What Are The 5 Phases To Launch Your FIRST Assisted Living Business
Dec 12, 2025
Today I’m going to walk you through the five phases you need to launch your first assisted living business. I’ve used this same plan with new owners who went from idea to open. Want the full breakdown? Watch the video below.
Build your foundation first
You must start by building a strong foundation. That means a business plan, underwriting (your numbers and projections), and market research. Lenders and partners want to see that you know what you’re doing. When you show them a clear plan and solid numbers, they take you seriously.
✅ Write a business plan that shows your vision, costs, and revenue.
Pick the right property for your residents
Choosing the right home matters more than you think. Decide the property type and check zoning, fire rules, and city requirements. Walk the house and think about stairs, exits, and rooms. Some homes work for younger, mobile residents; others need ramps and elevators. The right property makes care easier and keeps residents safe.
✅ Inspect zoning and fire department rules before you bid.
Figure out capital and funding
Funding often feels like the biggest hurdle, but it’s manageable. You can partner with an investor, talk to multiple lenders, or use savings. The key is relationships: lenders fund people they trust. Practice presenting your plan so you can explain where the money goes and how you’ll succeed. I partnered with my dad to start my facilities when I didn’t have the cash — partnerships are a great option.
✅ Make a short funding plan: amount needed, down payment, and potential partners.
Learn the rules and regulations
You must understand licensing, surveys, and Medicaid rules for your state. The licensing process can sound scary at first, but it is learnable. Hire or talk to the right people — consultants, attorneys, or experienced operators — who know the application steps. Once you learn the process, you can stay compliant and open with confidence. I teach how to break this down in my coaching programs so it becomes simple and practical.
✅ List the state agencies you must contact for licensing.
Plan a strategic launch and run your business well
A strategic launch turns the plan into daily work. Be ready for payroll, food, staffing, and resident care from day one. Hire staff who share your values. Use an EHR to document care and keep records. Learn basic financial management so you stay profitable. Marketing matters too — you need a steady flow of referrals and families who trust you. A disciplined launch makes the first year much easier.
Wrap Up
Those five phases are what I call the FOCUS Framework: Foundation first, Optimal property selection, Capital and funding, Understanding rules and regulations, and Strategic launch.
Do each step in order and keep things simple.
If you move step-by-step, you’ll reduce overwhelm and increase your chances of success.
Want help putting this into your own plan? I run a LIVE Roadmap Challenge that walks you through each step and helps you get unstuck.
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
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Today we are breaking down the five phases that you need to know to launch your 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 hop into this topic with you today. Want to remind you to get over to the website assisted livinginvesting.net. And if you stick around for the end of today's video, I got a special invitation just for you to
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help make sure that you are on the right path to launching your assisted living business. You can also check this out at roadmapchallenge.com. Would love to help you out, but stick around to the end of the video so I can tell you a little bit more about how I can help you out with that. All right, let's get into it. I want to go through the five phases that you need to know to launch your assisted living business. And I have a framework that teaches you exactly how to do this. It's called the focus framework. It's an
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acronym. We're going to dive into exactly what that acronym is today, how it works, and what is included in each of those phases as you are trying to launch your assisted living business. I really want to try to simplify this and make it so that you're not so overwhelmed as you're trying to get started because I hear from you all the time. Those of you who are watching this, I hear it in the comments, see it on Facebook, you don't know how to get started. Like you don't even know how to
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go about the process of getting started. The focus framework is the best way for you to get started on your assisted living journey. And let's go in and let's start breaking it down. So, Focus. The F in focus stands for foundation first. You have to build a foundation. I talk about this all the time on YouTube. I'm sure you've watched one of my videos where I talk about building the basics and working on your business plan, doing your underwriting, doing market research. All of these things are a part
00:01:42 - 00:02:28
of building that foundation. You have to know what you're getting into. You have to build your business plan. I have a solid business plan that a lender will look at and say, "Oh, cool. Now I know exactly what they want to do. I know how much money they need. I know how they're going to be successful." They look at your underwriting, which is your numbers, your projections to see how much money you think you can actually earn from this business, how much it's going to cost you to run the business.
