Day in the Life of an Assisted Living Owner

assisted living administrator assisted living business assisted living business model assisted living business owner assisted living business startup assisted living facility management assisted living operations assisted living operator assisted living owner assisted living ownership assisted living staffing day in the life of an assisted living owner owning an assisted living facility passive assisted living business Oct 01, 2026

Have you ever wondered what an assisted living owner actually does all day? I’ve found that the answer depends on which hat you choose to wear, and you have more choices than you may think.

Want the full breakdown? Watch the video below👇

You can choose how involved you want to be in your assisted living business

One of the things I love about assisted living is that you can build the business around the role you want to have. You can be very hands-on, or you can build systems and a team so you can focus on the bigger picture.

I live out of state from my assisted living business, so I’ve had to build strong systems, create clear processes, and learn how to delegate. That has helped me spend more time thinking about strategy, growth, relationships, and future opportunities.

The key is to decide what you want your business to look like before you get started.

💡 If you want the business to become more hands-off, start building it that way from the beginning.

You have three hats you can wear as an owner

I like to think of assisted living ownership as having three different hats: owner, operator, and administrator.

The owner hat focuses on the big picture. You are thinking about the business, the numbers, growth, funding, and where you want to go next.

The operator hat focuses on how the business runs. You are looking at systems, processes, team performance, culture, and making sure the plan is actually being followed.

The administrator hat is much more involved in the daily operation of the facility. The administrator works with staff, interviews and hires people, handles resident intake, creates schedules, manages supplies, and helps make sure the facility follows its rules and regulations.

You can wear one hat, two hats, or all three.

✅ Decide which role you want to have.

✅ Decide which roles you want to delegate.

✅ Build your team around those decisions.

Your core team starts with an administrator and caregivers

Staffing is another big part of understanding your day as an owner. Your facility will need an administrator, along with caregivers to meet the care needs of your residents.

Depending on your state and facility, some caregivers may also need specialized medication training. You may also choose to have additional team members for activities, housekeeping, maintenance, food preparation, or other needs.

But you do not have to build a huge team on day one.

In my facilities, we have combined some roles. For example, someone may spend part of their time caregiving and part of their time helping with activities or maintenance.

The right setup depends on your facility, your residents, and your goals.

💡 You can build your staffing model around what your residents actually need.

Build the business you want from the beginning

If you know you eventually want your assisted living business to become hands-off, don’t wait three years to start planning for it.

Start with the end goal in mind.

If you do not want to be the administrator long term, you may need to budget for an administrator earlier. That may change your numbers, so you need to understand your revenue, wages, insurance, food, utilities, and debt payments.

This is where your numbers become important. You need to know what it will take to build the business you want.

And remember, running an assisted living business will come with surprises. Staff may leave unexpectedly. Someone may get hurt. A resident may have a problem that needs attention. Things happen.

You cannot predict every problem, but you can prepare.

Policies, procedures, insurance, good systems, and a strong team can help you work through the unexpected.

Wrap Up

Owning an assisted living business does not have to look one specific way. You get to decide whether you want to be the owner, operator, administrator, or some combination of all three.

The important thing is to start thinking about your future role now. Build the team, systems, and numbers around the kind of business you want to own.

If you need help creating a business plan for your assisted living business, check out the Business Plan Checklist.

And if you’re ready to figure out your next step, join me for the next Roadmap Challenge where I’ll walk you through how to get started.

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Show full transcript 👇

Transcript

00:00:00
Have you been trying to understand exactly what it looks like to own and operate an assisted living business because you're not sure if it's the right fit for you? Well, in today's video, owning an assisted living facility, what a typical day really looks like, I'm going to kind of pull back the curtain and help you understand exactly what that looks like to help you determine if this is actually going to be a good fit for you. And the reason why I created this video is I see comments all the time on YouTube and on

00:00:26
Facebook from people like you who are trying to figure out like how does staffing work and the administrators and how do you have to hire people and all the operations facility size passive ownership. Are these things possible? Like I get inundated with comments like this from people like you because you just don't understand the operational reality of the business. And so that's what I want to help you understand here in today's video. Hey friend, my name is Brandon Gustafson. I help healthcare

00:00:54
workers start their own assisted living business so they're not stuck trying to figure it out and know exactly what they should do next. And if you need some help with things like that, go check out assistedlivinginvesting.net to get some help. I got some free resources over there. And if you're just like, I I I want to work with Brandon. I know I do. Take my quiz at aliquiz.com. We'll have a QR code for you down here in one of the bottom of the corners. And go take that quiz. would love to see

00:01:20
where you're at and see if I can help you make some progress towards launching your assisted living business. Now, with that, let's get into our topic today. Again, it's owning an assisted living facility. What a typical day really looks like. So, let's talk about it. What do owners actually do daily? So, I'm going to actually talk about this from my perspective as a person who lives out of state. Okay? I live in Utah. I have owned a facility in Colorado. We sold it about a year ago.

