How to Actually Get Started in Assisted Living (Without Overthinking Every Step)

Transcript

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but you're just not like sure how to get started. Uh like everything just feels confusing, overwhelming, you're not sure where to go, um what to do and how to actually move forward as you're getting on this path to launching your own assisted living business. Well, this video is going to help you out a ton with it. Today we're going to talk about how to actually get started in assisted living without overthinking every single step and so you stop getting stuck and you can actually make some progress and

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move things forward along your your path to launching your assisted living business. So if this is something that you've been struggling with, this video is going to be for you. Hey friend, my name is Brandon Gustafson. I help healthcare workers start their own assisted living business without getting stuck and feeling overwhelmed by the process so they know exactly what they should be focusing on and doing next to get started on their assisted living journey. All right, let's hop into it.

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Today again, we are talking about how to actually get started in assisted living without overthinking every single every single step because a lot of you out there, you're you're you're overthinking it and and and it's it's hard for you. I mean, you're stuck. You're you're stuck trying to figure everything out at once um without taking the first step. I was watching this video actually recently. Um we're working on finishing our basement. And this video, so I'm I'm

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having a lot of people come up in my YouTube feed that are like, "This is how you frame a house. This is how you do things." And this one video, this guy, he uses blocks and he shows you how to build your your home. And it all starts with your foundation, right? So, it starts with building this foundation before and then you transfer all of the weight down into your foundation and your footings on the home. And that's how you build a really solid firm foundation as you're trying to get into

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into moving forward. You don't go and be like, "Okay, cool. I want a house." And you build a roof and then you you try to build the walls and you're like hanging, you know, your your trusses up at the top and then you're building the walls to match into it. And like you don't do that. You build your foundation. You build down here first and then you build up. That's how how you should be building something. That's how you build a home. That's how you build a building.

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That's how you should be building your business. You build your foundation first and take those first steps first rather than trying to skip to step number 30, 60, 100. Don't do that. Money is not where you start. You don't try to figure out the funding piece of it first. You don't try to figure out licensing. You don't try to do everything. There's a step-by-step process that you need to follow as you are getting into your assisted living business. And the first step to doing

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that of that step-by-step process is building your foundation first. It's absolutely crucial. So, why are you trying to figure everything out at first? Um, and and why does that keep you stuck? The reason why I think most people are trying to figure all of this all out at once is you want to have the entire picture before you get started, right? And I think that's very normal that you want to take some time. You want to be like, "Okay, well, how do I how do I do this? How do I actually get started?"

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And and then you you start kind of just working through um through things and you're like, "Okay, well, I got to I know I got to do funding. So, let's let's spend some time thinking about funding. Let's spend some time thinking about, you know, what this what all of this might actually look like and how to how to move forward." So, you start thinking about all of these things and that is that's where you're wasting your time. That's why you feel overwhelmed

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because when you start looking at all of the things, it's like, "Oh my gosh, there's so many things here that I have to do. This is this is a little bit harder than I thought it was going to be. How can I actually move this forward?" And that is the thing that is getting you stuck. That's why you feel confused. That's why you feel overwhelmed. You're not you're not doing this in the right in in the right order. Okay? That makes you feel stuck. makes you feel overwhelmed because there's

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just so many things that you could or should be doing and and so you can't make progress with it. You get stuck that way. We talked about building the house. You just can't build the house with the roof first. That's not how it works. You have to build that foundation first. So, there are three decisions that you need to make before you do anything else. One, you got to figure out your the model. Um, you got to figure out, you know, is this licensed or unlicensed? Am I going to get into this by leasing a

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home first or buying an existing facility? Uh, what population do I want to serve? These are questions you need to ask yourself as you're trying to get into this. And that's going to give you a lot of clarity. You need to answer how how much do I want to scale? Do I just want one home or do I want three, five, 10 homes? What do I want this to actually look like for me when I'm running my business? And you also need to ask yourself, what role do you want to have in this business? Do you want to

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be hands-on? You want to be doing the work and you're okay with how much work it's going to take you to get started? Or do you want this to be more passive and you don't really want to touch it? You want to have the benefits that that come from owning a business and the rewards that come from from doing it, but you don't want to be super hands-on. You need to ask yourself those questions. And once you identify those things and you have an idea of what that's going to look like is you you can

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start building your business plan. You can start working on other things. But what you should not do first is go buy a property. I have I've talked to dozens of students of mine um dozens of followers here on on YouTube and Facebook and and Instagram and all the all the different social media platforms. They tell me, "Oh, I bought a house or I have this house and I go, "Oh my gosh, now people are telling me that I can't do assisted living here." And it's like this sinking pit in their

