One of my short term goals is to have buy a MFH within the next 12 months.

My goal is to build a nice income to live from in 10 years but if there are ways to tax shelter the income for longer that is fine too. 

Again having my guys doing the rehab.Following, building a steady portfolio of flip and sell and buy and hold properties id like to start moving in to the international market, obviously this area will take years to get to but is an end goal of my company.I do greatly understand by putting myself into the business side of this and throwing myself into the renovation side of it, i do fully understand the work load I will put my self under, however from all I have read and learned from other people in the industry one of their biggest issues is the contractors.

At some point investors need to take responsibility for their investment goals & get aggressive.

Do some reading and then get on the phone to compare services relative to your investment goals.

So my main questions are:1) What do I need to do to meet my goals?

My goal is to start with one SFR/townhouse/condo in a decent area and go from there. 

What route to choose really depends on your goals.

My goal is to NOT let the seller see what I will be making on this deal because he has an "extremely light fuse" (sort to say) that can explode and just walk out on the deal seeing that I'm walking away from the deal with 3-times more than him.

If you can solve this problem and re direct your goal to owning a home - that will be more beneficial for you in the long haul.