Episode 6 Presentation: The Big Three in Senior Care

Are you ready to launch a senior care business but aren't sure exactly where to start? 🚀

In the premiere episode of [Insert Podcast Name], we’re breaking down the absolute foundation of your future business: "The Big Three" care models. You can't do it all on day one, so you have to pick a lane!

Join me as we dive into the pros, cons, startup costs, and profit margins of: 🏡 Non-Medical In-Home Care 🏥 Assisted Living Facilities (ALFs) ☀️ Adult Day Centers

Whether you are bootstrapping your startup or looking to invest heavily in real estate, this episode will help you choose the perfect model for your budget, your goals, and your lifestyle.

Tune in and let's start building your blueprint! 🎧👇 🔗 [Insert Link to Episode / Restream Link]

#SeniorCareBusiness #Entrepreneur #SeniorCare #AssistedLiving #HomeCareAgency #AdultDayCare #PodcastLaunch #HealthcareBusiness

https://daytodayseniorcare.com/about-us

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi everyone. Jolly Day here from Day to Day Senior Care. How are you? So we are live today. Um, we are doing episode six of our um podcast for thinking of starting your own senior can business. Well, this is our if you look to our right on the screen, you'll see um on our website, you would just hit the listen now button and let me show you if I can do it here. Okay. I'll go to the screen itself. I'm still learning all this stuff here. You would hit the listen now button on our website and it'll bring you right to our website. Episode six is live right now. Thinking of starting your own senior care business. Okay today's episode. I have a script with me today, so I don't go off uh key here. And it's called uh the big three in senior care. That's our presentation today. The big three in senior care. All right. So welcome back to the podcast. Today we're looking at the foundation of your business. What type of care are you going to provide if you're going to start your own senior care business, folks? We're breaking down the three most popular models. Okay. So let's open up the screen. And we should be able to see this. This is our presentation. Alright. I need to get out of here for a second and check it on here. We're gonna switch. Give me a second here. I'm gonna take this one out. Let's see here. Replace and we're gonna do a new screen share.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Alright.

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And then let's do a new screen share right here, folks. Appreciate your patience here as I'm trying to get this going. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

And there she is.