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feeling and I feel horrible for them. You do not want to get stuck in a spot where you have a property that you can't do anything with. You should not be chasing funding blindly either. You shouldn't just be like, "Okay, cool. I found this this one loan program and I think it it's going to help me get there. Um, and I'm just going to kind of piece mail all this together and we're going to hopefully get it." That's going to create overwhelm. It's going to create confusion. It's going to cause

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you to get stuck and stop. So, so stop trying to figure all of that out from the beginning. And don't don't get into licensing right now. Um, you can have an idea on if you want to do license versus unlicensed. It's totally fine to to identify that, but don't get so caught up that you're just like, "Okay, I've got to do all of these other things for licensing and and I've got to figure that out." Like, stop stop doing that as well. You will get to it eventually. I

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promise you. You're going to find a property. You're going to find the funding. You're going to get the license. All of those things will come in time. But that's like trying to put on the door and the windows and the roof before you've even built a foundation. Before you've even identified how you want to build your facility, before you've identified how you want this to look. So, you need to focus on that. The correct first step that you should be focusing on right now. And the cool

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thing about this is you don't need money to start this. If you don't have funds, you can still get started with this today, right? You need to focus on building your foundation first. To go back to the house analogy, you have to build your foundation. You have to put in the foundation and the footings so that you can then put in your the the the base framing of it so you can get everything and then you get the subfloors and then you do the next walls and the subfloors and the next wall and then you can do

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your trusses and you can do the windows and the doors. You can do all of those things, but it starts off with building that foundation. getting your foundation, getting your footings in place, putting those things together. So, what what is that in the world of assisted living, right? That's the question. What you should be doing, there's three things here, three three big things that you should be doing. One is your business plan. So, this is this is going to help you find the right property. Um, it's going to help you get

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funding. Like, you're the the municipality and the lender that you're going to talk to, they want to see that business plan, by the way. Like I've talked to dozens of of my students, myself, the the city, weirdly enough, is going to want to see your business plan. I don't know that they actually look at it, but they want to see it. They want to show you. They want to see that you're serious about this. Okay? So, they want to see that. The lender is going to ask for it. Like, it's a

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standard part of their process for for getting this. If you need to go find a partner, they want to see it. You need to do it for that. It's going to help you get licensed. I've actually had states ask me for my business plan. Again, I don't think they actually look at it, but they want to see that I've thought through the process. They might be checking something in my operations section on my business plan to see that I've thought through the staffing models and that they're confident that I can do

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this. If not, it's going to at least help me answer the questions when I'm filling out the application to get my license. This is going to help me out with that. And it's also going to help you run the business cuz it's it becomes like your playbook to help you get started and running your business. So, spend time doing your business plan. It's like the highest leverage thing that you can do as you're building your foundation. Next is you need to do market research. This is going to help

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you find the property. You're no longer going to be like, uh, I don't know. I don't know what to do. Will this four-bedroom home work? I I don't know how many facil You're going to do your market research. You're going to figure that out. You're going to have a lot of confidence that you have the right property. And it's going to help you get funding because a lender is going to want to see this. The partner is going to want to see that you know that there's enough residents that that you

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can serve to keep your beds filled and and and generate a profit. They're going to want to see that you've looked at the the competition in your area and that there's a there's enough people there that can can come into your facility and that you're not it's not oversaturated already. You need to do the market research. You go and and grab this. There's free tools out there that help you do this research. It's it's available. you just go grab it. Okay? Or and the third thing that you need to do

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is your underwriting, which is like understanding the finances and seeing if it's going to be profitable. You have to have this from a funding perspective. A lender is going to ask to see as a standard for lenders to see it. If you want to get a partner, they're going to want to see it. They want to see how much money they're going to get. What's the return on the investment? A lender is going to want to see that and make sure that you can take care of that that that service, that mortgage payment,

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that lease payment that that you're getting the funding for. they need to make sure that it can cover that. So, you're going to have to do this. And I know for a lot of you that this piece of it is confusing and just like the numbers piece of it is overwhelming. So, I have a free underwriting calculator. Just type in calculator in the comments down below. We'll get get you access to it. Um, but you're going to have to figure out the funding. There are actually simple ways to do this, by the way, uh, to figure

