September 22, 2026

#203 ​​​Off-Grid Short-Term Rental Lessons From Kristen Sluiter, Host of Pole Bridge Penny

Kristen Sluiter runs an off-grid short-term rental forty miles from the nearest power line, and she found the tiny house that started it all on Facebook Marketplace the same week her father died. That’s the actual timeline, and it tells you everything about how Kristen builds — from grief, from instinct, and from twenty acres of Montana forest she wasn’t sure what to do with.

On this episode of the STR Sisterhood podcast, Stacey sits down with Kristen to talk about caregiving, loss, a devastating house fire, and Pole Bridge Penny, the off-grid short-term rental she built from nothing. It’s one of the rawest conversations we’ve published — and underneath the grief is a masterclass in boundaries, front-loading, and building a team you trust when you’re not the one on the property.

From Caregiving to Twenty Acres of Montana Forest

Kristen spent almost twenty-five years as an educator before life redirected her. In 2018, she unexpectedly became the sole caregiver for her late mom and dad, moving home to a state she’d left years earlier. “I would never not do it again,” she says. She got to be present at the end of both of their lives — and inherited a small portfolio of family real estate she wasn’t yet calling a business.

After her dad passed in 2019, Kristen was scrolling Facebook Marketplace on a Friday night — a decision she made, in her words, “from a place of grief” after finding she couldn’t live in her parents’ house. A tiny house listing popped up eighty miles away, its design almost identical to one she’d sketched herself years earlier, down to everything except the door placement.

That tiny house became the seed of Pole Bridge Penny, her off-grid short-term rental on twenty acres of raw forest near Glacier National Park.

Building an Off-Grid Short-Term Rental From a Facebook Marketplace Find

Most hosts think an off-grid short-term rental is a real estate project. Kristen found out fast it’s an infrastructure project first.

The nearest grid is forty miles away. There’s no “just call the power company.” Kristen powers the property with solar and monitors it over Starlink, funding part of the build with a USDA rural development grant she only learned existed because a regular customer at her coffee shop job turned out to be a solar installer. He’s her solar guy now.

Getting the grant also meant forming an LLC — proving, on paper, that her off-grid short-term rental was a real small business, not a hobby with a great view. If you’re still treating your STR as real estate instead of a company with a team, you’re leaving funding and protection on the table.

Three Challenges of Running an Off-Grid Short-Term Rental

Stacey asked Kristen to name the three biggest challenges. Her answers apply to any host managing a property they can’t drive by every day.

1. Systems fail differently than you expect. Days before her first guests of the season, Kristen was still troubleshooting an on-demand water heater quirk. A beautifully designed space doesn’t mean the water pressure behaves like it would in town.
2. Front-loading expectations isn’t optional. “I have to do a lot of front loading,” Kristen explains — setting expectations before guests arrive, because there’s no fixing a surprise from forty miles away. She dropped Instant Book on this listing and keeps cancellations flexible, preferring a lost booking over a guest who never read the listing.
3. You need a team you can trust completely. Kristen and her husband no longer live near the property full time. In negative-degree winters, she can’t just “check the webcam.” Her team came from relationships built during her coffee shop years — word of mouth, one introduction at a time, in a town small enough that everybody knows everybody.

The House Fire That Taught Her What She Could Rebuild

Then Stacey asks about the house fire — the one that taught Kristen more than she thought there was left to learn.

The fire wasn’t caused by Kristen or her husband — it started on a neighboring property, and the person responsible was never identified. Rebuilding took fourteen months, and people broke into the damaged house for months afterward. Kristen describes discovering an anger inside herself she didn’t know she had.

She and her husband now talk about their lives in two chapters — before fire, after fire. Kristen has started EMDR therapy, a treatment often used for PTSD. “I think I’m still learning,” she says — an honesty that doesn’t dress up an unfinished process as a tidy lesson.

What came out the other side wasn’t a neat resolution. It was clarity about what actually matters — fewer possessions, more intention, a wallpapered ceiling and dusty-pink doors because they finally could. “There ain’t nothing I can’t do,” she says now. Not because the fear disappeared, but because she found out what she’s capable of carrying.

Hospitality Doesn’t Mean You Have to Make Everyone Happy

This is where Kristen’s story turns into a business lesson every STR owner needs. Running an off-grid short-term rental — or any rental — means guests will occasionally be unhappy, and that’s not always yours to fix.

Kristen credits her lawyer with a phrase that now runs her business: “just the facts, ma’am.” You’re going to get the bad review. You’re going to walk into the unexpected every time. “You don’t have to bend over backwards to make somebody happy” who was never going to be happy, she says — and that’s their business, not a referendum on your hospitality.

