Do You Need to Be a Nurse to Open an Assisted Living Facility?
May 01, 2026
A lot of people think you have to be a nurse to start an assisted living business. I used to hear this all the time, and it stops people before they even begin. The truth is much simpler than you think.
Want the full breakdown? Watch the video below๐
You do not need to be a nurse to get started
Let’s clear this up first. You do NOT need to be a nurse to open an assisted living facility.
I’m not a nurse, and I’ve been able to build and run multiple facilities. I’ve also seen many others do the same.
The key is understanding your role. As the owner, you are running a business, not providing medical care.
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Focus on ownership and operations, not clinical work
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Don’t let lack of a healthcare background stop you
๐ก If you can run a business, you can run assisted living.
Assisted living is not a clinical business
This is where most confusion comes from. People think assisted living is like a hospital or nursing home. It’s not.
You are helping residents with daily living activities like bathing, dressing, and meals. You are not providing full medical care.
Nurses are only involved part-time for things like care plans and assessments.
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Caregivers handle daily support
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Nurses support with oversight, not full-time care
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You are offering a service, not medical treatment
๐ก This is why you don't need to be a nurse to get started.
Your administrator does not need to be a nurse either
Many people assume the administrator must be a nurse. That’s not true.
Your administrator needs to be licensed in your state, but that license usually requires experience and passing a test, not a nursing degree.
They are responsible for managing the facility, staff, and compliance.
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Check your state’s administrator requirements
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Look for experience and leadership skills
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Prioritize strong communication
๐ก A great administrator keeps your business running smoothly.
You can hire nurses for the clinical pieces
Even though you don’t need to be a nurse, you still have access to clinical support.
Most facilities work with a nurse part-time or through an agency. They help with:
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Resident assessments
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Care plan updates
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Medication oversight
They can also delegate tasks like medication handling to trained staff.
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Use nurses as support, not full-time staff
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Let them handle clinical oversight
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Keep your focus on operations
๐ก You don’t need to do everything yourself. Build the right team.
Business skills matter more than medical skills
This is one of the biggest mindset shifts.
Assisted living is a business first. That means your success comes from how well you manage:
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Finances
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Staffing
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Systems
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Processes
If you’re an entrepreneur or real estate investor, you already have a big advantage.
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Learn or improve your business skills
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Build systems and clear processes
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Track your numbers and stay profitable
๐ก Strong systems will take you further than clinical knowledge.
Always check your state requirements
While the general rule is that you don’t need to be a nurse, every state is different.
Some states may have stricter staffing or licensing rules. It’s important to do your research before you start.
Look at licensing, staffing, and caregiver requirements in your area.
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Research your state regulations
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Understand licensing steps
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Adjust your plan based on local rules
๐ก Clarity upfront saves you time and stress later.
Wrap Up
You do not need to be a nurse to open an assisted living facility. What you really need is a strong team, clear systems, and solid business skills. When you focus on those, you can build a successful and profitable assisted living business.
If you need help creating a business plan for your assisted living business, check out the Free 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.
Show full transcript ๐
Transcript
00:00:00
Are you trying to start an assisted living facility, but you're like, "I'm not a nurse. There's no way I could do this. I have to be a nurse if I want to start my own assisted living facility." I'm here to clarify that for you today and help you understand, do you need to be a nurse or not in your assisted living business. If you're interested in learning about that, make sure you stick around for today's video. Hey friend, I'm Brandon Gustafson. I help first-time assisted living entrepreneurs
00:00:29
launch profitable, purpose-driven businesses, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives. Super excited to be talking today about nurses and do you have to be one to start an assisted living facility. Before we hop into it though, I want to remind you at the end of the video, I'm going to talk a little bit about my roadmap challenge. So, make sure you stick around for that. And if you want to learn more on your own, go to roadmapchallenge.com. And if you need some help, some guidance as
00:00:50
you're trying to launch your assisted living business, go take my 30 secondond quiz at aliquiz.com. We're going to have a link for you down here, QR code. So, go check that out. Go take the quiz. 30 seconds, help you out and see which of my programs is going to be the best fit for you as you're trying to launch your assisted living business. All right, let's talk about it. So, do you need to be a nurse to open an assisted living facility? It's a good question. I get it actually all the time. I get it on
00:01:15
Facebook. I get it in YouTube comments. I get it on Instagram. People are like, "I want to start an assisted living business, but I'm just a caregiver. I'm just a real estate investor. I'm not a nurse. I can't do this." And I'm honestly curious why people feel like they have to be a nurse if they want to get into this business. I'm genuinely curious. So, if that's you and why you have this thought in your head about I have to be a nurse, comment down below.
