From Remodel to License: How One Student Finally Submitted Her Assisted Living License

Transcript

00:00:03
All right. Hey friend, it's Brandon Gustafson with Assisted Living Investing. Super excited to have you here today. Today I'm going to be talking about a story from one of my students who has been making some incredible progress on their assisted living journey. So, really excited to get into this one for you for those of you who um are trying to like thinking, "Hey, assisted living seems like a cool idea. I think I'd like to get into it, but uh you know, all I see is YouTubers, uh telling me about

00:00:29
this stuff. I've got a real uh scenario here that I wanted to play out for you, uh and share with you so you can see that people like you can do this as well. And I hope this is inspiring for you and helping you see that you can make this progress. And I'm going to kind of walk you through exactly how that happens. So, um yeah, make sure you stick around. My name is Brandon Gustoson. I help first-time assisted living entrepreneurs launch profitable, purpose-driven businesses, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their

00:00:55
lives. I love doing this. It's one of my favorite things to do. Um, as of the recording of this, we have our roadmap challenge coming up next week. That is a way for you to get in and chat with me and and get some and get some experience working with me in launching your assisted living business. So, I would love to have you there. Go check it out at roadmapchallenge.com. It is a live coaching experience. Uh it it's it's just a ton of fun. I would love to have you there with me. Uh answer your questions, help you make

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some progress. Uh it's not like some big sales webinar or anything like that. It is coaching and I am helping you build your personal roadmap to help you launch your assisted living business. So go join us roadmapchallenge.com. Um also want to remind you to go and get the book, the profitable assisted living facility at the book.com. We'll have that linked below for you over um on on the YouTube description. So, uh go ahead and and make sure you're watching that uh and and getting access to that one

00:01:52
there. Um and let's see. Um it's also this is really cool for me. Uh it's become a bestseller on Amazon in a couple of categories, which is really cool in real estate investment um books and also for like long-term care and nursing home type planning books as well. So, go check it out. the assistant the um a thealibook.com that's the website. Go check there and you can get access to it. All right, let's hop into the the topic today. Again, I want to talk to you a little bit about one of my students. Um she had

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a recent breakthrough and it's really cool. So, I want to share that with you uh and demonstrate to you that hard work and perseverance really does pay off. Uh because this is something that she's been working towards for quite a while. And sometimes it can go fast and sometimes it takes a while and that's okay. But the more you are persistent in doing the these things, you're going to be successful. That's why I tell you at the end of every single video. When you are consistent and persistent, you will

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be successful. And this is just a demonstration of that. Uh cuz she's run into a bunch of roadblocks and she's making some incredible progress and I'm super excited for her. uh we'll share a little bit about her funding process as well because I know that's something that a lot of you are just like funding I don't know funding's hard I don't know if I can do it uh I promise you you can uh we're going to talk a little bit about her journey and getting the getting you know funding for her

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assisted living business and um I want to talk to you about submitting the license application because I know this is another thing that for a lot of you is uh kind of hard difficult and something that is uh a struggle for a lot of people. So, with that, I just need to make sure I've been having some issues here lately. Okay, I am live on on all the things. Okay, we're good. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't uh talking into a void here cuz sometimes I can see people and sometimes

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I can't. It looks like on my phone I am live. So, let's keep going. Uh, all right. So, my student I'm not I'm not going to share much of of her details just because I want to keep her private. Um, but this was between the Christmas and New Year break here and uh she reached out to me and I hadn't talked to her for quite a while, but she reached out and shared some really exciting news that she had had a breakthrough. She finally got the fire department to give her approval, which was the last thing

00:04:14
she was waiting on so she could submit her application over to um over to uh for her for her facility license. And that is that's something that's like super cool uh to to get through. I I remember uh when I've had some of those those roadblocks as I'm going through this uh that it can be just super nerve-wracking when you're waiting on other people and they're taking forever and and you're it's out of your control. And that's the very situation that she was in. She was just waiting for this