00:01:48
We own one in Idaho and we're looking to expand our portfolio in Idaho in the coming months and years and we're really excited for where we're going with that. So, what do I actually do on a daily basis? Not a lot. [laughter] So, I have determined that living out of state, I want this to be passive. And that was something that for me was intentional a little bit in the start. I never wanted to be somebody that was doing this actively, but operating out of state was never like in my initial

00:02:21
plan. And it has turned out to be this incredible blessing for me. I'm so grateful that that's what we ended up doing. And the reason why is it has helped me figure out how to create better systems and processes and delegate more to people so that we can have more success in our facilities. It's pretty cool. So, we have spent a lot of time over the past several months in creating better operational procedures and creating an operational plan that's going to allow us to be ready for expansion to stabilize our

00:02:55
income and when new opportunities come to us that we'll be able to jump on them. And so, I'm really excited for that. So what I do is much more highlevel strategic thinking strategy for how we're going to build a solid business and how I want our operations to be run and how we're going to get our staff to follow through on those things that we're doing and how we're going to go find new opportunities and get funding. That's a lot of what I do with my business. Now, the really cool thing

00:03:25
about this is you can do exactly what I do. Or if you want to be super involved in the day-to-day, you want to be the facility administrator, guess what? You can do that, too. I believe there are three hats that you can wear. One hat is the owner hat. Second hat is your operator hat, and the third hat is your administrator hat. You're going to need these three hats when it comes to owning an assisted living business. Now, you can own multiple hats. To this point, I have been an owner operator. Then I've

00:03:52
hired the administrator. But what I'm looking at doing now is a shifting so I just only have the owner hat. I want to give my operator hat over to my administrator and then ultimately have my administrator training new administrators underneath him. And then he's going to be able to take off the administrator hat and just own the operational hat. So those three hats are super important. And you get to choose which of those ones you want to wear. It's pretty cool. You can wear all three. You can wear one of them. You can

00:04:24
delegate all of them out. You can just be like super passive and just be like the person that has the money. That's totally fine as well. But I think it's really cool that you get to choose what hat you want to wear. So right now I'm an operatorowner. I have a lot of input in the design and how we want our facility to be run and the culture we want to create and where we want to be going strategically in the future. But as I shift away from the operator hat, I'm going to be much more

00:04:51
strategic driven and having a better handle on our numbers and seeing where we can go developing relationships so that we are able to actually move forward. But you get to choose what you want to do. So, let's talk about staffing because that's something else that I think will help you out as you're trying to figure out um like what an owner actually is going to do. You need to understand the staffing mechanism. So, you're going to have an administrator. Like every facility is going to need to have an administrator.

00:05:18
It's a licensed position in the state. People go through a process to become a licensed facility administrator. So, you're going to need to have that person. And then underneath them, you're going to need to have caregivers. Oftentimes, these caregivers are going to need to become med certified. Each state kind of calls it something different, but allows your staff to administer medication to your residents. Most residents are going to need some kind of medication. So, it's a specialized training. So, oftentimes we

00:05:42
will have at least one what we call a medtech can be called different things in different states working the floor, which is working with the residents on every shift that we have. And then maybe we have a lower level caregiver who hasn't become med certified yet, but they can help out with the different cares, you know, toileting and dressing and preparing food, etc. So, those are the staff that you are going to need to have. They're your core staff. You could have an assistant administrator, you could have an

00:06:10
activities coordinator, you could have housekeeping, you could have somebody that does maintenance for you, you could have a full-time chef. You can have all of those things or you could have none of them and then just go with the core administrator and caregiver team. This is another cool thing. You kind of get to choose how you want this to look and feel. For a lot of our staff, we have them do meal prep. They cook. We have a person that is halfime is a caregiver, halftime is our activities coordinator.

