Overwhelmed Starting Assisted Living? Here’s Where to Begin

Transcript

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Hey friend, have you been trying to figure out how to get into assisted living? You're just like trying to figure out how to get started. You're just confused. You're overwhelmed. It's It feels like, "Oh my gosh, there's so many things online and that I I just I want to do this. I can see the potential, but I I have no idea where to start." Well, in today's video, we're going to talk about that. uh because I I hear from a lot of people like you that that's something that you're struggling

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with and I just want to have a real and simple conversation around what it takes for you to get started in assisted living so you know the things that you should be focusing on as you're trying to make some progress. So if you're interested in that, make sure you stick around for today's video. Hey friend, my name is Brandon Gustafson. I help first-time assisted living entrepreneurs launch profitable, purpose-driven businesses, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives. I

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love helping and coaching people, and really looking forward to to helping you along the path. If you need some help and some guidance on this, just type in roadmap down below, and we'll send you a link to our next roadmap challenge. And I'll tell you a little bit more about that here at the end of the video. With that, let's get into our video for today. Okay. So, again, we're talking about what it's like uh for you as you're trying to get started and you just feel overwhelmed. Uh it just feels

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like there's so many things to do and you don't know where to begin. Uh I I get this this comment on on YouTube comments all the time. Um and uh I got one recently, so I was like, "Oh, we're going to make a video that's specific to this and helping you kind of get unstuck." So, if you need help on certain things, drop those things in the comments because I pay attention to those. I add them to these live topics um and and for future videos. Uh so if there's something that you need some

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guidance on, drop that in the comments so I can make some videos that are going to help you out along your journey. Um because if you're struggling with it, you're not the only one. And I want to make sure I'm helping you uh make some some progress. All right, I am feeling a little bit congested and under the weather today as well, so I apologize if I cough or sneeze. I will try super hard not to, but no promises. Anyways, let's get into it. So, we're going to talk right here uh today. We're going to talk

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about starting with the basics and what those basics are, what you should be doing. Uh so, we're going to talk about that. We're going to get into uh why you should be putting in the hard and sometimes even boring work first. Um but that's what's going to help you be successful. So, I just want to have a very frank conversation with you about doing the hard and boring stuff, but that's going to set you up for success more than what anybody else is going to teach you how to do. And then we're

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going to talk a little bit about my focus framework. And for those of you that have followed me, you know a lot about the focus framework, but if you want some extra guidance and direction on that, just type in focus down below and uh that'll let me know, hey, you want some some content around this um and and we can make that for you uh to help you get unstuck. All right, so let's let's get into this. Starting off with the basics, the things that you need to do to start off with, and I

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teach this to everybody um when I'm talking to them. I teach it in the road map challenge. I teach it here on YouTube. But you have got to build your foundation. It is the F of the focus framework. It is foundation first. That foundation is what is going to help propel you into having success. So if we look at at the story in the Bible, and I'm I'm blanking on the exact uh book and chapter in the Bible, but we know that uh there is the parable of the wise and the foolish man, right? So the wise

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man um he builds his house on a rock on a foundation and when the rains come down and the floods come up uh that house is built on a solid foundation and so it stands there on the rock right it's it's solid nothing's going to happen whereas the foolish man has built his house on the sand and uh when the rains come down the floods come up that foundation that is built on sand is washing away. If you've ever gone to the beach and have built sand castles, you know that uh when when you're out there

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and it's low tide and you're building this nice sand castle and everything is is great. Um like you have a really cool thing. But when the tide comes up, the tide comes in that that water is going to wash away everything that was built in that sand castle. It goes away. And if you come back the next day, it's gone. It's totally gone. It's not somebody came and knocked it over. The ocean did it. Right? It's the same principle. When we don't do these things with a solid foundation, it makes it so

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that we cannot have something that is is going to last. You might be successful for a period of time. You might be able to push through it and have some success. I'm not saying you can't, but you're going to be so much more likely to have success long term and and have a business that's going to run uh efficiently and profitably in the long term if you set up your foundation correctly upfront. All right. So, we're going to talk about what those things are a little bit here in just a second.

