Unlocking Clarity and Confidence to Launch Your Assisted Living Business
Dec 22, 2025
Starting an assisted living business can feel confusing and hard. I see this all the time with first-time owners who want to do this the right way but are not sure where to start. In this post, I want to help you find clarity and confidence so you can move forward with purpose. Want the full breakdown? Watch the video below👇
Clarity comes from knowing exactly where you are going
Clarity starts with a clear vision. If you do not know where you are going, every step feels hard. I have seen people stall out simply because they never slowed down to get clear.
You will want to ask yourself a few honest questions before you get started. These questions are not necessarily business questions; rather, they are life questions for how you want your business to fit into your life. When you answer them, everything else will start to fall into place:
✅ Why do you want to get into assisted living
✅ What are your income and freedom goals
✅ How many beds do you want to have
When you write these answers down, you give yourself a north star. That north star helps you make better decisions and stop second-guessing yourself.
Confidence comes from having a simple plan to follow
Confidence is not about knowing everything. Confidence comes from knowing what to do next. That only happens when you have a process you can trust.
I teach a five-phase framework (the FOCUS FrameworkTM) that walks you through launching an assisted living business step by step. When you follow the framework, you stop guessing and start moving forward with purpose.
✅ Foundation First: Build a strong foundation with a business plan, underwriting, and market research
✅ Optimal Property Selection: Find the right property and understand zoning and fire requirements
✅ Capital & Funding: Secure capital and funding in a smart, realistic way
✅ Understand the Rules and Regulations: Learn the rules, licensing, and regulations
✅ Strategic Launch: Launch the business with a clear strategy
When you follow a structure like this, you will stop feeling stuck. You may not move fast every day, but you will move forward.
Most people get stuck in overwhelm or hustle mode
I see two common traps. The first is the overwhelm zone. This is where you know you want assisted living, but you do not know how to move forward. Everything feels big and confusing.
The second trap is the hustle zone. This is where you take action without clarity. You work hard, but you feel tired and frustrated. I lived here myself early on. I thought hustle alone would get me where I wanted to go.
Neither place feels good for long. What you really want is to move to the FOCUS ZoneTM.
The FOCUS ZoneTM is where clarity and confidence meet
The focus zone is where things start to feel lighter. You know why you are doing this, and you know how to move forward. Your actions become more intentional, and your progress becomes steadier.
For me, this shift happened when I combined my personal “why” with a clear system. Once that happened, every podcast I listened to, every book I read, and every conversation I had was focused on assisted living.
You do not have to figure this out on your own
One thing I want you to hear clearly is this: you do not need to do this alone. Trying to figure out everything by yourself often leads to analysis paralysis or burnout.
If funding feels like your biggest barrier, that is normal. I hear that concern all the time. There are real ways to work through it when you have the right guidance and structure.
If you want help building clarity and confidence, the Roadmap Challenge walks you through this process live, step by step. It is designed to help you move from overwhelm into the focus zone with real momentum.
Wrap Up
Launching an assisted living business starts with clarity and grows with confidence. When you know why you are doing this and follow a proven process, everything becomes easier to manage. Take time to get clear, choose a framework, and keep moving forward one step at a time.
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.
