Administrator QUIT?! How to Save Your Assisted Living Business
Jan 23, 2025
Running an assisted living facility can be incredibly rewarding, but it’s not without challenges. One of the toughest moments any operator might face is when a key team member—like an administrator—suddenly resigns. Losing an administrator can feel like the sky is falling, but with the right approach, you can weather the storm and come out stronger.
Here’s the story of how I faced this exact situation, the lessons learned, and practical tips to keep your assisted living business steady when facing staffing surprises.
Check out the video, too:
The Reality of Assisted Living Management
Managing an assisted living facility isn’t easy. From caregiving to compliance, every day brings unique challenges. Staffing, in particular, is a pain point. When I lost an administrator at one of my facilities, it was a wake-up call to stay ready for anything.
The Administrator Resigns: A Sudden Shake-Up
In December 2021, I received an email no operator wants to see: my administrator gave two weeks’ notice. Although I had suspected something was wrong, the official resignation still hit hard.
The administrator left suddenly, leaving the team short-staffed and scrambling. Without her leadership, the facility risked operational issues and compliance problems.
How I Overcame the Crisis
Luckily, my quick thinking and adaptability helped me steer the ship through choppy waters. Here’s what worked:
1. Build Relationships Ahead of Time
Even before the resignation, I kept in touch with potential hires. I contacted a previous candidate immediately, though they declined. While it didn’t work out this time, maintaining relationships can open doors for future hires.
2. Rely on Teamwork and Communication
During the transition, I leaned on my existing staff and external help. I kept communication open with everyone involved, including the former administrator’s husband, who assisted with scheduling. Clear communication is essential to keep things running smoothly.
3. Seek External Support
I also hired a staffing agency to fill shifts temporarily. While costly, it ensured residents received the care they needed.
4. Get Creative with Hiring
I tried everything to find a replacement: job postings, word of mouth, and even chatting in local Facebook groups. One of those casual conversations eventually led to the perfect candidate.
The Silver Lining: A New Administrator
Just when things seemed overwhelming, I connected with a licensed administrator through a Facebook group. Late-night interviews led to a fast hire, and within ten days, the new administrator started. She brought stability and exceeded expectations, proving that persistence pays off.
Why Mental Health Matters in Assisted Living
This experience highlighted the importance of mental health—for staff and leadership alike. The former administrator faced personal challenges that made her role unsustainable.
Here’s the takeaway: prioritize mental health in your workplace. Encourage open dialogue, provide resources, and remind your team that it’s okay to ask for help.
Key Takeaways for Assisted Living Operators
1. Build a Strong Network
Keep in touch with qualified candidates, even if you don’t have an opening. Relationships can make all the difference when you need to hire quickly.
2. Diversify Your Recruitment Strategy
Use job boards, social media, local networks, and staffing agencies to expand your search.
3. Have a Backup Plan
Cross-train staff to handle leadership roles temporarily. Consider partnerships with staffing agencies for emergency coverage.
4. Prioritize Mental Health
Foster a workplace culture that supports mental well-being. Provide resources and encourage employees to seek help when needed.
A Brighter Future
My story shows that even when things feel chaotic, solutions are within reach. With a strong plan, creativity, and a willingness to adapt, you can overcome setbacks and keep your assisted living business thriving.
When challenges arise, remember: every problem is an opportunity to grow stronger and better prepared for the future.
Make sure you grab your free business plan checklist, to help you learn all the things you need to hit on to create a successful business plan.
Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00
working in assisted living can be really difficult it's it's not always easy it's not just you know happiness sunshine rainbows butterflies flying everywhere it can be really hard sometimes especially in a time right now where staffing has been very difficult to get people in there and administrators can get overworked and get burnt out and it's something that we as an ownership group really trying to stay on top of but we can't do it all the time and sometimes things happen and we had our
00:00:31
administrator quit on us at one of our facilities recently and that was really rough for us to go through i'm going to share the story with you in today's video and go through kind of the process that we went through as we tried to get a new administrator in place hi everybody i'm brandon gustafson i own and operate two assisted living facilities and i created this channel to help people just like you learn the ins and outs of investing in assisted living welcome to assisted living investing
00:00:59
[Music] hey everybody welcome back to the channel in our last video we talked about kind of a daily planning with me process of how i use the different tools that i have at my disposal notion matrix planning and apple and google calendar so make sure you go and watch that video smash the like button on it if it's helpful to you and share with me kind of your process of what you've gotten into um as far as planning to make you a little more successful and productive with the time that you have
00:01:36
uh to work on your your different projects and things that you've got going on in today's video i'm going to get into kind of a a little more of a somber tone and conversation about a situation that happened to us at one of our facilities recently uh one one of our administrators quit on us i'm going to kind of give you the back story on it and what that was like but before i get started i really wanted to preface this story by saying that you know our administrator who quit did an awesome job for us we
00:02:06
could not have been happier with her she was incredible i don't have any hard feelings against her for leaving she just did an excellent job and we were so sad to see her leave but very understanding of of why she did leave and no hard feelings um but i'm going to be without saying names or anything like that be kind of vulnerable in in this video and so i would appreciate kind of your feedback and and do you like this type of a video where it's more of a i'm kind of opening up to
00:02:37
you and letting you see a little bit of what it's like to really operate a facility and not giving you just like the high level tips and fun things and things like that like a really serious conversation but before i get started i really want to harp on something um that is extremely important before i get started and that is mental health if you or anybody that you know is struggling with anxiety or depression or something else please don't suffer in silence and don't let those that you
00:03:06
love suffer in silence reach out to somebody for help it might be hard to find a therapist right now a lot of people are trying to get in with with therapists and it can be difficult but talking to your loved ones can really help bring you through any issues that you're dealing with just remember they are there they love you they want to help you out and it's important that you have those conversations don't be scared to reach out to them they are not going to look at you in any kind of poor light
00:03:37
they understand they want to help you they love you and they will help you get through the things that you're you're going through just remember you are never alone just don't forget that so with that said kind of that public service announcement around um mental health and making sure you get the help that you need i'm gonna get into the story a little bit here so on to the story um in early december 2021 i got an email from one of my administrators and she was giving us her two weeks notice
00:04:08
and i was a little surprised and disappointed though i wasn't completely shocked something had just kind of felt off for the last few weeks maybe even a month or so and so when i got the email i saw it in my inbox i was ah that's difficult but it it didn't like shock me completely my first reaction to that was i'm going to reach out to somebody that we had previously interviewed that we actually really liked and wanted to have come to our facility we just kind of felt a little bit better about the facil
00:04:41
the administrator that we ended up hiring um and so um i was able to do that and something that i want to point out to you is it is extremely important i can't emphasize that enough it is so important that you build and maintain relationships with people and don't leave um things in a bad situation developing those relationships and maintaining them and staying in a good spot with them you never know when you're going to need that person down the line and so make sure you do that so
00:05:09
this is my first thing ultimately we had some conversations phone conversations interviews this person was going to come and look at the facility ultimately they decided to stay where they were at it was a pretty good situation for them kind of what they had been looking for similar to our facility actually and they had moved there and they just kind of decided to to stay there so we didn't burn any bridges there again we just kind of maintained that relationship and had some really good conversations
00:05:36
and at some point in the future you know if something else opens up then we have still built that relationship and we could go back to that person and say hey we've got another opportunity i don't know where you're at with things right now but we have another opportunity for you and so that's just something that you really want to pay attention to and and get things in place so that's some really good advice there i would give you now my second reaction i honestly don't know
00:06:01