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Okay, episode six, it should say. Sorry about that. The big three in senior care. Everyone can see that, I hope. All right. So just introduce myself again, Charles Day from Day to Day Senior Care. And I am the founder owner of a company that provides services for seniors. We do companion services, we do um transition services, we do placement services, we do discharge planning services, consultation services, um, we do uh seasonal things like snow removal during the winter. We've helped our clients, and then in the um summers, we do our camper getaway weekends with um with uh camper companions that are trained to take our clients camping. We use an RV and we uh spend the weekend camping. Okay. Um I'm in my second year. This was my first year. And I mean, last year I did my first year. This is my second year. I'm in March now. Um, this series is very personal to me because I'm right here in the thick of it. I have four clients of my own, um, and I continue to service them while running this business. Um, I have companions that work with other clients. Uh, we've taken over, uh we had 12 last year. We carried over 10, and uh we currently have an additional uh three uh with uh two more expected to open up uh either late this month or early J uh April. Slow and steady wins the race, folks. I'm in no rush. It's a very uh competitive business. Uh, if you're going to focus on one of the big three, which is the in in-home senior care companion services, non-medical, um, there's so much, so much need for it out there. There is not enough companies to cover all the need out there, even though it's very competitive. I'm gonna teach you how to rise above, uh, especially as a new uh business. You need to find your niche, you need to find your um things that will help carry you above and get you noticed. Um, and then the rest goes from there. It's referral sources. Um, but I'm gonna follow um the uh episode today. You can always go to our YouTube channel. Please subscribe, and you can get every episode that's coming up. We can give you an alert once a month. I'm not gonna overwhelm people with the subscriptions. Um, very excited that we already have over 5,000 views on our YouTube channel. Okay, that's not with our day-to-day senior care uh Facebook page, LinkedIn page, my personal pages in Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram. Um, we have a day-to-day senior care Instagram, but uh we're we're we're growing a network of people that are that are at least interested in seeing what we have to offer. Um, and most importantly, our families. Families that we are servicing right now. They can always come to our YouTube channel and uh look at our Care with Confidence podcast, which will uh explain a lot about um what's going on in the current uh trends. Uh we get special guests that'll be uh companions and um nurses' aides and CNAs that are already in the business. Some of them are former peers I've worked with over three decades, and they're actually working in assisted living and nursing homes, but yet they come uh special cases for me. Okay. Um I was a good boss. They wanted, they they've actually reached out to me many times and said, You have anything yet? You have anything yet? So I'm doing my best, and I try to keep the business family focused, former peers. And if I bring in new people, it's usually referrals from the families and the former peers. So it's very important to um when you're bringing in your staff, you've got to do your best to try and keep that network of uh close relationships, trust factors. It's all very important. And of course, continuity, continuity, people that will continue to work. My own sister has worked over it'll be a year this July, and she hasn't called in sick once with her client. Okay, not saying that things happen in life and everything, I get that, but it's very important to be able to um grow a staff. That's all comes with leadership skills, folks. Okay, so let's get into episode two presentation the big three in senior care. All right, I am going to switch over so I could let me see if I'm able to change it while I'm here. If I click it, no, so I have to go into the screen itself. I will be over here. All right, so the senior care landscape. Why pick a lane? Why are we picking a lane, folks? We're picking a lane because we have one different startup costs, um, depending on whether you go with um uh senior care, non-medical, or you want to open an adult daycare center, which services non-medical, or you want to uh open up an assisted living facility, okay? Hold on one second, if you like I'm okay. Okay, so you want to open up an assisted living facility, okay? Um, now I'm from New York, folks. I have a New York State uh licensed uh nursing home administrator uh license that I uh still active. I was an adult home administrator, um, and uh I had to be certified licensed for that with the New York State Department of Health. If you're doing a medical care agency, you need to be licensed by New York State Department of Health, assisted livings, adult daycare centers, home companion services, not so much. Um, it's um it's the foundation for going into home care on my, as far as I'm concerned, with my career endeavor and and and um operation mindset on what I plan on doing. But um the first thing is different startup costs. There they I mean, you want to start up a home companion program, you can go a few ways. You can do like I did and decided to do it on my own. I stepped out of the corporate world after three decades working in in um assisted livings and nursing homes and um adult homes, hospitals. Um, I took the leap and decided I'm going to um learn about home care and operate home care and grow a business. Okay. So costs are dependent on on how you want to grow your business. You know, you start with your expenses when you first open up, you've got your uh start getting your LLCs or corpse or whatever you want to do. You've got to register, you've got to do publishing of uh uh in in paper uh you know articles uh in Newsday or or Wall Street Journal or any of those that allow you to do uh classifieds and you've got to publicly announce your business. That's a requirement that's got to be done with 120 days from the time you register with New York State. Um, not gonna get into all that today. I want to stay focused. That's why I have my script. I always said I wasn't gonna have a script, but I do need a script because I I get tend to get excited about this. Been doing it a long time and I'm still very passionate. Okay, so the senior care landscape. Now, we also have different licensing rules. Okay, and you see with the different licensing rules, uh, you know, again with with the uh non-medical home companion, there's rules and regulations. We we we're