Why You Need a Business Plan to Launch Your Assisted Living Facility
Jul 16, 2025
Starting your assisted living facility? Don’t wing it.
You need a business plan. And not just any plan—a great one.
Let’s walk through why it matters, what goes inside, and how to make it so solid that lenders and investors say YES.
Check out this video, too:
Why a Business Plan Matters
If you're serious about opening an assisted living facility, this is step one.
A business plan helps you:
β
Get funding from banks or investors
β
Stay focused instead of chasing shiny ideas
β
Know your numbers and strategy
β
Build trust with partners and professionals
β
Actually launch instead of spinning in circles
Most people skip this step or do it halfway. Don’t do that. You’ll waste time, lose money, and look unprepared.
What Goes in a Strong Business Plan?
A business plan is about clarity and confidence.
Here’s what yours should include:
π Executive Summary
Quick overview of your mission, vision, and plan
π Market Research
Prove there's a need for your facility in the area
π Services You'll Offer
How many beds, private vs. shared rooms, dementia care?
π Your Team & Experience
Why you (and your partners) are the right people to run this
π Financial Forecasts
Revenue, costs, profits—make it crystal clear
π Licensing & Regulations
What licenses you’ll need and how you’ll stay compliant
π Exit Strategy
How will you grow, scale, or eventually sell?
Check out this Business Planning Guide!
The #1 Mistake Beginners Make
People say things like:
“I’ll just figure it out as I go…”
“I’ll talk to the bank once I find a house…”
“I don’t need a formal plan—this is just a small business.”
Nope. That mindset will slow you down.
Lenders and investors want to know you're serious—and a polished business plan proves that.
How the Business Planning Guide Can Help You
We created the Business Planning Guide to make this process easy.
It walks you step-by-step through everything you need.
π οΈ Templates
π§ Prompts to think through your plan
π Examples and market research tools
π― Guidance to build a lender-ready application
Plus, it’s designed specifically for residential assisted living—not generic businesses.
Bonus: Market Research Tool
Your Business Planning Guide comes with access to our Market Research Guide.
With it, you can:
π Identify the best cities in your state for assisted living
π¬ Know where to start talking to city officials and property owners
π Compare data to pick the most promising market
No more guessing. Just smart moves.
Ready to Launch?
Here’s what to do next:
π Download the Business Plan Checklist — your free starter step
π Success System — get coaching, support, and access to all our tools
Still have questions? Comment below or reach out. I’d love to help.
Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
Show full transcript π
Transcript
00:00:02 - 00:00:56
hey friend it is Brandon Gustafson with Assisted Living investing excited to have you here with me on the channel today for our topic in this live coaching session we're going to be getting into does do you need help launching your assisted living facility so I wanted to kind of go through that and some resources that are available on the website for you today and just kind of show you how I can help you out through that process so if you're interested in that um and you're here make sure you like and comment uh just
00:00:29 - 00:01:32
say hi and uh we'll kind of get things going here on live for those of you that that don't know me I'm going to go ahead and share my screen here um let's see I I go to this one and this one and that okay so um let's get that into full screen mode all right so I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the business planning guide uh if you haven't gotten the emails you're not on the email list uh you don't know about this the business planning guide is a resource I've created for you if you get
00:01:01 - 00:02:02
over to Assisted Living investing. netv PG there's a link Down Below in the video description you can go and get that and for a limited time I've got the uh a promo code that will give you 20% off that's planning all in capital letters so if you do that it will go through the end of this week this recording of This is October 18th of 2023 so that will go until Friday at midnight so you can take advantage of that uh so just want to make sure that you are aware of that to give you some background on on myself so sry um still
00:01:32 - 00:02:32
trying to learn this whole live thing and sharing my screen okay um so to give you a little background on myself I own two assisted living facilities um I own and operate them out of state and went through that whole process of of start to finish and figuring out how to purchase it and didn't have a lot of experience uh or I had some healthcare background but I didn't have much help read a few books try to figure out the process because I work in the healthcare industry felt very confident in my
00:02:01 - 00:03:11
ability to go and and and start a facility and we were able to do that successfully U but these tools here in the business planning guide are the two main tools that I have used secure to secure over1 and A5 million in SBA funding so the the tools here that we're going to get into are my business plan and also my uh my calculator which you have probably downloaded if not get over to the website Assisted Living inv in.net and you can get access to that calculator that's kind of my background um here and with Assisted Living I've
00:02:36 - 00:03:28
been doing this now since 2020 so I was the recording of this it's been three years um have two facilities now they're both cash flowing they're doing well and I just wanted to kind of share with you it's it's it's possible you can do this you can be successful and I'm here to provide you with those tools that are going to make it just a no-brainer for lenders and other investors to work with you on your and help you along your investment Journey let's talk a little bit about the tools that are inside of
