How to Start an Assisted Living Business the Easy Way

and business foundation learn how to start an assisted living business with a simple step-by-step plan focused on your model market money Sep 11, 2026

Starting an assisted living business can feel confusing when you do not know what to do first. I hear from many healthcare workers who want to do this but feel stuck because there are so many things to figure out. The good news is, you do not have to figure out everything at once.

Want the full breakdown? Watch the video below👇

Start by building your assisted living business model

The first step is to decide what your business will look like. Before you worry about a house, funding, or licensing, get clear on why assisted living and who you want to serve.

Write your answers down. This helps you explain your vision and gives you a clear path to follow.

You also need to choose the path you want to take. There are four paths I teach:

✅ Rent and renovate
✅ Buy and convert a home
✅ Buy an existing facility
✅ Build from the ground up

Then decide how many residents you want to serve. You may want six residents, 10, 20, or even more. You also need to decide who you want to serve, such as seniors, people with dementia, or people with mental health disorders.

Learn your market before you choose a property

Once you know your model, it is time to understand your market. This means looking at supply and demand in the area where you want to start your assisted living business.

First, find out how many people in your target population live in that area. Then look at how many existing facilities are already serving them.

This market research helps you see if there is a need for more beds. It also helps you feel more confident that you are looking in the right place.

💡 Do not start by falling in love with a house. Start by understanding the market.

Make sure the numbers can work

Your next step is to understand the money. You need to know how much revenue the business could bring in and how much money will go out.

I use the WIFE'D expenses to help look at the major costs:

✅ Wages
✅ Insurance
✅ Food
✅ Energy, such as utilities
✅ Debt service, such as a loan or rent payment

Take your revenue and subtract these expenses. Then you can start looking at the profit potential of your assisted living business.

You do not need to spend money to begin this work. You can start your business plan today using free tools like Google Drive or other free word-processing software.

Build your foundation before worrying about funding

One of the biggest beginner mistakes is trying to solve everything at the same time. You may be thinking about funding, licensing, and finding the perfect property. But those things come later.

Your foundation comes first:

✅ Business plan
✅ Market research
✅ Underwriting

I have seen people spend hours trying to find a property before they know if the business model and numbers work. That can lead to wasted time.

Think about building a smooth sledding trail. The first few trips may be slow and hard. But each trip makes the trail smoother. Once the trail is ready, you can move much faster.

That is how you should approach your assisted living business.

Take one clear action at a time

You do not need to watch every YouTube video or take every training before you begin. Knowledge helps, but taking action is what moves you forward.

Pick one task and finish it. Then move to the next one.

Start with your business plan. Then work on your market research. Then complete your underwriting. Once those pieces are in place, you can start working through funding, licensing, and finding the right property.

That is the easy way to start: model, market, money, then build your foundation.

Wrap Up

Starting an assisted living business does not mean solving every problem today. Your next step is to define your model, understand your market, and make sure your numbers work.

Start small. Take one step at a time. The work you do now can make the rest of the process much smoother.

If you need help creating a business plan for your assisted living business, check out the Free Business Plan Checklist.

And if you’re ready to figure out your next step, join me for the next Roadmap Challenge, where I’ll walk you through how to get started.

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Show full transcript 👇

Transcript

00:00:00
Have you been trying to figure out how to start an assisted living business, but you are just like totally confused cuz you have no idea how to start. It feels overwhelming and you're just like I I don't know if I'm ever going to do this. I want to do it so bad. I know I can do it better than anybody else, but I just don't know how to start and this is confusing and overwhelming and I just I don't know. It's a dream, but I'm probably never going to get there. Like does that sound like you? Have you had

00:00:26
this conversation in your head? If so, today's video, your first assisted living business easy start is going to help you out as you're trying to get started on your path to launching your first assisted living business. And the reason why I created this video is because I hear from so many people like you on Facebook and on YouTube in the comments that are telling me that this is something you struggle with. I hear from almost everybody that you don't know how to get started. So, I created this video to help you out

00:00:59
and help you launch your assisted living business. If you need some help with that, um or you want to give me a little bit of feedback on where you're at and what you need help with, go to ALIquiz.com. We'll have a a QR code down here for you somewhere in one of these corners. But, hey friend, my name is Brandon Gustafson and I help healthcare workers start their own assisted living business so they know exactly where to start so they're not stuck trying to figure out and they know exactly what to

00:01:21
do next. So, let's get into today's video. Again, we're talking about your first assisted living business easy start. We're going to push that easy button and this is what I see. The actual first decision beginners need to make. Not the things that you're actually doing right now cuz honestly, you're probably doing it wrong. But, let's talk about the actual first steps that you should be making as you get started on this. And if you want to learn more and want to dive deeper in this with me,

00:01:50
type in workshop because I have a free workshop where I'm going to teach you a lot of this stuff. I'm going to remind you about it once I'm done uh kind of giving you a little bit of information here. But, when it comes to beginning your assisted living journey, the first thing you need to do is figure out your model. You need to figure out why assisted living. And not just something that you have in your head, you need to put it on paper so that other people catch your vision and they

