Choosing Your Role in Assisted Living: Owner, Operator, or Administrator?
Jul 02, 2025
Discover which role fits you best in the assisted living business and set yourself up for success!
Starting an assisted living business can be exciting, but there are several options for you to consider for how you want to be involved. Specifically, do you want to own, operate, or manage the facility, or some combination of those? In this post, we break down the key roles in the business and help you decide what’s best for you!
Let’s dive in! π
Check out this video, too:
Why It’s Important to Know Your Role
Before you jump in, it’s essential to clarify your role in the assisted living facility. Whether you want to be an owner, operator, or administrator (or some combination of those roles), knowing where you fit helps you make strategic decisions early on.
Ask yourself:
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Do I want to focus on the real estate side of things (owning the property) or managing day-to-day operations?
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Am I interested in running the business and caring for the residents directly?
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Would I prefer a mix of those responsibilities?
Clarifying your role will help you get started and keep your goals aligned with the way you run your business.
Step 1: Understand the Different Roles
Here are the main roles you’ll encounter in the assisted living business:
Owner
As the owner, you’ll focus on the high level aspects, owning the real estate and making sure the money is available for the various expenses required for your facility. You aren't necessarily involved in the day-to-tday operations, but you’ll need to know how the business is running to make sure it’s successful.
Operator
The operator is the person who makes sure the business is running as expected. Often times they're involved with the regulations and building some of the bigger strategic relationships that are needed to keep the business up and running. They may not be in the facility all-day every day, interact with staff, or help manage the care, but they need to make sure those things are happening so the business continues to run smoothly.
Administrator
An administrator is responsible for staffing, managing care, overseeing residents, and ensuring everything runs smoothly at the facility. They handle all the day-to-day happenings at the facility and are essentially the face of the facility; they're the person that staff, residents, and resident families interact with. This position is a licensed position in each state and is required for a licensed facility.
π‘ Tip: If you’re interested in being an administrator, make sure you’re familiar with your state’s regulations regarding licensure and certifications.
Step 2: What About Executive Director or House Manager?
As your business grows, you may encounter other positions like Executive Director or Manager. Here’s the difference:
Executive Director
An Executive Director typically oversees multiple facilities. They make higher-level strategic decisions and are responsible for aligning business goals across different locations. They often times have been a facility administrator and they blend that expertise with the role of an Operator.
π‘ Tip: If you want to scale and build a larger portfolio, consider promoting your administrators to an Executive Director role as you grow.
House Manager
House managers often assisted in handling the day-to-day operations of a facility. Depending on the state, the roles of house managers and administrators may overlap. In my facilities, our house managers act more as assistant administrators and ensure that everything runs smoothly in the home.
π‘ Tip: Always clarify the role when you hear someone say they want to be a “manager” to ensure they understand what’s expected and are talking about the same thing you are.
Step 3: Consider a Management Company
If you’re planning to grow your business and manage multiple facilities, you may want to consider bringing in a Management Company. Here’s why:
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What They Do: Management companies handle everything, from operations to staffing, so you don’t have to. They typically charge a percentage of income (I often see 3-5%).
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When to Use Them: If you have multiple facilities or large facilities, a management company can help you scale without the need to give up ownership.
π‘ Tip: Using a management company can be a great way to keep your business running smoothly without giving away ownership. But make sure it fits with your financial goals and business model.
Step 4: What’s Right for You?
The key is to find a role or combination of roles that align with your skills, interests, and goals.
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Owner: Focus on the real estate and high-level strategy.
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Operator: Build strategic relationships and carry out the facility's long-term plan. Ensure the administrator has what they need to be successful.
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Administrator: Handle the day-to-day work at the facility, administrative duties, and ensure compliance.
π‘ Action Tip: Comment below with which role you’re most interested in, or if you’re aiming for a crossover of roles. Let us know what works best for you!
Next Steps: Take Action Today!
π Ready to pick your role and get started in the assisted living business?
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Step 1: Download the Business Plan Checklist to start planning your business.
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Step 2: Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
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Step 3: Take action! Start moving toward your goal today.