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Uh, but you have to start off by building your foundation. That's the first thing you got to do. I also don't want you in the beginning to get too caught up in like finding the perfect home or uh worrying about the funding or the licensing process. So, those things um it's it's kind of the principle of do first things first. If you do those first things first, finding the right house, getting the funding, understanding the type of licensing that you need to do, all those things are

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going to start falling into place. It doesn't mean that, oh, cool, I I built my business plan, it's perfect. Now, you know, I can figure out my licensing, you know, just, you know, snap your fingers and it's done. There will be hard work into it, uh, that goes into it. But the more time that you spend, uh, just kind of building that foundation and having something solid, the more successful you're going to be. So, do first things first. Build your foundation. And don't get too caught up on thinking, "Okay, I

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have this three-bedroom home that that I think would be great for a small unlicensed care home. Um, I'm how am I going to figure out how to get the license and and talk to zoning and and figure all those things out?" Take a step back, build your foundation first. Let's run the numbers. Let's make sure this is actually going to work and you're going to reach your your profitability goals with it. Because if not, it doesn't matter. Don't waste your time going and talking to the city about

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zoning and trying to figure those things out. Those things don't matter. You're going to waste your time getting there. So, you have to start with the foundation first. Don't worry about getting funding for renovations on a house that's uh three or four bedrooms and trying to to make some changes to it if you haven't run the numbers yet and you don't know what excuse me that income potential is going to look like. All right. And a part of that is validating the idea first. And that's that's what we do

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inside the road map challenge. So again, if you're interested in that, just type in road map. We'll talk about it here at the end of the video. But we want to validate the idea that assisted living is going to work. Assisted living, I think, is a great way for you to generate an incredible amount of income, um, give back to your community, and build this incredible legacy for your family. It's such an incredible business model, and it has so much potential to do good. But that doesn't mean that

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every single home is going to be perfect for assisted living. Doesn't mean that um your specific area is perfect for assisted living. There will be hurdles. Uh a person uh one of my students in in my success system program uh we're working through that right now. She actually has three homes uh that she's looking at at converting into assisted living right now. And um two of those homes are in a certain city um that there's a lot more rules and regulations that we have to handle. the other one

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that's in another city. It seems to be a lot more open. Like she's gone through the process of building the foundation and now we're we're shifting over to, okay, let's do idea validation. Let's make sure this is going to work. What types of permits and conditional use permits and zoning do we need to have in place? What type of funding do we need to have to get it up and running? What things can we do in the interim while we are trying to get the license in place to to make sure there's cash flow coming

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in? We're validating all of these ideas. And I was just talking with her yesterday in a coaching call. Um, and we went through and got a better understanding of exactly what those financials are going to look like for her. And now she's able to have those conversations with the respective cities with a lot more confidence moving forward and knowing that she knows what she's she's getting into. So, let's talk about the the uh foundation that you need to be building. You know, we talked

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about the importance of building this solid foundation. Uh, let's chat about that. These are some of those more uh boring things, you know, the boring stuff at least for some people that they don't want to do. And you know, as much as I think uh some people think this is boring, I think it is the most important thing for you to do. And I will also say I love doing these things. And so what might be boring for you uh isn't boring for me. And I I would also uh I'd submit to you that uh once you get into this

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and you see uh some of the potential uh it actually kind of gets exciting and it it doesn't seem so boring. I say boring because a lot of the stuff here in the foundation phase are the things that you would have learned in school like if you went to uh if you did your undergrad or you went to graduate school. Um these are the the types of little basic things that you have to do. And if you haven't done that that's fine. You can still be successful in this business. I'm not saying you have to have a masters in

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business or healthcare administration or um even that you have to be a nurse or or any of those things, but um these are the the types of things that you should be focusing on. So, the first one is your business plan. You need to be working on that. If you need a checklist of the different pieces of your business plan, uh just type in BP down below. We'll get you a link to my business plan checklist. It's it's free. Uh will help you know which sections you need to have inside of your business plan. Uh so,

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just BP down below. But your business plan is going to be so important for you because it leads you to having the correct conversations with the city. Uh it helps you out in getting funding, whether that's finding and and convincing a partner to work with you or talking to a lender or or anything from, you know, around all of the funding aspects of trying to get funds. It's going to give you something that you can hand to them and say, "This is where we want to go." So your business plan, it's

