How I Got Started in Assisted Living: My Story and How You Can Start Too
Mar 30, 2026
Starting an assisted living business might feel like a big leap. But you can absolutely do this! I’m here to share my real journey—from reading one life-changing book to buying my first property—and simple steps you can take to start your own assisted living business in the next 12 months.
Check out this video, too:
Starting With a Spark
For me, it all began on a quiet day at home, watching my daughter while she was sick. I finally picked up Rich Dad Poor Dad — a book I’d been putting off for years. I read it cover to cover in just one day and felt a strong pull inside me: I want to figure out real estate investing and build something real.
That book opened my eyes to financial freedom and made me believe it was possible for me too.
Step 1: Show Up and Learn
Just 10 days later, I decided to attend my first real estate event in Salt Lake City. I was nervous, unsure what to expect, and definitely outside my comfort zone. But I listened carefully, asked questions, and soaked in everything I could. That event planted the seed — I realized I needed education and support if I wanted to succeed.
Step 2: Use What You Know
I have a master’s degree in healthcare administration and spent over a decade working in the healthcare industry. When I discovered assisted living, I saw the perfect way to combine my healthcare knowledge with my new passion for real estate investing.
I binge-watched tons of YouTube videos (big thanks to Serge Lepescu — amazing content!) and started diving deep into assisted living regulations, operations, and opportunities.
Step 3: Plan Your Path
I joined a local real estate education group to learn about real estate investing. My initial plan was to fix and flip houses, build up capital, and then launch my assisted living business.
But a mentor challenged me: Why wait? Why not focus directly on assisted living and start building now?
That advice changed my mindset and accelerated my journey.
Step 4: Find Your Financial Partner
Starting this kind of business takes money. So, I took my dad out to lunch and asked if he’d consider investing in assisted living with me. Thankfully, he said yes, and having a financial partner gave me the confidence and resources to move forward faster.
If you don’t have family who can invest, look for other investors or consider small business loans.
Step 5: Learn the Rules & Hunt Properties
Next, I called local city and county offices to understand zoning, licensing, and state regulations. Some municipalities were straightforward, while others were more complicated. Knowing the rules early helped me avoid costly mistakes.
Then I searched online on Zillow, Redfin, LoopNet, and BizBuySell for properties that were a good fit for assisted living.
π‘ Bonus tip: Sometimes buying an existing assisted living business is easier than starting from scratch. Keep an eye out for businesses for sale.
Step 6: Take Action — Find Your First Property
One day, while waiting at a chiropractor appointment, I pulled out my phone, opened LoopNet, and found a promising property in Draper, Utah. I contacted the listing agent and took that first important step toward ownership.
It wasn’t perfect (in fact, I made a ton of mistakes), but it was real progress.
It's been a long road to getting me where I am today, but taking massive action has made a huge difference for me, and I know it can do the same for you!
Next Steps: Take Action Today!
π Want to launch your assisted living business in the next 12 months?
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Step 1: Download the Business Plan Checklist to start planning.
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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.
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Step 3: Follow this guide, take action, and bring your vision to life!
Got questions? Drop them in the comments below! β¬οΈ
Show full transcript π
Transcript
00:00:00 - 00:00:51
Hey friend, welcome to assisted living and investing. I help beginners like you launch their assisted living business in the next 12 months. Excited to have you here with me on the channel today as I tell you my story about how I got started in assisted [Music] living. Hey friend, welcome back to assisted living investing. Excited to have you here with me today. Before we get started and and I tell you my story of how I got started investing in assisted living, I want to remind you to go get the free underwriting calculator.
