How to Start an Assisted Living Business with a Partner
Jun 12, 2025
Thinking about starting an assisted living business with a partner? π€
Good idea! Teaming up can help you move faster, split responsibilities, and grow bigger — together.
But you need to know how to set it up the right way.
If you skip a few steps early on, it can lead to big problems later (trust me, you don't want that π«).
In this post, I’ll walk you through how partnerships work, how to pay each other, and how to protect yourself financially, so you can build something amazing with your partner.
Let’s dive in! π
Check out this video, too:
Why It Matters
Working with a partner is exciting — but it’s important to:
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Set clear rules from the beginning (create an operating agreement) π
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Know exactly how each partner gets paid π΅
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Avoid future confusion, arguments, or tax headaches π§
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The right setup keeps your partnership strong and your business growing.
β
The wrong setup... well, it can get messy fast.
Step 1: Decide How Partners Get Paid
When you start an assisted living business with a partner, you have two main ways to pay yourselves:
1. Guaranteed Payments πΈ
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Regular payments (like a salary)
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Paid monthly or at a set frequency you decide
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Paid no matter what — even if the business isn't profitable yet
Tip: Guaranteed payments are a smart move if you or your partner are working inside the business every day, handling operations, caregiving, marketing, or admin tasks - just make sure the business has the money to pay you.
2. Distributions π
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Payments based on profits only
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Typically paid quarterly (every 3 months)
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You get paid only if the business makes money
Tip: Distributions are a great reward when the business is doing well — but there’s no paycheck if profits aren't there yet.
Step 2: Set the Payment Schedule
As business owners, you get to choose:
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How often guaranteed payments go out (monthly, bi-weekly, etc.) π
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How often you pay out distributions π΅
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How much each partner receives based on their roles and ownership share
You can even mix the two:
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A small, steady guaranteed payment each month to cover basic living expenses
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Bigger, exciting distributions when profits roll in! π
The key: Be clear and write it down. Everyone should know what to expect and when.
Step 3: Talk to an Accountant π§πΌ
This step is super important — do not skip it!
An accountant will help you:
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Structure your payments correctly from Day 1 π
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Set up the right tax strategies to save you money π°
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Protect your business and personal assets π‘οΈ
There are smart ways to balance guaranteed payments and distributions to lower your tax burden — but you need a pro to guide you.
β‘ Quick Tip: Accountants can also advise you on how to structure ownership percentages, set up your LLC or partnership agreement, and make sure you stay compliant with state and federal rules.
Step 4: Plan How You'll Use Your Earnings
Once you and your partner(s) start getting paid, you’ll have options:
π Buy that dream car or π€ get that boat
πΌ Reinvest back into the business for future growth (probably my favorite)
β€οΈ Donate to local nonprofits and make a bigger impact on your community
Many of you aren’t just in this for profits — you're in it to create real change.
Setting your partnership up correctly allows you to make money AND make a difference. π
Bonus: Donating to nonprofits like Boys and Girls Clubs or local charities can even give you extra tax benefits!
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.
β
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
00:00:01
hey friend it is Brandon Gustafson and welcome to Assisted Living investing excited to have you here with me today I've got a fun and exciting topic for us um and I was going to switch my camera sorry um I've got my less good camera going that's fine um anyways sorry it dist distracted me for a second there um we are going to be talking about today working with a partner in Assisted Living this is a question I get from people often um they want to know like if if you're working with a partner how
00:00:31
is that going to work um what's the structure need to look like and and things like that and we're going to dive into that in today's video before I get started though I want to remind you to get over to the website Assisted Living investing. net we will have a ticker going across um the bottom here that is going to remind you to get over there and get the business plan checklist uh go to Assisted Living investing. netb checklist we'll have links down below as well so you can get access to that and I
00:00:57
just want to make sure that that is clear and this week for those that are in the Facebook group we're doing a special promotion um for the accelerator course so if you are not in the Facebook group make sure you get over to the Facebook group and join that um I'll try to go back into YouTube and Link that if you're on the Facebook group already you don't need that but I'll try to link that up in YouTube so you can get over there and uh we're doing this um just till till Thursday so if you're
00:01:22
interested in in getting a little bit more information on that make sure you reach out to me on messenger is the best way to to just reach out and and say hey I'm interested raise your hand and uh we'll have a a conversation because I'd love to see what I can do to help you along your journey um throwing in some extra bonuses this week on the accelerator course so uh excited to to hopefully chat with you and help you along your investment Journey um all right let's get started so we are