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00
Starting an assisted living business can feel overwhelming. And in today's video, we're going to talk about how you can create clarity and confidence so you can successfully launch your own assisted living business. Hey friend, I'm Brandon Gustafson. I help first-time assisted living entrepreneurs launch profitable, purpose-driven businesses in 12 months, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives. Super excited to do that. Before we get started though, I want to remind you to get over to the
00:00:30
website assistedlivinginvesting.net. We have a bunch of resources over there for you. And also, if you stick around until the end of the video today, I've got a special invitation for us to work together to help you successfully launch your own assisted living business. It's the roadmap challenge. Go to roadmapchallenge.com to learn a little bit more about it. If you stick around till the end of the video, we'll talk a little bit more specifically about how that works and what I can do to help you
00:00:53
out through the challenge. So, go check it out. roadmapchallenge.com. All right, let's get into it. So clarity is going to come from having a plan, knowing exactly what you want to do, where you know that northstar, that thing that you are working towards. That's where clarity comes from. And confidence is coming from knowing what to do, having a process, a step-by-step system that you can follow to help you launch your assisted living business. So that's what you're going to need. Let's talk a
00:01:18
little bit more here about clarity. You need to get a clear vision on where you're going. get clarity for what that's going to look like for you. And the ways that you can do that, um, you got to ask yourself some questions. Honestly, you have to do a little bit of self-reflection and figure out where you want to go, why you want to get into this, and and how you're going to make progress there. I'd encourage you to ask yourself questions like, why assisted living? Why do I want to get into
00:01:42
assisted living? You know, what are some of your income and freedom goals? Not only why assisted living, why are you so interested in doing assisted living? What are the goals that you have? like really foundational goals. How much money do you want to make? How much time do you want to have? What is that going to look like for you? When you figure those things out, it really helps solidify everything in your mind and lets you have something that's going to let you move forward and make some good
00:02:07
progress there. I'd encourage you to figure out how many beds you want to have in the facility as well. You know, how many residents you're going to have, the type of resident that you're going to be serving also can factor into all of this. These three questions, why assisted living? What are your financial and your freedom goals? What do those look like? And also, how many beds do you want to have? When you can get clarity and ask yourself those questions, and I would encourage you to
00:02:31
pause the video and journal those things out and make sure you're writing those things down. That's going to give you so much clarity as you get started. I've shared this story many times before, but I want to share it again. When I got started, it was June 9th, 2019. My daughter was sick. She had a cold. It was a Sunday. My my wife took our oldest daughter to church. I stayed home with the youngest from church, from family activities, and we just hung out. 15, 18month old baby. We're watching Daniel
00:03:00
Tiger. She's napping. I have all the time in the world. And so I decide I'm going to read a book. And I read Rich Dad Poor Dad. And that book was so impactful for me. In my mind, it solidified the desire to get into real estate. Not assisted living at this point, but to get into real estate. I want to do this so I can create more time and financial freedom for me, for my family, so I can invest, so I have something to retire on. Uh so I have all of these assets. I want to get into this. And the more that I dug into it,
00:03:31
the more I found out about assisted living. And I have a masters in healthcare administration. And for me, the blend between healthcare and real estate and being able to do that through assisted living was the thing that for me was like, this is what I want to do. this is how I want to achieve these goals. I had been working doing entrepreneurial type things for years up to that point. Nothing super successful, but I loved doing it. And when I found this and the way to have these crossroads, these two big pieces of my
00:04:01
life meet in the middle, I was like, this is what I want to do. That then gave me allowed me to become hyperfocused in all of my actions becoming how can I get to assisted living. Everything that I did was through the lens of I want to start an assisted living business. How am I going to do that? The podcast I would listen to, the conversations I would have, the things I would read, all of that was with a lens on it to starting assisted living, to getting into assisted living. And it was for me reading that book was
00:04:36
the thing that was the catalyst to to really launch myself for. We'll link the the book down below if you've never read it. It's it's a really good read and and really really impactful. So that was the thing for me that I really needed to figure out was how to do it. Now I had all the clarity in the world. I knew where I wanted to go. I teach a little bit about what I call the focus zone matrix. So in the bottom left corner you're in this overwhelm zone. And a lot of you feel this way. you're just like,
00:05:03
I don't know how to move forward. I'm confused. I don't know how to get started. I know I want to do assisted living, but I don't know where to go. And you're in this overwhelm zone. When you have clarity, all of a sudden, you move into this phase where what I call the research zone, and you're just trying to figure out as much as you can. You're doing a bunch of research. You're trying to just you're kind of scaring yourself because you do so much research. But yeah, you're in this
00:05:25
research zone and you get analysis paralysis. You can't move because you're just scared. what if this happens? What if that happens? You just don't know how to move. And so, you can get into that zone. And I've been there before where it's just I'm in this research zone. I'm there and man, I want to move, but I I'm too scared to go. I'm too scared to actually take action on it. And so, I want you to get out of that zone. The next thing I want to talk to you about,
00:05:49
and we'll talk about the rest of that matrix and what it looks like exactly, is how you can get confidence and pair that with the clarity. So, I mentioned this just a few minutes ago. You get confidence by having some kind of a plan, some kind of a framework, some kind of a system for you to follow and really be able to work through implement. I teach people what I call the focus framework. It's a five-phase process to launching your assisted living business. Um, you build your foundation first. You have to do that.