00:06:39
We have a person that is like half-time caregiving and halftime maintenance. We do hire full-time staff to do our housekeeping though. So, this is how we've kind of run it and it works really well for us. And we've evolved and we've changed a few times over the years, but our facility that it's not like catering to this really high-end area where we have a personal chef. We don't have a need for that in our facility. So, our caregiving staff, part of the process when we bring them in to make sure

00:07:05
they're comfortable working with us is to confirm that they are able to handle food, that they might need to get a food handlers permit, um that they are comfortable working in the kitchen, that they know how to work at different appliances, and that they'll take care of the dishes, etc. Those are the types of things that we want to look at. But again, you get to decide exactly how that looks. So while the base is facility administrator and your caregiving staff with some med techs in there, people that can pass medications

00:07:32
is the base of it, you can scale this up as high or as low as you want it to be as long as you are meeting the care needs of the residents, which is in most states the requirement for how many staff you're going to have. So really helpful hopefully there for you in figuring out your staffing structure. But those are the basics of it. And then you can kind of scale it up uh as much as you want. And you can add a bunch of different positions, but they're not required. Okay? You do not have to have

00:07:59
a full-time chef or even a part-time chef. You don't have to have it. I know a lot of places will tell you you do. You don't. You have to provide meals, but you don't have to hire a chef. Okay? Totally different things. If you want to though, I'm not going to be mad at you. I think it's a great amenity to have. I think it's a cool thing to do, but you don't have to have it. So don't let that be the thing that holds you back. Okay, let's talk a little bit about what an

00:08:23
administrator handles versus what the owners handle. And again, I talked about the three hats, right? We have our owner, our operator hat, our administrator hat. For us, our administrator kind of wears a little bit of an operational hat along with me, and we kind of share that a little bit in tandem. But as the administrator, what his role is is to make sure that we are meeting all the rules and regulations. They're meeting with uh staff. They're interviewing people. They're hiring people. They're doing the interviews

00:08:48
with residents and their families. They're doing intake. They're bringing those people in. They're setting schedules. They're buying the food. They're making sure that um our pantry is fully stocked and we have all the medications that we need and that we have all the medical supplies that we need. They're taking care of all of that, the day-to-day stuff. That's what our administrator does. Whereas me, I am over um doing much more strategic thinking and building out the plans and

00:09:12
and building the relationships and and trying to think of where do we want this to go in the future and what are we going to need to help us get there. And so we come together and sitting a little bit in this operational piece. And where I want in my scenario to help my administrator put on that middle hat, the operator hat, what I want him to start doing is start thinking more strategically, start thinking about the things and the impact that we're going to have as we try to look at expanding

00:09:39
our portfolio. So that's the big main difference between an owner and the administrator. But like I mentioned earlier in the video, there's three hats. owner, operator, administrator. You can wear one of those hats, two of them, or all three of them. And that's another really cool thing here about the world of assisted living is you kind of get to build what you want it to be. Um, you're not tied into any one type of model. You could do it like me, and I think it's a cool way to do it, but it's not

00:10:08
the best way. It's not the only way to do it. It works really well for me, but it may not work for you. So, you have to decide that. I have other friends that are in the industry and they do it very differently from me and that's okay. So, think about what hats you want to wear and then make sure you're just kind of handing those things off and hiring people and delegating things to people that align more with the type of work that they actually want to do and they're good at doing so they can meet

00:10:34
the needs. So, when does the business become less hands-on? It's when you have designed it that way. So, a lot of you have commented, "I've seen this. I want this to be handsoff or I eventually want this to be hands-off. I anticipate being really busy upfront in this and then I plan on handing it off." That's great. I think it's a good plan. What I would suggest that you do is think about what you want this to be in the future and start building out that plan now. Don't wait and be like,

00:11:11
"Okay, well, in three years I don't want to be the administrator anymore, so I need to make sure I hire somebody." And then three years come, you're like, "Okay, in three years I'm gonna do this, you know, and it just keeps getting pushed back and then you keep getting burnt out." What you need to do is from the beginning say, "Okay, I don't want to be the administrator." That means day one I need to hire the assistant administrator. I need to bring them in

00:11:33
or maybe I should look at hiring an administrator from day one to do things and it's going to cost me a little bit of extra money, but at least it's going to help me get there. This is where running your numbers and understanding how those things actually work is going to really benefit you. So, if you need some help with that, type in calculator down below. I've got a free underwriting calculator to help you out in understanding exactly how these numbers are going to work for you to see if if