That’s the Stacey lens here. A host who treats every unhappy guest as a standards failure will burn out fast. The host who’s built a business — clear listing copy, honest photos, a defined cancellation policy, a boundary she doesn’t renegotiate mid-stay — protects her energy and her guest experience at the same time.

You don’t have to build that clarity by yourself, either. Inside the STR Sisterhood, hosts work through exactly this kind of decision — where the boundary sits, what the listing needs to say, what’s worth front-loading — with women who’ve already been through it.

What This Off-Grid Short-Term Rental Story Teaches Every Overwhelmed Host

When Stacey asked what she’d tell a woman who feels exhausted and overwhelmed by her own STR business, Kristen didn’t offer a hustle line. She said: if you need to cry, curl up in a ball and cry. Do it. “We’re gonna be better off because of it.”

Then she added the advice her educator parents gave her long before short-term rentals existed: “There’s nothing you can’t do, but you don’t have to do it all.”

That’s the real takeaway from this episode, off-grid property or not. Keep going doesn’t mean pretending it doesn’t hurt. It means admitting what’s hard, setting the boundary anyway, and trusting that this season — the water heater quirk, the bad review, the fourteen-month rebuild — isn’t permanent and isn’t who you are.

Listen to the full conversation and sit with Kristen’s story at your own pace. And if you’re ready to stop carrying every decision in your STR business alone, Stacey’s STR Offerings are the next right step.

 

Click here now to listen to the full podcast.

HIGHLIGHTS AND KEY POINTS:

Golden Nuggets:

• “You could be as prepared as you want to be, but you’re not really going to learn it until you do it.”
• “Keep going. You can’t know what you don’t know. There’s something about you, that for whatever reason this thing happened.”
• “If you feel like you need to cry, curl up in a ball and cry. Do it. We’re gonna be better off because of it.”
• “You don’t have to bend over backwards to make somebody happy.”
• “There’s nothing you can’t do, but you don’t have to do it all.”

Connect With Our Guest:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vansby_theriver/     https://www.instagram.com/polebridge_penny/

Proudly Sponsored by Pricelabs! Mobile Link: https://hello.pricelabs.co/mobile-app/  Website Link: https://pricelabs.co/users/sign_up?referral=STRSISTER

Full Episode Transcript:

All right, here we go. So today I am joined by Kristen Sluiter. And Kristen, before we dive in, just want to say thank you for being here. You’re welcome.

Happy to be here. So first of all, let’s have you start sharing with our audience a little bit about who you are and how you got into the short-term rental space. Well, thank you, Stacey. So, oh, who am I? Great question.

So I am, I’m a former educator of many, many years. I come from an education family. And of course I said like, I’ll, I’ll never do that. I’m very good at it.

I studied journalism in my undergrad and I’ve always been a writer. And so I, You know, I taught or I was working in and around schools in various forms, not only just as a classroom teacher, but like program coordinator, project manager, things like that for, gosh, almost twenty five years. Pandemic, you know, pandemic timing. It’s a little weird. And then in twenty eighteen, I very unexpectedly became my late mom and dad’s caregiver.

So I’ve been living in another state. and of course I would come visit and this and that, but I, I moved home. I didn’t know I was going to be moving home, but I moved home and it was a blessing in disguise. Honestly.

I got to see them to the end of their lives, which was just, I would never not do it again. You know, you can’t do it again. So it was around that time that I, you know, they were educators their whole lives. And I kind of knew like they had like a little rental here and they had like this little rental over here. Well, in twenty eighteen, they basically handed off, handed it off to me.

And then that was when I was like, oh, my. Oh, oh, oh, OK. And so I have not tried to belabor it, but. So that’s kind of how things started.

Now they were not short-term rentals. It’s when it’s after my, my dad passed away and then I was my mom’s sole caregiver. And after she passed away that in twenty one that I. I also started in twenty two. And so I made the decision to retain their home.

most of the real estate. And then I decided to make one spot, a short term rental. And then the one I’m sitting in right now, this has been a almost six year project going on. And so I want to dive into that.

But I want to go back, first of all, and comment on the fact that you were the caregiver for your parents. A lot of people look at death as a horrible thing. And it is, obviously. It is a horrible thing. I will tell you…

When my mom passed away, and I’m curious if you had this same experience, my mom was very ill. She battled breast cancer for many years. And at the very end, we knew it was the very end, right? And her particular journey, I’d never looked at death as a journey, right?

but I very much look at death as a journey for someone in her situation. Now, obviously there are, you know, other folks that lose loved ones, you know, in a, in an accident or, you know, a different type of experience. And yeah, It was just shocking to me. I’d never witnessed a death like that. And you’re like, wait a minute.