00:03:03 - 00:04:03
of the business planning guide and how this works um and and how it's an incredible resource for you the first one is a business plan so you need a business plan when you are trying to get investors um as you're trying to launch that that that business for you um and and try to be successful you're going to need to have a business plan and there's a lot that goes into it you can find um all kinds of things on the internet and looking for this and and try to figure it out yourself or what I've created for
00:03:33 - 00:04:32
you here is as a plan that is very specific to Assisted Living um what I did here with this this this business plan template is I talked with other lenders I talked with like two or three of them figured out what they want in a business plan also got on the sba's website and I've taken those three or four kind of resources and combined them into an incredible business plan template that is specific to Assisted Living that's going to meet the needs of all the lenders that you're going to be looking at working with while also kind
00:04:02 - 00:05:03
of helping you set those goals so the big point of of doing a of of building a business plan is is going to help you solidify and set those goals and craft your vision and and kind of put out there what do you want to do over the coming years with your investment you you need to be a little more specific in what you're doing than I want to buy an assisted living facility what do you want out of it like what kind of facility do you do you want do you want it uh to be focused on Elderly Care do you want a sobriety house do you want
00:04:33 - 00:05:31
something that's transitional housing do you want um something that is small two or three beds do you want something that's large that's 50 beds what what do you want you need to build out that Vision how do you want it um to look over the next five 10 20 years um this is where you really need to dive into in into how you're going to build out uh that what you're doing so you can do this on your own certainly uh it's very easy for you to go and and grab a business plan and start creating it it but you need to set those goals you need
00:05:02 - 00:06:01
to craft that vision and you need to create a plan so that you know what's going on with it and that's something that I talk a lot about uh in the business planning is how to build that and and I give you the template to help you out and it's going to help you um create uh just a really good solid way for you to to get in front of investors to get in front of lenders and have them just be like oh why would I not work with this person this is an obvious choice they have it put together they know what they're doing and they're
00:05:31 - 00:06:26
going to be successful the next thing is going to be the calculator and this is something that I you know if you don't have it already get over to the website Assisted Living investing. net you can get access to the free calculator I give it to everybody uh it's the tool that I used um as I was underwriting my facilities and I I go really deep I've given if you go onto the YouTube channel um go way back um you can find some tutorials on that I've created updated versions of it as well for the course um
00:05:58 - 00:06:55
but get really deep into into it and and kind of help you understand how much money does it cost for you to get started running your facility and and how much money is it uh going to cost to operate that facility these are all questions that everybody asks they want to know because they want to see if this is going to be a profitable Venture for them if it's an opportunity they should pursue or if it's not worth spending their time on this is where underwriting is key you you spend the time to really
00:06:27 - 00:07:18
dive into it figure out what those expenses are and how much it's going to cost you to operate figure out how much money is going to come in and then you can figure out from there is this from a financial perspective something is going to make sense for me and if not then then fine that's that's okay just move on but if it is then you know it's worth pursuing and then you can figure out all the other healthare things um beyond that and figure out what it takes to to run a facility um once you get through that
00:06:53 - 00:07:45
process there's a lot of resources out there I'm creating some my own as well to kind of help you through the process of just operating uh and effective and profitable and uh good facility um I also talked to you in here about uh loans and and what are loans how do you get them what do they look like what are the interest rates I'm going to help you out through that process as well which is great um so those are some of the things that you're going to get here as you get into underwriting is just
00:07:19 - 00:08:14
understanding a lot of what that looks like and how it's going to work for you to help you along that process and sorry I'm doing this live and I've got my full-time job over here and it's um noise on me so I'm going to see if I can really quickly um turn down my volume on that so there's no pings there and doesn't distract me okay so that's underwriting um and what that looks like now let's get into some of the bonus resources that I'm giving you and this is something I I see this all the time
00:07:47 - 00:08:44
I'm I'm trying to be really active on Facebook groups have my own if you get over to if you search for assisted living investing on Facebook you'll be able to find me there have a bunch of resources and and things like that on that um platform um but I also see this question all the time does somebody have their pnls they could share with me and what I've done here is I have create I've taken my my expenses for 2022 and have blinded them so you can't tell which facility it is um and I give that
00:08:15 - 00:09:11