why this wasn't my first reaction but my second reaction was to try to convince our administrator to stay with us we had a conversation about offering more money and some other perks and trying to help her through some of the personal situations that she was going through we had conversations we've talked about it for i don't know day one to three days i can't remember how long it was but really kind of talking through that process and seeing is this something like can we help you
00:06:33
fix things um to to get things in place and ultimately again she decided to pass on that but it was and i i knew going into it that it was a long shot and this is probably why it was my second thought i really didn't think she was going to stick with us um but it was certainly worth a shot to have a conversation and i think it opened up things to a good spot for us so from there things changed quite a bit unfortunately to this point i was really hopeful we were going to have something that would
00:07:03
work out and have things kind of fall into place and things that we had had some really good productive conversations and i was you know disappointed but understanding of where things were at and and where things were going but from there things really did kind of change i got a call from the husband of our administrator on a saturday morning and he said basically our administrator had left town she was moving out of state and and so she had left him to kind of prep for her move but had not reached out to us to let us
00:07:38
know he she she let her husband do that for us kind of put us in a bad situation she didn't want to talk to us right then she was going through i think a pretty serious mental health crisis for her which is why i prefaced everything by with this video saying that if you need help please please get the help that you need don't suffer in silence but she didn't want to reach out to us i had to coordinate through him as a third party to kind of get the information that we needed to to really
00:08:10
figure things out and it was so stressful that's one of the downsides of living out of state it's not just down the road from us we couldn't just like get there and and go and cover a shift like it was it was really hard i spent a lot of time on the phone talking with our already short staffed staff members about working extra shifts and paying them double time and just like i need something to happen like it was a huge blow it was extremely extremely stressful for me for a week or two and if you actually watch closely in
00:08:44
a few of my previous videos you can see the stress in my eyes like i was having a really really hard time with this but again i want to harp on on mental health um our administrator was obviously going through something that was she needed some help and i was also struggling with something fortunately i was able to reach out to my support group and help have them help me get through the process ultimately my dad had to even drive up to the up to the facility to cover a couple of our shifts for us
00:09:17
and we were struggling to bring back a former staff member to come in and and work a couple shifts so that the existing staff members could at least have a day off or like a shift off and like it was just it was so much we hired a staffing agency that was really quite expensive but it's what we needed to do just to get these shifts filled and it was extremely stressful for about a week or two um you know because i'm out of state and i can't get up to the facility very very easily it was it was rough it was a hard
00:09:50
thing to go through and but during this time we started also posting our job on a different a few different places so we had it on simply hired we had it on facebook and i put things out on linkedin i was canvassing everything that i could think of we started working with like a temp agency a staffing agency having conversations i was just trying to find any way to get somebody to be our new administrator and putting it out there and the difficult part was i needed it now like i there's there's a rule in the state of idaho
00:10:26
where you can operate 30 days without an administrator like an administrator on the building and so we were we were really struggling trying to get things in place for that we had several applicants through those job postings so just i'll link this up above i talked about kind of hiring an administrator previously and some of the tools there i used a lot of those tools and we had some success we interviewed probably somewhere around 10 applicants in the week week and a half that we had the job
00:10:55
posted and really met some incredible people some of them not quite um all the way qualified for the job but that are on their way to getting there and i think would be great fits for us at some point in the future and so we wanted to develop those relationships and maintain them just like i mentioned earlier in the video but that was something that you know we got through that and like just had these really good conversations um moved along with the interview process with several people ultimately
00:11:26
what we were able to do actually through to find our new administrator was actually through a process and i'm going to get into this in my next video um but it was reaching out to somebody who posted on a local facebook group that we're a part of in the area where where we have the facility at and the initial conversation was around looking into a backup plan what could we do with the facility if our assisted living facility kind of falls apart and puts us in this situation where um like we we don't know what
00:12:00
we're gonna do you know that 30-day process was getting a new administrator the clock was already kind of ticking and we needed to figure out what we're going to do i had a conversation with this individual about changing our facility into an independent living facility she had posted on this facebook group about an independent living facility that she was kind of in charge of that they were looking to fill a bed and i just wanted to get information like i was genuinely just doing information
00:12:29