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thing to happen and I'm sure there was uh an initial uh inspection that came through and there was a list of things she had to do to to improve the house because she renovated a house and has gotten this one ready and it's in in California. um and uh it took quite a while to to get it there, but she was able to get that through and that was the last thing and now she's submitting her license application. So, she's gotten all of the other things done and she's submitting that application and

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that's something that for her is is going to be super exciting uh to get through. So, a little bit of background on her. She this has been I want to say probably close to an 18-month process for her. So, it can take a while. I did I did two facilities in 5 months. So, you can go quickly. Um, it can go a lot faster than this, but um, she had a lot of hoops to jump through. Um, she actually lives in Arizona and is doing this in California, kind of like on the border area, um, in a in a small town

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she's very familiar with. And, um, that has been something that figuring out the funding for her was a really difficult process uh, for us to figure out. Um, I'll I'll share that story here. Um, yeah, I'll go ahead and share her story a little bit. We were trying to figure out how to get funding. And we worked on what I teach. You know, you got to build your foundation. You have to you have to do your market research, make sure you're comfortable with it. You have to build this solid business plan and you

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need to do your underwriting so that you can get funding. So, we were working on that for quite a while. And we honed this thing in, and it was about as perfect as you could uh imagine for a business plan to be. And she was able to get funding. But she went a very different route. um she did a a local um like a small local business development loan that was specific to her city. Okay. So, this wasn't an SBA loan. It wasn't even like a conventional mortgage. It wasn't private money. It

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was it wasn't a grant. It's more similar to a grant than anything else, but it was a loan with a business development in her local city. And I have actually had success in helping other people find these types of loans. They don't they're not always open. uh they can take some time to find, but they're actually really good loans um that that you can get uh that that you can look for and they're just with the business development uh area in your state or your county or your city. Kind of

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depends on the municipality, but you can find these um in in multiple areas. So, we did that and then she had and it was like the the funding was approved contingent to her finding a house. So, she had to find a house and uh she had a few areas in mind and she was kind of uh pigeon holes is maybe too strong of a word, but the funding for from this business development grant or loan was in that specific city. So, she had to do find a home in that city. So, she had to go through a process of finding that.

00:07:25
Once she found it, she had to do renovations on the home to get it ready to go. Um and and that took a a good chunk of time. And when you're going through the process of getting a home and renovating it, one of the big things there there's two big things you have to do here. Okay. Uh so my focus framework foundation first, optimal property selection is second. And when you're in that optimal property selection area, what you have to do is check your zoning. You got to make sure it's zoned

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properly. You have, you know, all the all the appropriate, you know, just eyes dotted, tees crossed, all of those things are are in the right spot, permits, whatever. Excuse me. permits or whatever you need, you're going to have have those things in place and you're going to need to have the fire department come out and check the home. They're going to check it and make sure that it's good. They'll give you what is called a certificate of occupancy. So, like if you've ever gone into a fast

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food restaurant and you see, you know, right by their exit door it says maximum occupancy 95 people or whatever it says, that is a fire department saying this is how many people can be in this facility before a fire would make it impossible for everybody to get out in time. Okay? You have to do something very similar to that for your assisted living business. Um, and they will give you uh uh what I call as as a person that invests in this a punch list of things that I need to do, renovations I need to to get done so

00:08:48
that I can obtain that certificate of occupancy. Okay? So, they're going to give you that and then you got to work through it and you got to have them come back and and you go through this little cycle of getting things done to the point that you now have your um you now have the certificate of occupancy and you submit that with your license. So, it's a part of your licensing process. Okay, that's what she was working through. But once you do that, and while that's going on, you should be working

00:09:13
on the rest of your license application. You should be filling out the forms. You should be working on your policies and procedures, which takes a significant amount of time. You should be doing all of these things so that you can get it all done at the same time and then you can just submit it. Okay, so that's that's what she was working through. She was able to submit that and she followed like what I just showed you there is my focus framework, right? foundation first optimal property selection. She got the