to you I'm here in the course uh and you're going to be able to see exactly what it costs me to operate my two facilities they are two 16 bed facilities one in Colorado one in Idaho one is mental health focused one is Elderly Care focused um but you can kind of get a feel for what that looks like and then I also break it down by percentage of total expenses and where is that money coming from and going to so you can see it's a super useful um tool that I'm giving you access to here as well and I've also created a market
00:08:43 - 00:09:39
research tool which is the other really big tool that I use when we were trying to figure out where we wanted to invest uh I I dove deep into where are people retiring which markets are most favorable um for me to to be operating in a facility and um which ones align with um political views that I have and and are going to kind of align with that and and just kind of make me feel a little more comfortable in the way that I am um building my facility those those types of little tiny questions I built
00:09:11 - 00:10:08
that into the market research tool and it's going to help you out through the process and uh and just kind of identifying the market and if you are if you don't want to go out of state you're going to be able to see which markets inside of your state or locally are going to be good for you to start having conversations with the welan municipality and start looking for assisted living facilities it's going to really help you out along that journey and getting to where you want to be and so excuse me
00:09:39 - 00:10:33
I've got like a little bit of a a cold here so why do you need the business planning guide really it is to make your application a no-brainer for a lender um that's the purpose of this and helping you get this get your dreams off the ground help you to launch it and and drive it forward it's also going to give investors a reason to work with with you they're going to they're going to be able to present this to them and they're going to see that uh you know what you're doing and and they're going to be
00:10:06 - 00:10:59
more likely to say you know what this person they got it together I I I'd really like to learn more and see if we can make this work and work together and it's also going to help solidify your plans as to what you want to do what type of facility do you want to have so you don't go into this blind and you don't think to yourself oh you know that's cool and and have kind of that dog with the squirrel syndrome where it's a squirrel and you go and run after it um you're going to be a little more focused because you know exactly what it
00:10:33 - 00:11:27
is that you want to do so I want to shift over here really quick this is the website um so if you get over to Assisted Living investing. net and go to BPG you'll be able to get this um you can get your business planning guide I've got a lot of information here on the site so go ahead and scroll over to that and and you'll see um exactly what it is that we talk about what's included in your different modules and things like that uh it's going to help you out in determining if this is the right fit
00:10:59 - 00:11:56
for you so I wanted to just remind you quickly that this is a limited time offer with a 20% off so if you're thinking to yourself you know that would be a really good thing for me to have um you might as well get it now because it's 20% off I'm not sure when I'll do this again I've thought about doing it another time maybe in the holidays um or sometime next year um so if you're thinking to yourself I really want to get that you might as well just get it now get the 20% off I might not be able to do a 20% discount as well on the next
00:11:28 - 00:12:16
time um so you know you might as well do this this is the first time we're launching this making sure that it's available to you helping you understand exactly what it is that um that you're getting and uh there's also a 30-day money back guarantee so no questions asked you can just ask for a refund and I'll I'll make sure that we get that over to you so uh just want to kind of give that information to you make sure you have this so that you understand um you know what you're getting into at the
00:11:53 - 00:12:57
business planning guide and how it's going to help you out through your process and helping you launch your assisted living facility your dreams your investment goals and everything that goes into it and make it a no-brainer for a lender or an investor to work with you again Assisted Living investing. net BPG um link is down below in the description um so I'm going to just jump over here really quick and let's see let's see how this goes all right um so I see some comments here Nick thanks for for being here uh for
00:12:24 - 00:13:24
downloading the calculator um awesome to to have you here um let me know if anybody else has any questions I would love to uh just kind of chat with you about the process of of what it is to to start an assisted living facility and kind of help you out through your investment Journey um love having everybody here in the community and building this up and helping people uh just kind of understand what it is and how they want to to reach their goals I'm trying to build a lot of resources here to help you reach those goals and
00:12:54 - 00:13:40
and you know just achieve your dreams um that's a lot of what I I love doing I love coaching people love working with people uh and helping them along the process does residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you just don't know where to get started at Assisted Living investing. net we are here to help you through the process start to finish I want to thank you all for watching and uh make sure you like the the video subscribe and ring the bell so you get notified each time we go
00:13:18 - 00:13:36
live trying to do this once a week for you and uh yeah thanks for watching and have a great day
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