Can someone point me to a podcast, book or blog post about how to run your rental properties as a business. 

Since the the housing market has appreciated so rapidly over the last few years, the wholesale business margins have gotten very thin and will continue to get thinner within the next year or two.If you want to start wholesaling properties with a lot of meat on the bone (profits), I would suggest looking East and Inland towards some of the areas where the affordable housing has shifted to such as Inland Empire, High Desert, Coachella Valley and any other markets that always tend to ride on the coattails of the Metro markets such as Los Angeles. 

They have interviewed many successful investors that started in the wholesaling business. 

If I bring the rent up to market on her unit, is section 8 flat out going to say no?

Investing and being a landlord is a business.

Having a separate bank account in the LLC makes sense to keep track of expenses and income from business activity IMHO, and is something we generally prescribe to clients. 

Then I tell most of them I’ll have to bring their rent up just a bit due to my higher mortgage and expenses than the last landlord.

If the JV partner is coming in with all of the experience they are going to be able to negotiate much better terms since you'd only be bringing the land into the equation. 

for certain its just like any business under capitalized business fail at an alarming rate.

Again, if it did, everything else would be out of business by now, right?