Get Residents Fast: Essential Marketing for Assisted Living Facilities
Oct 03, 2025
Starting an assisted living business is exciting, but filling your facility with residents can feel overwhelming. Where do you start? What strategies actually work?
Good news—you don’t have to figure it out alone! This guide breaks down practical marketing strategies to help you fill your facility fast and get your assisted living business thriving. π
Let’s dive in!
Check out this video, too:
Why Marketing Matters for Assisted Living
You can have a beautiful facility and a great team, but if people don’t know you exist, beds will stay empty. Marketing in assisted living is all about building relationships, trust, and authority in your local community.
Every successful assisted living business has a strong marketing foundation. It’s how you attract residents, grow your reputation, and ensure your business is profitable.
1οΈβ£ Build a Strong Referral Network
One of the fastest ways to get residents is through referrals.
Key referral partners to connect with:
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Hospital discharge nurses
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Rehab centers and case managers
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Other assisted living facilities
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Nursing homes
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Home health agencies and hospice providers
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Independent living communities
Here’s how to build strong partnerships:
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Visit in person consistently - Don’t just hand out a business card once.
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Offer small gifts - Donuts, flowers, or a simple token keep you memorable.
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Serve first - Help them with resources or connections before asking for anything in return.
Start networking even before you open your doors—it sets you up for success from day one.
2οΈβ£ Dominate Local Google Search
Google is where most people start when looking for assisted living. Ranking high in search results makes a huge difference.
Here’s how to optimize your online presence:
Set up your Google Business Profile
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Free and easy to do
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Include accurate business info, photos, and hours
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Validate your address via postcard
Collect Google Reviews
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Ask residents, family, or staff for reviews
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More positive reviews = higher ranking
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People trust high-rated businesses
Post Regular Updates
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Weekly or bi-weekly posts on your profile
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Share holiday events, team highlights, or facility updates
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Shows Google you’re active and engaged
Use Keywords on Your Website
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“Assisted living in [city]” or “Best assisted living near me”
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Include awards, photos, and descriptive text for better searchability
Consider Google Ads
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Affordable way to appear at the top of search results
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Target specific locations with geo-fencing
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Adjust your budget based on performance
3οΈβ£ Use Lead Magnets to Capture Interest
Driving traffic to your website is only the first step—you need to capture visitor information. Lead magnets are free resources that attract potential residents and families.
Examples:
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Guides or checklists about assisted living
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Facility walkthrough videos
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Free tools to help families evaluate their options
Once you have emails, you can:
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Send email campaigns
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Invite people to open houses
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Convert leads into residents
4οΈβ£ Gather Testimonials and Success Stories
People trust social proof. Testimonials and before/after stories show potential residents that your facility delivers real results.
Tips for testimonials:
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Ask happy families for reviews on your Google Business Profile
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Offer a small incentive like a $25 gift card
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Record short video testimonials if possible
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Share before-and-after photos of your facility renovations or décor updates
Highlight your team as well:
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Share bios, background, and what they love about their work
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Make your staff relatable and trustworthy
5οΈβ£ Be Consistent and Patient
Marketing success doesn’t happen overnight. It’s about consistent effort and building relationships over time.
Start broad:
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Build your referral network
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Optimize Google search presence
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Capture leads with lead magnets
Then focus smaller:
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Engage interested leads
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Invite them to visit
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Convert them into residents
Once your system is in place, you’ll see steady growth, and you might even be ready for your second or third facility!
Next Steps: Take Action Today!
π Want to fill your assisted living facility faster?
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Step 1: Download the FREE Business Plan Checklist to set your foundation.
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Step 2: Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Consistency and small, strategic steps will pay off. Start building your network, optimizing your online presence, and capturing leads today!