I thought we’re supposed to be talking about short-term rentals here. Oh, no. I knew we’d talk about this. Death can be a very beautiful thing.

Number one, I’m a believer. And so I believe that my mom left this earth and went to heaven. And I’m just curious. what the experience was like for you when you were taking care of your parents. What, how did you leave differently?

Well, I mean, so by the time my mom passed away, that was the end of my immediate family. I had an older brother. Oh my gosh. I didn’t expect this, but I am in a place that’s deeply personal to me and them.

So, like my brothers buried on this land. So at a young age, I mean, I was thirteen going on fourteen. It was and he’s gone. And it was it’s it’s a really hard experience to even put into words. It is that type of loss is so gut wrenching.

I mean, any type of loss is gut wrenching and grief can encompass far more than just a death because I learned that too. We had a house fire and I learned that just not even two years ago, but you know, grief also is just this, there’s so many layers. And anyways, I actually love talking about this. So my dad also passed away very suddenly.

And it could be argued that my mom passed away suddenly too. But when your two other experiences have been, you know, they’re here and then it’s just a switch. Like the eight hours I got with my mom in hospice was just beautiful. And she… She was a breast cancer survivor and probably a year after surviving it, she had a, it could only really be described as like a psychotic break.

Huh. and this is a woman who is a mathematician. She studied mathematics. She was super logical and this and that.

And I remember at the time we were just shocked. We were just like, what is, you know, she’s the most stable person we know. And that’s when you’re like, Oh, thanks. Thanks for telling us this could be a thing. Apparently, you know, there’s a, there’s big feelings of after surviving, maybe something like that.

And, I, you know, I’m not her and I, I haven’t been through something like that, but I’ve been through some big things. And it is interesting how your brain almost in retrospect, you can look and go like, where I was just not online. You know, my brain was not quite with me. And then it was after that, that she was, I, I think, you know, you can’t go back and fix it, but I think wrongly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s because her trajectory was so much longer than Alzheimer’s would be, but chemo was very, very hard on her.

And that’s when we started seeing cognitive changes that did compound over time. And it was ultimately a dementia sort of style manner of cause of death. But, you know, it’s like, it’s so vivid that eight hours and it was, I had never experienced anything like that. How, like, how, how was I so calm? Like, so beautiful.

It was like, also because like I said, I had these two other experiences of losing, you know, the other parts of my family, just like a switch. And then here I am. And it’s like, it’s a very liminal time. I mean, time really does become so sacred and, um, Yeah, I’m getting chills.

And it’s, you know, I remember the hospice. They are just. Aren’t they angels? They’re angels blocking this earth. I remember her, you know, saying, okay, well, this is what to expect.

And you might hear this and it might did it. And, you know, and I think about it even now. And it’s been this year will be five years. And it’s like, I just knew.

And I can’t explain it. It was just so innate. Like, oh yes, of course that will happen. Of course that will happen too. Oh yeah.

And I had never been through that. I mean, I am not Christian now, but I have a long neglected Buddhist practice. And I have delved in a lot in that realm with, you know, I’ve gone on silent retreats. I’ve really sat with myself and dug into those concepts.

And I think that in that moment when everything you realize like, Oh my God, my whole life is not only about to change, it’s literally changing in the moment. There’s this weird, almost serenity that, that happened. And, and I actually, um, I think this doesn’t get talked about very much, but I know that people have experienced this. There was a sense of relief. Just my heart is ripped out of my chest and my mom, you know, my mom, my one person.

But then what a relief. Because she was, she was so miserable and she’d, And who am I, who am I to say like, stay here for me? No, this is the sacred process that I’m just witness to. Yeah, it’s it’s very difficult when you have a loved one who has an illness like that because it is a relief.

And at the same time, you’re feeling relief. You feel guilty for thinking that it’s a relief. You know what? At least I did. Yeah, I still every now and then, you know, just driving in the car.

I wish I would have done this different. Oh, I shouldn’t have, you know. So, okay. So I know, first of all, if you’re watching or listening, I promise I’ll get to the short formal stuff.

This is how we got, that’s how I got there. It’s very real. So your parents have left you this real estate. You turned one of the properties into a short-term rental. What made you decide to turn that property into a short-term rental?

