If your relationship is good, those leads could be fed to you.

This will lead you to secondary and tertiary markets to find deals, which lead to additional operational challenges if you don't have an appropriate asset management strategy designed for smaller markets.  

I do have a private lender/ silent partner presently that prefers quicker turnover, which leads me to fliping.  

This has to do with both consistency and learning what works and what does not work, which leads me to my next point.5.

recently got a lead, the guy who has the property is a flipper and says that he does a couple a flips a year, the house is a 4bd 2ba garage and 2 levels, in a very decent neighborhood.

I set up click2mail with the list and postcard saved so if i am working on a new list it just takes a few clicks to send to old list with postcards.I didnt do bandit signs because with technology imo it is a waste for me and you get a lot of calls but a lot of false leads as well.  

Rather we lead individuals to creating small businesses using the vehicle of real estate investing.  

And, in terms of actively working to direct the strong population growth into urban growth areas, Snohomish county seems to be leading the pack of the Puget Sound counties.

Your parenthetical reads to me like you don't want to just borrow the money, but your description doesn't look like your friend would play a management role.  

That's why I don't understand the extreme reactions from people, if I said I could turn lead into gold and ill teach you for $100.00 and then got out a can of gold spray paint, would I be evil for taking your money, or would you be silly for giving it to me?