00:01:49
talking today about working with a partner in Assisted Living I'm going to try to make this a little bit bigger let's see that is not bigger um let's see can I make me smaller no I think if I click here that makes it bigger you're not going to see me but that's all right um so I wanted to talk a little bit about uh working with an assisted living partner um so my background in case you don't know me um and you're new to the channel or new to the Facebook group I own and operate two assisted living
00:02:18
facilities one of them is in Colorado the other is in Idaho and I live in Utah so I operate these out of state have a lot of good experience uh going through the you know just understanding how to do that acquired both of those fa fa ities on SBA Loans so I've been able to secure over $1.5 million in SBA and know that process very well and can kind of coach you through how to use that as a as a way to help you get the funding you need to get you started and and launching your Assisted Living business
00:02:48
I have a masters in healthcare administration as well and have worked in the healthcare industry for over a decade now so I've got a lot of experience in the healthcare industry um we are largely Medicaid facilities and so I can teach you about that process government paid programs um and a bunch of different things if you are new here type in newbie um and if you are an experienced operator and you're just looking at expanding or or need more information um specifically around how to partner with other people make sure
00:03:16
you U just type in operator down below so I can see who is here and um who is um trying to figure things out and if you have questions as we go through this um then feel free to type them in here um the system I use doesn't always allow me to see your names um but um I can get back to you um here I see I've got somebody at least on Facebook so welcome thank you for joining you have any questions make sure you are typing them in and we can chat a little bit about that as we go along so uh let's jump
00:03:47
over now to the types of Partners I want to give you kind of an overview of the types of people you might consider partnering with as you are getting started on your investment Journey number one is family um and that's that's a simple one it's also kind of a complex one if you've ever worked or invested with family members um it can be uh it can be strenuous on on that relationship and so you want to make sure that you have a good relationship that you set up a really good um a
00:04:16
really good way of just the structure of how things are going to go and that you keep the business stuff business and the family stuff family and and you try your best to not intermingle those things just so that you can maintain those familiar relationships because I've talk to a lot of people whose family relationships have soured through doing a partnership with their family but it's also somebody generally you're going to trust them quite a bit and so it's a really good option for you to to partner
00:04:41
with them really easy to have that conversation as well uh and then the next one is going to be friends or investors people that are maybe outside of that familial Circle that you could get in with and talk with and uh just kind of work with as you're trying to um get things started and there's you've got your existing circle of friends right that's that's a good spot another great way for you to find investors is to go to Real Estate meetups so there's there's probably going to be uh a real
00:05:11
estate um type of a of a group in in your state um that they an association um other groups excuse me other groups um you can find them on meetup.com um you're going to be able to find a lot of meetups for the for other Real Estate Investors and being a to work with them and build those relationships is an incredible way for you to find these types of Partners so if you're looking for those partners that is a really good spot for you to go and find those Partners now the types of other partners
00:05:43
that you could be considering here aside from the individuals themselves are people that have certain types of experience or resources and that could be an operational partner U maybe you're the person that has the money and you need somebody that has some experience doing operations and can give you some guidance there um you're going to want to find that person that's operational and if if that's you going to those real estate meetups actually might not be that great of an option for you you
00:06:11
might be better off finding um a group like this this Facebook group um or or getting kind of ingrained in uh in in a group of people where operators are hanging out and see if you can go find them um in Idaho where we operate one of our facilities we actually have an excellent Facebook group that is around that there's a lot of people that I would say are operators they they're probably not entrepreneurial um right now but if you had the money and you went to them and said hey I'm looking
00:06:40
for an executive director or somebody to like operator to to run my facilities um I think you're going to be able to find them so that's one spot and the other one is money partners and this one is a lot of the people that I talked to are are people that they want to be the operator and they want to get started but they don't have the funding they don't they don't know how to get started and so you're looking for money Partners going to those real estate meetups is a great way to find those money partners
00:07:07
and just going out and doing networking and seeing who you can find and talking to the people in your network you probably know people you might not know that they have the money but I almost guarantee you that you know somebody you have somebody in your existing Network that has a lot of money that needs to invest it somewhere for tax purposes or things like that and it is putting yourself out there this is my Vision this is my dream this is what I want to do and explaining that to them and then
00:07:35