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crucial. You got to work on it. Um, and it it makes the world of difference. I had somebody uh a student of mine um in a roadmap challenge who just like was like, "We we took your business plan um course." Um, and at the time I was I was offering uh the Launchpad bundle. If you're interested in that, just type in Launchpad down below. I might uh open that back up for people as well. So, if you're interested in it, open it back up, but or just type it in and I'll see if I can open it back up for you. Uh but

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the Launchpad bundle was all about building this foundation, everything we're talking about in this video. Okay. And excuse me. Um what uh what she told me was um we took this to a lender and they were blown away by what uh we had put together. Um but what I what I give you in that launchpad bundle is uh the foundation for how to to build these things. And it is it's it it's what I have learned from working with uh with several different lenders and and having secured over three loans with 100 $1.5

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million in funding uh for multiple businesses. um and taking that something that people would charge you thousands of dollars for um making it very affordable so you can do the work yourself and give it off to somebody and they get blown like their socks get blown off because it's such an incredible business plan. Like that's that's what you want to do and you hit on all the sections that are important to them. But you need to have your business plan in place because it makes everything that much easier. Okay. The

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second thing that you need to work on is your underwriting. And underwriting is something it's basically what underwriting is is you're you're taking the numbers. You're um projecting out what your income potential could be and what your expenses are going to look like and then what your net operating income is going to be. Okay? If you need some help with that, you can go grab my calculator. Just type in calculator down below. We'll get you a link to it. But you need to spend some and I give it

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away for free. um the the calculator um the the underwriting process can be hard especially if you're somebody that doesn't understand numbers and that's something we actually talk about in the Launchpad bundle. So again, type in Launchpad if you're interested in that. Excuse me. Uh but when you have solid underwriting, that's going to give you confidence that you can move forward. You're actually going to make a profit on this. And um underwriting is so important and and it's important for you

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as well to not have rosecolored glasses on as you're going through that underwriting process. It's so easy to be like, "Okay, well, um what if I had 10 residents and I I was able to charge $8,000 a month. Like that would be really cool." And then you're like, "No, I can do that, right? This is it's going to be easy. Um that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to underwrite it that way." When in reality, your home can only have eight residents, not 10.

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Right? We're thinking, uh, could be 10 if I do this renovation, I do all these things. Yeah, potentially, yes, but let's let's underwrite it where it's at today. Um, and and maybe it's eight. And and maybe your market can't hold an $8,000 um monthly rent. Maybe you're at four or 5,000. And that is a huge difference, right? 10 beds at $8,000 per month is $80,000 in income. That's nice. But eight beds at $40,000 or eight beds at $4,000 uh a month in income is $32,000. That's a $48,000 gap. It's

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huge. So, what I don't want you to do is be like, "Oh, pie in the sky. This thing is going to be awesome. I can charge $8,000 for 10 beds. Um, and and I'm going to be great." And it's always going to be that way. You need to pump the brakes on that. And you need to take a little bit more time. I want you to reach your profit goal. Not not break even, but your profit goal. So, if that's $10,000 a month, I want you to have that at 80% occupancy. That's what I want you to be underwriting it at. And

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the underwriting calculator is going to help you understand exactly how those numbers work. So again, type in calculator. We'll get you the the link to the free underwriting calculator so you can look at that and and help make some progress on this. Because if you take the underwriting process seriously, you're going to be able to determine if this is a good fit for you or not. Um, I got into the first business, the first assisted living facility, existing facility I was looking at buying was in Draper, Utah.

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If you want to hear the whole story, just type in Draper down below. That'll be my key to let me share the story with you. But, uh, what I what I did with that home is it was beautiful and, um, it was the beginning of COVID um, when when we were looking at that home. Uh, and until I got the numbers and like looked at them and ran the numbers, I would have jumped into it. But after getting the numbers, I realized this isn't gonna this isn't going to be a good fit for me. We're going to lose a

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bunch of money. And I'm so grateful that I took time to understand the numbers to make sure this would work for me. Otherwise, I could get upside down very quickly. And in this business, you have the potential to make a lot of money. But if you don't do it correctly, you can also lose a lot of money. So, I just want you to be aware of that. And that's why underwriting is so important. Okay. The third thing that you need to be doing here is your market research and you need to understand exactly what the