So… I feel like it was, I did such an, like an American version of an introduction, like, Oh, I was an educator and you know, but really, truly in, in my heart, you know, I’m, I’m a creator and I am a traveler and I feel so, so lucky that I got to travel. I mean, I actually didn’t grow up just here where I literally am sitting, but my folks were educators and they, they met while working in Germany because they both had separately decided to teach overseas so when they had us as when they had us kids they said we want to expose them to another culture so I actually spent I would consider them formative the age four until ten in Japan wow and That, I think, you know, of course, when you’re a kid and we moved back to the middle of Montana and I’ve been in Japan, I’m like, why did you, what did you do to me? You know, it’s just one of those things that I feel like you, you got to throw time at it because of course now I’m so grateful.

And then they were always so encouraging, like go, yeah, you know, go, go here, go there. Like, don’t worry about going by yourself. Like just be safe and you’re smart and I have been able to do such cool things. And so that really informs then the decision to do a short-term rental. So where, well, where this one is, is actually closer to Glacier National Park.

And the one that’s in, I call it in town, is about twenty minutes from Glacier National Park. And, um, I, I was living here through the pandemic. I was taking, I took care of my mom and I saw this huge influx. It was like, people were like, wow, there’s outdoors.

Um, that’s what COVID did by the way. We introduce people to the outdoors. It was wild. And it was, it was really interesting to witness in a place that we’re all about the outdoors, but, um, I honestly didn’t mean to get into it. I thought about it.

It was really from a, I made that decision from a place of grief, which was interesting that it’s turned out so well because I tried living in the house after I had this visceral, like I can’t literally be here. And then that began the process of, What do I do? What do I do with this? I don’t want to get rid of it.

It’s a beautiful asset. You know, this is a great spot. And probably like six months later, it was just I think I was driving and it was just like a thing, you know, and my mom and dad had always wanted to do like a bed and breakfast. And I don’t know that also just pinged in my head. But ultimately, like I’ve yes, I’ve been a teacher.

But when I haven’t been a teacher, I’ve been in the service industry. I love making people happy. And, and also I still feel this way. Like I’ve been given this amazing thing and like, why not share it?

Why not? Why not? Why not? So tell me about that. Then, correct me if I’m wrong, you’ve got this property twenty minutes away, but the property that you’re sitting in while we’re doing this interview is an off-grid property.

Correct. Tell me about that and where did the first property lead to the next one? So, this started out as twenty acres of forest. And I had always…

I had, I don’t know where this came from, but like, I was always super fast. Well, I’ve always been fascinated with like architecture and design. And like, I was a home stager and a color consult consultant. And this, and I just became obsessed with tiny houses for a while. And, and then I, I’m the kind of person that it may take me six years to But if I make that goal, you better believe I will get to it.

It might be a little wandering, this and that, but I’ve always been like that. Like, especially if it’s something I really believe in. So after my dad died in twenty nineteen, I happened to be on Facebook marketplace and I had I knew I had the twenty acres and this is one of my favorite places in the entire world. And I was like, you know, what can I put up there?

That’s not because it’s very remote. Getting up here is not exactly easy. You know, like what would work? And I was like, oh, my God, a tiny house on wheels would work. So I went on a Friday night after my dad had died and I just was on Facebook Marketplace and typed in tiny house.

In a tiny house, eighty miles away, popped up. And I could go into that story. It’s just a wild story. Let’s just say the design is almost exactly the same as I had designed one myself, except for where the door literally is.

So, and then the people I bought it from had literally been here. And this was pre-pandemic because pandemic came and now it’s a different story around here. People, I will say pole bridge and people go, Oh, wow. You know, I’ve been there. And before pre pandemic, I mean, it was not like that.

So, um, I started with of raw land and I have been through two, one, two, three builds with my folks. Up here. I had a sense for what will it take on an off-grid property to create that. Now, I also didn’t let having a lack of grids stop me.

So in twenty, I rented this place out basically as like glamping, like a dry cabin. I saw great success. And again, it came back to like this hospitality aspect. and being able to share this I don’t want to cuss but like this really effing cool thing that I was able to ascertain from this really crappy thing that happened that like the I don’t know that’s just life really but so yeah so having gone through three different builds with them up here you know it wasn’t like I didn’t have a sense, but trust me now I feel like I didn’t know a damn thing. So what made you decide to do it off grid or what did it have to be off grid?

It has to be, there’s literally no grid. It’s not like, Oh, I don’t want to. Um, let’s see. The grid is.

Forty miles away. And so now I’m just logistically curious, you are having this interview with me through your cell phone data. Is that how we’re having, like, how are you, you have Starlink? Starlink. So I got a rural, I can’t say that word, rural development grant.

