Trying to be a good steward with the education I'm getting at BiggerPockets, I'm casting a net to see if anyone has use for some volunteer work that I can help with.Cleaning / prepping a unit for rental, research (that I can do remotely), any kind of exposure.

The first pillar is a good insurance policy as that cover the majority of your exposure.

It is my understanding that your liability exposure associated with the LLC entity choice is limited to your capital investment. 

Bonus question - What is the lowest % down on a commercial loan?

I tried to get exposure to each of these areas as I was going through school because I didn't know what I was going to need to know until after I graduated and started working (my focus ended up being mostly on the hardware side of the spectrum).When I became too out-of-date to do engineering (I went through school using a slide rule because electronic calculators hadn't been invented yet), I switched to marketing semiconductors to circuit board designers and then became a technical writer documenting how to use electronic products (I enjoyed taking things apart as a kid and figuring out how they worked).

The first pillar is a good insurance policy as that cover the majority of your exposure.

Plus if you have a PM you have little direct exposure to the management.

You need to network and create exposure.

They want maximum exposure and they don’t deal with the general public.If it hasn’t been listed, there might be title issue that need clearing.

I completely second Tyler's opinion that, while property appreciation can be a great bonus of investing in STRs, banking on it is rather uncertain.