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capital and funding. Um she kind of did these a little bit out of order and that's okay. And then she did the understanding rules and regulations. She's submitted that. Now she's just waiting. And this is the part that depending on your state. This can take, you know, it could a couple weeks or could take six months. It just kind of depends on the state. I always um suggest that you actually submit your application early on in the process. At the very least, you get inside of a queue. Um, and then you can add more to

00:10:04
your application as you go through it. But you don't generally go back to the start of the queue if they've reviewed it and you don't have everything. You get put it like in this side queue. Um, so once you get the stuff in, then that you're at the front of the line already. So you want to do this early on in the process and doing that. Once you get that, the last part of my focus framework is a strategic launch. So this is where you are hiring the right people. You've got good payroll systems.

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You've got uh you know meal planning software. You've got EHRs. You've got all of these things. And then you're you're running the business, which is stressful in and of itself. Um it's like a whole another thing, but it's really hard to get started. And she has gotten to that point where she's submitted it and now she's just waiting. And once it's approved, then boom, doors are open. She can start bringing in residents. And that is that's really it's it's super exciting when I see my

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students get to that point. I've had a few of them get there and it's it's so rewarding to hear their stories about just the uh this will sound really bad about the headaches that you have to deal with when you own the business, right? Um to move from I need to figure out how to get this. I need to figure out the funding. I need to figure out the licensing. I got to figure out all of these things. and all of those sudden you have the business and your questions and your conversations start shifting

00:11:19
significantly. And for me as a coach that is it's super fun to see people make that shift and move into this new phase of different types of questions and where they need to get to. So that's my goal with everybody that I coach is to help you go from, okay, my my questions are about funding. How do I find a lender? How do I get them to tell me yes? How do I how do I navigate this part of the licensing process? and and turning your questions over to, okay, how do I do this job posting and and how

00:11:46
do I do an interview here and uh how do I set up this EHR system? Um, where do you go to buy food and how do you run payroll and uh you know, tax questions and all of those types of things. Those are those are super fun to get into and I love when people shift from one area to the next. It's it's super fun to see that happening. All right. So, what I want to tell you here as well, I talked about this the funding the funding process. I shared her story. Um, the way that we got to that point with

00:12:18
uh with doing with finding that loan specifically for her, we started out with doing her foundation, right? So, I'm going to I'm just backtracking a little bit here. Um, we started off with doing market research, making sure we could find that that the city that she wanted to do this in was going to work well for assisted living. We did the market research. We made sure that worked. We built the business plan and then we looked for these funding options. And we were we were scouring everything that we could find and

00:12:45
ultimately found this one, this government program loan. And I teach inside of my roadmap challenge what I call the cash compass. And there it's it's basically there's there's kind of four big large groups that are available to you to help you get the funding. And it's it's really easy, especially in the beginning where you're just like, I don't go I don't know how to get funding. I I've heard people talk about SBA loans and you know grants seem like an exciting opportunity because you know

00:13:11
I don't have to pay them back and those types of things. Um when in reality there there's so many options out there and that's what I teach inside of the cash compass when when you join the roadmap challenge and you can kind of combine them and make them fit together. And so I' I'd love to teach that to you because it's something that a lot of my students, they learn these things and they're like, "Oh my gosh, like it is so eye opening to uh to to realize there are a lot of ways for me to get the

00:13:36
funding that I need for my assisted living business." And and you can uh so that's what I teach in there. And then you I talked about this also. I'm kind of I'm like looking at my scripting my my little thing that I set up for myself. I talked about all a lot of this stuff already, [laughter] but I just wanted to touch again really quick here on the home renovations for her. Um, it was something that that part can be really stressful. When I was getting started, my Idaho facility, this was my