developing, continuing developing policies and regs. Um, but once you go into medical, um it's it's uh stricter and requires more policies and regulations and licensing rules. LLCs are limited liability companies. You are the sole proprietor of your business, so you are um going to be able to um there's there's a lot of things you can do and can't do. I'm not gonna get into the depth of that today. Um, we just want to show you which lane you want to pick. All right. Um, and then there's the adult daycare and the assisted living, which go through the New York State DOH. Uh, I worked in assisted livings, I know the rules and regulations since the 90s, how much they've expanded and grown and added. Uh, I mean, now you can have to not only do you need a uh a license at an assisted living to open it, you know, uh just a basic assisted living in New York. If you're gonna uh take in residents that are gonna need some um additional services, there's other uh licenses you need to apply and be um approved for. That includes enhanced licensing. Um there were so many of them. So um I could go on and on with that as well. They've they've grown a lot. So you can, I mean, in some facilities, I know in Bristol's, they can use a Hoyer nowadays. Back when I when I was working, there were no Hoyers. No, no, no, no, no. Not an assisted living. And um even memory, every even dementia care was a big thing back then. Uh we opened, I was uh very fortunate to be part of a very large uh adult home which became an assisted living, 400 beds in Hopog. And those were very um, very important. Um uh sorry, I got sidetracked there. Um I'm looking, I also we're also on TikTok right now. Somebody had sent uh something. I just can't answer right now. So um this first uh memory care unit was was put into the Suffolk County in that facility, and we had to get special licensing in order to um to operate it. It's a set it was a 76-bed safe care unit, it was called at the time. And I was hired as the case manager to be specifically um certified by the state to be the case manager for that safe care unit, so that um whatever uh I needed to do, whether it was the initial admission notes and then the first seven-day note, then there was the three-month follow-up note, then there was the six-month progress note, then there was the annual note, and obviously we did we had paper charts back then, folks. There was no technology like there is today with the computers and software programs to uh do electronic records. Okay, so that was all old school stuff. But yeah, so a lot is advanced. But we want you want to know if you're gonna start your own business, you've got to know the rules and the regulations, the licensing rules. Um, we are gonna have special seminars down the road. Uh you're welcome to attend. Um, I'll be hosting them once a month. I'll be on the road doing events and conferences. You can certainly uh catch up with me there. Um so, and I'm gonna be working on a book that I'm gonna publish that will uh try and explain this this this uh senior care business and everything and how I started it and how I am uh growing um in our second year. And I think I'm I'm good. I don't think I need to go back and and work in a nursing home right now. I think uh I'm very happy with uh with the clients, the families. Um it's a great business, folks, um, but it it has to be done correctly, okay, to succeed. And then the third is the different lifestyles for you. You you need to find out what you know what kind of lifestyle you have. I'm doing a quick look at my script here. I'm definitely going off script today, folks. Um, because we only have a total of 30 minutes on this episode. But um, yeah, so you you can't do it all in one day. You your choice impacts how much money you need up front, the legal hoops you jump through, and whether you're working 9 to 5 or are on call at 2 a.m. Okay. So it everyone has their different lifestyles. You may not want to do assisted living because you may not want to be there all hours of the day. Trust me, it don't matter whether you're the owner or the administrator, you're gonna be there. It's not a nine to five job. You want to do adult daycare center, that's a little different. They're only open from nine to three, which and and some people may like that. You still get the residents that you can uh make you know a profit to help your business on. And there's they're all there in one place. You get your team in there, you work that out, and it could be a very uh profitable business. Um, it's it's definitely needed because there are a lot of residents, um, clients I've spoken with or or know where their next step may be. They don't need to go and assist the living yet, but if I can get them like an adult day center, it would help with that transition into assisted living because now they're in the community, they're they're at the facility. It's it's it's a great thing. Okay, let's go on to the next. Okay, so the non-medical in-home care. Okay, the non-medical in-home care. Just doing a quick look at my notes. Okay, so focus daily living tasks, cooking, cleaning, and bathing are one of the priorities when you're doing companion services. Okay, so you're gonna need to have um companions that are trained to be able to do the cooking, cleaning, and the bathing, um, assistance with bathing. Um, it also requires uh more than just uh that it requires uh activities, being able to get them out for a walk on the spring in the springtime or or getting them to uh a social event or taking them out grocery shopping. I have a few of my own clients that I take on occasion out grocery shopping, and they enjoy it, even if it's for a few items. They're out of the house, they're doing something very important. Okay, so what up the what are the startup costs? The startup costs are low to medium. Um, again, it depends on what you want to do. All right. Now, if you want to go with a franchise in home care, that's another whole um area. Okay, in franchising, you have um, you know, you can start as low as honestly, I did a lot of research before I even launched my business last year in January, because you know, it's it's easier to just jump into something that's already existing. You got your uniforms, you got your logo already, you got your website up, you got your team, everything. It's great, it's great. But I'm not gonna, I'm I'm definitely not gonna uh hide the fact that there you don't need to. You really don't need to. If you're a go-getter, if you're an entrepreneur, you can save$25,000 to$100,000. And there's no guarantee, folks. If you start to not do well, they don't care. Pay me. If you don't do, if you if you're not making a profit that month, they don't care. Pay me, okay? Because they need to get there, uh, they have they have a profit margin, they collect royalties, they collect