Show full transcript π
Transcript
00:00:00 - 00:00:42
Hey friend, I'm Brandon Gustafson and I help beginners like you launch their assisted living business in the next 12 months. Today's video we're going to be talking about marketing strategies to help you fill your facility fast. If you're interested in that, make sure you stick around for today's video. Hey friend, welcome back to Assisted Living Investing. Excited to have you here on the channel. Before we get into our topic for today, I want to remind you to get over to assisted
00:00:25 - 00:01:13
livinginvesting.net. We have our free underwriting calculator for you. It's the big blue box in the top right corner. Go grab that free resource. It's going to help you decide if this is going to be profitable for you or not. Now, let's get into the topic for today's video. I've got some incredible marketing strategies that are kind of local to you that are going to help you fill your facility fast as you're trying to launch your assisted living business and get residents in the bed so you can
00:00:49 - 00:01:42
be successful and be profitable with your assisted living business. All right, the first tip that I have for you is to build out a strong referral network. It's really important for you to be building these relationships with people and having that go both ways. Referrals are basically people say, "Hey, I know you. I know what your needs are. Here's a person that is a good fit for you." And on the same side, you can do that for other facilities near you. Some of the people that you want to be
00:01:16 - 00:02:03
interacting with as you are building out that referral network are going to be like the hospital discharge nurses. Uh you want to be talking to rehab centers, case managers. You want to be talking with other assisted living facilities. I was actually talking to another former owner recently and they were saying that one of their best referral sources was actually another assisted living facility. They were memory care. This other one was kind of more standard traditional assisted living. And they
00:01:39 - 00:02:24
had built this relationship where they were going and passing residents back and forth on a pretty consistent basis. And he said it probably made him a million dollars over the few years that they had that relationship with them. So other facilities can be a little bit tricky. Not everybody wants to do it, but can really benefit you quite a bit if you can build those relationships. Nursing homes is another one. Nursing homes, it's a higher level of care, so you can bring people that may not need
00:02:02 - 00:02:50
that anymore. They can't afford nursing care anymore. They don't need it. They can come down to assisted living. Home health agencies and hospice providers is another great resource for you because they are in these houses. They are out talking to a lot of people that need that help and networking with them can really benefit that. And you can also bring them in. they can still do a little bit of work and maintain that relationship with your residents inside of your facility. And independent living
00:02:26 - 00:03:16
communities as well. These are people that may not need assisted living and now they're going to step up and they're going to need it. It's another great opportunity for you to be building that type of a partnership out. The way that you're going to build that partnership is really crucial. You have to visit them in person and you have to do it kind of consistently. You want to maybe bring them some small gifts. Nothing big or extravagant. You know, donuts, flowers, something that may last a
00:02:51 - 00:03:39
while. You don't need to do that every week, but bringing little tiny things just so that they're like, "Oh, yeah, that's the people that brought us donuts and they like they just have good feelings about you is is really beneficial." Checking in with them regularly. Don't just, you know, build a a pamphlet or do your business card and go hand it out to all of the people and see them one time. Like, people aren't going to remember you. Like I I totally promise you they will not remember who
00:03:14 - 00:04:07
you are because everybody else does that and they might put it on their little push pin boards as a resource and then somebody comes the next day and there's no room and so you get yours, you know, get something put over your business card. I've been a business owner that has had people come and give me that stuff before and we had a board specifically for it and I had so many that it was like, you know, I can't remember who that person like they do that thing. I can't remember or you know
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I put this person gave me a huge piece of paper and it takes up the whole board and now it's covering other people's business cards. You can't rely on that. You really need to be building out relationships and being consistent with it if you want to be successful with this. I also encourage you to offer value. See what they need and serve them first because the more that you're able to serve them and that could be maybe it's referrals, maybe they need help building a relationship with somebody
00:04:05 - 00:04:59
else and you can facilitate that relationship. figure out what they need, what their biggest needs are, and help them, serve them. When you do that, it's going to make them be like, "Oh man, I remember when this person helped me out. You know, I remember when Brandon introduced me to that physical therapist that my resident really needed." And it was an incredible experience. And that will just like put you up so much higher in their mind. And when you when they have a person that fits what you need,
00:04:32 - 00:05:21
