From Novice to Pro: My Journey into Assisted Living Investing
Dec 18, 2024
I want to share my story of how I got into the assisted living business. I’ve faced challenges, learned a ton, and had some amazing moments along the way. Now, I’m excited to share some helpful tips with you! Whether you're just starting out or want to grow your assisted living facility, I hope my journey will inspire you.
Check out the video, too:
From Healthcare Professional to Entrepreneur
I started working in healthcare back in 2013. I even got two master’s degrees in Business and Healthcare Administration. My career was rewarding, but by 2020, I felt ready for something different. I wanted to make a bigger impact, so I thought, “Why not combine my healthcare experience with a new challenge, real estate?” That’s when I discovered assisted living!
The Turning Point: Real Estate Meets Assisted Living
At first, I thought real estate investing would be my ticket to success. My plan was to flip houses and eventually buy an assisted living facility. Then, a mentor asked me, “Why not start with assisted living if that’s your goal?” That question changed my entire approach.
I decided to dive right in! I started learning about rules, talking to health departments, and trying to turn houses into facilities. But Utah, where I lived, had strict regulations that made it tough to convert homes.
Lessons from My First Deals
I began looking for assisted living facilities already up and running. My search led me to LoopNet, a website that lists businesses for sale. It was my first time talking to brokers, and I felt a bit out of my league, but I kept going. I checked the numbers and signed my first non-disclosure agreement (NDA). The Utah property I looked at didn’t look profitable, but I still learned a lot from analyzing the deal.
Then, in May 2020, I found a great opportunity in Colorado Springs. Even though COVID-19 was happening, I decided to take a chance. By September 2020, I had bought my first facility! A few months later, I bought another one in Idaho in February 2021.
Overcoming Challenges and Building Success
Running facilities in different states was tricky. Each place had different rules and challenges, but each experience taught me something new about managing and growing my business. Now, I own two successful facilities, and I’m proof that hard work pays off!
I believe assisted living is a fantastic way to invest. It's not just about making money—it's about making a home where residents feel happy and well-cared for.
How You Can Start Your Assisted Living Journey
Thinking about getting into assisted living? Here’s my best advice:
Start Small but Start Now
Don’t wait for the perfect time. Begin by researching, talking to brokers, and learning the rules in your area. You don’t need to know everything right away—just get started!
Use Helpful Resources
Download your FREE Business Plan Checklist to help you create your business plan to make the process easier.
Stay Consistent
Success doesn’t happen overnight. It’s all about taking small, steady steps. Keep learning and don’t give up, even when things get hard. Little by little, you’ll make progress.
Closing Thoughts
Assisted living is a special business. It’s a way to make a positive impact on seniors' lives and gain financial freedom. As the demand for quality care grows, there’s a real chance to make a difference.
I’m here to support you on this journey. Let’s keep learning and working together. With hard work and the right mindset, you can achieve your goals and make a positive difference in your community.
If you need help building a solid business plan, make sure you download your Business Plan Checklist.
Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00
hey everybody it's Brandon Gustafson with Assisted Living investing it has been a while since I recorded any videos for you here on the channel and I'm excited to be back I had a few things come up in my personal life that caused me to to take a delay but I'm back and ready to start working with you let's get into it on Assisted Living investing [Music] thank you hey everybody welcome back to Assisted Living investing I'm super excited to be here with you again today it has been a
00:00:41
long time since we chatted here on the channel for those of you that have found me since uh since I stopped recording uh most of a year ago uh welcome excited to have you I'm hoping I can get some videos out to you on a regular basis hopefully again on a monthly basis or on a weekly basis and be able to continue working with you and kind of getting you through the process if you haven't already go to the website assisted livinginvesting.net we're putting some exciting stuff on there I can't wait to
00:01:10
see you over on the website and what we're trying to build there it's it's exciting so make sure you hop over there and check that out as well uh today I just wanted to kind of reintroduce myself and my story and who I am and what I'm doing just in case uh you haven't seen it or it's been a while since we uh you know since we had this conversation uh so my name is Brandon Gustafson I live in Utah and I work on uh I I have a full-time job in healthcare I've worked in healthcare
00:01:38
since I think it was 2013 is when I started working in healthcare so close to 10 years now as of the recording of this uh actually a little over 10 years um based off of when I started so it's kind of exciting to have that much experience I have a dual master's degree from the University of Utah uh Masters in Business Administration and a master's in healthcare administration and have worked for a lot of different companies in the healthcare industry as I got into into that and working through
00:02:06
that process of working in in healthcare I found that I was just falling in love with the impact that I can have on the lives of people that are around me and it's a lot of fun to be able to have that that impact and work with people and help them and just have a positive impact on their lives as I got deeper into my career though what I found is I wanted something where I was getting the entrepreneurial itch and needed something more so in 2020 just as covid was kind of starting and everything was