00:06:18
It makes everything so much easier. Business plan, your underwriting, your market research. You do those three things, everything becomes so much easier. all of a sudden you can find the right house, you can get the funding, you can work through and get the licensing all in place when you need it. You can do all of that, but you have to build your foundation first. It's absolutely crucial for you to do that. The O stands for optimal property selection. You got to find the right house. You got to understand how zoning
00:06:43
works and work with the fire department. You got to do those things. C is capital and funding. This is working with lenders and getting the funds that you need, which is I hear from you. This is one of the biggest things, the biggest concerns that you have for why you're not getting into assisted living. And I promise you, you can figure it out. There are ways to do it inside of the roadmap challenge. Go to roadmapchallenge.com. You can learn a little bit about it. We actually do a full day on exactly how you can work
00:07:09
through all of that and get beyond that barrier for capital and funding. The U is understanding the rules and regulations. This is the licensing process. You got to figure out how to do that and learn what you need to do, who to talk to, what applications to fill out, how to fill out the application. Uh, working with Medicaid and government programs and things like that, figuring out how to work through those things. And then the S is strategic launch. This is actually running the business and helping you get started. If you don't
00:07:35
have the clarity, but you have the confidence, you you know the framework. You're watching this video, you know, okay, cool. I got the five phases. I know how to move forward this. I know I got to focus. I've got to get here. here. I got I got to follow the five phase process, but you don't have the clarity. You're in in what I like to call the hustle zone. You're just moving forward. You're you're just trying to make things work. You're hitting your head against the wall. You're just like,
00:07:56
I I know I can do this. I can do it by myself. I don't need the why. I don't need a guide. I can do it by myself. I'm just going to hustle and do it. And I have, if you watch my old YouTube videos, I have a block in the past behind me and it says, let's see, I actually still have it up here, but I use it for a different purpose now. It says, "Dreams demand hustle." And for me now, it's a reminder that I shouldn't be hustling all the time. So that's why I still keep it up. But in the past, I
00:08:23
felt like I got to hustle. Like that's how I'm going to be successful. And you're just I'm going to do it. And you can be successful when you're in the hustle zone. You really can. Honestly, it's probably how I got my first facility. I was in the hustle zone. I was just hustling. I was making progress. But it wasn't until I took the crossroads between those two, when I took the clarity, the vision where I wanted to go and how I wanted to get there and what I wanted out of my
00:08:51
assisted living businesses. Once I coupled that with all the knowledge that I had and everything that I had learned and all of the action I was taking and being in the hustle zone, all of a sudden I shifted up into what I call the focus zone. This gets you into the focus, the focus system, but you get into this spot where you now have clarity. You now have confidence. You know what you're doing. You know how you're going to move forward, and you're moving forward with purpose, and it
00:09:19
becomes so much easier for you to be successful as you're trying to launch your assisted living business. So, I just got to encourage you, don't just sit there and try to figure all this out on your own. Don't just keep banging your head against the wall and don't just do so much research that that you're just stuck and you get into analysis paralysis. You got to learn how to combine those two things. Take these these two really strong forces and bring them together. Get yourself into the
00:09:45
focus zone that's going to allow you to be successful. If you'd like to learn a little bit more about the focus zone, type in focus down below and I'll do a separate video that is specific to that for you so you can learn a little bit more about exactly what that looks like and how you can use the focus zone to help you catapult yourself into a spot where you own your own assisted living businesses. you have a profitable and purpose- driven business that is creating that prosperity, purpose, and
00:10:12
peace in your life that you are searching for, helping you really create that time of financial freedom that you want, have an impact in your community, and creating a legacy for your family. That's something that I know that you want. Now, at the start of the video, I talked about a special invitation. It's the roadmap challenge, the assisted living roadmap challenge. Go over to roadmapchallenge.com. I would love to work with you. We actually go through this and helping you kind of navigate how to get from just
00:10:37
that overwhelm zone into the focus zone and how you're going to get there and helping you build the clarity and also get the confidence so you can move forward with purpose and helping you achieve your goals. Um, it is a live training. It it's 100% live. It's a week-long thing. You can be in there. It's not a webinar. And you can also get a VIP ticket and be in there every day for me for the entire week and asking me whatever questions you have to help you launch your assisted living business.
00:11:06
Coaching people and interacting with people is one of my favorite things to do. I would love to have you join our next challenge. We have one coming up soon. So go check it out, roadmapchallenge.com. Would love to have you in there and help you launch your own assisted living business. Are you curious about assisted living, but you're not sure how to get started? At Assisted Living Investing, I help first-time assisted living entrepreneurs like you launch profitable, purpose-driven businesses in
00:11:30
12 months, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives. I love doing it. It's one of my favorite things to do. I'd love to coach you along your path to launching your own assisted living business. And I want you to remember that it's not that hard. It just takes a lot of time and effort to get there. But if you keep going step by step by step, I promise you, if you do that and you are consistent and persistent, you're going to be successful. Thanks for watching and have
00:11:54
a great day.
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