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out funding. And it's something that I go through in my foundation builder program. I'll tell you a little bit about that here in a second, or you can just type in foundation. We'll get you the link to it. But you have to figure that out. And the other thing with doing your underwriting is when you start operating your business, it's going to give you like be a gut check. Okay, cool. Why are you actually making more money than we thought? Or why um was my projection so far off? What did I miss

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there? Ah, I missed this expense over here. Oh, you know, I thought we were always going to be 100% occupied, but really we're like 80% occupied most of the time. It's going to help you tie all of these things out and you can see what story you were going to tell and see if it's going to pull through. It's just projections is what it is. But you need to make sure you do those things. Those three things, your your business plan, your market research, and your underwriting, which I call uh once you

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have those three things, you're going to be able to have a foundation that you can then build off of to do the rest of the process. I teach my focus framework foundation first, right? We just talked about that. Then it's optimal property selection. It's finding the right property. It's under it's um capital and funding. It's getting the funding that you need. It's understanding the rules and regulations, the licensing process, and then it's having a strategic launch.

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That is the process that you need to go through to launch your assisted living business. But it all starts with building your foundation. So what does clarity for you actually look like? It means that you have built the foundation. that when somebody asks how's work going, you tell them about your business, right? When because you're you're working towards it, they can they can ask you about it and like, hey, how's work going? You know, I I I know you're working at the hospital now

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or yeah, you're you're doing this other thing or whatever it is, they ask you how it's going and instead of being like, "Yeah, man, it's really busy." And I know I'm talking like a guy here, so um you know, take that for what it's worth. I know there's a lot of a lot of women that watch the channel. Um, so I'm just talking like a guy. Um, anyways, um, you know, somebody's like, "Hey, how's it, how's this work going?" And you're like, "Oh man, it's,

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you know, it's busy. I've got this project going on, that project." Instead of saying that, you say, "I'm actually working on this new thing. I'm I'm building my business plan. I'm going to start an assisted living facility, and I've got the business plan. Everything's going really solid. We've got the underwriting. Everything's going well. I'm actually starting to look for partners um on this." And they're like, "Oh, that's interesting. tell me more.

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Um, yeah, let's talk about that. I maybe they maybe they're are interested in partnering with you. Maybe they don't have the funds, but they know somebody that does. You'll be you'll be amazed at what happens when you start building your foundation and then opening your mouth to share the things that you're working on. Doors are going to open. It's going to be pretty awesome to you. Opportunities will start coming to you when you start doing this. You your mind will be blown. When I started building

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my foundation and started looking for facilities, I was blown away that dozens of opportunities were coming to me and I was I was new at this. I was not like an old hat or anything like this. Uh I I was I was not having a ton of success there. Um I I was I was just kind of trying to figure things out. And all of a sudden, I was getting multiple opportunities per day coming to me. And it's because I was working on things. I was opening my mouth. I was starting to talk about it. And I just all of a

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sudden things started coming to me and it was it was really amazing. And the other thing is you're going to um you're going to find that when it comes to talking to a lender, talking to a potential partner, talking to the state, talking to the the municipality about your zoning, all of those things become so much less scary because you've put in the ground work. you put in the leg work and all of the sudden those conversation, those things that were like, "Oh man, I just the idea of having

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to call a lender, having to call the state and ask this question about licensing that just terrifies me. It's just going to be I've got to figure this thing out on my business plan. I'm going to call this person and ask them how would they like to see it? What's going to to meet their needs? Um, I just need to get clarity on it." And so your your your whole mindset shifts and you go from this this place of just like feeling scared and overwhelmed when you have to talk through those things to

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being excited about doing it because it's helping you move towards your goal. And that mindset shift is just incredible and what it's going to do to help you out as you're moving towards launching your assisted living business. Okay, these are the things that you need to be working on. Like I just I just want to be real with you about what you need to be doing on this is how you actually get started in assisted living without overthinking every step. You start building that foundation. You

00:15:17
start working on those foundational things and that's going to move you forward. If you're interested in learning more about this, type in foundation below my foundation builder program. I help you build these things. I mentioned this before. You can do all of this stuff for free. like you you could go and and build these things on your own, but I know that my system and my process works. It's worked for me multiple. It's worked for me three times, okay? I have helped dozens of my

00:15:44
students secure millions of dollars in funding using the tools that I have for you in the foundation builder program. And so, I would love to help you do that as well and help accelerate you to the next phase. Just type in foundation. I'll give you the more details on that one so you can move along with it. And I'm I'm hesitant to do this one, but I also have next week my roadmap challenge coming up. If you're interested in learning more about that, type in roadmap. I'll give you the link for it.