fees. Um, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I mean, we may eventually want to franchise uh day-to-day senior care too in the future. I have a lot of um, you know, other moving parts. I do other, I mean a few other businesses, but we're also going to eventually move out of uh of of uh New York. We're gonna open up in Maine eventually, because I have a Maine nursing home administrator's license up there, too. So I don't want to be up there all the time either. So I may need to franchise. I may need to find someone that's willing to invest with me. And if they're if I know that they're a really good leader and they're gonna do well, we're gonna work together. I'm certainly not gonna charge 25,000 or higher. I'm gonna be more um open to um, you know, to something that is more workable at this point. But um very, very important to know that you know, we if you do take on a franchise, you you you may be in in a lot of debt initially. Now don't get me wrong, there's a lot of companies out there, the owners are doing very well, and that's great. You know, you get your take off, and now you've got a lot of clients, and then you've got all that that that uh corporate structure behind you. Me, I'm gonna create the corporate structure as we grow. I'm already looking at uh having people take over tasks that I'm getting better at because I feel that, you know, once I learn all this AI and get things going, I'll have some other people that can do um some things as well, you know, a younger crowd that is a lot more knowledgeable than I am. I'm still learning every day. So I'll build a corporate team. I'll have a, you know, uh uh we have account terror, I have two account territory managers now. I'm looking for a third. Eventually they will be the management team to take over all of Long Island. We're out in east, we're out in Suffolk, and now we're in Nassau. Um okay, so very important to know what your startup costs are. And again, your expenses, they're expenses. You've got to, you know, you've got to purchase your printer, you gotta purchase, you know, uh a lot of marketing, uh, online stuff, you know, to do your marketing, software. So there's a lot involved in the startup course, okay? Again, I'm giving broad overviews on these on these 30-minute um podcasts. Again, we are gonna open an academy eventually, day-to-day senior care academy, and we'll be able to bring in larger groups at once and be able to do trainings um in depth. And um we'll just grow, we'll grow exponentially. Um, and all of us will do very well. Or you can certainly go on your own uh as well and start your own home care. And then the profit margin it's volume. based folks so with the with the profit margins you it um in assisted living you've got your residence and you're you're making money on per beds okay you've got um say it's a facility with a hundred beds i'm just using example so every bed that's filled is it is profit per month to pay expenditures and operating costs okay so if you have filled to capacity and you see everyone on social media especially on linkedin when they're like yes we're we're full we're full the owners are loving it okay because and of course the staff too it's great to be full it it it's it's not always accomplishable I've had it a few times in some of the facilities at work and when you get it it's that great it's a great feeling because you don't have to do as many emissions there's less notes to do um things like that but anyway it's important uh for owners to have a there's a there's a margin there's a certain amount they don't want a 60 beds and with uh you know uh 40 beds you know or 20 beds whatever that are still you know empty so with day with adult day centers with the adult daycare centers you get maybe like 15 and you're doing well you get a profit off of you know a profit margin is you know whatever you you got to pay your staff you got to pay your uh you know the if there's somebody there that's doing the housekeeping whatever it is you've got to incur all of these um expenses and then you'll take um the profit from that both of those businesses are very profitable I will tell you that New York State will I ever do something like that I don't know I'm looking more to retiring uh campground property uh that I've been working on I got a little business going on with that right now that's where I want to go maybe in the future just you know sell this business or have someone else operate it and then be able to grow that campground business so I can relax and you know at the RV but I'm also working you know what I mean during the summertimes and me being a social butterfly I love hanging out with fellow campers it's great when you have people that are vacationing they're always in a good mood um anyway I'm getting off key here off track so let's go back to um let's go on to the next okay okay so yeah we're talking about the you know we were talking a little bit about the assisted living facilities so very important you know focus is 247 care in a residential facility you can't get around that um and just a note too I had written down that um you know this is the most pop popular starting point because you don't need real estate in the beginning just great caregivers but the margins are tighter in the beginning so you need a higher volume of clients and staff to scale okay um so in assisted living again I explained to you it's the the revenue is in the per bed per month like a monthly rent almost like real estate property all right now if you do decide to go assisted living you're gonna need to purchase real estate okay as opposed to doing home care or or things like that so um startup costs are could be really high millions folks in the millions and you know everyone's oh yeah I'll get assistance trust me it's not that easy to get the license either okay the New York State Department of Health um is very strict on who's gonna who they're going to approve same thing with home care um everyone thinks they oh yeah you know I can just go get a uh home care agency license and the state will approve me all right I've got I'm an active licensed nursing home administrator and I've got 30 plus years and I'm doing home care non-companion right now I'm putting all these moving parts in place and I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed that they approve me all right they don't approve everybody that's the thing you you see all these ads out there oh yeah well we'll get you started in assisted living all right maybe in another state I'm not too sure how the other states are but not in New York profit margin is phenomenal okay trust me I've seen the financials in both assisted living nursing homes it you can be extremely profitable um very pro very high very high all right so you may invest millions but you're you're gonna be