It was a fairly easy and quick process to get the license (a few months).

It is important to keep the funds flowing and have the project move as quickly as possible with little or no stoppage in work. 

I also agree that a lot of wholesalers have no idea what they're doing, and that they start cutting corners when they realize it's not the get-rich-quick scheme that they were led to believe.

We've been utilizing biggerpockets' tools and have built our own excel spreadsheet to quickly analyze data-dump from mls reports. 

You will learn a lot quite quickly.

If so how quickly were they able to do it?

The markets are overpriced but homes do sell quickly.

I don't need a quick buck with these my hope is that over time the owners in this area come to me when they are ready to sell. 

We got in to see the house that afternoon, so quickly that the listing agent didn't even have keys to the place. 

A quick follow up question on this - I do have a small consulting / freelancing gig on the side and will be a 1099 income, but it will probably be less than $2K for this year.