If your friend is a traditional lender, he is the guy who can help your eventual seller, but not the right lender to help you on the business side.It sounds to me like you need to find a commercial banker at a local bank.  

Usually the latter eventually reach a point where expenses exceed revenue, at which point either more revenue must be procured or expenses have to go away (often the latter, through bankruptcy, chargeoff, whatever).

I'm sure the right person will come along eventually. 

I'll eventually use his firm to do everything, but I'm not there yet.  

Just play the odds, if you've come across 8 bad ones already, keep meeting them and eventually you'll find a good one. 

It may be a challenge to eventually exit without wiping out any cash flow as you noted.

I spend a lot of time in AL (went to school there) and hope to move back eventually.

I actually did this because real estate really interests me and I'm hoping to eventually transition out of my current full time occupation into RE sales and investing full time.  

My only concern is that I eventually want to, you guessed it, buy rental properties.

Its my opinion that if you are going to eventually have an LLC, might as well do it right away and start running your business.