from there you are um starting to have the conversation you're convincing them you're you're negotiating with them and creating that partnership so you have that money partner so these are the types of partners that you could be working with now let's talk about the structure and this is another one a lot of people um ask me this question and I like I don't have a good answer for you because it depends on every single situation um there are two ways to kind of go about this though so I want to
00:08:01
just highlight the the two different ways there's like a 5050 or an even split um with the members so if you had three Partners in the group then you each own a third um or if there's two of you then it's a 50/50 split that is a pretty easy um process to go through you just kind of figure that out if you are like we were talking about an operator looking for a money partner or a money partner looking for an operator and they're you know you just kind of want to figure that out you're going somebody
00:08:28
whoever is heading that up uh whoever the brains of that um that situation is is going to have an idea in their mind what they want um to to give ownership what percentage of ownership they want to give to another person and so what you're going to do is you're going to have that idea in your mind you're going to have conversations you're GNA going to try to negotiate that and it's going to be based off of a percentage of ownership I don't know what that is going to look like for you um it depends
00:08:55
on if you're an operator how much experience you have as an operator how much value are you bringing versus if you're the money partner how much money do you have how much value are you bringing to that investment so these are the types of things that um that you need to consider and it honestly it just depends on everything there is no hard and fast rule that says as an operator I only get 20% or I get 80% as an operator and the money partner only gets 20% there's no hard and fast rule that says this is what it needs to
00:09:24
be that is very much up to you as as partners in how you're going to negotiate um you want to get as much as you can while also being fair to the other partner uh and you have to realize you can't get started without the money so the money is extremely important but you also cannot run a successful business without the operator and the operator is extremely important and so if the money partner wants a return on their investment they need to have a really good operator in in in running the
00:09:56
business okay so those are the the the components and it's really up to you to negotiate that there's there's just no hard and fast rule but I would regardless I would talk to an attorney to help you out um through the structuring of that process I this is something that is so complex I would not just get on Legal Zoom and and go and and create an entity and and put it together willy-nilly if you've got a partner that thinks they know what they're doing and that's what they want
00:10:24
to do I would push pause and I would go and talk to an attorney and make sure you understand exactly what you're getting into because there are there's so many complexities to this type of a business and uh the liabilities that you have as you are caring for residents and things like that you want to make sure that you are completely protected and and helping get things in line with where they need to be and a big part of that is your operating agreement so your operating agreement basically says these
00:10:53
are the 20 responsibilities and this person's going to do these 10 and this person's going to do these 10 and you are laying that out um as to who's going to do what and um how much they're getting out of the partner partnership you're going to put in there you know if you have to change the structure you're bringing in a new partner you're somebody wants to exit what is that going to look like you're going to want to put all of this together in an operating agreement and working with an
00:11:21
attorney is the best way to do that what I like to do when I'm doing these types of Partnerships is I like to sit down and think to myself okay these are the roles these are the responsibilities this is what I want to want this to look like and sorry I need to plug my computer in so I don't um die as as I'm doing the recording my battery's getting low um let me go back okay so what I like to do is I I build that out and uh and put it in a in a structure this is this is how I Envision it and then I'm talking
00:11:53
with the the other partner and getting that information out there and we're we're talking about it together um and figuring it out and then we're taking that to an attorney and saying okay this is how we envision this going um this is what the structure is this is what we think it's going to be like um can you now put this in legal ease so it protects each of us um in the situations that we're in so that's that's that's how I like to kind of structure those operating agreements but you want to
00:12:20
take the time to figure out who's going to do what and how it's going to work um this is key to any partnership and um why I would highly suggest that you get an attorney I'm not an attorney I don't get any Kickback from any attorney um I would suggest you do that ones that I have worked with in the past there's kkos lawyers is who I have used and then um Clint Coons is another one that I've seen have really good stuff around assisted living on on YouTube and so I've never worked with them never talked
00:12:48
with them I've been very impressed with um the type of stuff that they put out the content that they have so there's a couple um a couple opportunities for you there um to to talk to people um all right now let's get into paying partners and this is another question that I get asked all the time is how much do I pay my partner and like we talked about earlier it's going to depend on the percentage of ownership but also in your operating agreement you're going to outline exactly what
00:13:16
that's going to look like for for you and for the partner you're going to define the terms of payment do you have to hit certain metrics do you have to be profitable by a certain point do you have to have X amount of money that is um set aside for operations before you can do any kind of a draw and pay the the people and there's really two types of payments and again I would talk with an accountant on this one uh talk to professionals as much as you can as you get into this but um there's two types