00:02:15
get excited about why you want to do it. Why assisted living? And what like honestly, what I would like you to do is kind of take this video as a training. Go ahead and pause things and like journal all this stuff out because it's going to help you out. So, why assisted living for you? Type it in the comments, too. Like I'd love to hear from you. Why do you want to get into assisted living? Second one is which path are you going to go down to get started on your assisted living business? I teach four paths. There's

00:02:43
There's four ways you can get into this. Uh number one is rent and renovate. One is buy and uh and convert a home. One is buying an existing facility and and the fourth one is building something from the ground up. Now, you may have an idea of what you think you want to do. Actually, in the workshop, I'm going to take you through a quiz that's going to help you determine which one's the best fit for you. It's not perfect by any means, but it is directionally going to get you moving and helping you solidify

00:03:09
an idea of how you're going to get started. Okay? And the other thing that I want you to look at, the third thing here with your model, is how many residents do you want to serve? And what population is it that you want to serve? Is it six residents, 10 residents? Is it 20? Is it 100? Like how many do you want to have? Are you looking at serving a dementia population? Some mental health disorders? Just elderly care in general? Who do you want to serve? Type those things down below, as well. Like how

00:03:37
many beds do you want to have and what population do you want to serve? I'm I'm really curious to see what that looks like for you and see who you're trying to get to. Okay, the second thing is you need to figure out your market. You need to understand the supply and demand. So, this is market research. This is understanding how many residents in that population that you want to serve, whether it's dementia or elderly care or mental health disorders or whatever it is, how many people of that population

00:04:04
live in the area where you want to start your assisted living business. Okay? So, that's going to be your supply. Then we're going to look at the demand, and we want to see how many existing facilities are already there. And what you're going to often times find is in most areas, especially right now in the United States, there are a few spots that are saturated, but most spots are not. There's actually a deficiency in the amount of beds that are available. And so, you're going to be able to have

00:04:29
a lot of success here. But you need to understand the supply and demand and exactly what that looks like and how it's going to work so that you can feel confident I found the right a spot to start my assisted living business. Okay? The third thing is your money. You need to understand if this is going to be profitable or not. So, you need to understand the finances. You need to ask to understand how the income works. We need to all that revenue that comes in. We need to understand the expenses on

00:04:55
that side and see how much money's going to go out and if we can be profitable or not. I teach what I call the WIFE'D expenses, w i f e d, wages, insurance, food, energy, which is your utilities, and your debt service, which is like your loan payment or your rent payment. Um you're going to take your revenue, you're going to minus the WIFE'D expenses, and then we're going to only to look at our profit potential. Okay? We need to understand those things. Now, what I just walked you through very,

00:05:21
very quickly is what I call the 3 M's, model, market, money. Uh in the workshop, type in workshop down below, by the way, if you want to learn more about this. It's a free, live workshop. Would love to have you in there. I go through in depth those 3 M's to help you understand how they actually work and how to make progress on each of them. And this workshop is not something that is just like, "Oh yeah, it's cool. It's another webinar. I'm going to go watch it." I'm

00:05:46
actually going to make you do some work on there. So, this is like come prepared with a pen and a paper. I'm going to have you do some exercises. You're going to email me some stuff. Like I really want you to make progress. I'm going to hold you a little bit accountable cuz I'm your coach. I'm going to make sure that you're moving forward with this. All right? So, go check it out. assistedlivinginvesting.net/workshop or just type in workshop down below. We'll get you the link down in the

00:06:07
comments. But, if you can do those things, that's what you should be working on first. Getting your three M's, your model, your market, and your money in place, and then you can start moving forward. The things that you should not be focusing on first, and these are probably the things that you are focusing on right now, but what you should not focus on right now is your funding. Like trying to figure out funding and getting overwhelmed by it. Just stop. Just stop worrying about it. Unless you

00:06:35
have already built your foundation, don't worry about it. Build the foundation first. You're worried about licensing. Stop. Stop figuring out licensing. Stop worrying too much about it. Build your foundation first. Get that thing done first. You're probably trying to figure out, okay, I think I got this perfect property. I think it's going to work for assisted living. Stop. Build your foundation first. Get your business plan in place. Understand the numbers. Make sure those things work.

00:07:01
And then if you think you still have a house that's going to work for assisted living, great. Then let's start looking at the licensing for that house and converting it into a home and and working through all the zoning issues and everything that comes into place there. But if not, you're just spinning your wheels, you're wasting your time, you're not focusing on the things that you should be worrying about right now. All of those things, those are the three big ones that people get so hung up on

00:07:22
in the beginning. Funding, licensing, finding a house. They're just noise at this point in the process. You will have to get through them. You will. I promise you, you're going to get to it. You're going to figure it out. It's going to be fine. But you have to build your foundation first. And the rest of it becomes so much easier. In the Navy SEALs, they have this idiom. It says that slow is smooth and smooth is fast. It's the same thing here. When you go slow and you move slow

00:07:50
and you put in the foundation work, you're building something that allows you to go smooth. And when something is smooth, it goes fast, right? I I've often times talked about this analogy of sledding snow sledding. If you've ever done this, you know that you sit at the top of the hill and you're like getting ready to go and you got to scoot down the mountain a little bit. Scoot down the hill and it's really, really slow. But what you're doing if you look behind you, you're making this smooth trail.

