4 Myths About Assisted Living Investing You Need to Stop Believing

Transcript

00:00:00 - 00:00:44
There are a lot of myths out there about running an assisted living facility. In today's video, we're going to address those headon. Make sure you stick around. Number four is a big one as well. Hey friend, I'm Brandon Gustafson. I help first-time assisted living entrepreneurs launch profitable, purpose-driven businesses, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives so that they can have success and get to where they want to be, creating time and financial freedom for their

00:00:22 - 00:01:15
family. So, if that's you, you are in the right place. Before we hop into the video today, want to remind you as well, I've got a special offer for you here at the end of the video. Make sure you stick around till the end. Also, stick around for number four on our miss here today cuz it's going to be really beneficial. But if you want to just, you know, skip into what that special offer is, go check out roadmapchallenge.com. Would love to have you just check that out. That's what I'm going to talk about

00:00:50 - 00:01:36
here at the end of the video. Would love to have you in our next challenge, though. And if you need free resources, make sure you get over to assistedlivinginvesting.net. Got a bunch of things over there to help you out as you are moving things along on your journey to launching your first assisted living business. All right, now let's dive into the four biggest myths that I hear around assisted living. Again, make sure you stick around for number four. It's a big one and going to help you as

00:01:13 - 00:02:08
you're trying to figure things out moving forward with your assisted living business. Number one, though, is you don't need staff until you're open. I hear this from people all the time like, okay, like at what point do I need to to hire staff? I've even heard people, well, you don't want to have staff until you get your license and then you have residents in there. And you know, in a perfect world, that would be great. But in reality, there's kind of this onboarding process you have to bring

00:01:40 - 00:02:34
people through to help them get ready to run an assisted living facility, to train them on how to care for residents, to start creating a culture, to get payroll all set up. And so the reality of this, especially with your facility administrator, is you're going to want to have people in place before with an administrator. So our facility, what we we did in Idaho, we were buying an existing facility, but the previous owner was also the administrator. And while she was okay to help us out with a

00:02:07 - 00:03:12
few things, she wasn't committed to being our administrator and honestly didn't really want to have this be a full-time job for her. So she was walking away. So we had to hire somebody. We had found that facility. I think it was in October of 2021 and it took a while to close. A lot of that actually was the the licensing process. Took us a couple months to to get through the licensing. We didn't close on the facility until February of no October of 2020. Closed in February 2021. There we go. Caught myself on the

00:02:39 - 00:03:36
years going back that far. It brain doesn't always work that way. Anyways, so we needed to find a new administrator and we needed to find that administrator before we could close on the facility and we couldn't use the previous owner as the administrator of record. We had to go out. We had to interview people and it was a little bit scary because we were in a spot where we already had owned a facility, right? So, I I knew a little bit of what was going on and and what to expect here, but I didn't know

00:03:09 - 00:04:15
the person that I was going to be hiring. And I had never gone through that process before of finding and hiring a good administrator for a facility. And that took a while to figure things out. Ultimately, we did, but we were ready to hire that person in December, and we weren't ready to get the facility. And luckily we had somebody that was willing to wait for us and kind of be in the wings waiting while we worked on getting the license. And that was a huge lifesaver for us. But had we not gone through the process of finding

00:03:41 - 00:04:36
and hiring that person and having them ready to go months in advance, we would have not been able to hit the ground running. We actually our facility is up in Idaho. We live in Utah. about a month before the facility opened and we were able to close on things. She came down to us. She was coming down to the Salt Lake area for some personal reasons and we're like, "Hey, let's just meet." Went to lunch. Had a really good conversation with her and her husband. Gave us a lot more confidence that we were hiring the

00:04:08 - 00:04:56
right person and then we we were able to move forward. But you have to start those things early because you've got to do training. You got to make sure that all the paperwork is in place. When you're doing a license transfer with an administrator or a new administrator is getting in place, you make sure they have the administrator license. You need to make sure that is communicated up to the state so they can check all the boxes they need to or else you're you're going to be out of compliance and you

00:04:33 - 00:05:20
don't want to do that. So, make sure you start recruiting early. Start building your leadership core very early on. And there's three hats that people wear. There's owner, operator, and administrator. So, you need to have that administrator. That could be you. It's totally fine if that's you. If it's you, type in administrator down below. I would love to hear from you and what your questions are as well. Type in those because I can help answer some of those questions. But also, you might

