Behind the Scenes of Assisted Living: What Really Happens Day-to-Day
Oct 10, 2025
Ever wondered what life inside an assisted living facility is really like? From resident activities to meals and staff, there’s a lot happening behind the scenes to keep things running smoothly.
If you’re thinking about starting your own assisted living business—or just curious about how it all works—this guide will give you a clear look at what actually goes on inside. Let’s dive in! 🚀
Check out this video, too:
Daily Life at an Assisted Living Facility
Running an assisted living facility is all about creating a warm, safe, and engaging environment for residents. Here’s what that looks like on a daily basis:
Activities: Keeping Residents Engaged
Activities are at the heart of assisted living. They provide fun, social interaction, and stimulation for residents.
✅ Daily group activities like games, crafts, or light exercise
✅ Social interaction that helps residents stay connected
✅ Special events to make life exciting and joyful
💡 Pro Tip: Think about what your residents would truly enjoy. A great activities program helps reduce loneliness and makes your facility stand out.
Meal Time: More Than Just Food
Meals aren’t just about nutrition—they’re the social centerpiece of the day.
🍳 Three meals a day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner)
🥪 Two to three healthy snacks in between
📋 Meal planning software (like Grove Menus) helps manage dietary restrictions and compliance
✅ Residents get options and autonomy—they can even refuse meals if they choose
💡 Fun Idea: Coffee time or small traditions like delivering snacks to rooms can help create an atmosphere of comfort and connection.
Staffing: Who Makes It All Work
At its core, an assisted living facility only needs a few essential staff members to operate effectively.
👩⚕️ Caregivers – Provide direct resident care
👨💼 Administrator – Licensed facility administrator
🩺 Nurse – Not always full-time, but necessary for assessments and medication management
Additional staff like cooks, cleaning teams, or maintenance workers can be added as your facility grows.
💡 Many owners outsource nursing or maintenance, which saves costs while still meeting resident needs.
Why This Matters for New Assisted Living Owners
Understanding these behind-the-scenes details is crucial if you’re planning to open your own facility. You’ll need to:
✅ Plan out activities that match resident needs
✅ Create meal programs that meet dietary and compliance standards
✅ Hire (or outsource) the right staff to deliver high-quality care
Next Steps: Turn Insight Into Action
Ready to move from curious to confident about your assisted living business? Here’s how:
📌 Write out a sample daily schedule for your future facility
📌 Research meal planning software like Grove Menus
📌 Look into your state’s staffing requirements so you know who to hire
Make sure you grab your FREE Business Plan Checklist to help you build the foundation you'll need to start your assisted living business.
🚀 Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:07
Hey friend, it's Brandon Gustafson with Assisted Living Investing. I help beginners like you launch their assisted living business in the next 12 months. Excited to have you here with me on the channel today. Today we're going to be talking about behind the scenes what really happens inside of assisted living. So for those of you that are you're trying to figure this out, you know, does assisted living is it the right fit for you? Is it going to work? Uh, I want to tell you a little bit of
00:00:29
ex a little bit uh exactly what it's like to run a business, what it's like the day-to-day here inside of assisted living and and hope you find this this to be valuable. So, um, if you do uh find it valuable, make sure you like the video, subscribe, ring the bell, do all those things so you get notified every time we put out content like this. I'm I'm trying to help people like you launch their assisted living business. Also, make sure you stick around for today's video. the end of it, I have a
00:00:57
special announcement. Um, so super excited for that. I have a few things changing here at the channel. Uh, this is going to be uh one of the first things uh that that I'm rolling out to you. So, make sure you stick around and watch to the end so you get uh you get notified of of some of the fun uh exciting changes I've got coming up here on the channel. So, with that, uh let's dive into our topic for today. I want to also remind you to go over to the website assistedlivinginvesting.net/
00:01:25
this/BP checklist. Get your free business plan checklist. Link's going to be down here in the bottom uh corner for you uh to to make sure you go and grab that. Make sure you go check it out. Again, it's assisted livinginvesting.net/bp checklist to get access to that. Now, let's get into um our topic today. Uh behind the scenes, what really happens inside of an assisted living facility. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Brandon Gustafson. I uh have operated assisted living facilities
00:01:52
since 2020. I've done it out of state. I live in Utah. I've operated in uh in Colorado and in Idaho as well. Uh so have some experience there. I have a master's degree in healthcare administration. Uh so have worked um in in the industry since I don't know 2011. Uh quite a long time. Uh and just kind of working through and helping just I have a really broad understanding of of how the healthcare industry works. I've also been able to secure uh $1.5 million in SBA funding uh as I've gone through
00:02:23