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Or if you go to roadmapchallenge.com, you can get more information on it. I would love to have you in the challenge next week. We're going to go through a bunch of stuff and help break down a bunch of barriers to helping you get started. You can ask me questions. You can get in there. Make sure assisted living is going to even be right for you if you're just not sure if it is. But I simplify everything through the process. And it's lengthy and there's homework and it's this is not like come watch a

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YouTube video kind of thing. It's like we're working together and helping you make progress, but it the the the changes that I see in people when they come through this program, it is man it's it's so rewarding. So I would love to have you there. Type in roadmap. go to roadmapchallenge.com. Would love to have you in there um and and help you move forward into this. And then if if you need some help or you just can't afford one of those other programs, go grab the book, the alibook.com. All the

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links are down below for these programs, by the way. Uh so go check them out. But would love to help you out with with all of those things. Are you curious about assisted living, but you're not sure how to get started at assisted living investing. I help healthcare workers start their own assisted living business without getting stuck and knowing exactly how to get started on their path. And I love doing that. It's so much fun for me and I would love to help you out with it as well because it

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doesn't take a lot. It just takes a little bit. Just keep going step by step by step. And when you do that, you build a foundation and you build off of it, everything becomes easier. And that's what's going to help you be successful. Now, I did have a question here um in in the chat. I didn't hopefully you're still here. I didn't forget about you. Um, you need help working now on pharmacy billing and want to start an assisted living business. I love it. Um, how can you know which state to buy an

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assisted living? That that's a great question. And how to connect with agents to get good deals. You're asking great questions here. Um, so what I would say is a lot of what we talked about today. Okay. It's it's you're building your foundation. It is the market research part of that is what you need to do. And when I when I say market research for you in this situation where you're like I don't I don't know which state to get started in. You start at a very high

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level. I was just teaching this to people in the foundation builder program um last week. And uh we call it the I call it the market um I think it's the the market research funnel. I I'm a little fuzzy on the words right now because I'm trying to do it off the top of my head. But um basic excuse me basically what you have to do is you have to start at a a high level the market the the macro level and that means at a at a state level you have to start really high and you want to look

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at the rules and the regulations and um what's the ratios in the state at a at a macro level like are there already a lot of facilities in that state or not? Um how long is it taking you people to to get licensed? You want to look at those things and then you can narrow it down from there. So like Arizona used to be really hot. Arizona is a little bit oversaturated now. So, you might not consider Arizona. Maybe you want to move over to New Mexico or Texas or Oklahoma or something like that. If you're in

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that area, you know, the southwest u of of the United States, um Florida, it there's a lot of people in Florida. But once you figure those things out, you figure out the state, then you start doing the exact same analysis. You're just doing it at more of a a county level, right? You're you're you're breaking this down. And then once you've identified, okay, I want to be in this county, now you're doing it at a city level. And then once you figure out your your couple cities that you want to do,

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then you go down and you do it at a neighborhood level. And then you're looking at, you know, HOAs and different things like that and figuring out what's going to work from you. The entire process with market research, it's it's cyclical. It's just you you start up high and then you get down into something that's more granular and all of a sudden you're like, "Okay, now I found the perfect spot." when it comes to um connecting with good agents, um I it's I have found one of the best ways

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that I found to do this is actually to um if you can find a a broker in in your area that works with commercial real estate, specifically somebody that works in long-term care, that's the best person. Uh some of the bigger brokerages have people that specialize at this. Um so like uh Marcus Milichap um has people. Uh Keller Williams has people. So, if you find people in those brokerages, you can typically find somebody that specializes in long-term care. They're they're a good resource. The other one

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is to get on a site like Loopnet and go find them. And even if it's not the right opportunity for you, reach out to the license to the to the listing agent there and build a relationship with that person. And if you like that person, have them become your new broker, your new agent. That's what's going to help you out. Okay? So, that that's one of the best ways to do it. Um, you're still here. You're in New York. Uh, looking for East Coast State. That would be good. Maybe

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try to run a search uh live just to see how it works. I don't have time to do I've actually got somebody out. Um, I've got a we have birds in our in our event, so I'm not able to do I've got to hop over and go help him out. Um, but uh yeah, basically what you want to do is you want to start at a high level. Um, New York is is a rough state to do this. And I know this because I have uh some students in New York, but if you're open to doing other states, you want to be looking at the different regulations

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that exist in those states. And that's going to really help you out in in figuring this out. This is stuff that I teach and actually go through in the foundation builder program. I give you the tool. I have a market research guide. It actually helps you I I I do all the research for you, like 80 90% of it, and then I show you exactly how to do the rest of it. Um, so it helps you identify which of those states is going to be best for you. And then from there takes you down to that more city level.