you're going to be the first person that they think of when they're trying to place that person. So building out a local referral network is it is one of the most important things that you can do and it's something you can do now. You don't have to have a facility to do that. You can go start doing that networking with those individuals. Start talking about it, seeing what they need, adding service, adding value to their business, and it's going to all of a sudden once you open your doors make it
00:04:56 - 00:05:54
be a lot more successful for you. None of these things by the way in this video are going to be like quick fixes. They can help you fill your facility fast, but it is a little bit of a buildup to get there. Uh, and so I just want to be transparent with you. There is no magic pill. Even working with placement agencies can take some time. Now, the next thing that I want you to be focused on is dominating local Google search for your business. I try to stay away from using the Gword talking about Google
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because I know not all of you use it and you know there's you people have feelings about Google sometimes but Google is kind of the end all beall when it comes to search and for business profiles and so there's a few things that you want to do as you're trying to launch your assisted living business and honing in on what Google can do for you is really going to help you out quite a bit. Some of the things that I want you to be aware of as you're trying to rank high on those Google searches are just a
00:05:50 - 00:06:35
few strategies that you can implement. You can set up your business profile. Setting up a business profile is free. Takes you a little bit of time. You are going to have to put the information in. They're going to send you a postcard. You're going to have to validate the address. That's the longest thing you have to do, but it's free. Super easy to do. Setting up a business profile on Google uh for your business is going to help you out immensely as people search for, you know, assisted living near me
00:06:12 - 00:07:02
or something along those lines. Next is going to be getting Google reviews. So asking residents, maybe asking family members of the residents or your friends and family or staff members to go in and write reviews. The more reviews that you have, the higher up you're going to rank. I mean, I want you to think about yourself when you're looking at restaurants near me and you're like, I want burgers. So you narrow it down to that and you're new in this town. Are you going to go to McDonald's that has
00:06:37 - 00:07:28
three stars? Are you going to go try the little dive bar there that has 4.7 stars? you're probably going to go try that out, right? Um, but if that dive bar has like a 2.3 star rating, you might not want to take the risk and just be like, you know what? Let's just go to McDonald's. I I know what I'm going to get there. So, you want to be having those high ratings because it not only helps you rank higher, the more reviews that you have, the more Google looks at you as an authority, but it also
00:07:03 - 00:07:57
instills a little bit more confidence in the people that are trying to find an assisted living facility near them. You should be posting weekly. As hard as that is, um posting weekly on that b business profile is also something that's going to benefit. And that can be little reviews, updates to, you know, your times, your hours of operation, little like holiday posting type things, pictures. Uh there's a few things that you can do there when it comes to building out your business profile. But
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the more that consistently that you do it weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, if you're doing that on a regular basis, it shows Google that you are active, that you're kind of running this business and you're doing things that you should be doing and it's going to start building you up in the rank for the people that are looking for assisted living. You also want to be using some keywords on your website and that's going to help you rank higher as well. So, assisted living in city, you know, best assisted living
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in this place or whatever. If you have awards, you want to be putting that on your website and then using words that explain that. You can do images. Images are fine, but you want to have the words in it because that is what is more searchable. So, it's going to help things rank a little bit more. So, the more that you can put those little tiny things inside of it, the better off you're going to be because I mean, you think about it, the two I would say most popular searches are going to be one,
00:08:20 - 00:09:09
assisted living near me, like near me is is kind of the default. That's what we want to look at. but the other one is going to be assisted living in a specific location. So that's what you want to be doing. And so you want to hit on some of those keywords. And if you're in an area that maybe has a bigger metro area, you might want to use some of the different verbiage for those. For example, being in Idaho, our facilities in Nampa, which is close to Boisey, which is a much bigger area. The area is
00:08:44 - 00:09:36
also called Treasure Valley. I might want to also kind of hit on some of the area areas that are kind of nearby like Meridian or Star, you know, some of those other locations that are kind of close by. I might want to start using a little bit of that verbiage so that I'm hitting up and and ranking a little bit higher, but I really really want to own Nampa. That that's the spot that I want to be in. So, I have to be a little bit careful. I have to balance it a little bit and not inundate it and and make it