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They're going to validate all of those things. And when they look at that, all of a sudden, what they see as just, you know, oh, this person wants to to do something. They want to start a business. You know, good for them. Everybody wants to start a business. It turns that into this person knows exactly what they're talking about. She knows what she wants to do. He is super confident in where he's going with this and I can see the path to becoming profitable with this business. So, that's what you need to be doing. You
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also want to make sure you do your market research. We have inside of our Launchpad bundle, you can get the market research guide. So, if you want to check that out, go to assistedlinvesting.net/aunchpad. super incredible tool that I keep updated on a regular basis annually to help you know exactly what you should be looking for when you're doing your market research. You put all of those things together, you're going to have the foundation that you need to launch a profitable and successful assisted
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living business. But you have to build the foundation. It makes everything else that we're going to talk about the rest of the phases that we go through makes everything so much easier once you know what you're getting into and how you're going to do those things. you take what's in your mind, your vision for where you want to go and you can really push this thing forward. Another piece of of this phase is is creating an entity. I will say though with an entity, I'm not an attorney, um, number
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one, but in my experience, you don't need to have that entity built until you're about ready to close. So, this is something that a lot of people, they do, and I call it fake action. You do need to have that entity. Highly suggest that you create the entity, but you don't have to have it immediately. So, don't get caught into the trap that a lot of people that they get caught into the trap of, "Oh, I set up the entity. I'm I'm making progress on this." In reality, it's probably the least
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important of these first phase steps, that foundational step that you need to be doing is creating the entity. I wouldn't worry about it. You should spend a lot more of your time building your business plan, working through the numbers, and understanding your underwriting, and also doing your market research. If you do those three things, you're going to be way ahead of the game. It's going to open up doors for you with lenders, looking at properties, helping you get your license as well.
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It's going to help out with all of those things. So, build your foundation first. It's what you need to do if you're going to be successful. So, make sure you do all that. The O in focus stands for optimal property selection. So, this is finding the right house [laughter] and being able to move forward with it. By the way, I talk about all of this. The focus framework, we talk about it in the book, The Profitable Assisted Living Facility. Make sure you go and grab your copy. It's at the alibook.com.
00:04:33 - 00:05:23
You can go grab that. It's everything that I've learned, my five phase process for getting started. You can get the book. There's also a workbook can really help you out along your path. If you can't afford to get into any of my coaching sessions or coaching programs, the book is the way to go and you can use that and really help you make progress. It is built to be the bible of launching an assisted living business. So, make sure you go and grab that. Now, let's talk about optimal property
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selection. This is figuring out what type of property you're going to go through, what property you need. We'll link a video up above. I talk about the four different types of properties that you could be selecting from, which model you're going to go with. But when it gets to this phase, you need to not only select a property, but you need to check zoning, check fire department. You're going to have to work with city planners and the chief of fire in the area. You're going to potentially need to be
00:05:21 - 00:06:14
doing renovations, figure out what renovations you need to do in the house. All of those things are super important for you to do and are going to be what allows you to really be successful in having a property that is perfect for assisted living. Um, when it comes to things like stairs, I've had a property that was four stories tall, had a ton of stairs, like way too many stairs. I will link up a video where I did a walkthrough of that property, uh, so you can see exactly what it was like, but so
00:05:47 - 00:06:42
many stairs in that facility. Now, we focused on a resident, an avatar that was mental health focused. So they were younger generally. We were working with people that were from 20 to 50 or 60. They could handle the stairs. And if they couldn't, then we just had to discharge them and and put them in a place that could actually care for them and meet their needs without the physical demands of going through stairs. So you can do this with stairs. It does limit you and who you can bring into the home because they have to be
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able to do stairs. And if at any point they can no longer do stairs, then you can't have them in the home. So, you want to make sure that you're taking all of that into consideration and all of the things that come with that. So, those are the types of things you want to be looking for when you are looking at a house. If you're interested in a specific type of a property, chat that down below. I would love to hear what kind of property are you most interested in learning about. And if we get a lot
