.-  W2 income is a necessity until you get a consistent portfolio of properties producing gains.-  Also diversify your debt with multiple sources.  

For buy and hold I would definitely focus on long term rather than short term lets - the latter can be incredibly time consuming, not to mention fickle. 

For starter agents Keller has a great training program  once you get trained then you can move to less expensive options.. but a good start is to get on a Keller team.My wife and I are with Soldera and they are a great boutique firm with high dollar producers not really a starter office...

so they have assets to invest, but property prices out here are just so incredibly high.

According to Armando wholesaling is incredibly easy.

Probably not a very useful metric IMO, especially since I am aware of one very active user who has stated that you will never see a vote produced from their account, and I am aware of others who have  only given votes on rare occasions but have contributed lots of posts. 

Not surprisingly through this process I needed up with one of the top producers in the area.

. #2 - offer your service to a top producer.

Instead of going to war over producing permit docs and/or walking from the deal maybe you could suggest they produce the permit or pay for a qualified inspection which could then be provided to the building department for proper documentation.

It produces income solely as a result of the efforts of you and your employees.