00:00:27 - 00:01:18
Go to assistedlivinginvesting.net. big blue box in the top right corner. Now, today I wanted to get into the topic of how I actually started my assisted living journey and just kind of give you the untold story of exactly how I did that and and and how you can do it too as you're trying to get in here and and launch your own assisted living business. I hope this you find this inspirational, you can relate to some of this. And as I go through it, like type in your your highlights down below, like
00:00:52 - 00:01:44
what was the thing? Was it when I read the book? Was it when I talked to my dad about getting funding? Was it like finding the first one and the awkwardness of it? And you know, I'm giving you some precursors there to what the story is going to look like. But which of those things is the thing that resonates most with you? Type that down below. Would love to hear from you as I go through my story. So, as I started, it was June 9th of 2019. I I was home with my daughter. She was sick. She was
00:01:18 - 00:02:12
about a year and a half. I stayed home from church with her. It was on a Sunday. I stayed home from family dinner with her and just kind of hung out with her. And you know, she's a year and a half, so she was sleeping the whole time or watching Daniel Tiger or something like that. And as she was doing that, I was like, you know, I've been wanting to read this book for a long time. I maybe now's the time. And that book was Rich Dad Poor Dad. And it literally has changed my life since I I read that book
00:01:45 - 00:02:37
that day. I read Rich Dad Poor Dad in one day, one sitting. Got through it all. And as I finished it later that night, it was probably like 11:30, you know, put the kids to bed and everything. My wife and I had spent some time together and I kept reading and I got done with it and I was like, "This is what I got to do. I I've got to figure out how to do real estate. I want to do this, right? It was how I felt." And so I got on my phone and I started looking, you know, where Rich Dad Poor
00:02:11 - 00:02:59
Dad, you know, whatever. Just trying to do some research pops up with events. And there was an event 10 days from the time that I had read that book. It was on June 19th, 2009, which is consequently my anniversary as well. So, I decided, you know, I've got to go to this and and I had a conversation with my wife in the morning the next day and said, "Hey, I know this is our anniversary. Would you mind if I go? It's in the afternoon. We're going to dinner later after that with some
00:02:36 - 00:03:28
friends and and things like that." And she's, "Yeah, yeah, go for it." I was like, "I promise you I will leave on time and I I will not stay late." So, and and I did. I stuck to that. I went to that Rich Dad Poor Dad event in downtown Salt Lake. I went into the hotel, Marriott, Hilton, whatever hotel it was. Went in there like trying to figure out where I'm going to go. Go find a spot, sit down, and everybody's like me. We're all just a little bit, you know, what's going on here? Um, what
00:03:02 - 00:03:54
are we getting ourselves into? What did I just sign up for? And have a guy come out and starts talking and and teaching us a little bit about real estate and negotiating and and being aggressive with opportunities and things like that. really valuable conversation, but I could see that this was going to be a hey, come to the back of the room and buy a thing and I could not stay longer. I had to leave cuz it was my anniversary and so I had to had to check out a little bit early. They tried to stop me
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at the back end, you know, at the back of the room, but I was like, I'm I got to go. Sorry. Appreciate it. And I'm gone and just took off really quick. But as I was driving home, was thinking about this the the whole way like, okay, like I I got to figure out how to do this. I definitely need some help as I'm trying to get into real estate. And I started doing some more research. And at that point, that's when I started listening to podcasts about real estate and really diving into this. And and I
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stumbled upon assisted living. For those of you who don't know me, I've got a background in healthcare. I have a masters in healthcare administration, have worked in the healthcare industry for over a decade. I have a lot of experience in the healthcare industry. And so when I found assisted living, I was like, "This is perfect. I can blend this new found passion for real estate with my knowledge of healthcare and I can bring those two things together. And that's what really made me feel like
00:04:19 - 00:05:08
this is what I got to do. I got to get into assisted living. This this makes the most sense out of everything that I've seen here. So, as I started really diving into that, reading books, consuming as much content I possibly could on the topic, YouTube videos, Serge Leescu was just kind of getting started at that point. and I consumed all of his stuff and Sergey and I have become friends since then. He's a great guy. So, if you've not subscribed to his channel, make sure you go do that cuz it
00:04:43 - 00:05:32
really really helpful and and has has given me a lot of really good information. So, subscribe to mine first and then go over and subscribe to him. But I started watching all these videos and was like, I got to figure out how to do this, but I can't do it alone. So, ended up joining a real estate education company. Uh, I won't say the name because I'm not trying to sell anything there, but here local in Utah. Did some research on it. I was like, "Yep, I feel pretty good about this. They're going to
00:05:08 - 00:05:56
help me understand the real estate side of it. I got the healthcare background." So, I joined this this organization, consumed all of their content, want went through with my mentor, the things that I should be going through, and I developed this plan. I'm going to do some fix and flips. I'm going to get some money and then I'm going to go and I'm going to start my own assisted living business. So, I I was trying to figure out how am I going to do all this stuff. Started looking for properties that I could do