00:01:38
Why do you feel that way? I'm genuinely curious. I want to know why. Because I'm here to tell you, you do not need to be a nurse to get into and start an assisted living business. It's not a requirement. I am not a nurse at all. I was a CNA, certified nurses assistant when I was in high school 20 plus years ago, right? So, I have a little bit of that nursing background, but it was for less than a year 20 plus years ago. I I I definitely put it on my business plan and my management biography when I was
00:02:08
writing it to get funding as something, hey, I've done this. If you look on my LinkedIn and go far enough back, you'll see that it's on there. But I'm not a nurse and I've been able to do this with multiple facilities. I know multiple people who have done this. They are not nurses. So, you can do this. You do not need to be a nurse. I would say owners, this is the other thing that I want to point out to you. Owners are not clinical providers. In fact, assisted living does not offer clinical services.
00:02:38
You may have a nurse on your team that it comes in and helps out with care plans and does a few of the clinical pieces, but you are not providing clinical care in an assisted living setting. Pretty cool, right? So, that's something I want you to be aware of that this is not clinical. You are providing a service. You're providing assistance with activities of daily living. Your administrator does need to be a licensed professional, but also does not need to be a nurse. They need to be a licensed
00:03:07
facility administrator in your state. I'm curious, which state are you in? And have you looked at the administrator licensing process in your state to understand exactly like how complex it is? Because in some states it's really hard. There's a lot of things you got to do. In other states it's not that hard at all. And generally what I see when it comes to becoming an assisted living facility administrator is you need to have some kind of work experience in the area. Some amount of hours 2 to 400 to
00:03:34
800 hours of experience working in a long-term care setting. This could be as a caregiver, could be as a nurse. It doesn't necessarily matter. You're going to need that. You're going to need to study and take a test as well that you're going to have to pass. Like these are the two big things that you need to have. There's a little bit of things there with a degree. If you have a degree, maybe you need less hours, but those are generally the base requirements to become an assisted
00:03:58
living facility administrator. And you'll notice as I went through those things, there's nothing in there about being a nurse. This is because the administrator is handling the daily care and oversight of the residents. They are in charge of making sure the regulations are met that all the the information is documented. But again, because assisted living is not a clinical setting, they are not providing clinical care. So they do not need to be that they do not need to be a a nurse to to be a facility
00:04:26
administrator. Now, can you be absolutely, but it is not a requirement. The thing that matters most is knowing how to build a good team. So if you are good at at team building, at building culture, at at helping people understand the the process of of of how to build a a strong organization, that's what's going to help you out a ton as a facility administrator, as an owner, as an operator. There there's so many things that you get to do when you are doing that. And you do not need to have
00:04:53
that clinical background. It's not required. So that is something I want to really highlight for you that you don't need to do that. So now let's talk about why you do not need to be a nurse. This is another great question. So oftentimes the first question is I can't get started. I'm not a nurse or do I need to be a nurse to get started? And you know we just talked about that you don't need to be. So let's talk about why you wouldn't need to be a nurse. And I I've
00:05:17
mentioned this a few times but there is only parttime nursing oversight in a facility. We hire and contract with a nursing agency. They come in on a regular basis, a few times a week, to look at our residents, to update care plans, to help us out with evaluations as we're trying to bring in residents into the facility. You know, those types of things. They're helping us out with that. They will help out with readmissions, with initial admissions, with reassessments, and identifying if something's going on with a resident and
00:05:49
if they need a higher level of care, if they need to go to the hospital, if they need to have physical therapy. They're helping out with those things and helping us understand what a resident needs. They're also in charge of medication. They can delegate the passing of medications over to our caregivers as long as they are certified medical technicians. Medex is what we call them in our facility. They could be called something else, but basically a medte is somebody that has gone through
00:06:15
the process. They've gone through a level of education and training to know how to handle medications, how to dispose of them, how to track them. And a nurse at your facility is going to delegate that responsibility. So, they do not have to be there full-time to administer the medications. They delegate that responsibility to a medtech who can do that. So, you're going to need to have a nurse that is in charge of all of that, that can do the delegation and that you're working with and managing the medication cuz
00:06:44