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that that entails for you. Um, in my book, The Profitable Assisted Living Facility, if you go to the book.com, we'll have links down below, but if you type in book in the comments, we'll make sure to get you the link. Um, but it looks like this. You can find it on Amazon, on Audible. Um, it's it's on all those platforms. It's a bestselling book in multiple uh categories on Amazon as well. So, make sure you go check it out. uh but it has like my entire brain on how to start assisted living and puts it

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into book form. But in my book on um let's see it's on page 138 I talk about my 5% rule uh for market research. And that that 5% rule is something that is going to just kind of set you apart in the way that you are researching to make sure that this is going to be a good fit for you for that specific market. If you're interested in learning more about the 5% rule, just type in five down below and I'll make sure I get a video for you that is specific to that 5% rule. But when you do those things, your

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business plan, your underwriting, your market research, you are building a foundation, you know, like the the wise man who's building it on a rock. That's what you're doing. It's going to take you some time. Now, you can do this quickly. You could you can knock out a lot of those things in a week or two. Um, you can go fast on this. A lot of people don't. And I'm I'm here to tell you as well. I was in a coaching call um this morning with a guy named Myin Golden. If you're interested in learning

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a little bit more about him, just type in Golden down below. I'll get you a link to some of his stuff. Um but um in there, he's talking about how um money loves speed. And the faster that we work on things, the the more that that money is going to come into us. And so if you're looking at starting out an assisted living business, then what you need to do is you need to move fast. You need to build your business plan fast. You need to underwrite fast. You need to do your market research fast. Then you

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should probably go back and review it again. Uh so you shouldn't just be doing it and be like, "Cool, cool. Awesome." You know, 10 beds, $8,000 per room. Um this this thing is going to be great. Everything's going to be everything's going to be perfect. Like take a step back. Just breathe on it. um wait just a second uh maybe sleep on it overnight. Um work on your business plan uh you know for 3 days and then go over and start working on your underwriting uh for 3 days and then go back to the

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business plan and review it and make some adjustments. Um take some time away from it but the faster you go the faster you're going to get into this business and the faster you're going to reach that profitability goal. I started two facility I purchased two facilities in a 5-month period. So you can do this really quick. Um, and so it's very possible for you to do that. You just kind of have to go through the process uh and and build your foundation the right way. It's going to help you be a

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lot more successful. One thing that I do want to point out to you, and this is part of my foundation phase, it is creating an entity. But I also want to tell you that creating an entity, while it is a part of building your foundation, is something that a lot of people will do first. and it creates kind of this like fake um uh fake progress because while I think you should have an entity, I 100% believe that. I'm not an attorney, so uh this is not legal advice. Go, please go talk to one uh for your situation and understand

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what that looks like for you. But um you should have one. You don't need it until you close. You can do all of this stuff. You can look at facilities. You can look in areas all without having an entity. You can even go under contract without having an entity. As long as you have that entity when you close, then you're going to be in a good spot. All right? So, don't do that first. It's just fake progress. Um I I hear from people all the time, I created my entity and I'm like, good. Did you work on your

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business plan? Good. Did you validate the idea? Have you have you done the market research? Have like do you know for sure this is going to work for you? Have you done your underwriting? Well, no. I haven't done that because uh you know whatever uh comes up. Um I just I knew I needed to create the LLC and I think it's good. So if that if that's you, I'm not mad at you. I'm just telling you do the other things first. Go back and get those things done. That's what you need to do, okay?

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Because you spending a few hundred to create an LLC is not moving the ball towards launching your assisted living business. It's just it's just not. All right? Um, so make sure you do those things. All right, the the next thing that I want to teach you is my focus framework. So my focus framework is a five-phase process. And if you want to learn more about it, type in focus down below. But it is the five-phase process for launching your assisted living business. We talked a lot today about

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the foundation first. That is the F in focus framework. um in in the focus part of the framework, build your business plan, do your market research, do your underwriting, create your entity. You do those things, you're going to have the solid foundation. It makes everything go so much faster. The O is optimal property selection. This is finding the right house. It's navigating the zoning process, fire department approvals, you know, those types of things. Any per per special permit, special use permit, uh those types of

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things that you're going to need, it's navigating that process. The C is capital and funding. That is the funding process is getting the money so that you can move forward and you can own the business. Okay. The U is understanding the rules and regulations. That part is uh overwhelming for a lot of people. Uh it really is it's especially for my people that are not healthcare workers, they're like this whole new world of healthcare regulations. I worked in real estate. There's regulations there, but