the process. For those of you who are new here, um type in newbie down below. Love watching uh love seeing all the newbies that are that are here trying to figure this out. Uh trying to figure out if assisted living is going to be right for you or not. So, make sure you um are uh you know, type in that newbie so we can see who who the new people are. Uh and yeah, we'll go from there. So, with that, uh let's see. Let's get into it. Let's talk about I want to I really want to hit on the the type of care that you
00:02:52
can provide in assisted living and also the the type of care that you cannot provide in assisted living because I think there's a lot of uh a lot of confusion around that what that looks like how it works and and what can be done in assisted living. So I want to kind of demystify that for you a little bit and and help you understand what's going on there. Um so so you know what can be done in assisted living at its core. you're going to be able to provide assistant with daily activities. Um, so
00:03:21
when when you think about that, what it is is um, you know, somebody needs help toileting or they need help with eating or meal preparation or getting dressed or uh, those types of things that uh, what what we call activities of daily living, the things that you do every day um, when somebody needs help with that, that's what you're doing inside of assisted living. This is where it's very different from like nursing homes. When a lot of people when they hear assisted living, they think nursing home. They
00:03:49
think, oh, you know, they're they're going to they're going somewhere where where they can't do anything. And that's that's not the case at all. Um, in reality, a lot of residents in assisted living, they have the ability to do a lot of work, uh, a lot of things on their own, but they do need some assistance. Um, they're also going to need help with like medication management. It's a big thing inside of assisted living. A lot of them have medications they need to do. Uh they
00:04:15
they need to work with and um you need to help manage that medication so there's not overdose so they remember to take their medication so they don't run out of their prescription. Those types of things. Um you're going to be doing a lot of that. It can be redirecting people uh helping them out when uh you know maybe prompts. Hey, you need to go take a shower today. Make sure you get dressed. Go brush your teeth. You know those kinds of things. You want to be um prompting them to to do that. It's just
00:04:41
the the things that you would do normally. Sometimes they just need a little bit of help, a little bit of encouragement um to to get those things done. That's what you're doing inside of assisted living. You also going to um serve meals. So, you prepare the meals. Um you serve them. Uh there's a lot of people that talk about doing like, you know, high quality um like you know, private chef type uh type of a situation. And you can certainly do that inside of uh your assisted living facility. Uh it's if you want to, it's
00:05:08
it's totally fine. you're you're able to do that. Um it is a a higher you know it's going to cost you a little bit more because you got to hire that chef and they've got to prepare the meals and things like that. Uh so you want to be aware of that as as you get into it. But you don't have to hire that chef either. For our for my facilities, we've always just had the caregivers prepare the meals and um and serve serve the meals that way. So you you still are going to make sure you're you're taking into
00:05:36
consideration dietary restrictions and and everything there to make sure that you're meeting the needs of the residents. That's really what you are doing in assisted living, meet their care needs. Um but you don't have to have like this, you know, high-end private chef come in and do things. You can uh totally fine if you want to do that, but you don't have to do it. So that's I think a common misconception that people have with with assisted living. You're going to do a lot of
00:05:59
social activities. We're going to talk about social activities here uh later on in the video, but uh you're going to do things like events and just fun things. You want to keep people engaged. It's actually a a requirement by the state that you do regular activities. Um usually it's multiple times a day that you have to have activities. And these are not just playing bingo. It's fun activities. We'll talk a little bit more about that. And the other thing that I want to point out is assisted living is
00:06:25
is kind of like apartment style living. Um you live in a community, right? Uh you can think of this as a big box, but you can also think about this as as a residential setting. Things that I do uh with with the way that I do assist living. You have a group of people living in one communal space and and they share that and so they get this uh this really good uh social interaction that they might miss uh if they were not in assisted living. And that's something that I think is is really beneficial
00:06:53
about assisted living that uh as as people get older and their friends are passing away um to to be frank um they they lose that social interaction that they've had throughout their lives and you're able to um incorporate that because of the way that you are you have your facility. Regardless of how you have a facility, you are creating kind of this apartment style living where you have more camaraderie and more opportunities for social engagement, which is great. The things that you cannot do inside of assisted living. So,
00:07:24
I want to make sure this is clear is you are not allowed to do intensive nursing care. You could have hospice come in and provide that care inside of the facility, but you as an assisted living business are not able to provide that care. home health could come in, hospice could come in, they can do that care. You as assisted living, your caregivers, they're not able to do that care. So, that's something that is that I want to be uh very explicit there. If somebody needs that higher level of care, then