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of votes on a certain type of home, then we'll do a separate video specific to that type of home. So, comment down below. What are you most interested in? What type of home are you interested in getting started with? Now, let's go back to the focus framework. Let's talk about the C. So, C in focus stands for capital and funding. There's three things that I hear from people. You don't know how to get started. Like, you don't even know where to start. You don't know how to
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get the funds. And the licensing is something that is just confusing. We're going to talk about licensing here with the U. But with the C for focus, capital, and funding funding, it's man, it's overwhelming. Like, I I I hear you. You're trying to get started and and you're like, but it's going to cost me how much money to get started? It makes you just, ah, man, maybe it's not worth it. Maybe I should go do something else. When I was getting started on my assisted living journey, I'll share this
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story with you. I didn't have the funds to get started. I I didn't I I knew I wanted to do assisted living. I had read Rich Dad Poor Dad. I knew, hey, real estate is what I want to do. Started listening to a bunch of real estate podcasts, found assisted living as an asset class that like spoke to me because of my background in healthcare. I have a master's in in healthcare administration. And I was like, that's what I want to do. And I ended up joining a group that did real estate
00:07:48 - 00:08:46
education. $20,000 taught me a ton, though none of it specific to assisted living, but taught me all of the real estate side. And I combined that with my, you know, my expensive graduate degree, healthcare administration, to kind of get to where I'm at with assisted living, but I didn't have the money. I had spent all of it on school, right? And so what I did is I went to my dad and was able to like kind of present to him. I had a little bit of a skeleton business plan, nothing like what you're going to build
00:08:17 - 00:09:07
if you follow my process. But I had this idea. I had this vision. I had this plan for what I wanted to do. I presented it to him and we were able to partner and he had the funds available. I didn't have those funds. And so that was something that was really hard for me. It was a roadblock for a little bit and then I realized I can partner with somebody and get the funds that I need to help me reach my goal. You may need to do that. Or maybe you're watching this as somebody that has the money and
00:08:42 - 00:09:25
you're like, "Yeah, assisted living sounds like an interesting asset class. I've got the money for it, but man, I don't have the background in healthcare." We're going to talk about that here in just a second. So, stick around for that piece of it. But those of you who need funding, you need to figure out who you should be talking to. There's so many different ways to fund this type of business. Figure out who you should be talking to. Start talking to different lenders and learn how to
00:09:03 - 00:09:53
build relationships with lenders. It's super important for you to do that. and figure out what your down payments are going to look like. Uh when you do those types of things and you have your foundation in place, you're going to be so much more successful. The world of funding and getting the funds that you need is very much relationshipdriven. And the more that you can build relationships with people and show them that you are good at following through and you know what you're talking about,
00:09:28 - 00:10:18
the more likely you are to obtain the funds that you need. It's as simple as that. Not to try to dumb it down. I mentioned this at the start of the video. I'm going to mention it here at the end, but I want to also tell you inside of my challenge, the assisted living roadmap challenge. If you go to roadmapchallenge.com, we actually walk through and I have a bunch of stories that I can tell you about ways that people got funding that they needed to launch their assisted living business. So, if you get in
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there, I teach you all of that, help you identify which of these options is going to be the one that works for you and how to then move forward with that option. once you figured out what that option is, how you're going to identify that person, how you're going to talk to them, and how you're going to make some progress there. So, go check it out, roadmapchallenge.com. We have a challenge coming up soon. Would love to have you there and help you kind of get beyond this barrier. The U in focus
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stands for understanding the rules and regulations. And this is that thing that I was just talking to you about. There's people out there, you invest in real estate, you have all the funds, and you're just like, "Ah, assisted living sounds really cool. I can have an impact in the community. I can build this legacy for my family. That's what I want to do. But man, what are all the like I'm listening to this guy Brandon. He talks about Medicaid all the time and I don't like I don't even want to deal
00:10:40 - 00:11:33
with that and getting a license and how do I where do I go to do this? What's this application? How do I handle surveys and and things that come up? What is that going to look like? And it's confusing. So, that's you type in regulations down below. And I would love to hear from you if you have a struggle with regulations. So, type that in there down below. I want to see what I can do to help you out along just kind of removing that piece out of out of your mind as a barrier because you can get