Got questions? Drop them in the comments below! β¬οΈ
Show full transcript π
Transcript
00:00:02
hey friend it is 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 this is take two um here on the on the live session the first one I did not click my um audio my my Jack into the adapter and so you couldn't hear anything so we're going to try this again and I'm hoping that it works well uh kind of in a different space for for everybody um and this is not the time that I announced that we
00:00:28
would be doing the live so uh we'll see how many people we get here but if you do um show up then make sure that you comment your questions um and and we'll get into it so today's video we're going to be talking about the different roles uh leadership roles specifically for assisted living uh and what that looks like so if you're interested in that uh would love to hear what you have to say um and I'm going to ask for a little bit of participation as we get into this one
00:00:53
um today so um please make sure you do your comments um in here and um and make sure that you know you're helping me know um who here is is listening and as we get started want to also remind you to uh go and grab the free uh checklist down below so I'm going to have a link there's a ticker go to Assisted Living investing. netv checklist um that's going to get you access to this link and um then you'll be able to see that and and you'll get access to that as as a tool that's going to help you um move
00:01:26
things along so uh without further Ado let me share my screen bring this up um and I'm doing this in a different space a little bit out of my element today um but kind of rearranging my my recording space and excited to to do this with you today um so as I mentioned we're going to be talking about the residential Assisted Living leadership roles um that exist with Assisted Living so um in doing that I wanted to give you a little bit of background on who I am my name is Brandon Guston I own and operate two
00:01:55
assisted living facilities um and have done that since uh 2020 so i' I've had facilities for a few years now um I have secured over one and a half million in SBA funding and uh have ALS I also operate out of state so I live in Utah I have one of my facilities in Colorado and the other one is in Idaho um so we we do that and then I have a master's in healthcare administration with over a decade of experience um as we get into the roles um here um and I'll I'll go ahead and go into this there's three
00:02:23
main roles um that I that I kind of boil all of this down into there's an owner there's an operator and there's an administrator so my role in what I do in my facilities is more of the owner operator role um and I'll get into that a little bit as as I progress here uh but it's important to note that these roles can cross over um and and a good way to kind of explain this is uh I was actually in my Mastermind program we had our Q&A and and somebody was bringing up this question they wanted to know kind of
00:02:54
what these are and um she after I explained it she's like okay so this is what it is and she used a corporate analogy and I I really like this so uh an administrator is kind of like an a manager level um the operator is more of a director level and then the owner is more of a VP level um in the way that they are structured and the way that they they work um as I go through these though what I'd love for you to do is comment down below which of these three roles you see yourself in if you're an
00:03:23
owner then comment that if you're an operator then go ahead and comment that and if you're an administrator comment that and if it's something that you're not yet you would type in I want to be an owner um or I will be to use assumptive language um I want to be an operator and if you're crossing over that's okay put those in and the the last thing I want you to do um is to if you are one of these people and you're an owner and you want somebody to operate for you or you're an operator
00:03:51
and you need some you need the the capital to buy stuff I'm working on building out uh kind of a a way for for you all to network and would love for you to get on to the website Assisted Living investing. net and go to the contact UM page and just submit a thing for me um that lets me know your contact info a little bit about your background and things like that um and then if you're okay with me making connections for you uh really want to know like um you know where you want to operate and
00:04:19
and some of the the information I'm not going to sell any of your information um as I grow um I would potentially reach out to you but it's it's not that I'm I'm looking at this for myself this is much more of a networking opport opportunity for people and and let allowing you to make connections so you can vet each other before getting involved so if you're interested in doing that then just get over to Assisted Living investing. netcon um there should be a way for you to fill out a form send me an email and
00:04:45
then we'll put that in kind of a database as as we get going so um there's your action item for you as as you're watching these and as I kind of explain exactly what these three different roles are inside of this um other places might might call these different um that's totally fine um but in my mind there's really these three um these three core places that that you want to be uh Three core roles that you want to be aware of um and I'm G to just hop over really quick and see if I have any
00:05:13
um questions okay I'm on a different screen so I can't see the anybody in the chat uh if there's any questions if there are some uh there will be a little bit of time here at the end for Q&A so go ahead and type those in I I realized that we might not have a ton of people here live because the timing was off based off of my bad recording earlier so if you have questions make sure you type those in um below um even after the fact and we'll get into those so an owner what is an
00:05:41
owner they they're the the person that owns the business they have final say on those big important decisions um and they delegate responsibilities the the idea with being an owner is um you you you know you're the money person you own the real estate you you kind of want to have all of that you want the benefits of of help helping people you want to be here you want to be in this industry you want to have an impact on your community and things like that but you don't have the background in healthare you have no