you're gonna be okay um adult daycare centers focus daytime care and socialization so again you're looking at like an eight to three or two o'clock maybe a six hour day five days a week you you're off on weekends it's nice remember we spoke about the lifestyle it's a great business to have no doubt um I've been in a lot of adult daycare centers in my 30 years um but um I am more of um what do you call I was more of just going in there to see residents or or uh you know get involved in um some some um you know outside stuff during that time I never actually was employed in an adult daycare center but um got you know it's a good lifestyle if you like to have weekends off unlike myself startup cost medium for a commercial lease um not as expensive as assisted living again you have lower lower uh you know resident volume um so you you got to see what what you like profit margins are pretty predictable and scalable now we didn't say that when we were in assisted living because they're not always predictable and scalable okay um all right so making your decision okay so making your decision um how much capital do I have that's what you very important too when you start how much capital do I have you you know when you start in uh like myself for example I started I invested you know capital I put money into the business um before I launched it in January of 2025 because I already had to start in December getting that uh you know sending out the you know the application which was like I think$250 or whatever and there were other applications for things that I needed to get in order to uh get registered and licensed for the uh LLC so you're you're starting to uh invest already and then in January we launched I opened it up officially with an older website that I you know with GoDaddy at the time um you know I had uh small expenses I I had my personal expenses too because I went from a very profitable um you know working in in the in in senior care in nursing care especially uh as a nursing administrator you can make a lot of money yeah six figures folks but I stepped out of it um believing in myself and I'm you know proud to say that I'm surviving but um you know it takes a while um so you got to have some capital if you're gonna franchise you better have a lot of capital um and um again you've got to really weigh those those factors out on what you know you may want to start first and see about you know doing it yourself and another thing too is I don't care you know you it just gets me sometimes when I see some of these um these ads from some some of the uh people that just you know come out of nowhere and they're like uh yeah uh you know you can grow your your senior care company and uh you know from the first month in two months you could be making fifty thousand dollars and I'm like are you kidding me it took me almost a year just well it took me a couple of months just to get uh four clients at least six months to get four clients solid for myself and that I and I was the owner and I had to do it I believe I was doing almost 40 hours a week then I dropped to 30 then I let go of a client then I took a client back look you know if you're the owner expect it don't think you're not you're not gonna be you know unless you you know you want to just not me I I had I always want to make money because I got bills to pay and I'm I'm passionate about I what what I do so I have some great uh clients that are still with me to this day in year two they love me I love them um and then of course you got to look at uh what are my local zoning laws okay so when you're doing assisted living or or are or working in any business you've got to see if if you're gonna be like you know take on new construction um or or any other things you want to look at into that so that is pretty much it for today again it I'm just giving 30 minute overviews letting you know that my professional consultations are available for uh anyone all right um but uh we're gonna be doing some other things the most important thing folks is to subscribe if you hit the subscribe button on our YouTube channel I promise I'm not gonna be sending in you dating you with a whole bunch of uh emails it once a month we'll just put out what we're gonna be scheduling for the for the you know the next month so if you're really really interested in in you're you have that entrepreneurial spirit and you want to grow a business you can certainly learn from me um I I'm I'm the real deal I don't I'm not doing anything that uh you know this is what I do for a living it's my whole lifelong career this this last step in in um growing this uh senior care business to the best I can is the last uh ring on my ladder all right I'm not ready to retire but um I'm ready to uh you know move forward in the in the final ring um next week we're gonna go into a little bit more about navigating the state licensing in New York State specifically so yes um you can certainly ask me questions about other states but I'd have to look it up because I'm I'm mostly New York State with everything here. Maine I know what the rules are in Maine because I have a like I said I have an active nursing well it's not active right now it's it's there I'm gonna reactivate it when I go up this spring but I did get approved to uh to do operations up in um in uh Maine because I had worked in a facility up there and they they awarded me a license in Maine after um after I gave them all my experience and all that and it was a great facility um it had both assisted living and uh a nursing home so it was great to uh and it was during COVID but it was great to be able to work in both again you know so because I love both of both of those you know those industries I love the the assisted living and I love the uh long-term care so that but the regulations and the rules I'd rather be in assisted living than nursing that's my own personal uh you know uh feeling because it you know you got the book and assisted living's like this for regulations but the DOH and then you got the Medicaid uh regulations along with uh the rules in red regs by the DOH in nursing uh homes so anyway yeah get in touch with me folks get in touch with me um day to day senior care um dot com uh is our website you can get me there my phone number's there um charles at daytodayseniorcare dot com you know where to find me i'm all over folks um and available um thank you very much we went over four minutes but you're all great and i again i really appreciate uh over 5000 views on just our youtube channel so just subscribe subscribe help me out um because that makes it easier for me to get you stuff uh in a more timely fashion okay all right everyone take care and i will be in touch all right you tick toc friends just gonna check and see if there are any questions all right everyone thank you very much