So I, In that process, I told you about acquiring that real estate. I also had the wonderful fortune of an amazing estate lawyer who taught me so many things. And so I created an LLC. And so help creating the LLC that I’m a small business.

which literally I am. That was very helpful in getting the rural development grant for the solar. And one of the things that you need to do is you need to monitor the solar. And in order to do that up here, the only thing I could get was Starlink to be able to monitor the usage. Now, I have a question because a lot of folks don’t necessarily think about their short-term rental business being a business.

They’re looking at it from, oh, I own a piece of real estate. I love, obviously, that your lawyer helped you see that this is a business, number one. And number two, I’m so impressed that you’ve gotten a grant. I feel like our…

our country has tremendous opportunities to earn grant money. And that’s an area where not many people are playing. How did you get the grant? Did you have a grant writer? Did you write the grant yourself?

What did that look like? So this is where me not working as a teacher and me working in the coffee industry comes to play. When I took care of my mom, I was a barista at a place over in Whitefish, Montana, which was a very touristed place. And we had this guy would come in and he’d use it like his office, you know, and finally just one day, cause I’m me, I was like, what do you do?

He’s my solar guy now. And so he actually was the one that told me about the grant connected me with, Oh gosh, what is it? It’s like the USDA grant. it’s like an extension office. I’m probably miss speaking, but something like that.

And then he worked on the grant, but there was, there’s literally a person in that office in Kalispell, Montana that helps you write the grant. And I mean, that was the other thing. It’s like, you know, I do have a writing background. I’ve done fundraising.

I have a lot of different skills, but you know, a grant is a very specific thing. And so, I mean, it just opened up this whole world that I didn’t know existed. It was awesome. So did you get your full solar paid for or did it augment? How, how, what did that look like?

So, you know, grants is a little, it, was a grant but it’s a little bit of a misnomer because you have to put up the money um all the money up front first okay you have to like meet certain parameters you have to make sure that you’ve you know it’s a pretty stringent process but you know thankfully my solar guy had done this with other people and what’s cool is he’s worked up here before so he was familiar with the area Um, he had helped other people up here, get, get that grant. So pretty well versed. And so he knew, well, you got to meet this, you got to meet this. And then the person in the extension office also may, I think we maybe had to rewrite it once.

You know, it wasn’t just like, and ta-da. Right, right, right. Interesting. Okay, cool. So you’ve got these two properties now.

I’m curious, when you first got started, what did you think this business was going to be? And how has your perspective changed since then? So this is a place that I’m really glad that you talked about it being a business because I, all the traveling I’ve done, I’ve used short-term rentals and, and then also hotels. And I mean, you know, I’ve been trapped.

I haven’t in the last five years because life has been crazy, but you know, I’ve stayed in like a hostel. I’ve stayed in like a five-star hotel. Like I’ve had this gamut. And so through that, I was like, okay, this is an experience I want to have, but I never thought of it as like, I don’t know. I did think of it like, Oh, I can share this cool thing that I have, but I never ever thought of it as anything other than a business.

And I think that my experience working with my amazing lawyer, because I ended up working with her for like five years because of, like I said, I took all of her, all that stuff with my folks. And then, um, there’s lots of legal stuff that happens. Man. Speaking of my solar guy, he just showed up.

That’s hilarious. We’re going to shoot. Let me go greet him. I’m going to let my dog. You’re fine.

I apologize. You want to go meet the guy? That’s funny. That’s hilarious.

Maybe as the ears were burning. Yeah, I was like, well, you know, we could definitely talk about the challenges of an off-grid property. Yeah, there you go. Oh, that’s so funny. That’s hilarious.

Okay, so you worked with your lawyer. You worked with your lawyer for five years. How has this business turned out to be different than what you expected when you first started or has it turned out to be different? That’s a great question.

I mean, I, you know, it’s funny cause I, my education background, you know, you could be as prepared as you want to be, but you’re not really going to learn it till you do it. And I am a, I’m a big, like a lot of, I like a lot of information and I like a lot of information upfront. So there was a whole process too, that I went through before I decided, you know, to open my first, um, STR where, I mean, I joined our community and just sat back and observed and you start to see, or at least I started to see patterns. And that is also where then I also saw, I don’t like, yes, two things can be true at once. One, I can be all about sharing this awesome gifts with the world too, but it is literally a business and I need to approach it as a business.

And I am in the hospitality business. And a hospitality business does not mean that people will walk all over me. Um, and I think that is something that I started to learn, you know, like I feel so fortunate. I’ve had like, I don’t even know how many has stays now, maybe a hundred, maybe more.

