I Almost Gave Up on Assisted Living! | My Investing Journey
Jan 24, 2025
Running an assisted living business can be deeply rewarding, but let’s be honest—it’s also tough. From staffing crises to unexpected resignations, the road is filled with challenges. Recently, I hit a low point when the administrator of one of my facilities resigned. For a moment, I seriously considered walking away from the assisted living industry altogether.
That experience made me reflect on my journey and explore whether this path was still right for me. Spoiler alert: I stayed the course, and here’s why.
Check out the video, too:
The Emotional Weight of Challenges
When my administrator announced her resignation, panic set in. Staff were stretched thin, and I felt an overwhelming responsibility to my residents, employees, and family’s investment. It was a moment of doubt. Could I keep this going, or was it time to try something else?
Exploring backup options became my lifeline during that uncertain time. While we eventually hired a fantastic new administrator and stabilized, taking a closer look at alternatives gave me a fresh perspective and renewed focus.
Exploring Alternatives to Assisted Living
If you’ve ever faced a similar crisis—or wondered what other options might exist—here are some models I considered:
1. Independent Living
In this model, residents manage their own care but receive services like housekeeping and meals. It reduces staffing needs, but you still need to comply with state regulations.
2. Memory Care
This offers higher revenue potential because you can charge more for specialized care. However, it requires extra training and more staff, which can be a challenge during a staffing shortage.
3. Low-Income Housing (Section 8)
Converting the facility into low-income housing could cover debt payments, though it may limit profits. Partnering with local housing authorities is key to understanding requirements.
4. Room Rentals
Leasing individual rooms reduces operational complexity. Residents share common spaces, creating a simpler business model but with lower revenue potential.
5. Short-Term Rentals
Transforming the property into a vacation rental for families or groups could be lucrative. This works well in areas with strong tourism or family-oriented communities.
6. Sober Living or Halfway Houses
These homes serve individuals in recovery. While rewarding, they require specialized knowledge of state regulations and operational needs.
7. Behavioral Health Homes
Focusing on mental health care can be a meaningful venture but requires significant investment in training and compliance.
8. Selling the Property
If all else fails, selling the property might be the best option. Rising real estate values could provide a chance to recoup investments—or even turn a profit.
Why I Stayed in Assisted Living
After weighing all the options, I decided to stay in assisted living. Why? Because this business isn’t just about profit—it’s about people. The relationships I’ve built with residents, families, and staff make this work deeply fulfilling.
Sure, it’s challenging, but those moments when you see a resident smile or hear a family’s gratitude remind me why I started this journey.
Lessons Learned
Here’s what this experience taught me:
1. Expect the Unexpected
Staffing challenges and other crises are inevitable. Having a contingency plan can make all the difference.
2. Build a Strong Network
Industry contacts, state agencies, and local professionals are invaluable resources when exploring solutions.
3. Take Care of Your Mental Health
This work is emotionally and mentally demanding. Don’t hesitate to seek support or take a break when you need it.
4. Stay Flexible but Focused
Exploring alternatives is valuable, but sometimes perseverance is the key to success.
Conclusion: A Commitment to Care
This journey reminded me why I chose assisted living: to provide exceptional care and create a home for those in need. Yes, there are tough days, but the rewards far outweigh the challenges.
If you’re navigating your own doubts or considering a shift, remember this: you’re not alone. With the right preparation and support, you can overcome obstacles and emerge stronger, more determined, and ready to make a difference.
Next Step?
To start your assisted living investment journey, download our Business Plan Checklist to help you build a solid foundation for your business.