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Um, and then from there it's it's just kind of looking and doing deeper research and how to get into that. So that's what I would suggest for you. If you go to assisted livinginvesting.net/foundation, you're going to be able to check out the foundation builder program. Um, but that's how you want to do your market research. Start at a high level. Look at the the regulatory environment. How long is it going to take you to get licensed? uh what does that process look like? How

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many other facilities are in in the area already? Um what's what does competition look like? And um how many beds are there? One thing I will say I think with New York um there is um it's it's hard from a regulatory standpoint, but there's actually not a lot of facilities in New York. Um so from a from a competition standpoint, you're actually in a pretty good spot when it comes to New York. there's there's a lot of people that need the the care and there's not a lot of facilities. So,

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it's just navigating the regulatory environment in New York which can be hard. Um and and that can be that can I mean that's that's a hard thing on its own but um if you can navigate those things you've got a lot of people that need care in New York and there's not a lot of facilities there. So, you can have a lot of success there. I think it's just navigating those those regulatory waters. Okay. Um, so yeah, go check it out. Um, I'll put the link here, assisted livinginvesting.net

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foundation. Um, so you can go check that out and see if it's a good fit for you. Um, I think that's it's probably the best uh spot for you. Um, which state do you know out of out of hen on the east coast that would be good? Um, that's a good question. I have I have quite a few students in Virginia. That might be too far south for you. Um, but I know Virginia, um, there's there's a lot of demand there. Um, it it there's there's quite a bit quite a few regulations there. I've had quite a few people show

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interest in Ohio. Uh, Ohio might be closer to you than than Virginia. I live in Utah, so East Coast um, geography is not my my specialty. Um, which state is that? Delaware always shows up really high on my list of of states, like on my top 10 list. Delaware has been there for the last three years and which to me is really surprising because it's such a small state, but I think the regulatory environment in Delaware is actually not too bad. Um, and there's not a ton of competitions and and a lot of people um

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from a from a migratory standpoint for where people are moving. Um, people are moving away from New York, right? People are moving away from New York and California and and Washington and Oregon and some of these other states. um largely because of regula regula regulations and taxes um and they're moving to other states and Delaware seems to be one of those states that people are moving to and why that's a good thing for you as an assisted living owner is people are moving there it's like on top lists to

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retire to and so where people are retiring they're probably going to stay for a long time and we're just at the start of this wave of assisted living so if you can jump on it that's a good spot to be at. Okay, so hopefully that one makes a little bit of sense for you. um and and getting into that. Uh I might just have gotten a text. Yeah. So, I hope that helps. Um do I recommend starting with a small six bed or 20 or 30 bed that's more stable? If it's me, um I would start with a 20

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or 30 bed. It's more expensive to get started for sure, but your ability to be profitable and maintain profitability is so much higher in a bigger facility. So, if it were me, I would start with the 20 or 30 bed over a six bed. Six bed feels it feels accessible. It feels like you can do it, but the reality of small like less than 10 bed facilities is the the money that you're going to bring in, your profit potential is it shrinks very quickly. And if you have one or two residents that are not there, like you

00:26:08
you have vacancy in in your facility, any profit that you have goes away like almost instantly and then you're losing money actually. But if you have a 20 or a 30 bed, you could you could live at 75% occupancy and still be generating thousands of dollars in monthly profit. So, if your goal is profitability and you want both time and financial freedom, then I would go with a 20 or 30 bed. If you are just wanting more, you're kind of more concerned about just creating a good atmosphere for people

00:26:46
and you're not too concerned about making a ton of money um and and you you're okay working a lot of hours, then a six- bed facility is going to be fine uh for you. But just just keep in mind your ability for long-term profitability shrinks um quite a bit unless you're charging huge rates um for for the for for the home. Uh which is possible. Like I've I've talked to students of mine that have charged 10 $15,000 per month in their homes. So it's possible to do that. But in a normal just average

00:27:18
facility, I would go with the 20 or 30 beds like every day of the week. Um that's what I would do. Okay. All right. I got to hop uh hop out and go check on on this person. I hope this video was helpful to you uh and that you were able to get some good information from it. Again, remember uh if you need some help and some guidance as you're trying to get started, just type in foundation will get you access to the foundation builder program um there along the way and would love to see you in there. And

00:27:46
yeah, just 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. So, you're welcome and thanks for watching everybody and have a great day.