00:04:56 - 00:05:46
want to have, you know, maybe a care manager or house manager. The reason why you want these people is as an owner operator, somebody that I am, then I need to be communicating this is my vision. This is where I want things to go. I need to communicate that out to them. But also, they're going to need to start hiring people. They need to take that vision, internalize it, and then start training other staff. They've got to go out and they've got to find other people so that they're not doing all of

00:05:20 - 00:06:18
the work as as they get into this. So, make sure you are training your staff before you launch. If you're buying an existing facility, um there might be a little bit of retraining that goes there because they have worked for a different company for a period of time. You don't want to rock the boat too much, but you do need to make sure I would say it is important for you to have at least your core management team in in place before you launch your assisted living business. You want to make sure you have

00:05:50 - 00:06:44
these people. It's going to make your life that much easier. You don't need to hire them 6 months in advance, but you do want to have somebody at least a month in advance getting into this. So, make sure you don't skip on that. Myth number two is licensing is just a formality. And I know that there are people that do unlicensed facilities. And if that's you, type in unlicensed down below. I would love to hear from you on that. But even if you are unlicensed, there are still a lot of things that you

00:06:17 - 00:07:08
have to go through to get ready for your assisted living business. You need to still follow all the rules because you're still caring for people. Um, and while there's not this governing board above you, they could the state could still come in and shut you down if you are not providing adequate care for your residents or you're not following the rules. So, make sure you understand what you can and can't do when you're unlicensed. There's also the the piece of getting your your home, making sure

00:06:43 - 00:07:30
it's zoned properly, making sure you have fire department approvals because those are more city and state type of things. They you need to have a certificate of occupancy. You need to say how many people can be in a home. You need to make sure you have egress for fire. There's a lot of things that go into that that are not specific to a license. There's a piece of the license called a certificate of occupancy. It may be called something different in your state that you have to have in

00:07:07 - 00:07:56
order to obtain a license. But even if you're unlicensed, you still need to have that or else they could come in and say you're not meeting the needs. Somebody could report you. You get big fines. They could find you. They could potential jail time. They could take away your ability to run this type of business. there's a lot of things that they can do to you even if you're an unlicensed facility. So, you still need to make sure you follow the path to getting ready to go. It's it's really

00:07:31 - 00:08:24
important for you to do that. In my mind, there's three steps to a kind of a smooth licensing process that you should be following. One is you you should start early. Um if you don't start early, you may run into roadblocks and that could cause delays in your ability to get started um uh to launch your business. So, if you look online and my market research guide, which is a part of the Launchpad bundle, if you'd like to learn more about that, go to assistedlivinginvesting.net/launchpad,

00:07:58 - 00:08:53
we update this for you on an annual basis. It's an incredible tool. Helps you do the market research to make sure you're in the right house and the right property. But in there, we have added information in there about the licensing process for each state, including how long it takes for you to do the licensing. So, it's going to save you a ton of time because it's all in one spot. And a lot of states are going to take months to process the application and and not just one or two months like

00:08:25 - 00:09:28
four, six, 12 months even in some cases. And so you need to start the process early. That could mean and my friend Serge Leescu who you may have watched his videos on YouTube as well. He said this one time and I I thought it was brilliant. Uh he mentioned that you want to start the process of licensing sooner. Like submit the application today within reason. Maybe not today today, but um as quickly as you possibly can because it gets you in quue knowing that they will tell you this is incomplete. You need to do more things.

00:08:57 - 00:09:47
You expect that, but they'll tell you the things that you need to do. Plus, you're now you're in Q. So, the faster you can do this, the the better off you're going to be. So, start early. Start getting familiar with the licensing process in your state. Understand the types of documents they're going to need and get that all ready to go. Make sure number two in in this kind of framework is you let's view it as a triangle, right? So you got to start early. The the top of the triangle

00:09:22 - 00:10:13
is you have to document everything. Everything policies, procedures, floor plans, staff training, anything that you're going to be doing, you got to document it because it will be either required for you in the licensing process or your very first survey when they come out and look at the facility. They're going to want to see those things. So you have to document everything. This is something that is consistent throughout the process of owning an assisted living business. You have to document everything in

00:09:48 - 00:10:43
healthcare. If you didn't document it, it didn't happen. So, you have to make sure you have everything documented. So, so important for you to do that. Okay? So, that's a big one. You have to document everything. And then number three, the the other corner of the triangle here is you need to build relationships with the licenser. This is not a one-time transaction. you're going to be working with this person consistently for years to come until they go find a different job or somebody replaces them because they got

00:10:15 - 00:11:16
promoted or you decide you don't want to own the business. Having a solid relationship with them um and not treating it as a transaction, treating treating this as as a relationship is going to make your life that much easier. Okay? So follow that three-step process. The licensing becomes that much easier. It is not just a formality. It's not just a box to check. It is a process in my focus framework, which is my five-phase process for uh launching assisted living businesses that I teach

