How I Scaled My Assisted Living Business—You Can Too!
Mar 24, 2025
Starting an assisted living business is exciting, but growing it into a thriving, profitable venture? That takes strategy, consistency, and the right plan.
When I first started, I had one home, a small team, and a big vision. Now, I’ve scaled my business to multiple facilities—and I’m here to show you how you can do it too.
If you’re looking to start and scale your assisted living business, follow this five-phase process to grow faster and avoid costly mistakes.
Check out the video, too:
1️⃣ Build a Strong Business Foundation
Before you dive into buying a property or hiring staff, you need a plan. A strong foundation ensures you start smart and scale fast.
🔹 Write a Business Plan – Outline your vision, goals, and financial projections.
🔹 Underwrite the Numbers – Run financial models to make sure your business is profitable.
🔹 Understand Your Market – Who are your ideal residents? What’s the demand in your area?
📌 Pro Tip: Most people skip this step and struggle later. Don’t wing it—plan it!
2️⃣ Find the Right Property
Your business can’t grow without the right location. Here’s how to pick the best property:
🏡 Check Zoning & Licensing – Make sure the property is legally allowed for assisted living.
📍 Choose the Right Layout – A single-story home with wide hallways and accessible bathrooms works best.
🔍 Decide to Buy or Lease – Buying gives you control, but leasing can lower startup costs.
📌 Success Tip: Start small and expand when demand grows. My first facility had just a few residents—now I run multiple homes.
3️⃣ Secure Funding to Scale Faster
Growth requires capital, but you don’t need to fund it all yourself. Explore these options:
💰 SBA Loans – Low-interest loans designed for small businesses.
🤝 Private Investors – Partner with investors looking for strong returns.
🏦 Commercial Loans – For those buying existing businesses or large facilities.
📌 Pro Tip: Don’t let funding stop you. I’ve used over $1.5M in SBA loans to grow my business—it’s possible!
4️⃣ Master Rules & Regulations
Every state has different licensing laws, so don’t assume you’re ready to open just yet.
✔ Find Your State’s Licensing Requirements – Search “Assisted Living Licensing in [Your State]”.
✔ Create Policies & Procedures – Outline resident care, safety measures, and staffing guidelines.
✔ Stay Compliant – Failing inspections can shut you down—get it right the first time!
📌 Pro Tip: Even unlicensed homes must follow legal and ethical standards—make sure you’re covered!
5️⃣ Launch & Scale Your Business
Now that you’re up and running, it’s time to expand!
🚀 Hire & Train Great Staff – Caregivers are the heart of your business.
📢 Market Your Facility – Use social media, Google, and referral networks.
📊 Track KPIs – Monitor occupancy rates, revenue per resident, and staff ratios.
📌 Pro Tip: Most owners get stuck after opening. But with the right strategy, you can expand to multiple locations!
Final Thoughts: You Can Do This!
Scaling an assisted living business isn’t just about adding more beds—it’s about growing smart.
✔ Start with a strong foundation – Plan before you spend.
✔ Choose the right property – Location matters.
✔ Secure funding – Use loans, investors, and partnerships.
✔ Master regulations – Stay compliant and avoid shutdowns.
✔ Launch & grow – Build a great team and expand.
🎯 Next Steps:
📥 Download the Business Plan Checklist to make sure you’re ready for growth.
🔥Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
🚀 If I can do it, so can you! Let’s build something great.
Take the Next Steps
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00
hey friend I'm Brandon Gustafson I help beginners like you launch their Assisted Living business in the next 12 months excited to have you on the channel today we're going to be talking about how to launch and scale your Assisted Living business so if this is something that you need some help with make sure you stick around for today's [Music] video before we get started I want to remind you to get over to the website Assisted Living investing. net go grab your free underwriting calculator to
00:00:27
determine if you have a profitable business opportunity in front of you or not it's going to save you a ton of time and a ton of money and you can go grab that for free again it's Assisted Living investing. net go grab that free calculator all right now let's get into the topic for today's video we're talking about Assisted Living launching your business and scaling that business and exactly what that looks like now if you've been watching for a little bit this has been a series of of videos for
00:00:52
us it actually is the five-phase process that I go through this is Phase five launching and scaling your business now I talk to a lot of people about the Mastermind program and you can apply to that at Alim mastermind.com application would love to see if I can help you out there but in that process throughout the the The Mastermind program it's a year-long program and the reason why it's a year I I get this question often is like why why do I need to work with you for a year you can definitely get
00:01:20
something up and running in four to 6 months but after you do that you're going to get to the point where you're like crap I I've been focusing all my efforts on just like trying to get the funding and get the license and and then you're going to close on it and it's going to hit you one day like the day after you close because this happened to me I actually had to pay people now I'm responsible for all the lives of my residents and my staff and their families and like it hits you like a ton
00:01:45
of brick it's just boom it hits you and you're like oh crap like how how am I going to handle all of this and there's a lot that goes into it and that's why I make the program a year long cuz I want to give you the support that you need and you can always just renew as you get into the program because I know I've I can save you a ton of money by just avoiding the mistakes that I made in the beginning to make sure that you're running things the right way and so this is Phase five it's all about launching
00:02:13
and scaling that business and and I want to talk with you a little bit about that but before we do again remind you Alim mastermind.com application go check that out see if it's a good fit for you and to quickly recap the the different phases here in the five phase approach number one is building that business foundation and I've talked about I talk about this all the time you have to build this Foundation it's going to make everything go so much more smoothly for you including what you're doing here in
00:02:36
the launching and scaling your business phase phase two is finding the right property making sure you have all the zoning and certificate of occupancy and everything else like that is put into place number three is obtaining the funding getting the funds to actually purchase the the business purchase the home whatever you need to do getting access to that money so you can move things forward phase four is just understanding all the rules and regulations that go into Healthcare and assisted living there's so many out