00:05:32 - 00:06:30
some fix and flips on and get a really good return on so I could then flip that into assisted living. And was having this conversation with another mentor of mine and he's like I laid out this plan and he he's like, "You clearly want to do assisted living. So, why don't you just do that? Why don't you just focus on that one thing?" And that really clicked in my mind. It's very similar to when I read Rich Dad Poor Dad. It just like changed my life, changed my paradigm of of thinking and and shifted
00:06:00 - 00:06:47
me over to a whole brand new way of of thinking. I was like, you know what? Why don't I do that and the real reason was I didn't have money. So, at that point, I I went and took my dad to lunch. He had gone through the same real estate education as me. He's really passionate about getting into real estate. We're both brand new to it. I went to him and was like, "Hey, I know I've talked with you a little bit about this assisted living thing. I really want to do it. I need some help, though. I need some
00:06:24 - 00:07:17
money. Is that something that you guys can help me out with? And they had money with a heliloc on some properties that they had. And and and so my dad was like, "Yeah, sure." You know, let me go talk to your mom and we'll figure it out. And ultimately the the answer came back as yes, we can work with you on this. We can move this forward and we can we can launch this assisted living business. Andoo, that was that was great to know that I had kind of a financial backer and had made a good enough case
00:06:51 - 00:07:45
that that somebody was willing to work with me and and try to take this risk and and move forward with this is really exciting. So, as I was starting to try to figure this out and and using that leverage of education that I had received about real estate, I started looking for property, started looking at the different municipalities that were local to me. I wanted to understand zoning. I wanted to understand I I know like a previous home I actually had a residential assisted living home right next door to me for developmental
00:07:18 - 00:08:07
disabilities. Didn't know it until we were about ready to move and I wasn't like in the phase of trying to understand exactly what assisted living was. But man, if I could go back now, I'd go have that conversation for sure. But I I knew it could be done because I'd seen it and I I wanted to understand exactly how that was going to work and how I was going to be able to really move this forward. So started reaching out to all the municipalities. I wanted to have a conversation with them. I
00:07:42 - 00:08:42
wanted to understand what zoning would look like, what what it would take for me to start my own assisted living facility in a certain municipality. And it really opened up my eyes because it let me see that different municipalities work through this in a different process. And some of them super easy to do, simple application or even just verbal, yep, you're good to go. Other municipalities, it was just like pulling teeth. It was there was so much that had to go into it, applications and conversations and going to city council
00:08:12 - 00:09:09
meetings and reszoning places and it just felt like a nightmare and something I didn't really want to get into. So after doing after that process, what I found was there were like two or three municipalities in my local area that felt like a really good fit. So all of a sudden I went from, okay, I've got the entire Salt Lake Valley, which is, you know, two million people or whatever that I've got to try to figure out if where I could do this assisted living, down to two or three cities with very
00:08:40 - 00:09:38
specific boundaries on them that I knew, okay, now I can go and look in this specific chunk of of space and see if I can find something there. And when I did that, I started going out on like Zillow and Redbin and finding opportunities. My wife and I actually went out to a couple houses. We walked them, talked with the realtor about it, what we want to do, and you know, that's really interesting. And had these conversations and what I came to realize is it's going to cost quite a bit of money. Like on top of my
00:09:10 - 00:10:01
down payment, I'm going to have to pay an extra $50,000 to renovate this house to get it ready for assisted living and these hallways are a little bit all the things that you are experiencing as you're trying to figure out if if assisted living is going to work with. I I went through all of that and ultimately was feeling a little bit discouraged like I didn't know if this was really going to work for me. And so what I did next was started trying to find people in the industry. Started
00:09:35 - 00:10:30
looking online, trying to find people that had some experience that they could share with me, hoping that I could get some information. And I found a broker in Colorado and was able to have a conversation with him. And through that conversation, I I'm pretty sure he was trying to sell me a property that he had, but he said, "Well, why don't you just start off with buying an existing facility and going from there?" And that was another instance of, "Oh my gosh, why don't I do that?" So, I had three of
00:10:03 - 00:10:58
those instances at this point. reading the book, talking to my mentor about my plan to go and do some fix and flips and get the money, and then the other one was going to go and find existing facilities that were available for me. Those three, I don't know, turning points were just absolutely crucial in my journey to starting my assisted living business. So, at that point, I started looking. I didn't know where to start, but we went and and I started, you know, researching, hey, how do you find
00:10:31 - 00:11:22