00:06:08
interest in running a business you just want to be an investor um if that's you then type owner down below would love to to see how many of you are the owner um and it's what you typically are looking for is that um person that could come in and and operate things for you and take over operations so that you don't have to worry about any of the decisions or any of things uh that go into running this type of a business so that's an owner now let's get into what an operator is an operator is um they're
00:06:39
they're kind of more uh they handled high level conversations they report up to the owner but they handle the majority of the things that that need to be taken care of taking all of that weight and things off of the owner um from so they don't have to worry about those decisions and can trust that things are being run correctly they manage the administrator they're kind of in between that to go back to that corporate example between the VP and the manager they're a director they have um
00:07:07
more um big picture um type of a view of what's going on and they they understand uh some of those those more strategic decisions that need to be made they're the ones that are that are doing that they're possibly interfacing with some of the the regulatory bodies um that are higher up so for me I I consider myself an owner operator I own the business I I do all of the things that an owner would do but I also do the operational piece so um in our video last week our live last week we talked about grants so I'm
00:07:40
the person that's working with the grants and when we have uh have to interface with um the the state different state departments for the grant uh and the the construction that we're doing um and the licensing and all of those things I'm doing that I'm working with our construction company uh I'm working with those vendors um when we need to find a new um EHR system if you want to know more about EHR type in EHR down below I can do some videos on what EHR is it's an electronic
00:08:08
Healthcare record system um it have some really good information so type that down below if that's interested um go ahead and comment that but I I'm the person that's kind of interfacing with those and making those decisions that's that's my role as an operator um to be involved in that um and and so that that person is going to be coming out uh more strategic mind and uh trying to help grow the business and make sure that it is remaining profitable and that it's sustainably
00:08:36
profitable that's what an operator is now let's talk about the administrator the administrator is like one is is more key to anybody else honestly um administrators if you're watching this like thank you for all the work that you do you probably don't hear it enough but you are incredible we could not build these businesses and run these businesses without you um and you are the face of the of the of the franchise you're the face of the of the business and you're the ones that um that when a
00:09:04
resident or a person in the community or somebody at the state generally when they think about a facility they think of of the administrator um that is who they um that's who who they talk to that's who they interface with that is who um excuse me that's that's who they think of when they think of the facility so you as an owner or an operator you want to make sure that you have the right person in this position because it they are the face of of of the facility and everything that you're trying to do
00:09:37
there uh they're extremely important they do the day-to-day work they work with the staff they interface with staff they hire them um they they run payroll um typically they're they're just like really familiar with the ins and outs of what's going on in the business they find new residents they interface with the families of the residents they they bring them in if somebody needs to get discharged they're the ones that are handling that they do all of the day-to-day operations and then they
00:10:00
delegate as they can down to their caregivers and medtechs and the nurses but they are ultimately responsible for all those things they um are also interfacing with the state and the um budsman um an un budsman is is basically an advocate for the residents if you'd like to learn more about what an un budsman is um and how that might impact your ability to run an assisted living business comment un budsman down below um and you can see the spelling here on the slide so um comment that down below
00:10:29
and if that's of of use and I'd love to make some videos around that and what that looks like but um suffice to say the administrator is a person that that does all of this work now as I mentioned earlier a person you as as the person that wants to start this you could do all three of these roles you could be an administrator operator owner um you could do all that you could be an administrator um operator you could be an operator owner uh you you could kind of work through all these or you could
00:10:56
just have individuals in each of these sections uh regardless of how you want to get this thing started um those are the three buckets that I like to put people in because it allows you to kind of see what's going on so if you're an owner comment owner down below if you're an operator um comment that down below and if you're an administrator um comment that down below and if you want to be one of those and just say I will be one of those three um and if you're a crossover then comment that down as well
00:11:22
I'd love to hear from you now while there are those three there are a few others that I want you to be aware of and just kind of some other terms that you may here as you're trying to figure out some of the leadership roles instead of Assisted Living um one is going to be executive director so in my mind an executive director and an operator are very similar um in the way that they work um executive directors are is more industry term um for how you would term that they are typically going to be over
00:11:49
multiple facilities um and they're handling some of those more strategically driven decisions and the way that you want to to run the business uh so that's something that that as you grow your business as you scale it um you might want to have this executive director position um a lot of what I see is they're actually former administrators and then they bump up into that position so if you want to create a career ladder as you're growing your portfolio um hiring administrators that have the ability the education the