00:11:57
it is going to make sense uh from a financial standpoint. And if you want to see this in action, type in workshop because I have a free workshop. It's taught live, but you can come in there. You can see exactly what this looks like. And I can help you navigate this entire process to see, hey, this is actually how this is going to work. And I can have this become profitable. And we go through revenue things that you can pull. The wife expenses which are the top five expenses, wages, insurance,

00:12:24
food, energy, which is your like utilities, your debt service which is your loan payment, your mortgage payment, your lease payment, and how those things all kind of factor into this. So you can see, does this make sense for me to hire an administrator upfront for this to become hands-off like immediately or do I need to work through it a little bit so I can get more residents in? What hats do I need to wear and how am I going to to move forward with that? Okay, come to the workshop assisted livinginvesting.net/workshop

00:12:54
link down below. Would love to help you and guide you through the process so you understand exactly what you're getting into. Super important for you to do that. Okay, that's how you can figure out though if this is going to be hands-on or not. It really, I think, comes down to trust. Do you have somebody you can trust in that position? But also on the flip side, are you going to be okay from a financial standpoint? Those are the things that you can be focused on. And there's a lot of things

00:13:22
that are going to come up as you are starting this business that are like operational surprises that you just you don't know what to do and you're going to have to be on your feet. I have had administrators quit on me the week of Christmas and move out of state like total like ghost me and they're gone. I can't do anything about it. Like that's happened to me before. I have had incidents where we had a staff member get hurt and we had to deal with workers comp and our workers comp for some

00:13:50
reason had lapsed and so we had to work through that with workers comp. We have had instances where residents were off of their medications and were doing things that they shouldn't be doing and how to deal with all of that. There are things that are going to come up as you own an assisted living business. operational surprises or disasters, right? You're gonna work through it. You're going to be okay. It's part of the process of owning the business. But I promise you that those things are few

00:14:20
and far between. And the incredible impact you get to have when you own an assisted living business far outweighs those big surprises, those big things that you can't expect. like there's no way to understand what is going to come up. And my healthcare workers who are watching this, you're probably chuckling because you're like, "Yes, I know there's stuff that comes up and that's okay. You work through it. Everything will be fine. That's why you have policies and procedures in place. It's

00:14:49
why you get insurance. It's why you kind of put yourself in a position where you can be successful. Okay? And when you do those things, I can't tell you all of the big things that are going to come up, but when you prepare yourself, you're going to be in a much much better situation. So, I hope you found this video helpful, especially the three hats. Which of the three hats, uh, comment this down below, do you see yourself wearing? Uh, by the way, would love to hear that. And it could be one

00:15:17
hat, two hats, or all three of them. Uh, but type the hat that you see yourself wearing as you get started on your assisted living journey. would love to hear from you on that and see where you're at. And if you found this video helpful, make sure you like the video, subscribe, ring the bell as well so you get notified every time we put out content like this. It's going to help you get notified so that you know you're like, "Okay, cool. I got more videos and more education to do this, but also

00:15:40
helps other people like you who we need in this industry starting good, solid assisted living businesses." It's going to help them find the content as well. And that is super super helpful. And if you need some help with this or some guidance and you're like, I want to work with Brandon. I just don't know what way to do it, take the quiz, 30 seconds, aliquiz.com. Scan the QR code that's down here in the bottom corner. I can't remember which corner it is. Do that or type in workshop down below. Go to

00:16:05
assisted livinginvesting.net/workshop. Join the free workshop. We have another one coming up soon. Would love to have you in there and help you out along the path to launching your assisted living business. Are you curious about assisted living, but you're not sure how to get started? At Assisted Living Investing, I help healthcare workers start their own assisted living business so they're not stuck trying to figure it out and know exactly what they should do next. And remember, it doesn't take a lot, just a

00:16:28
little bit. Just keep going step by step by step. And I promise you, if you do and you are consistent and persistent, you are going to be successful. Thanks for watching and have a great day. Hey, it's future Brandon. I totally forgot when I was recording a little bit earlier today that I needed to remind you if you found this video helpful, make sure you go and watch this video. We're going to watch that one. Okay. And hey, if if you don't like that one, but you want to watch another one, watch the

00:16:51
other one that YouTube's going to recommend for you up there as well. Okay.

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