00:02:36
shutting down and I started having to work from home a little bit I had been getting into real estate for about a year and had been doing research and probably a little bit of analysis paralysis as I went through that process and decided that I wanted to move forward with this and I had this idea in my mind that I was going to do some fix and flips and I was going to generate enough income for me to be able to to get in there and and generate some income so I could get enough money so I could buy my own assisted living
00:03:06
facility and then start doing Assisted Living I talked to a mentor of mine at the time and he was like why don't you just do Assisted Living it's what you want to do and I thought to myself I don't know why not and so I jumped into it and I started the process of of going through uh figuring out what it takes to get into assisted living I started reaching out to different municipalities and started having conversations with just the different people the the health department and figuring out what it
00:03:37
would take if I wanted to convert a home and went out and started looking at houses I found that for me here in Utah it just wasn't going to make sense there's a lot of regulations and they have kind of clamped down on what you can do on a conversion in a home so I shifted over to starting to look for for deals I remember the I started looking on loopnet and I found an opportunity that was local to me here in Utah and I thought to myself I want to I want to have a conversation with that person I
00:04:08
had no idea how to do it and so I was on loopnet I had a broker on there I called them I was sitting in the parking lot of chiropractor I was early for a visit and I was just like I'm gonna give this this guy a call and figure it out and I fumbled my way through that conversation and I'm sure that broker was like who the heck is this guy what is he doing but I got to the point uh where uh we were doing an NDA and I talked to my attorney I was like I got this NDA can I sign it or is it like am I signing my
00:04:38
life away I was so scared I didn't know what an NDA was uh non-disclosure agreement and uh he's like oh no it's fine this is pretty standard I'll go ahead and sign him so I did that got the got the information on the facility their financials and everything beautiful home we went in and looked at it we couldn't go in person because of covered restrictions but we went and looked at the house and uh we were like just oh man this is beautiful um but as I looked at the numbers found
00:05:04
that it just was not going to be profitable for us in the way that we wanted it to be and so we moved on through a real estate group that I was a part of I met somebody that had purchased a facility in Colorado and the people that they had purchased from actually had another facility and so he introduced me to their broker and we started having a conversation with that broker and on this other facility that was in Colorado Springs and we went and saw the facility in May of 2020 and again code restrictions all over the
00:05:38
place especially in Colorado and we liked the facility and we decided to to move forward with it and we ended up closing on that facility in September of 2020 as I was ramping down on that one kind of getting to the point where you're starting to close and things are uh there's a quiet period um and so I was again bored and so I decided I'm gonna go find another facility so I got a loop net I was much more seasoned at it by this point and reaching out to people and working with Brokers and
00:06:09
things like that so I went a lot more quickly we closed on the one in Colorado in September we went under contract on one in Idaho in October and did that now I'll do a video on this but would I operate and do facilities in multiple States again I'll do a video on that so make sure you keep an eye out for that video short answer probably not um but we'll get into why I did it and and the reasons for it um anyways the one in Idaho we closed on in February of 2021 as of the recording of this video which is May of 2023 we
00:06:45
have those two facilities still we've had them for over two years for each of them and they are doing great they're doing they're doing awesome we've had struggles you can see that some of those struggles on the channel we had another one recently and I'll talk about that here in another video but things are things are going well and I still very firmly believe in assisted living as an asset class and that you can be successful with it and you can get into it and and have some success in what
00:07:13
you're doing with the Assisted Living asset class and I'm here to help you out on your journey if you're interested in it make sure you watch all the content on the video I'm putting a lot of content out there that is helpful in the step-by-step process of getting into I try to be real with you on what you can and can't do and what to expect and how to have conversations and just kind of coach you through that process so and I'd love love to chat with you make sure you visit me on assisted
00:07:39
livinginvesting.net I've got awesome resources over there on the site we're building it out a lot we're going to be putting a coaching course together there actually so that you can get more information on how to build out and actually get your own facility um in 12 weeks so we're going to put that out there make sure you're checking out the website and can't wait to see you over there and remember it does not take a lot just a little bit just keep making progress step by step by step if
00:08:04
you are consistent I promise you you're going to be successful thanks for watching and have a great day thank you
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