00:13:44
of payments one is a guaranteed payment and that is essentially a salary it says we are paying ourselves $10,000 every month no matter what um and that's that's what you would call Guaranteed payment and it comes out on a regular basis and it's a salary and the other one is a distribution and often times that is based off of profitability if you read the book profit first by um Mike um what is it Mike mallwitz yeah um sorry I've got one of his other books up here um it will give you a really good
00:14:15
guidance on how to do that there's another book by uh Donald Miller it's uh it's about building a business I can't it's sideways I can't see the the title of it but um he has a a process in there as well and they really do a good job of outlining exact those types of payments what they look like and how they should be structured and give you some guidance on that so highly recommend those two books um they're they're great uh but you want to define those terms and that's how people
00:14:40
are getting paid um distributions are generally like a percentage of profitability you're getting distributed out on a corly basis your guaranteed payments are more of a monthly thing but all of that is up to you as the business owner as to how frequently and how much you want to to be paying out to people um as as you get started talk to an accountant to figure out the tax implications of of that as well though because there's going to be tax implications for that money that is coming to you um through through the
00:15:11
business and there are strategies that you can utilize to say I'm going to do this much in the guaranteed payment and this much on the distributions and you can kind of Leverage that out a little bit and you're still getting paid the same amount and U out a regular Cadence but um there are tax benefits for how you do that I don't understand the complexities of it that's why you want to talk to an accountant they're going to help you out in figuring out how to protect yourself um from a financial
00:15:36
standpoint to keep as much of the money as as you can so you can do what you want to do with it uh and that could be um you know could be buying a new truck buying a new boat or could be giving back to other people and um improving your community even more and a lot of you that are doing this like uh yeah you think ah cool yeah that new car would be great but I've talked with so many of you that I know that you you have like a Caring Heart and and and and just like this you're incredible human beings and
00:16:05
uh like I think you are more likely to take that money and invest it into Boys and Girls Clubs or another nonprofit that's in the area that's going to give you a tax benefit for for donating but also allow you to have even more of an impact on your communities and like that's that's the majority of you that I talk to 80% are more um that's why you're in this business is you want to have that type of an impact on on people's lives so um that is um how paying Partners work and and how that's
00:16:33
structured so I switched this thing up but there's any questions please type them in I'll get to those right now I know there's a couple of you that are here live and if you are not live you can still type in your questions I'll get back to you if it's on the Facebook group then um I will possibly make an entire post or um I could if depending on the topic do a live session uh like this on on that topic uh but want to remind you to like the video subscribe and ring the bell as well so you get
00:17:02
notified every time that we are putting up this content um I'm doing this for you to help you out and help you through your process I want to remind you as well get over to the website at assisted livin.on BP checklist we'll link that down below as well then you will get access to a business planning checklist or if you just go to the website you can get access to the free underwriting calculator as well which is um just I I receive r feedback on that tool and I spent a lot of time on it and it's it's
00:17:32
very comprehensive uh you can also remember um if you are on the Facebook group this week only we are doing a special promotion for the accelerator program I'm throwing in some extra bonuses um this week and excited to see if if it's a good fit for you so if it is reach out and let's have a conversation you can reach out to me either on the Facebook post or um just jump in on messenger directly and message me and let's have a conversation there uh to see if see if what I offer is a good fit for you I'm not going to
00:18:02
try to sell you on something that isn't a good fit um but I I think it can help you along your investment Journey for sure um but again we're going to have that conversation uh one-on-one and see if it's a good fit for you or not and um God there was one other thing that goes that goes through um this Thursday which is February 15th yeah February 15th um and then I'm I'm taking those extra bonuses out so uh just wanted to kind of give you a heads up on that and excited to kind of work with you here a little bit
00:18:35
um as as we move things along uh want to remind you I'm going to try to come back into view here there we go that's me and uh just want to remind you to get over to the website uh Assisted Living investing. net um and get that business plan checklist get the calculator get all the free resources um that's what I'm here to do is is help you along your investment Journey uh because at Assisted Living investing I'm here to help you through the process start to finish launch your Assisted Living
00:19:01
business and coach you through the process I'm really excited to help you out and get you moving with that and uh see what progress you can make this residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you don't know how to get started at Assisted Living investing. net we are here to help you launch your Assisted Living business want to thank you for watching thanks for being here live with me and excited to uh talk to you next week make sure you like subscribe and ring the bell on
00:19:25
the channel so you get notified for all these other uh all this other content content and I'll talk to you next time thanks everybody have a great
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