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
running business is really hard and sometimes you just want to give up and throw in the towel and just kind of like wash your hands of it and be done with it luckily in assisted living and real estate investing there are different avenues that you can go through and different options as you're going through things it can be difficult we recently had an administrator quit at one of our facilities and it made things really difficult and we had to think long and hard about are we going to throw in the towel are
00:00:28
we going to give up on assisted living in today's video i'm going to get into kind of our thought process what we went through the research that we started performing and where we ended up landing on what we wanted to do with our facilities hi everybody i'm brandon gustafson and 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 [Music] hey everybody welcome back to the
00:01:04
channel uh in my last video we talked about my administrator quit on us at one of our facilities go ahead and watch that video i got a little bit vulnerable in that video as probably a little bit of a different tone than most of my other videos but i think it's really important to kind of learn that process i talked a lot about mental health awareness and what you need to do to help out and in today's video i'm going to talk about you know we almost gave up on assisted living and it's going to have a little
00:01:33
bit of that same tone i talked about this a lot in that last video but just want to reiterate it again here if you or anybody that you know is struggling with anxiety depression or something else please don't suffer in silence reach out to somebody for help it may be hard to find a therapist right now a lot of people are trying to talk to therapists and it can be difficult but talking to your loved ones or just kind of working through things and writing things down journaling can really help you through any issues
00:02:03
that you're dealing with don't be scared to talk to your loved ones they love you they want to help you out they understand what you're going through and they will be able to help you through it you are never alone um never forget that so just with that preface just make sure that as somebody that has dealt with anxiety previously and depression and with family members that have dealt with those things don't suffer in silence make sure you're having conversations and working through those problems
00:02:33
everything will get better you can do it and you know that you know things will get better it just sometimes it takes time and it takes work but you can do it and people are there for you they love you so i'm going to get into the story um in my last video i talked about the process of getting a new administrator in place at our facility when our administrator quit on us but i left out a key part of the story and it was that i almost gave up on assisted living and for those of you that have been following the channel or
00:03:03
who watched my video on why i got into assisted living and how i got into it and i'll link that up above you kind of know the process of why i wanted to get into it and and why i love it um and working in it and so to consider changing and being and moving on from assisted living was kind of a big decision for for us to to go through and try to figure out um so one of the first thoughts that popped into my head when our administrator told us that she was going to be quitting was that assisted living just wasn't going to
00:03:34
work out for us and i was really kind of freaking out about that the big reason why we were considering moving on why we were thinking assisted living isn't going to work is staffing we're in a staffing crisis right now and trying to find staff and keep things fully stacked is is really really difficult it's quite it's quite hard and it's it's stressful it adds stress to the staff members because they're having to work extra shifts it's adding stress to the administrator because they're having to
00:04:04
cover those shifts so they're trying to find people to hire for those shifts and and all of those things it's difficult one of the reasons i was really freaking out about giving up on assisted living though was because i had convinced my parents to invest with me in this in this project and to do this and you know why while they are adults and they made the decision themselves um i still felt responsible for the investment and it weighed very heavily on my mind as we're going through this
00:04:37
um so i started like shifting my thoughts into what are the backup plans to make sure that we don't lose the investment and that things are still gonna you know we can at least break even on it even if we're not making money um we're breaking even and everything's going to work out like my mind shifted into that pretty hardcore what we need to do so we can at least make the debt service payment and um kind of keep the the real estate going even if we had to to give up on on assisted
00:05:08
living and so i started brainstorming on ideas um what could we do and i actually came up with quite a few so i want to go through that list with you if you're looking at at assisted living and and you're just like i'm not convinced that assisted living is the right thing for me or you own an assisted living and facility and you're looking at dealing with some of these similar issues and you're wondering maybe maybe i need to look at something else or maybe i need to do something else
00:05:37
i'm hoping that this list is going to be helpful to you because i did a lot of research on it and i've got a decent idea high level on on several different options that you could look at and so if you find this this list helpful in in any way make sure you smash that like button and let me know um if you like it and also kind of give me feedback if there are other options in here that i am missing as you're going through this process yourself but yeah i came up with this list of options ultimately obviously we didn't