00:12:20
um just like the the the personality to be an executive director this might be something that you would want to consider so executive director is is one position there but very similar um I would say to operator so a lot of what I just talked about with an operator kind of pertains to an executive director level position as well the next is a manager so a manager uh depending on the state manager and administrator actually are interchangeable some of them uh some states actually call administrators
00:12:49
managers so when you hear this um you might want to clarify but um it could be that somebody is talking about a manager and an administrator and using that interchangeably uh very possible that that could be the case so uh you know some states they might consider it something different um but you want to get clarification when somebody says I want to be the manager of the facility um I would I would probe a little bit ask a little bit more um a little bit deeper and see what exactly that means in the vernacular that they are using
00:13:20
and then the third one here is a management company um management companies generally are going to be for larger facilities or if you have multiple facilities like four four or more is typically what I see with a management company um the margins don't make a lot of sense when you have a tiny facility you have like a one6 bed facility it's not going to make sense to have a a management company if you have four 10 bed facilities all of a sudden it's starting to make more sense um a lot of what I see in the industry
00:13:47
management companies are like between three and 5% of income is what you're paying that company but they take over a lot of what like an executive director or an operational uh person operator uh would be doing they handle all of that so as an owner uh somebody that just wants the real estate if you have multiple facilities or you're getting a large one um this could be a really good fit for somebody to kind of run um things for you in a way that that does that without having to give away any of
00:14:13
the equity in the business because if you want to bring on an operator um you can find them but oftentimes in the beginning small facilities you bring in an operator um typically you're going to have to give some type of ownership so that's just something for you to to be aware of um as as you get into this if you'd like to learn a little bit more about management companies type in management company down below um in the comments and I I'll see what I can do to kind of do a little more of a deep dive
00:14:38
into what a management company is and how it works and how it could impact you um as you're as you're moving through um and and trying to run the facility a really good opportunity there for you though because you know if you consider this as as an owner um it might be better for you to rather than giving you know 20 to 50% of ownership in the business to pay somebody 3 to 5% to run um the facility for you might be better for your scenario I don't know you know that's very much a personal decision um
00:15:07
for for how you want to to do those things that's just something for you to be aware of um as as you get into that um so yeah just want you to to think about that uh if that's the rout that you're considering going is you know management company might might be worth uh taking a look at and and doing some research on um I had something else I was going to say about owners and that scenario and it has left my brain twice while I've been talking so if it comes back I'll get to you anyways uh if
00:15:35
there's any questions uh go ahead and type those down below while people are typing questions want to um remind you to get over to the website Assisted Living investing. net and download that that business plan checklist the BP checklist and then uh like the video subscribe ring the bell as well so you get notified every time we do these uh do these live sessions those are on Tuesdays typically earlier than what I'm doing right now sorry for the audio issues uh especially those that are
00:16:01
watching the old video and and you're like why is the audio not working I apologize um so uh look hopefully this one goes better definitely have more people here which is promising uh than the last one I think people are getting on and and seeing my mouth move and and not hearing me and we're dropping off pretty quick nobody commented that they couldn't hear me though um so hopefully that is a better scenario for everybody uh this go around uh but like subscribe ring the bell get notified when we put
00:16:30
this stuff out if you need help as you're going through this as well go check out The Mastermind program Assisted Living investing. netmaster to learn a little bit more about how I could help you out through the process uh to see if it's a good fit uh as you're trying to figure out how to make progress on your investment Journey um so if there's any other questions feel free to type those in um I'm trying to jog my memory on the thing with the owners and management companies and it
00:16:54
is it is gone so um yeah sorry um but uh want to thank you all for being here thanks for watching um get over to Assisted Living investing. net if you want the grant template I forgot to change this from from the last time uh from our last video about grants go and grab that one um and if you want to learn more about grants um comment grants down below and we'll make sure we get through that uh that recording uh as well and then if you want the business plan checklist which has been going around uh with the ticker go grab that
00:17:25
Assisted Living investing. netb checklist um I want to thank everybody for being here for watching uh excited to to kind of grow with you and help you along your journey um you know does residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you don't know how to get started at Assisted Living investing. net we're here to help you help beginners like you learn um how to launch their business in the next 12 months so excited to help you along that process and remember it doesn't take a
00:17:50
lot just a little bit keep going step by step by step and I promise you if you do and you're consistent and persistent you're going to be successful thanks for watching and have a great day we'll talk to you next week
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