00:14:03
second facility. Um, we were going through the process and we had talked to zoning and uh that that went well and then we talked to the fire department and the fire department came in and they said, "You actually need to have an extra bathroom here or you need to at least change one of the bathrooms so that it um has a uh a public facing area. It has to be pointing to the common room um the common area of the facility." And we're like crap, how do we do that then? And so it turned into

00:14:34
even an existing facility. We had to make this slight adjustment. Now I like existing facilities because you get grandfathered into a lot of old rules, but there are certain things that you just don't get grandfathered into because it is totally updated code. This was one of them for us in Idaho where we needed this this bathroom that was more public facing. So we had to work through and get this renovation done. We had to do that before we could get the license, before we could get the funding. And all

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of these things kind of had to come together. And when you're going through that process and and you have to wait, it can be very stressful to get there. Um, so I've experienced it. I've had students obviously this this person uh not sure what I did there with my little string. Um, they've experienced it. And so like this is something that you may have to run into and you may have to deal with and and figure out how to to get around. But it also is something that I know you can um navigate and you

00:15:30
can figure out how to get through it. Okay. So, those renovations are are going to be big that could be a potential roadblock. I'm working with a couple people inside of my programs right now. That's that's something we're focusing on is their uh is their construction stuff that they're going through and that can be hard, but um it's definitely worth it because you can get beyond that and you can launch your own assisted living business and get where you want to be. All right.

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And then we talked about the licensing application here as well. So, I'm going to reiterate this. I said this a couple times already, but when you are working through all of this, the renovations on the home, um you should be working through the rest of your license application. Uh you should be trying to get these things done. You you should be submitting this early on in the process, especially in states where it's going to take you a little bit longer. And so in my um market research

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guide, which is a part of my launch accelerator program, you can learn more about that at assisted livinginvesting.net/launch, um I have my market research guide in there. And inside of that market research guide, I give you a guide uh there, I did the research for you to tell you about how long it's going to take you to obtain the license in your area, the uh administrator requirements, some of the other licensing requirements, those types of things. I've got all of that in a nice little

00:16:47
package for you for for each state. Uh can really help you narrow down and and understand a little bit of the scope of what you're looking at. Um so go check it out. Assisted livinginvesting.net/launch if you're interested in in getting access to that plus working with me for a full year. Um and a bunch of other things. [laughter] Uh, but you should be figuring all of that out and submitting your license application early, especially in those states that's going to take you a lot longer to get your facility license. And

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you should be working on your policies and procedures. You should be doing that early on in the process because that's what's going to um that that's the thing that's going to take you the longest, honestly. Um, you can pay somebody to do it for you. And if you're willing to pay between $1,000 and $2,500ish, you can pay somebody to do it for you. So, you just got to decide, hey, do I have the funds and do I want to pay somebody to do this for me or or not? Inside of my uh launch accelerator

00:17:42
program, actually, I give you access to my existing policies and procedures and you can use those and then kind of customize them to to to you. Um, so that's a really helpful thing there as well. But you should be doing all of that. And a lot of the licensing process, honestly, starts with finding the correct licensing agency. This is where a lot of people are like, I can't I don't understand the licensing process. I can't figure that out. A lot of it just stems back to finding the

00:18:09
correct agency. And once you find that agency, the application is is itself is pretty simple. Uh there's just these extra hoops you got to jump through. Uh big ones being renovations, getting the home ready so you can get that certificate of occupancy, and then the policies and procedures and getting those things done. So once you have those things done, it it works so much better. All right. And I I see that with a lot of my students, including this one that I'm telling you the story about

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today, uh, and her success is she was able to work through that and she did things in the right way. uh she had I'm not sure when she submitted the initial application uh or what the process was there, but I do know that she was working on policies and procedures while she was waiting on the renovations uh to get done at the house so that she could submit all of these things all at once um at least in a final submission and make sure everything was there because of the way that she uh was talking to me