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feel fake, but I want to be aware of the things that are around me so that I'm hitting on all of those things when people are starting to do search. And the other thing that I want you to be aware of is Google ads. Now, I've done Google ads for businesses in the past. I've not done it for my facilities, but it's something that you could be potentially looking at. Google ads are pretty affordable. And when you look at something, when you do a Google search for it, you're going to say, you know,
00:09:32 - 00:10:22
assisted living near me. You're going to have the ones that rank up high because of proximity based off of their Google business profile and what that's going to look like. You're also going to have a bunch that come up and they say advertisement or ad or whatever. And those ones are ranking up higher as well. And they use search terms that are specific to what you're looking at. So if I said assisted living near me and they pay for it to be kind of geo fenced in the area that they want it to be in
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or they'll say you know assisted living in Salt Lake City, they want to own a little bit they want to pay for people that are searching for that and rank higher up in those areas. Uh nice thing about Google ads is you can adjust your budget. They're pretty affordable and you can really hone in on what that's going to look like for your business. So that's another way for you to just get in front of people. Now, I will say as you're building this out, as you're building out your website and you're
00:10:22 - 00:11:08
trying to drive people to the website, you're trying to rank high, you then have to capture that information and how you're going to do that. I've talked about this a few time. I've got a few books. We're going to link a couple books down below. So, Marketing Made Simple by Donald Miller is a great one. And there's another one that's helped me build the assisted living investing brand by Graham Cochran called How to Grow Your Small Business. Those two, they both talk about what are called
00:10:45 - 00:11:32
lead magnets. Basically, it's a free tool for you to help you launch your assisted living business. So, as a test, what I want you to do is go to assistedlivinginvesting.net. So, I want you, if you're watching on your phone, you know, flip it up, go to your web browser. I want you to go assisted livinginvesting.net. I want you to look at the website. I want you to think now, what's the first thing on here that that I see? You know, I've got a picture of Brandon, but I have these
00:11:07 - 00:11:56
two blue big blue, light blue things on there that say I want my free underwriting calculator. Right? So, if you haven't already, make sure you go and download that. That is a lead magnet. Like, I I just be honest with you exactly what it is. Um, so it allows me to get your contact information so I can keep you updated on the things that I'm doing inside of assisted living investing, all of the the content that I'm putting out there, I'm giving it to you. And when I have something that I
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want to sell that I'm like, I've worked really hard on this. I want you to see it. I think it can really help you. I'm going to send that out to you in an email. So, if if you want some help, um, there's also a 30 secondond quiz that you can go and take. It's going to tell you what program is the best fit for you. And we have our ALI basics course, our ALI basics membership that is a great resource for you as you're trying to get started. Um, so go over to assisted livinginvesting.net,
00:11:56 - 00:12:51
look through the website, and see exactly how I'm capturing that information. You can see the things that I'm giving away. Those are lead magnets. So, you know, I don't pay for ads or anything like that, but if I wanted to, what I would do is like, you know, assisted living coaching or whatever, I I'd have an ad out there for that. And when somebody goes to my website, I know that they're not going to be there for that long. Like, statistically, you all that do make it to my website
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are there for probably 10 seconds. Like, I get it. Life is busy. You're like, "Oh, that's that's a cool video. I mean, go check it out." And you may or may not download the calculator. I hope you do. And what you're going to find is as you do that, if you don't have a way to capture people's information, they're going to get to your website, they're going to look around and they're going to leave and they're never going to get there. So, you at your assisted living
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facility, you have to have some kind of a lead mag. You need to create some kind of a resource, a guide, a video, a walkthrough of your facility video that they can watch if they give you their email, something along those lines. you need to give it away for free so you can get their email. That way you're going to be able to contact them. This is one of the most important things that you can understand about it. And like I I use assisted living investing, my website, my brand as an example because
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I it it's set up in a way that I know works. Like I've done this for a few years now. I know that it works. I promise you it will work for you as well. So I want you to use it and see how you can implement it for your facility. These are the types of things that I teach inside the mastermind program. So if you are interested in that, go check out ali masterastermind.com and and submit your application there. Um, now with all those plugs out of the way and hopefully you are able to to glean how what I do