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now there's those plus there's more. Like if that's you and you're a real estate investor, type in re down below. I would love to hear from you. But for my healthcare workers, uh just type in health down below. Um you know that there's a ton of just regulations, rules, and things that you have to navigate in this world. So it doesn't scare you and you know it's going to be fine, right? You know, you can do this better than anybody else. And that's what I'm here for is to help people like

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you because what you are probably struggling with is you don't know how to get started. You don't understand the business piece of it. you don't understand uh some of the underwriting pieces and and some of those uh things that you know those things that are boring uh those things that are making your eyes glaze over you get into it and you feel super overwhelmed that's a lot of what I teach you how to do inside of my programs so would love to help you out with that um just you know type in

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health if if that's you and you're on the on the healthcare side of things uh would love to help you out with it um but you you know and that that's the U in in the um focus framework understanding rules and regulation And then the S, excuse me, the S is a strategic launch. All right. So your strategic launch is when you uh take take that that that business idea um and you have gotten the funding, you got the business, everything's ready to go and then you are you have to actually run the

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business. And that that for a lot of people it's overwhelming. It's hard uh it's hard to know exactly how to to move forward with that. But it's also just so rewarding. And what I teach people um inside of my uh my programs, my coaching programs is the process of how to find and hire the right people. Um uh you know, meal planning and uh just carrying forward so you can have a successful and profitable business. I want you to have a system that works and that's exactly what the focus framework is uh is

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designed to be. If you need some help and some guidance, you're like, man, he's talked about a few different programs here. I don't know which one's best for me. Go take my quiz. We'll have a link down below for you, but aliquiz.com. Uh, takes you 30 seconds, let you see which of those programs are going to be a good fit for you. Or you can just go to the website assisted livinginvesting.net and if you go up to the top, um, there's a bar up there uh, that talks about my coaching program. Just click on that one

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and you'll see which of those programs are the best fit for you. Would love to help you out with that. So, if you found this video helpful, make sure you like the video, subscribe, ring the bell as well so you get notified every time we put out content like this. We go live on Tuesdays and put out content on Thursdays. All designed to help you learn how to launch your own assisted living business, how to start, how to move forward and make real progress so you can reach your goals. Uh because

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like I've been there. I know what it's like trying to figure those types of things out. And I want to help you as you're trying to to figure out how to move forward. So in today's video, just to recap, we've been talking about the process. You know, you're you're feeling overwhelmed. You don't know where to start. Um, and we talked about you have to build your foundation from the beginning. Start with those basics. Build the foundation. Put in the hard and boring work first. And when you do

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that, everything accelerates and makes it so much easier for you. And then overall, the process to do that is the focus framework. It's going to help you move forward. If you'd like some help and some guidance with a lot of this and building out the foundation and helping you move forward, go check out the roadmap challenge. Just type in roadmap down below. We'll get you a link. Or go to roadmapchallenge.com. It's a live coaching experience. We work together. Um it's it's a one-day experience. Would

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love to have Well, right now it's a one day experience. We've done it in five days in the past. Just kind of depends on what's going on um in my life and how I can can handle it. But it's a live coaching experience and I love doing it and seeing light bulbs go off in people's eyes. Uh it's not a sales call. Uh it's not a course. It is a challenge. I am challenging you to do work so that you can make progress and see if this is going to be a good fit for you. It's a

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great way for people to get started. Again, it's roadmapchallenge.com. And if you want my brain in a book, um then go check out the alibook.com. This is what the book looks like, the the profitable assisted living facility. It's got uh some hands on there. Um so go check it out on Amazon, um Audible, uh or just go to the profitableass assisted living uh or no, the book.com uh link down below. You can get the book, the workbook, uh the audio book. All of those things are available for you there. Would love to

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help you out um through through that resource as well. With that, I want to thank you all for watching. Thanks for being here. Appreciate those of you who have been here live with me. Uh it's always fun to to see people in the room uh here with me and just want to thank you for that. And you know, again, just a reminder, my name is Brandon Gustafson. I help first-time assisted living entrepreneurs launch profitable purpose-driven businesses, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives. I love helping and coaching

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people. Would love to help you. And I just 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. Thanks for watching and have a great day.