00:03:03
there and I want to make sure you don't go into this blind and then phase five is launching and scaling the business so it's the five-phase approach and how we're going to help you through the process as you're trying to you know have a profitable business and actually make a difference in the people in the lives of the people that you want to serve that's why you're doing this right when you started on this journey you started looking at assisted living the reason why you did it was cuz you like
00:03:25
you want to make money sure but you want to give back you want to help people out and you're passionate about that and you found this and you're like that's what I want to do that's what I'm going to help you do while also being profitable so you're not just like hemorrhaging cash and and losing a ton of money that's what we are going to talk about here in the the launching and scaling your business phase now in this phase we talk about operations you know running the
00:03:46
facility and getting the right staff in place how you're going to do all of that those are those are really big key components and we're going to release a few videos on those so make sure you stick around we will link those up above as well just like the operations of actually running an assisted living business because there's a lot that goes into it you have to determine you know how involved do you want to be do you want to hire people to do the work for you or do you want to do it for yourself
00:04:08
and there's different complexities there and making sure you have the right staff regardless of how involved you want to be you're going to still need to hire staff and make sure that they're there to help you run the business efficiently so how are you going to do that we're going to talk about you kind of growing that business Empire as well how to add more facilities how how you're going to go about doing that some of the economies of scale that you can create as you are getting into assisted living
00:04:33
and what that's going to look like we're going to talk about that here in some upcoming videos as well you got to also decide which path you're going to choose and this is something you should be doing way early on in the process in that business Foundation phase but I want to reiterate it here you have to determine which type of path you want to go down are you going to rent from somebody and start a a business there where you're renting the home and turning it into assisted living are you
00:04:56
going to buy a home and renovate it and and get it up and running are you going to buy an existing business and just take over operations are you going to build something from the ground up and move for forward from there those are kind of the four paths that you have available to you as you're trying to get into assisted living and something that I want you to be aware of but you have to figure out which of those path do you want to go down and make sure that you are doing that as as you kind of go
00:05:20
through this entire process now if you haven't done this yet and and you're watching this video and you're like crap I went through the entire five face process and I don't know what I was going to do they you did it wrong but if you are watching this video first what I want to encourage you to do is go back and watch a phase one video um we we'll talk about that there and in that I want you to really think about which path you want to go down and you're going to build your business Foundation your
00:05:44
business plan everything around that and it's going to indicate you know what you're going to do in phase three as as you're looking at the funding options in phase two when you're finding the house and everything that you're trying to do it's going to inform all of that so you got to figure out the path that you want to go down some of the the things that we're going to talk about here in this phase here in in the YouTube videos are going to be things like getting the
00:06:05
right staff in place you got to make sure you have the the right people in place so that you can you know run your business efficiently regardless of how involved you want to be we're going to be talking about marketing so if you need some help with marketing type in marketing down below we're going to talk about marketing plans how to create them what they should look like and how to help you get out into the world and let people know that you are are there to serve them in your assisted living
00:06:29
facility marketing is something that I hear a lot of concerns about from existing owners so we want to address that upfront so that we can help you out we're working on some resources here at the channel so again type in marketing down below we're going to talk about just operating the facility exactly what that looks like how to operate a facility some of the tips and tricks that I've learned um through that process we're going to be talking about that and then also creating some kpis so kpis are key
00:06:53
performance indicators but little tiny numbers that you can put into place to let you know how healthy your business is um at a quick PL which is a really good thing especially if you want to be somebody that is passively operating these businesses we talked a lot about the entire Mastermind program and the five phase process including going a little bit deep here in Phase five if you want some help with that go check out The Mastermind program Alim mastermind.com application but to recap this we've been talking a lot about
00:07:19
operations and Staffing and marketing and and all the things that kind of go into running a business and and how you need to do something in this phase that's going to allow you to be a profitable business because despite how much you may despise money or don't want to talk about money or whatever you still have to figure out how to do this and be profitable so you can serve the population that you want to be serving and I don't want you to be scared of money I want you to be able to talk
00:07:42
about it and just be open about it because it's going to make things just go so much more smoothly for you I also want to remind you you know if you haven't already then like the the video I would really appreciate that uh subscribe and ring the bell as well we do our content on Tuesdays and Thursdays as well and and just want to make sure that you are getting all of the content that you need to help you launch your Assisted Living business does residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you're not sure
00:08:05
how to get started at Assisted Living investing. net I'm here to be help beginners like you launch their Assisted Living business in the next 12 months and I want to remind you it doesn't take a lot just a little bit 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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