00:10:45 - 00:11:45
in my success system program. Um the U is understanding the rules and regulations. We go really deep into that. And so if that's something you feel like you need help with, um go to aliquiz.com. I have a quick 30 secondond quiz to see which of my coaching programs are best fit for you. and if the success system is the best fit for you, it'll tell you and give you all the details for it. Myth number three is if you build it, they will come, right? Fill the dreams. And unfortunately, that's not the truth. Um, as much as you

00:11:16 - 00:12:16
would like to think that, cool, I've got an assisted living business. I'm the only one. I did the market research. There's nobody else here. If you don't market it and don't let people know that you're there, people aren't going to know to come to you. and that can really um slow your ability to get residents into the facility. So, my first facility, my my facility in Colorado, we p purchased an existing facility. Uh but it was not full when we purchased it. I want to say there were 10 residents in

00:11:46 - 00:12:34
the facility at the time. We were licensed for 16. So, obviously, we wanted to to increase that. And I thought, you know, we're buying an existing business. We're under new management. People will hear about that instantly. It never clicked in my brain. Like, how are people going to hear about you? That that didn't click in my brain for whatever reason when I was getting started. They'll just know, right? It's going to be great. Somebody's gonna put a news article about us. I don't know.

00:12:09 - 00:13:15
Didn't happen. So, we had to kind of go back to the drawing board, talk to our administrator, and this was in 2020, so this is in the middle of CO. You couldn't go and build relationships as freely as you could prior to CO. And so we had to figure out how are we going to get residents in here? And what I found is it it took a lot of building relationships with people, getting out into the community where possible, talking to case managers, talking to discharge nurses at hospitals, rehab facilities. For us, the population

00:12:43 - 00:13:48
we worked with actually the state prison, the state psych hospital. We dealt with a a mental health population. Um, and so those were resources for us. It was building relationships there. And it took us a few months to go from 10 residents up to 16. We were able to get there, but it was not a flip the switch. Everything's great. We've got our facility full. It took some time, took some relationship building, and that is what ultimately got us to get to capacity. And that's something that you

00:13:15 - 00:14:16
need to work through. So there's a bit of a framework here that I'd like to share with you. It's called the fill formula is finding your ideal resident profile. Like think about it. Who do I want to serve? Are you serving a a population that is mental health? Is it disability? Is it elderly care? Who's my ideal client? My avatar for who I want to serve. Who's that person? Okay. So, identify that. I in the Phil framework is invest in referral networks. These can be case managers or hospitals or in

00:13:45 - 00:14:47
the case for us the state prison in our facility. Identify who are those going to be and then start investing some time into building relationships with those people. That's going to help you be successful. The first L is leveraging local partnerships. So this is, you know, talking to the local hospitals, rehab facilities. This is talking with social workers, seeing who's out there and seeing what partnerships they have and starting to leverage those types of partnerships so you can bring people in

00:14:17 - 00:15:10
so you can get in front of other groups that might have this. Maybe there's some kind of an association for the nurses that you're not aware of. And so you go and you start talking to the discharge nurse at the local hospital and you find that, oh man, next Tuesday they actually have a conference and they're talking about senior care. Can I get in there and be on a panel? Can I go over there? Do they have an opportunity for me to have a booth? Do they have like start opening your mouth and there may be

00:14:44 - 00:15:34
partnerships that are out there that can get you in front of the right people. Okay. And the last L is launch consistent outreach. And so this is something that you need to be in the community consistently, but I would also encourage you to have some kind of an online presence there as well. Um, make sure and if you do an online presence, I think it's great, but understand that not everybody's everybody's going to see that, especially in the beginning. You have to be consistent with it. You have

00:15:09 - 00:16:10
to post on a regular schedule. That's why I post my YouTube videos on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I'm consistent with it because it lets YouTube know in their algorithm, okay, Brandon's going to post on a regular basis if we know when to pump this out and and which people to pump it out to. So, if you're starting a Facebook page, a Facebook group or something like that for your assisted living business, then what I want you to do is create some kind of a cadence that you know that you can get in and post on

00:15:38 - 00:16:27
a regular basis. Could be daily, could be weekly, could be twice a week. Pick a number and then make sure you're consistent with it because that is going to allow the algorithm to kind of pick you up and spit you out into people's world, the people that are following you. Okay? the more consistent you are, especially with social media use, the better off you're going to be. And building the following. Hopefully, that was helpful for you in understanding that if you build it, they're not just

