If you are serious about this sport and your future skill, your number one priority is to find a highly competent shop in your area and get OW certified.
See if you can find some other users in SC and what their local LDS shop is--look for one with lots of technical divers/specialties and an owner/employees that have no problem talking for an hour or two on their methods and facts of this sport. That fact that you are on this board, puts you ahead of the curve of most divers and you will be able to ask detail oriented questions, gauge their answers and expertise from some of the highly qualified instructors on this board. If money was no issue, I might even travel and do GUE training or take the class from some of the more experienced members on this board.
Not all shops are the same and their are plenty of ****ty ones---I should know, I just took some new OW students out for some fun dives and the training they received wasn't just sub-par and inadequate, it was downright dangerous.
As per DM, I hate to rain on your parade, but I really hate the zero to hero bull**** with DM. To be a competent DM requires actual diving experience--not something that is learned in a class or even read on a super informative forum--diving, lots of it, in variety of locations, conditions, and people. I would not get DM until you at least had a beginner technical certification (Fundies, Intro to tech, etc) which proved your competency in the water from a basic skill level.
I would love to be a official DM or an instructor, but I am more focused on my own diving skill and don't have the time. Until that time when I get my instructor card (2-3 years), I will be assisting/training the divers below by example of how I conduct my diving--and that is something you should really think about.
Do you want to be a DM or do you want to be a diver.....because you can't be both at this stage.
Edit: Lots of people travel to Utila and Roatan to do DM