00:19:02
about her experience with the fire department. Okay, she's following the framework. You you need a framework when you're going through this. it it will make your life so much easier because there's so many of you that you're just like I don't know how to get started. If that's you, just like type in start down in the comments below because that is something that uh like so many of you are just struggling with trying to figure out how do I how do I even get started on this path? Where where do I

00:19:28
even go? And and that's confusing. And so you need you need a framework that can help you get there. Um it will make your life that much easier. And so that's it's what I teach, the focus framework. foundation first, optimal property selection, capital and funding, understanding rules and regulations, and a strategic launch. As you can see, I've talked about it through this example here. Today, my student um she has followed that framework. She's now submitted it. She's waiting, and once

00:19:52
she gets there, she will have done the FOCU part of the focus framework and then she shifts over to the S part, the strategic launch. And that is going to be just like this whole new world of of trying to launch a successful assisted living business and make it profitable. And that's that's something that is super exciting and I would love for you to also get there. But I also get it. Sometimes you're just like, I don't [snorts] even know how to do that. And so that's what my roadmap challenge is

00:20:19
all about. I would love to have you in there. The road map challenge, it's a a live challenge. It's as of the recording of this, it's actually a week from today is when we're going to do the challenge. And it's a it's a long it's a we're doing a one-day event this time. It's going to be long. Uh about four or five hours. uh we're going to be sitting there and I'm going to be teaching you and uh this is not just a come watch me, you know, turn it on and off kind of a

00:20:41
thing. It is there's homework, there's a workbook. We're working through stuff. I'm helping you build an actual road map to help you launch your assisted living business to know exactly where to start and have this base fun foundational uh my goodness, I can't speak foundational um awareness in your mind on how to build your your road map so you can be successful as you're launching your assisted living business. So, go check it out. roadmapchallenge.com. I would love to

00:21:05
have you in there for that 1-day event. It's live coaching. It is me working with you to help you build your roadmap, to answer your questions, and help you get unstuck so you can make real progress um as as you're trying to get started here and and make sure that assisted living is right for you as well. This is a great way for you to actually get in and ask questions and understand the numbers and understand some of the ins and outs to make sure this is actually something that's going

00:21:28
to be a good fit for you. So, I'd love to have you there. I'll say it one more time. Roadmapchallenge.com. Go check it out. Also, go check out the alibook.com where you can get the profitable assisted living facility. Um, it's the book took my entire brain, put it into words, gave it to you. It's like 500 plus pages. Uh, it goes through everything. I'm actually like lowkey uh I am recording the audio book right now. So, uh, audiobook will come out here in the next, you know, few weeks, couple

00:21:57
months. Um, so keep an eye out for that. But as I'm reading through it, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, there's so many like cool things in here that I forgot." [laughter] And so, it's really helpful for me to to just like read those things and I like it is it's so helpful for you as you are trying to launch your assisted living business. Go check that book out as well. Thebook.com. And if when you're over there, grab the workbook as well. Um, it's a companion workbook. Gives you all the things that

00:22:24
you can be you should be doing to help you be successful. So, go grab those things. They're on Amazon or go to the ALI the alibook.com and you can get access to the links there as well. So would love to have you get access to that. With that, I just want to thank you for being here. We've got a few people that are live. I was questioning whether I was actually on uh live here at the beginning, but I I've got a few people on here. So, thank you all for being here. I appreciate it. Uh it's fun

00:22:49
to to be on here with with people when I'm not talking to myself. That's always great for me uh to see how how you're doing and and make sure you're making progress. If you like the video, thumbs up, give me a like. Um make sure you share the video uh and ring the bell as well if you're on YouTube so you get notified every time we put out content like this. We go live on Tuesdays, we put out content on Thursdays. I'm here helping you launch your assisted living business. Are you curious about assisted

00:23:14
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, purpose-driven businesses, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives. I would love to do that for you. Go check out the roadmap challenge at roadmapchallenge.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

00:23:38
successful. Thanks for watching, and have a great day.