00:13:41 - 00:14:25
at assisted living investing and how you can implement that at your facility, how you can get those things together because it's the best example that I can give you here, the best way I can coach you on how to do that is go check out my own stuff because I practice what I preach. Okay? If you do that, you're going to capture their emails and then you're going to have an email drip campaign and you're going to invite them to come to open houses and you're going to try to do it there. There's this
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funnel. You have all the people that are getting to your website up here. You're going to get the people that download your lead magnet. You're going to have their email that you're going to send, people that'll click on it. And then you're going to have this smaller group that are going to actually come and look at the facility and then this even smaller group that are good fit and are going to go to your facility. But you have to start broad. You have to start big up here and then shrink it down a
00:14:23 - 00:15:08
little bit as you're trying to launch your assisted living business. That's how you're going to get good solid leads as you're trying to bring people into your facilities. We actually do this for my facilities. We are starting to It was something I didn't do for a long time. We're starting to do it and we're starting to get leads from it. So, I I know that it works there as well. Now, with that out of the way, let's go to the next one. The third one that I want to talk to you about is getting
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testimonials and sharing some success stories. So, you want to give people those consumers that are looking, you want to give them proof that what you're doing is actually going to work. So, you need to be getting out there and that you provide amazing care. You want to ask Happy Families. Hey, we go on our business profile. Please write us a review there. Give them a gift card. You know, Amazon $25 gift card, whatever. That review is going to allow you to rank a lot higher and make you look like
00:15:14 - 00:16:08
an authority in the space. uh you want to do quick testimonial videos. If you can get them to do a video or they're at the house and you video them really quick, those go a whole lot further than just a written one. Those are some really good tips on how to get some good solid reviews inside of your Google business profile. Um you want to show some before and after pictures as well. So, if maybe you're doing a a house or you've done some new painting or some cleaning or decorating or something like
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that, you can show this is what it was before and this is what it is with Christmas or Halloween or Easter or whatever holiday you want to do that for or we renovated this entire space and we did new painting and we've added flowers here. Whatever it is, you want to be implementing a lot of those things because people will see that and be like, "Oh man, they care about this and this is what it looked like. This is what it looks like now. This is super exciting." Get people excited is what
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you want to do. And you want to be talking about your team. So when I talked about weekly posts that you can do on your Google business profile, these are all things that you can do. Highlight your team, bios, where they came from, what they're doing, what they love about their work, those types of things. Now, there's a lot of information here. There's a lot of things that you can do to help you fill your beds fast. And the thing that I want you to remember again is it takes some time to build that up. But once you
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build that base up and you've got those things, then all of a sudden you're going to have too many residents and and have enough beds to fill. So you're going to be start looking for your second and third facility. If you need some help as you're trying to go through this, need some guidance building that marketing plan and how to implement all of this, I'd love to help you out with it, go to ali masterastermind.com, apply to that, or check out aliasics as well. Just go to assistedlivinginvesting.net/basics
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and you can join that community. It's a great group that's going to give you weekly tips and tricks and get your questions answers as you're trying to launch your assisted living business, plus a bunch of other resources. If you found this information to be helpful, make sure you like the video, subscribe, and ring the bell as well. We put out content like this. We go live on Tuesdays. We do these types of videos on Thursdays. And if you're subscribed and and ring the bell, you'll get notified
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every time we put out incredible, useful content that's going to help you launch your assisted living business. Does residential assisted living sound interesting to you, but you don't know how to get started? at Assisted Living Investing. I'm here to help beginners like you launch their assisted living business in the next 12 months. I love helping and coaching people. I'd love to help you along your journey as you're trying to launch your assisted living business and help you make that
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progress. 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're consistent and persistent, you're going to be successful. Thanks for watching and have a great day. [Music]
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