ultimately it falls on them and their license, but this is a very minimal part of what we do in assisted living. So, that's why you don't need a nurse because you you don't provide 24/7 clinical care. This is not a nursing home. Nursing homes, you do have to have nurses, but in an assisted living facility, you don't. And it's because we don't provide that clinical care. And the amount of clinical type of things that we do can be delegated, which is medication management. And then there's
00:07:12
only so many times that you can reassess or do admissions for residents because your beds are going to be filled. So this is a cool thing when it comes to to bringing in and working with a nurse. And that's because again, no clinical care. Those caregivers are the ones that are providing that hands-on support to the residents. They're the ones that are in there. They're helping out if a resident falls or helping with toileting or helping get dressed or bathing, any of those things. The caregivers are
00:07:36
doing that. This is what I love about assisted living and I wish the healthcare industry was more like this and you can see it in certain settings and in certain locations that you go to. But you want to have the level of care that an individual, a caregiver, a doctor, a nurse up to the top of their level of care. That's what you want them providing. You don't want nurses to be coming down and providing care that's down here at a caregiver level because you're paying them a lot more. So why
00:08:01
would you do that when you have caregivers that you can pay at a lower rate than a nurse to do that level of care? They need to be up here and then that's where a doctor is up here, right? And so you want to make sure you're taking that into consideration. That is something that is kind of built in to the way that we run assisted living, which is something I love as a person that has a masters in healthcare administration and is fascinated by the way these types of things work. That's
00:08:23
something that you want to be paying attention to is the level of care that a person is providing that it's based off of their level of ability to do a thing based off of their training. Uh so you want to be at the top of the level of care that a person can provide. And this is what's great about assisted living is you have caregivers that provide that hands-on care that are working there. And then the facility administrator is the one that is overseeing all the regulatory compliance and and making
00:08:50
sure everything is documented and handling all of those things. So the nurse doesn't have to do it because you have an administrator that is overseeing it. They're making sure that the caregivers and the med techs are documenting all the medication management and uh when somebody falls or somebody needs help with toileting or or those types of things, they're making sure that that has been delegated over to a caregiver and that those things are then being tracked in your EHR system or
00:09:13
something along those lines. If you want some information about EHRs, type in EHR down below as well, and I'll see if I can do a quick video for you on that as well to help you out as you're trying to move things along and get started here on your assisted living journey. Now, I do want to acknowledge that state regulations can vary. So, because what I am telling you is based off of my experience and I would say generally is accurate, there are going to be different requirements in every single
00:09:41
state. So licensing and personnel requirements are set by the state. Um so it's it's up to them. They get to choose how they're going to work through this. And that includes nurse involvement and the status of caregiving staff, what they can and cannot do. Do you need to have a nurse? I know for example in the state of Wyoming that caregiver level is supposed to be a CNA. Um so it is a higher level of what they can do than what a caregiver could do. And so you need to be aware that your state may
00:10:12
have certain requirements in the state that is going to cause you to maybe adjust your staffing model accordingly. Facility licensing however is so much more focused on the business rather than the clinical side of things. So, when you are going through the licensing process and if you need help with licensing, type licensing down below and then the thing that you need the most help with and I can do some videos on that to help you out with the licensing process cuz I know that can feel confusing and feel overwhelming. I'm
00:10:39
also here to tell you that if you join my roadmap challenge, walk you through that a little bit and help you understand that the licensing process is not that hard. I promise it's not. So, go check it out roadmapchallenge.com. But when it comes to licensing, they are so much more focused on the business aspect of things. Do you have your EIN letter? Do you have bank accounts? Do you have the proper insurance in place? They need to see policies and procedures, but the majority of the things that you do and even that is
00:11:06
businessoriented. Are you going to run this business in a way that is going to allow you to care for the residents and stay in compliance? but it's very much business driven, not so much on the clinical side, which is unique in the way that assisted living runs. It's kind of cool. So, what I would encourage you to do is get online, just start researching your regulations and and understanding what those are going to look like for your state and the things that that you're dealing with for your
00:11:33
market because it is individual. I can tell you all the generalities all day long and and that's what I'm here for. And when you're inside of my coaching programs, again, take the 30 secondond quiz at aliquiz.com to see which of my programs is going to be the best fit for you. But when you're in those programs or you join me in the roadmap challenge at roadmapchallenge.com, you can ask me those questions. They're very specific and I can help you out and guide you through those processes. Um, right here