00:07:50
they would need to be discharged from your facility and they would need to go to a nursing home, skilled nursing facility, uh is what they would need to do. They uh let's see, conditions requiring an impatient hospital stay or long-term care. um that you you are providing long-term care when you're assisted living, but if they need it more on an impatient basis, um they need uh I don't know, I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but if they need uh that more intensive care
00:08:18
that is impatient and an impatient setting, they need to go to a hospital or they need to go to u potentially a rehab center depending on where they're at. Um or they they could go to a skilled nursing facility. So, you're not able to do that type of care inside of your facility. Really, anything that is more clinical in nature, you're not able to to provide inside of assisted living. You have nurses come in, hospice, home health, they can come in and they can provide uh a portion of that care to your
00:08:48
residents, but on a daily basis, that's not something you're able to provide on a regular basis. Um, residents who are a danger to themselves and others. This is a this is a hard one because I've had residents in my facilities who are just incredible people and and sometimes they go they start going down a path that um just isn't safe for themselves or safe for the other residents whether that is uh they're having emotional outbursts um their suicidal tendencies um could could
00:09:20
be any number of things and you have to have a really hard conversation. you don't immediately uh unless it's a really bad situation, you don't immediately discharge them, you're going to start working with them. And if you see that this is a continual thing and and you have concerns over it, you're going to need to discharge them and put them in a spot where they can be they can receive the care that they they need uh to meet their needs because you resident safety um is is absolutely key
00:09:46
when it comes to assisted living. Um, another thing I want to point out is full-time supervision for severe cognitive impairments like advanced dementia. Now, I'm talking here specifically about assisted living. you know, if you wanted to get into memory care, which is uh kind of a step up from uh from assisted living and you're dealing with dementia and Alzheimer's and and some of those more um memory loss uh type type of situations, you can do that and still be providing more of an assisted living type of a care, but
00:10:17
you're specializing in in people that are are dealing with memory loss. You can do that in a memory care facility. It's very similar process to to what I teach um with assisted living. um same very very similar uh just like extra checkboxes when you're doing your application. There's a little bit more uh type of a secure environment that you've got to be implementing at the facility, but very very similar in the way that you're going to provide the care. Um but in traditional assisted
00:10:43
living, that's not something you're able to do. So, you want to make sure that you understand that, hey, if you're not memory care and you're not licensed to be a memory care facility and somebody starts going down this path where they have dementia and it's getting more and more severe, um, they probably need to go somewhere else that can meet their care needs. So, that's something that that I want you to be aware of. Sorry, I'm not feeling super well today, so try not to cough or or sniff into the
00:11:11
microphone here. Um, let's talk about activities. So, I I I alluded to this a little bit. Activities are what make a huge difference with with your residents. So, you're going to have to have daily activities, and usually it's multiple times a day. This is going to be required by the state. Um, you're going to have to document these things. This is where having a really solid EHR system in place is is going to be beneficial. You want to have a a an activity calendar. Gives the residents
00:11:36
something to look forward to, but also if if you have um a state inspection come, a survey come um for for your facility, you're going to be able to demonstrate that yes, um you know, we provide this type of care or we provide these types of activities and um this is how people are are interacting with it. This is the type of activities we we provide. Again, this is not just bingo. You don't just play cards. You don't just do Bingum. Uh you can do those, but your activities are intended to be fun
00:12:07
um activities, crafts, travel, social events, uh you know, like themed dances or um like uh mystery murder dinner type type of thing. Uh we recently took our our uh residents in our Idaho facility up to a local county fair. Um rented out a bus and and took them there, which which was incredible. like it was so much fun to see uh their interactions and things like that and and just their how excited they were. Um we've done things where we take them up to uh just like um like touristy um towns and and
00:12:43
stuff like that. Uh and in my my Colorado facility. So there's a lot that goes into that. Um a lot of activities that that can happen there and you kind of need to think out of the box. I would I would highly recommend that you assign a person at your facility to be in charge of activities of planning uh scheduling those activities, carrying them out. This can be a caregiver that like splits their time between half their time is activities and half their time is um doing traditional caregiving.