00:16:04 - 00:16:54
going to instantly come. You have to put in work. And that fill framework should hopefully help you out in and understanding what you need to do so you can fill the beds. Now, the big one, myth number four, super excited to get into this one with you. You need millions to get started. That's a big myth I hear. I hear this from people all the time. I don't have enough money. When I have a million dollars, when I have a few hundred thousand dollar, then I can get started. Once I have the down

00:16:28 - 00:17:19
payment, then I can get started. And you know, if that's you, type in funding down below because that's something that I think a lot of people feel that way. Funding is hard when it comes to assisted living. It is, I would say, one of the three biggest things that I hear from people like you and getting started. You don't know where to get started. Licensing is confusing. funding. I don't know how to do funding. And we actually talk about this in the roadmap challenge. So, if you want to

00:16:55 - 00:17:54
learn more about that, go to roadmapchallenge.com. But there are so many different paths for you to get the funding that you need. You just need to understand what that's going to look like. So, when I was starting out, I didn't have the funds. I knew I wanted to do assisted living. I had invested $20,000 in real estate education. I knew I wanted to do assisted living. I knew I wanted to be in real estate. But at that point, I was like, I don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars for a down payment on a

00:17:24 - 00:18:12
house. And so, I had formulated this plan in my head. I'm going to do some fix and flip real estate. I can get into that for a little bit less and I can put in a lot of effort, time, and effort into that and build this business so I can get enough money so I can have it as a down payment to get into assisted living. And I had a mentor of mine come to me and he told me, "You clearly want to do assisted living. Well, your yeah, your plan could work and and you know, you you seem like somebody that's

00:17:48 - 00:18:44
dedicated to I'm sure it'll be possible for you. Why don't you just do assisted living? And I was like, well, I don't know. Nobody gave me permission. [laughter] I don't know. I thought I had to do other things first. And the reality was I didn't. And it clicked in my brain that I was having a conversation with this guy and it clicked in my brain. I can just I can visualize it in my head. Why don't I just do assisted living? that's obviously the thing that I want to do.

00:18:15 - 00:19:06
Why don't I just figure it out? And so my brain shifted more towards, well, what can I do? Funding is obviously a big thing for me. I' I've got a masters in healthcare administration. The rules and regulations, that part's not going to scare me. I can figure out how to get started. I'm not worried about that. But the funding, man, I don't know how to get in into this and figure out the funding. So, I went back to my real estate education and there were videos on there that were teaching me about how

00:18:41 - 00:19:35
to raise funds. So, I took my dad to lunch. I was like, "Hey, I want to get into assisted living. Can I take you to lunch and we can talk about this and figure out how this might work creating some kind of a partnership. I knew we had funds through a heliloc home equity line of credit that would allow us to do that." And so, I took him to lunch and we had a conversation. I had built out the plan and I went to him and I presented to him this is what I want to do. This wasn't me as a son going to my dad being like I

00:19:08 - 00:20:02
need a bunch of money. That's not what it was at all. It was me as a new business owner, as an entrepreneur going to my dad and saying, "I have a business opportunity. I would like to work with you on this. Is this something that makes sense for you, for mom, for your retirement goals? Is this going to work?" And when I treated it that way, when I when I didn't just like, "Oh, yeah. I need I need $100,000 or whatever, but it was a partnership and we're going to work together and that's

00:19:35 - 00:20:28
how I presented it and I put a bunch of time and effort into this and it was clear. That's when it was like, "Yeah, we can do this. We can work together." That's where I didn't have money, right? I didn't I didn't have any of the funds to get started. I needed a partner and I treated it as an opportunity to go to somebody and say, "Hey, I need some help with this. Can you help do you want to come along with me on the journey? Now, your parents may or may not have the

00:20:02 - 00:20:59
funds that are available to you, but I guarantee you have somebody in your life. Could be a mentor, could be a different family member, could be a friend, could be somebody that you go to a real estate meet up with and you start developing relationships with and they have money. There is somebody in your world, I promise you, that has the funds that can help you get to where you're at now, where or where you want to be. Now, if you are somebody that has the funds and you're just like, I have the funds,

00:20:30 - 00:21:18
but I can't find a lender to to lend to me. Type in lender down below because I know that happens as well because it can be really confusing. And there really are a few different paths that you can kind go down when it comes to funding your assisted living business. My favorite, especially if you're getting started for the first time, is SBA loans, the 7A or the 504 loan. I've talked about those a ton on the channel, but if you are interested in learning more about those, type in 7A down below.