00:11:59
on YouTube, this is where I'm talking to you in generalities, kind of trying to help you out and give you some guidance the best I can when I'm talking to the entire nation, right? And to the entire world. I know there's people in different countries all over the world that are watching these videos and thank you so much. Like it's it's awesome for me to see that, but I don't know and can't give you the specific answer to your question, but I can in my coaching programs and I can help you dive in and
00:12:24
figure out the guidance. I was just talking to somebody in my success system program yesterday la last night actually and we're going through a licensing question and the process that that she needs to go through to look at the different programs so she can get the appropriate license for her and that was us working through that very specifically for her situation. So that's the type of things that I can do to help you out and guide you as you're doing this inside of my coaching program. So love to see you in there
00:12:49
aliquiz.com. Go take the quiz. 30 seconds just do it. Okay. All right. Did you do it? Okay. All right. Business skills. Let's see. Business skills can beat out your medical skills as well is what I want to tell you here. This is another cool thing about assisted living. So, this is why I think assisted living is great. Not only for nurses and the people that are in a clinical setting because I think you have a leg up when you do that. You've been in this setting. You've been a caregiver. You've
00:13:15
been a nurse. You know the rules and regulations. You know there's a ton of documentation that has to go into this. You're very familiar with it. It doesn't scare you at all. Right? And for those of you that are my nurses, thank you so much. You do incredible work. For those of you that are a facility administrator, you work in this industry. You do incredible work and you probably don't hear it enough. So, thank you so so much for all the work that you do. I appreciate it. And so do the
00:13:40
people that you work for. They really do. Even if they don't express it, they are so grateful for you. I promise you they are. Okay. So, if you're one of those people, thank you so much. But if you're a real estate investor, you're somebody that you're an entrepreneur, you found somebody else's videos and then you stumble on this one and you're like, "Oh man, I really want to get into assisted living. I want to do this. I want to figure this out, but I'm not a
00:14:02
nurse. I can't do this. Like, there's just no way." I'm here to tell you, you can. And I think that your business acumen, your ability to run a business and understand the finances and understand operations and and how to implement policies and procedures and standard operating procedures and all of these things. And for my nurses, you're hearing those things and you're like, I have to do all of those things. And yes, you do. You have to run a business. And this is where for the real estate
00:14:28
investors and the entrepreneurs that are watching this, you have an incredible leg up from that standpoint because you have that experience. You understand those things. And I truly believe that assisted living is more of a business than it is a clinical type of a thing. Okay? your business skills, your ability to do those things are going to far outweigh your clinical expertise when it comes to launching an assisted living business. That does not mean that those of you that are clinical people should
00:14:59
be turning off the video and be like, "Well, I can't do it now. You I give up." Please don't do that because you can learn these skills just like you learn how to be a nurse. You can learn these things. You can hire it out. You can partner with somebody. There's so many things you can do to help you out on the business side. So, you're not alone. You're not lost. You can figure this out. You just need to maybe recognize that, hey, this isn't a strong suit for me. Who do I know that could
00:15:23
help out? My brother-in-law, you know, my sister-in-law, my my aunt, uncle, my dad, whoever it is that has that experience. Partner with them. Pay them a little bit of money to help you out as you're building your business plan or doing your underwriting or those types of things. And they're going to help you out in learning how to do a business. But you need to have very solid policies and procedures, standard operating processes and procedures that are going to allow you to be successful. That is
00:15:51
what is going to help you get there. as something I'm actually working on refining a lot of my operational plans and and moving people around in my organization to prepare us so that we can be in a spot that we can easily grow and and expand because the way that we're running right now, we're running a small operation and I want to be at least medium-sized and so I know I need to have more standard operating procedures, more documented processes and more defined roles for how these people are going to help me run this
00:16:23
business profitably as I look to make this and expand this and become a medium to large size of operation and the way that I'm doing my business. So that's a lot of what I'm spending my focus on right now. It's those systems and processes that are going to allow you to be successful. The other thing is having a good financial management system is going to make sure that you are generating money. And I always suggest the book Profit First by Mike Mallo. It's I think it's an incredible book. We will link that
00:16:51