Maybe there’s only been two times where it was like, you know what, we’re going to have to give that person not a great review. And I really think that, you know, I supervised people. And I also, I dealt with twenty six souls and then their mom, their dad, their grandma, their grandpa, their aunt, their uncle, whoever. I have a lot of experience having to give constructive feedback. And I think there’s also like this beauty that happened because.

well, I thought I had been through the worst thing I’d ever been through losing my whole family. And then house fire said, hold my beer. But you know, like I, I’d been through so much crap. Like, okay, if I can do that, And with my skills, I was a stager.

I was a color consultant. I actually helped set up some short term rentals in my area. And through that, too, I started to learn like, oh, you know what? We’re not going to do that design choice because, you know, like I did the classic thing where it was like, oh, you know, everything has to be Christine and white. Well, guess what?

Guess what? I had to redo the whole second year, you know, right. That I thought that. I thought I knew my house.

I didn’t know my house very well, even though I had lived there because living there is different. So that’s when I then instituted, I’m going to stay at my Airbnb like a guest. Like do it like I’m a guest stuff that I’ve noticed. Plus I am super anal and it actually helps that I lived in that house because there’s going to be things that like I had a property manager to begin with. She, she, there would be things that she wouldn’t catch.

She hadn’t, she didn’t know the inner workings of the house. I knew everything about that house. I mean, you know, this one has been offline for, this is now four years. So this year I’m relaunching this one.

And you know, this is just off grid. It’s a totally different beast. I can imagine. What would you say are, I want to ask you about the house fire, but when we’re on the topic of off-grid, what would you say are three challenges of having an off-grid property? Oh man.

I mean, you know, I’m like, Oh, I just relaunching it. It’s amazing. I was crying like two days ago. Like, Oh God, there’s so much to do.

I mean, you know, like I said, said like, and this is, this is a place where I, this is, you know, with, with the one in town, I felt like I had done enough research. I had stayed enough. I could anticipate. And also like, I have a planning mind. And also with the training that I have, I take it, you go to the end, what do I want?

And then I work backwards. And in that process, it’s like detail, detail, detail. Off-grid, just obliterate. Off-grid is like, just kidding.

You think you know? So the three things. Well, one, you know, this is a super well-designed space and it looks great. It looks fantastic. And I’m really proud of that.

but that doesn’t mean everything’s gonna work like you are on grid right okay like i’ve created a water system the water pressure is not gonna be like if you’re in town right and like i just discovered which we literally are our first guests come july tenth and we are still problem solving this the on-demand water heater kind of has a little quirk okay what are we gonna do you’re When I did the dry run, I learned with the off-grid property, like I have to do a lot of front loading. Like a lot of setting expectations. And sometimes I struggle with that because I’m like, you know, it’ll be fine. But I also know what happens if you don’t do that.

And then people discover. So I have always been, I like, I don’t have anything to hide. I’m not trying to sell you something that it’s not. And I want, I literally want you to have, I want you to make memories. I want you to, I want you to be a repeat guest.

That’d be cool. But at the end of the day, like I want this to be memorable for you because you made a choice to, you chose me. And so the least I could do is just be honest. So, but the off grid really it’s interesting.

So I’m so like, I’m nervous about it this year. Cause I’m like, there’s only so much like front loading I can do. Off grid is just going to off grid. I mean, I literally are in bear country. Front load people about that, you know?

So it’s with the off grid one, I don’t have instant book on. I literally made it. So you have to, I only recently took. instant and took like, what is it called?

You know, they have to put in a request. Request a book. I only recently took that off because I was like, let me see how this goes. Because also I made my policy, my cancellation policy on that one very flexible. As soon as they book, if I say, hey, did you read the did it?

They’ll go, no. And I’m like, why don’t you go read that? Come back to me if you have any questions. And I’ve had people unbook.

Totally fine. You’re not hurting my feelings because this is not about my feelings. And then, I mean, the third thing is, is that I, unfortunately we don’t, we don’t live near here anymore. And so like, and I was away for, I feel like it was two years. It was really just a year.

but it is very remote. The elements are very harsh. And so like I rolled up and was like, I don’t know what I’m gonna have to work on this time. I ended up with some bigger projects that, you know, they’re manageable, but it’s very hard.

Like, I can’t be like, let me check on the webcam. I mean, I could, I probably could, but you know, it’s got to withstand negative four degrees at some point. So, so it really matters like my team, Yeah. Big time. Especially on the off grid.

So. And how did you find a team that was willing to do the off grid? Was that a challenge at all? I mean, my coffee shop job really was good.

And then I’m a big reader. And it’s a real pretty small town where we’re at. I mean, Polbridge is micro. And then Columbia Falls is even smaller. And having, I think the advantage was I lived there and I got to know people.

And it really is to find a place still where it’s like, hey, do you know somebody that blah, blah, blah? Oh, yeah, let me introduce you to my friend Josh. Oh, Josh, who do you know? You know, that is really how it happened.