00:06:11
decide to move forward with any of these right now we were able to find an administrator we were able to keep the facility up and running and things are are going well there now but it's something that you know if you're looking at assisted living and you need some help thinking up contingency plans or if you're just not sure that assisted living is is the right idea for you these are a few other ideas that are kind of similar but they they are different um and i'm hoping that this
00:06:39
list is is helpful to you it's not a comprehensive list by any means there are going to be things that i didn't think of that you are aware of and i would ask you to comment down below if there are other options that that you have considered or or looked at i'd love to learn about them just so that i have a better contingency plan in the future if something like this happens because i don't want to be caught flat-footed i want to make sure that i have some of these ideas in place and i'm
00:07:06
doing the research in the event that i need to shift my business model and i can do that quickly because i i just like i explained before i feel very responsible for um the lives of of my residents and making sure they're good but also um the people that i'm investing with and i want to make sure that everybody is is taken care of there um so without further ado here is that list so number one and they're in no particular order at all just number one on my list of things here was independent living so this is kind
00:07:37
of a step down from assisted living and at least in the state where this happened independent living is not a licensed facility as an independent living facility you are still providing meals and you're kind of doing like housekeeping but there is absolutely no cares that you can provide to your resident if somebody needs help going to the restroom or something like that you cannot help them that's kind of the the line between assisted living and independent living they could hire out an agency to have
00:08:09
home health come in and give them those services but you as the business owner as the landlord you cannot hire a staff member to go in and help somebody with that you can get in big trouble if you do so that's something that you want to make sure that you are aware of if you were to switch over to independent living if you talk to the state they can kind of give you an overview that's actually who i had a conversation with was somebody at the state to figure out kind of what would this process look
00:08:36
like if we changed over to independent living another option was to double down on things actually and get into memory care so our facilities are just assisted living but one of the suggestions was you should look at memory care and you're gonna be able to to get more money out of your residence your staffing model my stocking model is likely going to increase but you're probably going to be able to pay people more and it's going to be better for you for retaining staff um so you know that was something that
00:09:07
we we looked at and considered i had a lot of conversations with people about shifting that business model over to memory care and what that would entail for us we didn't get too far into that process and it's still something that we might consider doing at some point in the future but yeah it was something that we we looked at but given the staffing problems that we have been seeing in the industry right now i was again just a little hesitant to do something like that it was going to require more staff when we
00:09:37
are already having issues getting staff in place number three was looking at section 8 or low income housing actually so we spoke with the local housing authority that's who you would want to talk to you would look for the county housing authority is like the best thing to search for on the internet if you're interested in doing something like that to just look at the different low income housing options and honestly there are more than i thought in my mind it was like oh low-income housing section of housing
00:10:08
that's just one thing but as i started looking into it there were things where you're renting things out by the room things where you run it out by the room but you also provide services there were three or four different options that kind of fell under this umbrella of low income housing and so we kind of started looking at that and having conversations ultimately didn't go super far into it so i don't know exactly what it would entail what the application process would look like
00:10:34
especially in the sense that it's probably going to allow you to at least break even on something and yeah you might not be making much money off of it but it's something that you can look at number four was just like doing room rental so renting things out by the room and kind of kind of like an independent living but a little bit different where it would just be here's a room you pay us a thousand dollars per month to stay in this room and then there's a community kitchen and you can go there and eat and then
00:11:01
there's a community living space but you have your own room so the way that our facility would be set up that would be the the best way that we could do that we looked at that it's probably not the the best way to do it but we looked at that as like a short-term mental strategy or even a long-term rental strategy in helping people do that we looked at just straight-up short-term rentals and turning the entire house into a short-term rental and what that process would look like and you know especially it's a large house
00:11:30