00:13:11
When you have that person there and they're planning this this type of stuff out, it creates a much better environment for uh for your residents, increases their satisfaction, um makes them happier, and also keeps you in compliance. So, activities are huge, a huge part of running an assisted living facility and something you need to be doing a lot of. Um, and that's something that I think a lot of people overlook when it comes to assisted living. They they don't think about the activities
00:13:37
and and the interaction that your residents are going to have with you. um as they're living in the home. And so you want to make sure that you are doing those types of things inside of the home. Next is going to be meal time. So with with meals in assisted living, a lot of what you do is going to be centered around meal time, which is kind of fun and and uh it makes for um interesting uh interactions and um circumstances uh for your residents. So you're going to have to do meals. Typically, it's three meals a day,
00:14:06
breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You're also going to have to provide snacks. Typically, those are two to three snacks per day. Um, and these things need to be healthy. You need to understand dietary restrictions uh for your residents. You need to meal plan. Um, so you're going to need to have software. I I use Grove Menus. I I don't have a referral link for them, but they're great. Actually working on something with them to to get you guys a deal on that. But, uh, Grove Menus is is great. I highly recommend
00:14:31
them. Um, and you you can they help you meal plan. They give you a grocery list of the things that you need to buy. And then you can also add things in there for dietary restrictions. And it uh in addition to that, you need to stay compliant with the state and you've got to show what the plans are, the the meal plans. You're going to have to keep a certain amount of food um on on site um to to provide these meals for your residents. So, you want to be doing that. And residents have an opportunity
00:15:00
uh to choose in anything that they do. And when it comes to meal time, they can choose. Typically, you're going to have to uh provide them with options that they can choose from. Um they can choose to refu refuse food. Um if they decide to do that, so you need to be tracking that in your EHR. And if there is uh a consistent pattern of refusing food, then that's something you want to escalate up to their doctor so they can have a conversation. So you want to keep them healthy, but also you have to give
00:15:26
them autonomy and agency and letting them still choose what they want to do. So that's an important part of it. Um, we also do coffee time, uh, with a lot of our residents, which a lot of them really enjoy, uh, and just, you know, take them coffee to their rooms while they're watching shows, whatever it is. Uh, and and they seem to to really enjoy that. Miltime is is huge. It's kind of centric and you want to make it fun. Um, and again, you don't have to have a a professional chef to do all this stuff.
00:15:51
You could definitely hire that person if you'd like to, uh, but not going to be a requirement. We just have our our our caregiving staff um, cook the meals, and it works really well for our facilities. U let's talk about staff now. Uh so at its core with staff, you really just need three. There there's other types of staff that you could have. You know, you could have a cook, you could have cleaning staff, you could have maintenance um uh you can assign some of the stuff over to your caregivers. You
00:16:21
could hire um people uh just external um partners uh to to come in and do things for you. Um, but at its core, what you're going to need inside of assisted living is you're going to have your caregivers, um, and your administrator. Those are going to be the two two main people that provide the care. Your administrator is a licensed uh, facility administrator in a state where you're operating the facility. U, you're going to pay that person more. Caregivers, you're going to need to have as many
00:16:45
caregivers as um, is required in your state. Most states at this point are shifting over to a model where uh, there's not a a minimum requirement. uh it's it's much more based off of meeting the care needs of the residents. And so you want to understand what those needs are and then make sure that you're providing adequate care. So um that's how many how many staff you'll need. Just kind of depends on the state. Uh you want to figure that out. Um and and that's going to help you along along
00:17:09
that path. On top of that, um you're going to need a nurse. Now, the nurse isn't doesn't need to be somebody that you have on staff. You could definitely hire them out. They're not going to be a full-time, especially in a smaller residential facility. Uh but you're going to need to have nursing staff to do assessments when new residents are coming into the facility to do regular assessments on on your uh on your uh residents. Um they're going to be the ones that uh can work through
00:17:35