And, you know, it makes me wonder how it would be like in a, in a bigger city. I mean, I have some long-term, like I have a longer term rental in new Orleans and that, that has been brutal. I was going to do short-term rental and then, but you know, the city, but rightfully so, I mean, the city changed their whole rules. And so that was just a, okay, now we’re doing long-term, but I mean, that’s been almost five years. And I just, in the last two years got a fantastic property manager, but I went down on a one-way ticket and spent as much time as was needed.

So yeah. Interesting. Interesting. I want to go back to, you mentioned this house fire.

Was it at one of your rentals or was it at your home, your primary residence? So you said that you thought you had been through the worst part of your life until this house fire. Talk to me about what you learned about yourself from that experience. I mean, I’m going to be super honest and transparent. I think I’m still learning.

Um, I just started, I mean, yeah, I guess I just did started EMD EMDR therapy for it because that is, Oh, what does it stand for? It’s very commonly known to be used with, um, veterans. But it is a very specific type of, um, therapy for PTSD. I was diagnosed with met the DSM like a month after the fire and this and that.

And, but I just didn’t feel ready to, well, it’s one, it’s kind of twofold. One, I didn’t feel ready to tackle it too. I mean, the whole entire process took us. Fourteen months. And that is like.

Fourteen months of just white knuckle. FAFO. I mean, it’s not, not really FAFO, but like. here I thought I knew like real estate and this and that.

And then this was like, Oh, you were about to get a whole new education. And we’d only lived in the house like a year and a half. So we literally spent almost more time out of the house than we’d been in the house. It was brutal. And so I want to go back to through this process where you’re still learning.

How do you feel like, again, you were different beforehand and maybe in a positive or a negative way? And what does Kristen look like on the other side of that difficult experience? Yeah, no, thank you for reiterating. How do I explain this?

This is something that my husband and I talk about a lot because there’s this weird gap of like, who were we before? Like we call it before fire, after fire. And we are still figuring that out. I mean, I would say personally, I mean, I think I learned about the both of us, my husband and I, that we are badass. Yeah, baby.

We had also only been married like two, not even a full two years at that point. And We just, I remember this so vividly. Maybe it was like three days after and he just looked at me and he said, we are not going to let this ruin us. And let me tell you, there were times it was going to ruin us.

People broke into the house after for months. And I didn’t know that I could have so much anger. The fire was not caused by us. It was caused by a neighboring property. It was a person.

It was a person. And to this day, through different lawyers, no one has been able to be held responsible. Owner has never been located. And there is this, I have a real justice bias, probably my neurodivergence.

I’ve always been like that. And when you can’t, and I’m an investigative journalist, that’s how I was taught. And when I started digging in, it just got gross. But I could see that I was trying to control. There was nothing to hold on to.

I literally just, everything went. And so I think what it’s taught me is like, maybe don’t cling so much. like it’s interesting. The result has been, um, we’re very thoughtful about things that are in our house now.

We have a lot less stuff, you know, like, you know, it’s funny, you know, I will never say it’s just stuff because now that I, it was my stuff and it was the last of some of my family stuff. It’s never just stuff. It’s your stuff. Um, but we’re so much more thoughtful. Um, I have gotten a new relationship with anger that, that I think I realized that it can be healthy because I don’t know how we got through it because it was so, I mean, it wasn’t just like the fire.

Then it was like the aftermath was just insanity. It was like a soap opera. I was just like, what am I living in? This is my life.

is this real? Is this real? Like we found out like it was arson. We’re like, Oh my God. You know, like, ah, there were lots of other things that happened, but, um, but there was also this cool part where it’s like, well, when you’re left with nothing, what are you going to create?

And our house is beautiful. And we have a wallpapered ceiling. We painted the interior doors dusty pink. We did it up.

Because we could. Because you could. We’re both creative people. And I think that we then realized that the way we’re healing is through the literal rebuilding. And being intentional and really thoughtful.

And it really… changed again like how we view stuff how we view like clothes what do we want in the world do we want stuff or do we want experiences and um you know there’s still a very we’re a very hurt part of me a very raw part of me but I mean at this point I’m just like there ain’t nothing I can’t do Yes, girl. I’m curious, you know, there are so many people who have been through difficult situations and it’s through those difficult situations that you do find out you’re a badass. So if you were talking to someone who maybe lacked self-confidence, who maybe lacked courage, what would you say to her?

Oh my goodness. Um, I would say keep going. And that’s really something that like, when they give Vinnie Ferraro shout out right now, Vinnie is one of the people that was one of my teachers when I was, you know, learning about Buddhism. And one of his things is keep going. I love you.