down below for you so that you've got access to that. Um, but that is an incredible book. You could also go check out How to Grow Your Small Business by Donald Miller. He has another financial management system and there I don't care which one you choose. We'll link that one down below as well. But pick one and follow it. That's what's going to allow you to see how the cash is flowing and then you don't use it on just everything on one thing. You you're budgeting things. Having a financial management
00:17:17
system is really going to allow you to be successful, to be profitable, and help you generate money. Uh, which is a big reason why you're in this is to generate money. As as much as you would love to just out of the goodness of your heart care for these people and help them out, it's not really realistic all the time. So, you do have to make money or else you can't do it anymore. And so, you got to take care of yourself while you're taking care of other people. I also want you to learn how to find and
00:17:44
hire the right people. This is absolutely crucial. Your business cannot run if you do not have good staff in place. And if you have constant turnover, and that's a problem in this industry. Uh but if you have that constant turnover, then it makes it really hard for you to make sure that you're meeting the needs of your residents. So, make sure you find and hire the right people. Make sure you're comfortable with them. Make sure they are passing all the background checks, that they are properly certified in
00:18:10
whatever position that you're hiring them in, make sure you're calling their references as well. But when you find and hire the right people and you keep them, oh man, it makes it so much easier. It it makes a world of difference. I promise you it does. And I would encourage you to spend some time and create a vision and get everyone on board. Those can be your partners, could be your staff, but spend some time. And we do this in our roadmap challenge as well. roadmapchallenge.com. We spend
00:18:37
some time and we help you get just like pause and think and build your vision. And when you do that and you can articulate that to the people that you are working with, they can catch that vision. They can get excited and they can help you move forward and reach your goals. And that's what I want for you. Uh so make sure you're spending time doing that. It's going to help you out a ton. It really will. All right. to so to recap this video, we've been talking about do you need to be a nurse to start
00:19:07
assisted living? No, you do not. You do not need to be a nurse. Um, why don't you need to be a nurse? Because the work that we do in assisted living is not clinical. Uh, and then we talked about how states can vary. So, make sure you are looking at this with your state to understand what that's going to look like for you. So, don't just take my word for it here. Um, go and do the research to go back to reading Rainbow years ago when I was a kid. Don't take my word for it. Go go go and do it
00:19:35
yourself. Go do the research. Figure those things out. I can help you out in my programs, aliquiz.com, to figure out which of my programs are going to be best for you. And then we also talked about the business skills that you have or can develop or can hire are going to beat out medical skills because this ultimately at the end of the day is a business. You need to learn how to run a business and treat it like a business and that's what's going to help you be successful. If you like this video, you
00:20:00
found it helpful, make sure you like the video, subscribe, and ring the bell as well so you get notified every time we put out content like this. And I would love to have you inside of one of my programs. I talked about at the start of the video, the Roadmap Challenge. If you go to roadmapchallenge.com, you can learn a little bit more about that program, but it is a live coaching experience. If you get a VIP ticket, you get extra time with me to ask me any questions that you want. You get access
00:20:23
to the recordings for longer than those that are in the general session. You can come in here and we teach you how to uh, you know, pause, build your vision. We teach you how to do underwriting. We're going to work through just the different funding strategies that are available to you, how the licensing process works, um, the different paths that you have to get into assisted living. We're going to build you this road map and it's going to be specific to you cuz it's interactive. It's a live coaching
00:20:47
experience. I'm giving you homework. I'm we have a workbook. We're working through things and you are writing things down for you so that you know where you should be going into the future. It's it's so much fun. I love doing it. I would love to have you in our next challenge. Go to roadmapchallenge.com to learn more. I would I would absolutely love to do that. And if you're trying to figure out which of my coaching programs is a good fit for you. Go take my quiz. We have a
00:21:10
QR code down here in the bottom corner. Aliquiz.com. Uh 30 seconds will teach you which of those. And one of those options is the roadmap challenge. So, if you're like, I don't know if roadmap challenge is the right for me or not, go take the quiz and it'll tell you if it's the right fit for you. So, aliquiz.com. Are you curious about assisted living, but you're not sure how to get started? At assisted living investing, I'm here to help first-time assisted living entrepreneurs launch profitable,
00:21:33
purpose-driven businesses, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives. I love coaching. It is like my favorite thing to do. I would love to have you in one of my programs. Go take the quiz, aliquiz.com. 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 are going to be successful. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
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