JCEI Team 
Seventeen years later, I sold two of my care facilities for $2.7 million. I still run the third. When I opened the first one, I had nothing of my own to put in. Not a small amount. Zero. I went to every major bank in the region. Every one of them turned me down, and … Read more
A complete roadmap to opening a small residential care home (AFC) — from state application to your first passed inspection When people write to me about opening an adult family care home, the first question is almost never about money. It’s rarely about filling beds either. It’s about licensing. And the messages arrive in the … Read more
Get the financial model right, and a care facility is a surprisingly simple business to run at a high margin. It’s not unusual for an owner running a 6-bed facility to clear $7,000–$12,000 in monthly net profit. But plenty of operators get stuck at “somehow profitable” and never find the path from there to a … Read more
Seventeen years running small-scale care facilities, and there’s one question I get more than any other. “How do you actually run the place day to day?” Honestly, for the first few years, I couldn’t have answered that. I showed up, worked off memory and instinct, and some days went fine, some days didn’t. What changed … Read more
“The three months before our first resident arrived felt like the longest of my life.” That’s how Maria Sanchez remembers the early days of running her 6-bed AFC (Adult Family Care) facility in Tampa, Florida. Her facility reached full occupancy just six months after opening. For anyone considering an AFC business, her story isn’t a … Read more
A field-tested blueprint for running a profitable small-scale care facility — built from 17 years of getting it wrong before I got it right. Most people open a care facility on hope. They’ve got a location, a license, and a rough sense that “people need this.” What they don’t have is a design — a … Read more
Maria was four months into running her care facility when her bank account dropped below $1,200. Two residents. Six beds. Rent at $3,200 a month. Staff payroll due the following week. That night, she called her family. “I might have to close,” she told them. What had gone wrong? Not the quality of care. Not … Read more
1 AM. You can’t sleep. Tomorrow morning, a notice from your state inspector might be waiting. You’ve been reading through new regulatory documents for two hours, switching between Google and YouTube, and you still can’t figure out what actually changed. The answer isn’t there. Does that sound familiar? Running a small residential care facility in … Read more
Are you still “considering” entering the care business? That’s not a neutral position. Every day you stay on the sideline, you’re not standing still. You’re falling behind. Loss aversion is keeping you stuck. The human brain is more than twice as sensitive to loss as it is to gain. The fear of “what if it … Read more
Twenty-one residents. Full house. Staff showing up. The numbers were in the black. And yet one night, a thought stopped me cold: “If nothing changes, I may not be able to keep this company alive.” The problem wasn’t the business. It was the location. The facility was remote. Hard to reach for residents, families, and … Read more