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past this. Like I have a masters in healthcare administration. I'm very familiar with the healthcare world and there's a lot that goes into it. But I'm also here to tell you there's a lot of people to help you out along the path and help make sure that you do things correctly because they need that help. They need more beds. They need more facilities. Every state needs it all over the nation. Uh Canada too. Everybody needs this throughout the world. Honestly, we have a population
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bubble that is bursting and we have so many people coming in that are needing assisted living services and the supply and demand just means you got to get into this business now. This is the time to do it. And so I want you to take that into consideration and also understand there's a lot of people that are there to help you be successful as you get into this. The hard part honestly is figuring out who to talk to. But once you do that, the applications, understanding how to do this, hiring the
00:11:57 - 00:12:53
right people that can help you stay compliant, all of those types of things, figuring out how to do Medicaid, all of those things are very doable and learnable. My dad, who works in the construction industry, had no experience with healthcare previous to getting started. His his mom had had some health issues, so he did a little bit there, but not a lot. And he is now an expert. He handles all of our Medicaid processing and billing and recontracting and all of those things that for you listening to this might be like those
00:12:25 - 00:13:15
words are foreign to me. I don't know what it means. Uh but he's learned all of those and it doesn't take that long to learn it. So you can do that. The S in focus is for strategic launch. Uh this is where you have done all of the things. You finally close on the business. You finally get the license. You're ready to go. And then you wake up one morning and you got to pay payroll and you got to buy all the groceries and you got to hire the right people to do this. Finding the right people to hire
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is going to be key to your success. Learning how to do marketing successfully. Um, and I have a process, a framework that I teach inside of my success system on how to do marketing correctly in assisted living. So, I would love to help you out through that in the success system and also kind of learning financial management. What are best practices there for just managing your money and helping you be profitable? I suggest using a book like Profit First by Mike Mallowix. We'll link that down below. But using a book
00:13:17 - 00:14:07
like that is going to help you out a ton. You also have to make sure that you are documenting everything. And and a way to really do that and improve your operations is using an EHR system. So if you're interested in learning more about EHRs, type in EHR down below. Would love to see what I can do to help you out with that. I'm always working on building relationships with EHR vendors and seeing which is best. There are so many of them out there, which is great, but also a little bit can be a little
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bit difficult because there's so many options. So, I can help what I can if I can do anything to help you learn what you should be looking for when talking to an EHR system. Make sure you type that in down below and I can help you and and guide you through that. Ehr is the word to type. So, that is the five phases to launching an assisted living business. It's it's that simple. the focus framework, foundation first, optimal property selection. You're looking at figuring out capital and
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funding, understanding the rules and regulations, and then having a strategic launch. When you do those five things, you're going to be successful. You're going to have a profitable and successful assisted living business that's going to create time and financial freedom for you, allow you to have an incredible impact in your community, and also create a legacy for your family and the people that matter most to you. I mentioned at the start of the video that I had a special invitation for you. It's the roadmap
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challenge. Go to roadmapchallenge.com. I would love to have you. We have a challenge coming up soon. It's going to help you out along your path to launching your assisted living business. It is intended to be the thing that really helps you make progress and get on the right path so you know exactly what you should be doing to get started removing some of those barriers and really making progress. There's a VIP session as well, so you can get in there. You can ask me whatever questions. It's a week long. It's live
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training. This is not recorded. You're with me one-on-one or in a group setting and we are chatting and helping you make progress. I would love to have you in there. Again, go to roadmapchallenge.com to learn more about that. 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 launch profitable, purpose-driven businesses in the next 12 months, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives. I love doing it. I love
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helping and coaching people. It's one of my favorite things to do. And I want to remind you that you can do this. 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're going to be successful. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
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