00:20:54 - 00:21:56
We can do a video that's specific to that for you. In the um in my road map challenge, quick plug here, we go through what I call the cash compass and it talks through all of the different types of funding that are out there and SBA is one of them, but there's another three and you don't have to like choose one of them, you know, like if you look at a compass, you can go like southwest or you could go to northn northwest or or something along those lines. There's kind of a combination of where you can

00:21:25 - 00:22:16
do that's exactly how the cash compass works. You can combine some of these things together. I I have combined them throughout my process. And as I was teaching that to people inside of our road map challenge, it was so much fun to have people light bulbs just going off and off and and it was so much fun to look at that. So, if you're interested in learning more about that, type in cash down below. We'll get you a link to the roadmap challenge. You can just go to roadmapchallenge.com

00:21:50 - 00:22:48
and go join our next challenge. is coming up soon. Would love to have you in there. It is so much fun to teach those things. But you can find funding. I I did it. I didn't have any funds. I didn't have I had a few thousand dollars, but I don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars. I didn't have a million dollars to get started, but I did it anyways because I was consistent and persistent and pursuing my goals. I had a vision. I knew where I wanted to go. I just had to find the right people

00:22:19 - 00:23:06
to bring along the journey with me. And that's what I did. And as I look to start progressing and expanding my portfolio, I'm going to do the exact same thing. So, not not the exact same thing. I'm not going to go to my dad. He doesn't have all the funds that I need to get to where I want to go. But the principle of where I want to go. I'm going to do the exact same thing. I'm going to build a business plan, build a case, go to people, and say, "This is where I'm going. Do you want to come

00:22:43 - 00:23:34
along?" And that's how I'm going to get to where I want to be. You can do the same thing. So, we talked about a lot today. the big four myths that people have as they're trying to launch their assisted living business. Would love to hear from you which of these is the one that is like that's that's the myth that hangs me up. I can't get beyond that one. Type that down below in the comments. So myth number one to quickly recap was you don't need staff until you open. Then we

00:23:08 - 00:23:57
talked about number two was licensing is just a formality. Number three is if you build it, they will come. You're going to have your beds filled super fast. And then number four, the big one was you need millions to get started. Which of those was the thing that like for you? You're just like that's that's it. That's the thing that's that's my roadblock. That's the thing that I can't get beyond and that's what's making me stay stuck because I would love to help

00:23:32 - 00:24:28
you get beyond that. And and we actually in our roadmap challenge, we address we address those things for you. The roadmap challenge, go to roadmapchallenge.com to learn more. It is a live coaching experience. It's not a sales call. It's not a like a sales webinar or or a free webinar or just a bunch of courses online that you can do at your leisure. It is me in the room with you. We are talking. I'm coaching you through things. There's homework. It is it's it's easy homework, but there's

00:24:01 - 00:24:45
homework. You have to be there. You have to be committed. And if you do that, you're going to build yourself a milestone roadmap that's going to help you really be making progress towards launching your assisted living business. I love doing it. It's so much fun for me to be in there and to be coaching people and helping people along their path as they're trying to launch an assisted living business. It honestly is one of my favorite things to do. I love coaching and and getting in front of

00:24:22 - 00:25:10
people and this is the the best way for me to do. I've made it super affordable. So, go check it out. roadmapchallenge.com. Now, are you curious about assisted living, but you're not sure how to get started? At assisted living investing, I help first-time assisted living entrepreneurs launch profitable, purpose-driven businesses, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives. I would love to help you out. Go check out roadmapchallenge.com. Go to assistedlivinginvesting.net. Grab the

00:24:47 - 00:25:35
tools there. Make sure you like the video, subscribe, and ring the bell as well so you get notified every time we put out content like this. Go live on Tuesdays, put out content on Thursdays. I'm here like giving you stuff. I'm pouring things into you so that you can reach your goals. I would love to do that on a more personal level. That's what I can do in my coaching programs. If you're not sure which one is right for you, go to aliquiz.com. Take our 30 secondond quiz really quick

00:25:11 - 00:25:59
and it will help you out as you're trying to figure out which program is best for you. I also have a book, go to the alibook.com. Uh would love to have you get that. If if none of those other things are going to work for you, at least get the book. It will help you out. It goes through my five phase process, teaches you everything that I know. It is like the Bible of launching an assisted living facility. Make sure you go check it out. And remember, you can do this. It doesn't take a lot, just a little bit.

00:25:35 - 00:25:55
Just keep going step by step by step. And I promise you, if you do and you are consistent and persistent, you are going to be successful. Thanks for watching and have a great day.