medication. Then they delegate caregivers to be able to pass medication if they are a certified medic med passer or whatever it's going to be called in your state. Um so you don't need to have a full-time nurse. Uh you don't even have to have them on their sta on your staff. um we typically just hire out to a company, but you're going to need to have that person kind of in your fac in and around your facility. Now, I know there's a lot of you that are watching this that you are the nurse and you want
00:18:00
to do assisted living. So, if that's you, type in nurse down below. Uh because I love I love my nurses. I love you guys do incredible work. So, uh type that in. I just want to give you like thumbs up, high five kind of thing down in the comments. Um, but uh you uh if you are a nurse and you want to start this this type of business, you can be the nurse for your facility. You could be the administrator if you wanted to to go that route and and get your facility administrator license. Um that that's
00:18:26
totally fine. You can be both of those things. Um there's, as far as I can tell, I've done a lot of these in in different states and and things like that. I don't see any conflict of interest that says you can't do it. So, um you're going to be okay doing that. uh but you're you will need to have somebody with that expertise um there at the facility that is helping to manage medication and delegating uh med pass um to to the residents. That's something that you want to be aware of. Um me not
00:18:54
being a nurse, we just hire that out to uh somebody else in in our facility uh or hire it out to a company to come into our facility and then uh do that piece uh for the residents. So that's that's the staffing piece. So, that is that's what really happens inside of an assisted living facility. You've got your your mills, your activities, and you got your staff, and they're caring for the residents, and they're meeting their needs and and the type of care that you can provide there. Um, that
00:19:17
that's what really happens inside of uh of assisted living. So, that, you know, that that's that's kind of how it works. Now, I want to share with you big big announcement over here. Uh, let's get into this. Um, so this is coming next week, but um actually uh little bit of a sneak peek for you. It actually came to me in the mail um yesterday. I was surprised it wasn't supposed to get here for about a week. Um I've written a book. So uh you can go pre-order this. We're going to have a link down below in
00:19:47
in YouTube. Um and it's the profitable assisted living facility. So go and grab that. Uh it's available in hard copy um soft uh cover. Um this is this is the view. This is the proof copy of the of the hard cover. And there is also a workbook that you can get um on online as well. So um go and and grab that. It's bigger um but has a ton of information in it. Goes through my whole five phase process. Uh it's the best way for you to learn how to uh launch your assisted living business. So I'm super
00:20:20
excited for it. I've spent a lot of time working on this thing um over the past uh several months and it's really fun to kind of see it come to fruition and uh just kind of get it out the door. So, make sure you go and check that out. Again, link will be down below on YouTube. Um go get it pre-ordered. It launches officially on September 1st. I'll be sending out a bunch of emails uh for people. U so make sure you pay attention to those because there's some special bonus items here for the next
00:20:45
couple of weeks if you jump in and get that. Plus, I've got some extra bonus items in the back of the book. Um, so you get extra bonus if you uh buy early and then uh if if you don't buy early uh you know you're watching this three years from now uh then uh you're still going to get bunch of bonuses there in the back of the book. So make sure you go and and check that out. So uh with that uh super excited to to get that launched. I want to thank everybody for for being here. Uh remember you can go
00:21:10
check out AI Basics. Go to assistedl livinginvesting.net/basics to to work directly with me. Uh if you have any questions, we're only going to have this open for a little bit more. There will be a special announcement coming uh around that here uh in a couple of weeks as well. We just got a lot of change going on uh here at the channel and at Assisted Living Investing. So, I'm really excited for uh some of the changes that are coming up with that. So, make sure you pay attention there and make sure you like
00:21:33
the video, subscribe, ring the bell as well so you get notified every time we put out content like this. We go live on Tuesdays. We put out content on Thursdays. And uh really my goal is to help you launch your assisted living business. So, does residential assisted living sound interesting to you, but you don't know how to get started? At assisted living investing, I'm here to help beginners like you launch their assisted living business in the next 12 months. I love helping and coaching
00:21:55
people and would love to help and coach you along your path and help you launch your assisted living business. And remember, it doesn't take a lot, just a little bit. Just keep going step by step by step. And I promise you, if you do and you are consistent and persistent, you're going to be successful. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
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