00:08:16
And the next time you get up to the top and you go on that smooth trail, you're going to go a little bit faster and a little bit further. And then after you do this five or six times, now you're like going all the way down. Now you're maybe building jumps. You're going super fast. You're getting a lot of speed and it's a lot more fun. It's because you put in the work to build this smooth track that now you can go really fast on. But that first time you go down it, it's

00:08:38
hard. It's slow. It's not fun, right? But the more you go on it, the more practice you get, the better off you're going to be. That's what you're trying to build here. Might be It might be hard. It might be boring. But that's what's going to help you actually be success. So, common beginner mistakes that I see is you're trying to figure out everything out at once. Stop doing that. Even when it comes to your foundation, stop trying to do your market research and your

00:09:05
business plan and your underwriting at the same time. Just focus on one thing. Okay? Just one. That's how you have to do it. And I also see this and I see this with my students all the time and it uh it's it's hard for me and I I try to make corrections there. And I I want you to be one of these people that I get to correct and and help along the path is you are not taking action or you're taking the wrong action. You get caught up in Okay, I'm just going to watch a bunch of

00:09:33
YouTube videos. I'm going to watch a bunch of trainings over here and I'm going to gain some knowledge. I'm just going to pile it on my head and everything's eventually going to make sense. You have to like start doing the work. That's the thing that's going to actually help you make some really good solid progress. Stop watching all the things. Start putting in the work. Start doing things and then you'll be amazed at where you end up. Okay? And a lot of people as well

00:10:03
in doing that, in taking action, you're taking the wrong action. You're not building that foundation first. You're trying to talk to lenders to get pre-approved and that is a different process when it comes to assisted living. You need to have the foundation in place first. You need every pre-approval you get is actually going to be based off of a specific opportunity rather than just a general oh yeah, you have a million dollars to spend. Have fun with it. Um it is going to be very much case-by-case

00:10:30
basis. So, you need to build all of that in if you want to to actually be successful. The three foundational things that you need, those three foundational steps before you get to funding is going to be your business plan, your market research and your underwriting. I've got free resources for you here. Type in BP if you want the business plan checklist. Type in calculator if you want the underwriting calculator. I can get those over to you. You can start filling those out. Start working on your

00:10:56
business plan. Start doing your underwriting and start building that foundation now. And if you want some extra help, type in workshop. We'll get you over to the workshop. But when you do this, like the best way for you to come in here and for me to help you build your foundation, to help you actually get launched, is come to the free workshop. Type in workshop. Come here. Define your model. Define your market. Define your money. Understand how those things work and then start building your foundation. And

00:11:26
then, and only then, should you start looking at funding, licensing and getting the right property. Everything else will go so much more smoothly for you. That is the easy way for you to start. And the cool thing is for those of you who have the concern that I don't have any money, I can't get started. Guess what? You can write a business plan today with no money. You can use Word. If you if you don't have the money to to get Microsoft Word, then you can use like uh LibreOffice or there's free

00:11:58
word processing things out there. Get Google Drive. Uh type it up. You can put it all in there. Okay? I'm giving you the business plan checklist. It's going to help you know what sections to put into your business plan. I'm going to give you the free underwriting calculator away for free. I I spent hours on this thing. Like it is I have had people tell me that this thing is worth like $3,000 and I'm just giving it to you for free. So, like go take advantage of those things and start

00:12:24
building your foundation. And you can do that today without spending any money. Okay? I would love to help you out. I have coaching programs that I can help you out with that. Take take the quiz ALI quiz.com. QR code down here in one of the corners. And I can give you extra guidance, but you know what? Even if you don't work with me there, go grab the free tools anyways and start working on it. I don't care. I want you to be successful. So, links will be down below for all of those things. Now,

00:12:51
we went through a lot today, but what I hope you gathered is you need to work on your foundation first. You need to do your business plan, your underwriting, and your market research. And if you can do those things, you're going to be so much more successful. That's what you should be focusing on now. Like right now. Go start doing it. Pause the video. Stop the video. Whatever. I go start taking action. That's what's going to allow you to be successful. Now, if you found this video helpful, like the

00:13:16
video, subscribe, ring the bell so everybody gets notified so you get notified when I put out content like this and it helps other people find content like this as well so they can be successful in launching their assisted living business. Are you curious about assisted living, but you're not sure how to get started? Well, at Assisted Living Investing, I help healthcare workers start their own assisted living business so they're not stuck trying to figure out and know exactly what they should do next. And I

00:13:40
also want to remind you that it doesn't take a lot, just a little bit, just keep going step by step by step. And I promise you if you do and you are consistent and persistent, you are going to be successful. Hey, it's future Brandon. I totally forgot when I was recording a little bit earlier today that I needed to remind you, if you found this video helpful, make sure you go and watch this video. We're going to watch that one, okay? And hey, if if you don't like that one, but you want to watch another one, watch the

00:14:04
other one that YouTube's going to recommend for you out there as well, okay? Thanks for watching and have a great day.

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