existing businesses that are for sale? fell into Loopnet and Bisby by cell and I have videos for LoopNet and I have another video for Bisby byell. We'll try to link those up above for you so you can go watch those. But that was something that really allowed me to make some progress in finding actual properties. So one day I was at the chiropractor went in just normal adjustment kind of a thing. I go in and I got there 15 minutes early. So I'm just sitting in the car cuz I know they're on a pretty tight schedule. Like
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if I go in I'm just going to be sitting in the waiting room for the next 15 to 20 minutes. But if I sit in my car for the next 10 to 15, you know, maybe I can do something valuable with my time. So I get on and get on LoopNet on on their app and I look and I find this this property in Draper, Utah, which was pretty close to where I lived at the time and was like, "This is, you know, this seems like a good idea." And it has a form on there. You can click on it and, you know, it's like contact the the
00:11:22 - 00:12:17
listing agent. So I clicked on that and it's like, you write your message here or you can call. And I was like, "Sure, I'll call." And it started ringing. And I was sitting in my car and I I just had this feeling of oh I hear it ringing and I'm just like I have no idea what I'm going to say to this person when they answer the phone. I was kind of hoping that they wouldn't answer and would go to voicemail and I would either hang up or I would leave some kind of a vague
00:11:50 - 00:12:41
voicemail like hey saw the property. It looks interesting. Send me the details and hang up really quick. That's what I felt like I was going to do. And like second third ring, it's getting to the point I was like, "Okay, good. This it's not going to happen." And then, "Hello." I was I was stressed and and I didn't I didn't know what to say. I was like, "Hey, my name's Brandon. I I'm on Loop. I saw you got you got a house there. It's assisted living. I'm I'm interested
00:12:15 - 00:13:00
in details on it. Can you How do I How do I get those details?" Like that that was that was the fumbling of my conversation. I had no idea what I was doing. And he's like, "Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, just I I'll send you a link. What's your email?" Give him my email. I'll send you a link. I just need you to sign an NDA and then I'll get you all the details sent over. We can chat about it from there. I was like, "Yeah, do that. Yeah, sounds good." And I hung up
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the phone. And my initial reaction was, "What is an NDA? What did I just agree to? And and how am I going to actually do this?" So, I sent an email to my attorney. I'd been working with an attorney uh for a period of time that came through my real estate education. and email them, hey, I I just I found an opportunity. They said I have to sign an NDA to do it. Like, am I am I giving my house away? Like, I I seriously I had no idea what I was doing. I was that new to this process. And and he emailed me
00:13:07 - 00:13:55
back. He's like, "No, very standard." Basically, an NDA is a non-disclosure agreement that allows you to say, "Yeah, give me the information, and I promise you I will not share it with anybody else that is not somebody that I'm working with inside of, you know, my business, inside of my entity. um the the group that's going to help me decide to purchase this. So I was like, "Okay, cool." So sign the NDA, go into my chiropractor office, guy sends me the information, I look at it later that
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night, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this is a ton of stuff." Now, if you have ever looked at existing facilities that are for sale, and you get the details on that, tax returns and and financial statements and and things like that, and you don't have experience, like I didn't at the time, feels overwhelming. you're looking at these, you're like, "Okay, I know that that year is 2019 and those are numbers of things and I don't know what they are." And so that's you like
00:13:58 - 00:14:48
the video cuz like I went through that and I had no idea what I was doing and I I got the numbers. I I was like now I got to figure out how to underwrite this. Underwriting is is looking at those financials and projecting it out to see how you think it's going to perform in the future. And I couldn't find any type of a calculator that could help me do that for assisted living. I and in my mind, assisted living is very similar to multif family. And so I went and and started digging around some
00:14:22 - 00:15:22
multifamily investor websites and found a really good base calculator, which is what my my calculator is based off of now. So if you want that free calculator, go to assistedlivinginvesting.net, grab the free calculator, give it to you. Like it was born out of stress and trying to figure things out. So, um, but I give that to you and it's been refined a ton over time. And getting to that point, I was able to underwrite this deal. And I wanted this deal to work so bad. It was local to me. It was the first deal I
00:14:53 - 00:15:54
found. I had taken this action. I I really wanted it to work like so much. I I wanted this to work. I I was dreaming about it going there on the weekends and uh you know hanging out with the residents and having a good time and and letting my kids grow up in in that space and like I I could see it. I could visualize it. I was so excited for it. And when I did my underwriting, it didn't make sense. It just it wasn't going to work for me. And I was deflated at that point. I I like I didn't know
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how I was going to progress and and was really just trying to figure out, well, where do I go from here? And so I went back to one of my mentors from the real estate education company and and started talking with them and he's like, you know what, I've got a friend that's in Colorado in Denver right now and he's actually buying a facility. Would you like me to introduce you to him? Like absolutely. That would be incredible. So he makes the introduction. We we chat on Facebook. a guy's name is Earl and we're