gathering on independent living as is it a viable option for us and she messaged me back and was like oh no you got to stick with assisted living she laid all these things out she laid all these things out to like really encourage us to stick with assisted living and laid out kind of business case like i was extremely impressed by the initial conversation with this person and um found out that she had an active administrator's license in the state where we were operating and um didn't have a job as an administrator at
00:13:01
that time and so i messaged her back and i was like oh thank you so much for this information and we've had some back and forth i was like i i think the exact words i used were i would be remiss if i didn't ask you um if you are interested in um in considering our facility to be our facility administrator because i had kind of gone through the process of talking through this with her and um she messaged me back and she's like i have an idea okay we did a phone call we did a phone call at like 11 o'clock
00:13:32
at night we had two or three interview conversation uh types of things at 11 11 30 at night i'm a night person so this was not something that's abnormal for me and a lot of people that work in assisted living i think are administrators caregiver like all the med techs and everybody they're all going to kind of be people that are night owls a lot of them are it's not abnormal for this so we had these nighttime interviews which was kind of fun um but you know she said uh she was able to
00:14:05
start within 10 days of that initial kind of reach out conversation that was not meant to be uh something that i was looking for an administrator with her specifically it was more of a backup plan and she has been incredible she's been with us now for three weeks i think and she is just a rock star she has been awesome in picking things up and going through the transition and things that happened over the past few months that kind of have fallen fallen by the wayside again i think because of the the
00:14:35
mental health issues that may have been going on um with the former administrator and it's just something that you want to just be aware of make sure that you're aware if people are struggling have conversations with them just show them that you love them and support them and give them the resources that they need we probably were not doing everything we could have we we could have been doing better as an ownership group and that's something that we are trying to improve and be aware of that we we just need to be a
00:15:04
little more ingrained in what's going on to make sure that our people are in a good spot and the best part for me when she started was she was able to cover those shifts and the burden that came off of my shoulders when she was able to do that or find people to do it was just incredible um this happened just around christmas time and i was stressed out that we were going to have to spend christmas away from home taking care of the facility and she was able to get in there and just relieve that burden and has been a
00:15:38
lifesaver for us it's been incredible after she started it was not all just smooth sailing either there was quite a bit of drama to work through with the previous nurses that were with us and the new administrator who had a history and just didn't get along they didn't agree on how things should be run and that's fine um not everybody is going to get along everybody's adults and we kind of got through things um and and things are in a much better situation now and you know same thing with staff like
00:16:10
it's a big change when you have your administrator coming in being a new person and just kind of implementing changes and it shakes things up a little bit but we've been able to work through it and where we're at now right now it's mid-january at the recording of this video mid-january of 2022 um we're now through much of the drama and the transition and things are really starting to run smoothly again for us and getting back to normal like they were over the summer which has been great we
00:16:41
drove up to the facility for kind of an unscheduled site visit for when we were going to do things to get to know our know our new administrator in person we had done all of this process of hiring her remotely and had i think maybe a video call but it was all just kind of done remotely we had really good conversation with her have helped her kind of get through the transition we're working and supporting her as we get through that and she's just been a rock star like i said this has been
00:17:09
a super stressful situation it's it's not easy but we learned a lot through the process it has been a wonderful experience and i don't think i want to do it again but it has been a good experience if you like this video and it's been helpful for you and just kind of learning the process and me being a little more vulnerable and talking through this process and what it was like for for me make sure you smash the like button just let me know comment down below if you've gone through similar situations if
00:17:41
you're struggling with mental health again just make sure that you are reaching out and getting the help that you need um i really strongly encourage you to do that in my next video i'm actually gonna get into um where we um almost gave up on assisted living and what that process was like i kind of alluded to it here a little bit in the in the video but we almost gave up on it we were really strongly considering doing that and i'm going to share that story with you a little bit more as well
00:18:09
to learn more about uh investing in assisted living make sure you visit me on assistedlivinginvesting.net i've got other content up there free resources you can set up a call with me and we can kind of walk you through the process and follow me on my other social media platforms as well and remember it doesn't take a lot just a little bit just keep going step by step by step if you do it you're consistent you're diligent i promise you you will be successful thanks for watching and have a great day
00:18:36
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