We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Rocky and Sherry from Peak Care Assisted Living Homes to hear about their journey in assisted living and how they have managed to become so successful. Peak Care Homes is an organization that specializes in providing high quality assisted care to the elderly in the comfort of a beautiful home environment. With three homes in operation and a forth currently being constructed, Peak Care homes is setting new standards of care in the assisted living industry and many are taking notice.
Rocky and Sherry met Gene at a Breakout Session of the Real Estate Guys Secrets of Syndication Seminar in Phoenix in February of 2016, and three months later they found themselves at the RAL Academy’s Live 3-Day course.
They had some real estate experience in rehabbing homes before coming to the course, but they realized that apartments and flips weren’t the right asset class. While they attended the 3-day course they quickly saw the value of assisted living, but with a much greater cash flow potential and community benefit than other real estate classes.
After taking the 3-Day Fast Track Course Sherry recounts:
“I didn’t need to start from the ground up. A lot of what needs to be done, the groundwork, had already been laid. All I had to do was follow the game plan that was already put in place.”
Sherry, Peak Care Assisted Living Homes
The next step they took was to visit many of the other assisted living facilities in their surrounding area to get impressions of what they could learn from how they are run and what they could do better. It quickly became apparent that there were many ways that they could improve the care offered to seniors and it was this potential that got Sherry excited about getting into the assisted living business.
Doing their homework and recognizing the opportunity to elevate the senior care model gave them focus, a greater sense of purpose and clear vision of how to move forward. It was this purpose that established the foundation of their core principles: Integrity, Astonishment, and Stewardship. The principles that all of their decisions and the management of their business is built upon.
When starting your RAL business, or any business, you need to know your purpose. Your purpose will inform your core values and those values will keep you going in the right direction and help govern the choices you and your team make. Continually refer to them to keep yourself and your employees on track.
It was exciting to hear about their passion, and how it guided them from the beginning. Sherry explains, “my goal within this is to create a legacy,” and “assisted living would be something I could put my heart and soul into.” She continued, “To make a difference within this industry and to elevate it, we need people who have a passion for it, taking care of the elderly,” and:
“If someone is passionate about this industry it kind of just takes care of itself.”
Rocky describes Peak Care Homes’ mission statement as “treating every resident like they are our own mother in our own home.” “We realize that the decision of placing a family member in a care facility is strenuous and it can be very exhausting both mentally and physically on all family members. We work tirelessly to provide the safest and highest quality care to our residents so that both the residents and their family members feel comfortable knowing that they are in good hands.”
As far as the business side, they found their first major challenge was the financing. They expressed their appreciation in being able to consult the team of professionals at the RAL Academy and worked together to create a business plan.
One of the key elements they found was necessary to acquire their SBA loan was advisement from someone who was experienced in the assisted living industry. They were grateful that Gene and Tom were available to walk through all the financing with them and help navigate this crucial step.
“It was really important that we had the team from RALA be there for us to help with the SBA loans.”
Another challenge they ran into was establishing a good reputation. “Being new in the industry and not having much background in assisted living or health care, we had to build up our reputation.” Rocky wanted the people in his community to know “that we’re taking care of the residents, that we love them, and it’s not that we’re doing this just to make a quick dollar.”
Being new to the assisted living industry, Rocky and Sherry found that part of establishing a great reputation in the community was networking with the right people. Using the information from the RAL Academy they were able to hire quality people with the right experience and make connections with people in the industry who could help shine a light on their burgeoning RAL business.
The combination of having a clear vision of what they wanted to accomplish with their RAL homes and hiring an extremely qualified team, made it easier to find their place in the industry. It helped them effectively communicate to others why they were different from all the other assisted living options in the area. Their vision and the qualified team that they had put together, spoke volumes, even when their own personal experience was relatively limited. Rocky explained,
“We have advisors with the RAL Academy who have done this for years,” and “so even though we didn’t have the experience, our team did.”
One of the reasons that so many new business ventures fail is because entrepreneurs often don’t have the right team around them and advisors who have gone before them to help navigate through all the hurdles that arise in a new business. As Rocky explained, “make sure you surround yourself with the team that RALA has put together for you. If you do that, they will help you be successful.”
The team at Peak Care homes are in the inner circle at RALA and as platinum members they find it so encouraging that they can simply pick up the phone at any time with questions they have and an experienced member of the RALA team will help them. Rocky continues, “knowing that that team is behind you to get past any of those hurdles is huge.”
Here at the RAL Academy, we would love for you to become a success story just like the team at Peak Care Homes. So whether you are just starting out in this amazing industry or you have been at it for years, check out our resources available on our website, come to our live training courses, or reach out to us by email or phone and let us know what we can do for you.
We want you to succeed. We want you to Do Good and Do Well.