00:15:51 - 00:16:35
having a conversation and really starting to understand, you know, how he got started with this one. He was very similar to me, didn't know what he was doing, knew assisted living was a great investment and decided he wanted to move forward with it. And they were buying this facility in Denver. And he's like, you know, people were buying from actually have a second facility in Colorado Springs and the people in my investment group, they're just not interested in in having something down
00:16:13 - 00:17:07
there. So if you want something, I can introduce you to our broker who we've been working with and you guys can have a conversation. That's when I met my broker, his name's Charlie, and that has really catapulted me to where I am today. That was the fourth instance where it was like, here's a relationship and then go build the relationship with that person and it was a huge catalyst to getting me to where I'm at today. Uh without that introduction, I I don't know that I would own the two facilities
00:16:40 - 00:17:40
that I have. So started talking with Charlie. We go and and we look at this facility and it is May of 2020, which if you rewind yourself back to that point, we're in the middle of CO. Um things are shut down. Like we don't know what's going on in the world. Utah's a little bit more open than Colorado is um at that point, but we decide, hey, we we're going to buy this thing. We got to we got to go and look at it. I had done the underwriting, looked good. We go out to Colorado. We drive out there. 12 hours
00:17:10 - 00:18:16
straight through. Kids in the back screaming like 45 minutes into the drive. My youngest daughter, who's like I can't remember how old, three years old at that point, throws up all over the entire van. And now we've got to go to Colorado for another 11 hours in this in, you know, just already stressed out. And we get there, I can't go look at the facility because it's co procedures and my dad has to go in by himself with the inspector. And uh ultimately we still felt really good about it. That was in
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May. We struggled so much to get the funding. I got told no by I don't know 20 lenders to the point was just like oh my gosh is this actually going to work. So I this was not easy for me. That's what I want you to know. It is not easy for you to do this. That's why I tell you you have to be consistent step by step by step and make consistent progress and be persistent if you want to make this work. You can see all the roadblocks that I went through as I was trying to do this. There were a ton of
00:18:12 - 00:19:00
them. I got told no by 20 lenders before I finally found like two. They were like, "Yeah, let's try to figure this out." And and then we were able to make it work. So, I closed on that first facility in September. We went under contract on the second one in October. That's a different story. I closed on that one in February of 2021. But that is how I got started getting into assisted living. That's my origin story. That's where I come from. And I hope it resonates with you because like I feel
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your pain. I'm not the big guru that that's just like, you know, my dad had billions of dollars and decided, oh yeah, assisted living's cool and my mom needs it and so I'm going to go buy it and now, you know, I have a million-dollar education company. I'm not that guy. I went through all of the struggles. I tried so hard and hit roadblock after roadblock and and didn't know how to get started. And so I can like see exactly where you're coming from. I I know the heartaches. I know
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how to navigate them. I know how to try to get to where you're at. So again, I want to remind you to if which of these parts of the story resonated with you, type that down below. But I want to remind you to go and grab the free underwriting calculator. It's the first step. It's going to help you out along your path. Asliving.net. And if you need some help trying to figure out how you're going to get started and you're just not sure and and you don't know which path to take, go fill out my
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questionnaire, ali masterastermind.com and it will allow me to point you in the right direction and make sure you have what you need to really move things forward as you're trying to launch your assisted living business. I love coaching people. I I love helping people and trying to help them out and and reach their goals. And there's just like there's so much that goes into this. And I want you to understand like I get it and it's hard and it you're going to feel like you're going to hit roadblocks
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along the way every single time. Like every step along the path, you're going to hit a roadblock. And it takes you a long time to get there. But if you are consistent and persistent, I promise you, you can be successful at this. If you like the video, make sure you like it. If you 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. We we go live on Tuesdays, we put out content on Thursdays as well. Um, really my goal is
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to help you and guide you so you can 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. Would love that to be you. Go fill out the the questionnaire alimastermind.com. And remember, it does not take a lot. Just a little bit. Keep going step by step by step. And I promise you that if you do
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that, you will be successful. Thanks for watching and have a great day. [Music]
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