it could be something that could work really well with like family reunions or big family parties or something like that large families that you see often in utah and idaho those types of things and so just like you know maybe we could look at that as a strategy so we looked at that we also considered doing something like a halfway house or sober living and i've not done a ton of research into that um but it's another thing that we have looked at and kind of are considering and then another one that just was
00:12:03
brought to my attention earlier this week was i think it's called a behavioral home so like in colorado we have a mental health facility um it would be a little more focused on that and there i haven't done a ton of research into that one yet either but it's something else that um you know you could consider doing um and just kind of looking at and then the the last option that we considered was just selling the house outright we have been lucky enough to have our homes the real estate portion of it um
00:12:35
increase in value quite a bit since we purchased them just because of the market and how it is and so we considered you know maybe what we need to do is just sell it the real estate um and not the business just get rid of the real estate and recoup our losses that way and maybe even come out ahead because of how the real estate market is right now and so that was another option that we talked about and considered as we were trying to figure things out now as i mentioned we were able to find a new
00:13:02
administrator and we didn't need to go down the path of really figuring out what these backup plans were but it's something that we wanted to consider and it's good for us it's a good exercise for us to kind of go through that process and consider what some of those backups backup options are those contingency options in the event that something like this happens again or if we want to switch things over and and do the you know just try to figure things out you never know what's
00:13:27
going to happen in the future and so having some of these things in your pocket ready to go having done the research on it doing market research is just going to be extremely helpful so i hope that this was helpful to you comment down below again if i'm missing something on this list something else that you've considered if you're looking at assisted living but you're not sure maybe looking at some of these other options are going to be beneficial for you and you can kind of do some research
00:13:53
on that if you found this list to be helpful make sure you smash that like button ultimately our decision as i talked about this already after several conversations with my dad and and other investors that i have worked with in the past and had conversations with and people in the local area where we are operating the facility we ultimately just decided to stick it out we really love our new administrator she has been incredible she's helped us a lot through this process and things are going well
00:14:22
we have decided also to up our wages to retain staff and be more attractive to to people we have a facility where there's not a lot of cares it's it's pretty easy to be a med tech and a caregiver at our facilities because our residents just don't need a lot of care so we use that as a highlight and then if we're able to pay people the same amount that they're making somewhere else then it really will help us out in getting and retaining staff to make sure that they're in place and
00:14:52
then we are also going to start increasing rent for our private pay residents and then bringing in other residents medicaid residents that need more cares which are going to allow us to get higher reimbursement rates from medicaid and then properly documenting those things so we can pass it along to medicaid to make sure that we're getting uh reimbursed the proper amount for the cares that we're providing to our residents and then unfortunately at the beginning of 22 like all the other facilities we
00:15:22
are dealing with those staffing shortages i've talked about this several times but we're hoping that we can weather the storm and make it through this staffing crisis and then come out stronger on the other side i really do think that at some point in the future hopefully in the next hopefully in the next few months but realistically in the next year or so things will get better and we won't have this kind of a problem anymore we're just kind of working through that and trying to figure it out
00:15:49
but i'm still pretty convinced that this is a good business to be in and i'm excited to be in it going forward you know these last two videos have been a little bit of a different tone um than my other videos they're a little more personable and a little more vulnerable for me to talk about but i hope they're helpful to you and seeing kind of the personal side and what it's like to really operate a facility and have a frank conversation about you know what it's like and and how you can
00:16:16
move things forward in my next video i'm going to start getting back into some of the more tutorial type of things and tools that you can use i'm going to talk about online business tools that are available to you as a business owner that are going to help you through the process whether that's as a small business owner or as an assisted living owner of an assisted living facility uh gonna really start getting into that process uh with you and some of the tools that are available to help you
00:16:44
get through all that if you'd like to learn more about investing in assisted living make sure you visit me on assistedlivinginvesting.net and you can get free resources over there set up a call with me i've got a lot of content out there i would love to have conversations with you um so and and then make sure you follow me on my other social media platforms and just remember it doesn't take a lot just a little bit just keep making progress step by step by step if you do if you're consistent and diligent i
00:17:10
promise you that you will be successful you can do this thanks for watching and have a great day [Music] you
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