And it’s like, so Because I still get bogged down. Like, oh, sure, I have this practice and blah, blah, blah. But it’s a practice. Life is a practice.

And, like, it’s so easy to just think that it’s going to be like this all the time. And when I say this, I mean, like, it’s going to be so hard. And it’s going to be so challenging. And I’m just always going to feel, like, so hurt or so whatever. But you’re not.

It’s just like that right now. And I still have to remind myself that I was sitting here crying, like, Oh my God, the water doesn’t work. And I have people coming. And I was like, but it’s like this right now.

And I’m a capable human. So I guess I would just say like, yeah, keep going. You know, like you can’t know. Well, you can’t know what you don’t know. And there’s something about you.

That. For whatever reason, this thing happened and it sucks. But it’s not actually who you are. The thing happened to you.

You are not the thing. And so, you know, it’s easy to say, but when you’re in the depth of it, like be on the floor and just cry. You don’t have to be super strong for anyone but yourself. And that just know that like, it won’t last forever. I think we say that again.

Thankfully. Thankfully. I think, you know, it’s, it’s so challenging for so many people because they feel like they do have to stay strong. They do have to, put on an appearance, they do have to, you know, put a smile on their face because people will judge them if they don’t.

People will have opinions. Let me say, people are going to have opinions about us, whether we like it or not. So that’s their business. That’s their business. But I also, I think, you know, going back to Applying this in the short-term rental space, I know that there are so many women out there that are like, okay, I’ve gotten into short-term rentals.

It’s fun. And I am exhausted and I’m overwhelmed and I’ve built myself another job. And what do I do? What do I do?

And, you know, I think it’s really… great advice to say, first of all, if you feel like you need to cry, grow up in a ball and cry, like do it. We’re going to be better off because of it. And go ahead. I, you know, the thing that I saw early on and I see this, I don’t really like to, Ooh, this is hard to say, but I don’t like to critique our whole gender.

I feel like there’s this thing in the, and it’s not maybe just our gender. I think in the short-term rental space, like I say, we’re in the hospitality space, but we’re not in the kissing ass space. Well, some people are, some people are, but you know, like I’m not for everybody and neither is, neither is my short term rental. And like, the thing I learned from my lawyer, which has helped me tremendously running my business is just the facts, ma’am.

Just the facts. And so like, you’re going to get the bad review. You’re going to have the party. You’re going to walk into the unexpected every time, but you’re capable, but you also don’t have to bend over backwards to, make somebody happy that maybe just isn’t going to be happy. They maybe just should have made a different choice.

And so like you have to decide what your boundary is and stick to it. It’s going to be uncomfortable. Kristen, I can sit here and talk to you for days. You are so wise.

I just appreciate it so much. Well, this is so fun. I want to move to the lightning round. So I’m going to ask you some questions to answer with the very first thing that comes to mind. Oh gosh.

The first question is, yes. Where is your favorite place to vacation? Oh, I haven’t been on a vacation in forever. New Orleans.

New Orleans. I met my husband there. So I like, I like New Orleans too. What’s one place you’ve never been that you want to visit? Bucket list is Patagonia.

When are we making this happen? TBD. How about what’s one thing you know now that you wished you knew when you were starting out in the world of short-term rentals? Kind of like I said, like I don’t have to be for everybody and it’s okay to have boundaries.

Amen to that. Amen to that. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? Ever been given. Um, I don’t know.

That’s like a piece of advice, but my folks really instilled. I think I got it from them of like, there’s, nothing you can’t do, but you don’t have to do it all. That’s great. That’s great.

I love that a lot. Last question. What’s one thing and or person that you’re grateful for today? Um, my husband, you know, I mean, we have weathered more than just what I said. We’ve weathered some other deaths and, and somehow we are still finding the joy and finding the fun and sharing, you know, these laughs that felt impossible, maybe, you know, six months ago.

And cause when we just moved back into the house in last October and like, he’s always just encouraging me and cheerleading me and, Yeah, I can’t imagine doing life without him now. I’m going to encourage you to tell him that tonight. Oh, I will. Kristen, if folks want to learn more about you, where is the best place for them to find you online?

Yeah, right now I am on Instagram. So my properties are… at vans by vans v-a-n-s by the river yes it is a chris farley reference um and then um pole bridge penny p-o-l-e-b-r-i-d-g-e pole bridge penny they’re both instagram there’s some underscores and this and that but you got search functions you can figure it out i love it i love it kristen this was so fun thank you so much for being here yeah thank you for having me it’s been a pleasure

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