10 Secrets I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Sober Living Home

Most people starting sober living homes make the same costly mistakes I know because I made some of them myself. But if you know these 10 secrets, you'll save yourself years of headaches and make your sober living home way more successful and sustainable over time. Sober living is high reward, but it's also high responsibility. Knowing these secrets can be the difference between success and burnout. So by the end of this video, you'll know the hard truths that no one is telling you about starting a sober living home and how to avoid common pitfalls. My name is Andrew lam. I run 10 sober living homes in California. And when I first started in 2020, I started five homes in 12 months. And it was quite the learning curve figuring this out on my own. So there's about 90% that you're not going to ever get from this YouTube channel because I have a private community where we talk through all the nuances, all the things in many different states. We have students nationwide, hundreds of students, well over 300 at this point. But I'm going to put you on game to like the most important things you absolutely must do. And you're going to eat that right here, right now, before we finish this video. So secret number one is that location is, is everything, although not the way that you might think. I used to say that location, location, location was the most important thing, meaning proximity to public transportation, proximity to grocery stores and jobs and all that stuff. Yes, it's true, but the demand for sober living is so high that I've even found in areas of the country where there isn't public transportation or there aren't services, there's still a high need for sober living homes. For example, 30 miles south of Austin, Texas, we had a student who had two homes. They had a really large homelessness problem and no treatment centers, no programs, really not much going on. Local hotel where a lot of people were staying decided to shut down for some renovations and a lot of people were made homeless. So it was that public emergency. They started calling in all these different meetings, from housing to city council and planning and zoning and all this stuff. And my student was able to attend those meetings, work with a local government and basically work with a nonprofit as well to fill up two homes at $1,200 a bed through this nonprofit that had an incredible program training, high success rate. It was actually women out of prison, but they have, I think it was less than a 2% recidivism rate, meaning people get out. It's an entrepreneurship program. They train them, they teach them, they start their Own businesses, give them some money, some micro grants to get started, because they have purpose, because they have a mission, because they have a full support system. Very rarely, if any, I mean, I haven't heard from this particular program of anybody who's gone back to jail or prison after exiting through this program. So it's been an incredible success story. But again, no services locally, no public transportation. Couldn't even get into Austin from this particular town. And yet he was able to fill up two homes or have enough referrals to fill up two homes very quickly. And so it's not a requirement that you have to have those things, especially when the need is massive. It just makes it that much easier for people inside of your homes to have access to what they need access to if it already exists. So if you're in an area and some people have gotten a lot of messages and comments about this, if you're in an area that doesn't have services and doesn't have public transportation, that's not the most important thing. What's more important is being able to actually do treatment if they are in recovery, being able to access their healthcare provider if they are. We're getting a lot more people who are within our sober living homes but have more health and like physical disabilities than behavioral health or substance use disorder. And so they're getting placed and they need to be close to their hospital or their cancer treatment center or, you know, these other things that they need their primary care doctor and specialist more so than they need the ability to, you know, get on a bus. Because especially if you're going through cancer treatments, honestly, you don't want to be on a public city bus. Your immune system is compromised. You don't want to be in a space like that, but you do want to be super close to your specialist so that you're not having to. For example, we have this situation right now, multiple people undergoing cancer treatments in one home that is on the opposite side of the city from their cancer center. And so the time it takes to coordinate and have multiple visits from that side of the city all the way to the where they're getting treatment, it just doesn't make sense if you have the ability to move them closer. And so just thinking through the ways that you can can optimize location based on the needs of your residents is really the biggest key. And if there aren't services, that's not a detriment to starting a sober living home. It might just mean everyone's figured it out for years because there have been no services. So they'll continue figuring it out. What you can do is provide your own transportation. You can do something like meals on wheels or have an order meal delivery service, bring meals in. We're also doing that for a lot of our people now. And so all you have to do is make sure that there is a need in your area. And you know, if there's a way that people have figured things out before, they can continue, continue to figure that out. But you can also wrap around some additional services and maybe bring in some community partners to help make sure that things are, you know, the way they need to be. I would also still say that like B, neighborhoods A minus neighborhoods are going to be the best place for a sober living home. You don't want them to be in an area that's considered, you know, the hood or close to drug dealers, close to just. Just stuff that wouldn't serve the people in our communities. What we really want is a nice quiet space for our people to rest, relax, feel like it's safe, feel like they can just lay their head down, do what they need to do and not have to worry or stress about anything else besides having a nice, clean, safe space to live. Doing their chores, doing whatever they need to do inside of the home, and then going and doing what they need to do outside of the home without feeling unsafe, unwanted, anything like that. Secret number two, the right house setup can make or break your sober living home. More bathrooms actually equals less stress and less conflict. I've mentioned this in previous videos. If you have more than six people to a bathroom, that's not something I would recommend personally. You want to make sure there's at least two bathrooms, two and a half, so that people don't have to have long wait times, things like that. Also, single beds, in my opinion, are far better than bunk beds for several reasons. Number one, just space, the ability to actually give people some breathing room. Number two, you're going to have lower turnover because people will choose to stay longer if they literally don't have somebody above them or below them. Two twin beds. I have students who have done full beds or queen beds. That works too, depending on the size of the room. But two twin beds is usually the best case scenario for that maximum optimization of occupancy and turnover. You want, you know, more stability, less people coming and going, but people feeling like they're actually cared for and not just shoved into rooms. The model that I've seen of two or three bunk beds in every single room to me just is not sustainable. And it's why a lot of those homes actually have to charge less in order to fill up and stay full, because they constantly have conflict and constantly have people coming and going, whereas my average day in my homes tends to be well over 12 months. I would also say that common areas and the kitchen matter a lot more than you think. Having a common space to gather and just, you know, watch tv, making sure it's furnished with living room furniture, tv, stuff like that. We've had people bring in video game consoles and you know, in the evening they're playing Xbox or something together they're playing mad and some of the guys or, you know, Fortnite, all that kind of stuff too. And that makes it a really nice community space that can be used and people aren't feeling like they're on top of each other. They don't necessarily have to keep to themselves in their rooms. So it's nice to have those spaces. Unfortunately, there's a lot of co living spaces popping up where they're breaking up those living rooms and common areas into individual bedrooms. Number one, if those are unpermitted walls, that can definitely affect your resale value of the property later on. And number two, I just haven't seen that work out well in terms of again, just reducing turnover, higher and longer stays, things like that. So I'd rather have a couple of people sharing a room, have that mutual accountability. Literally, they're like dorm mates, like roommates, helping each other, holding each other accountable instead of giving people tiny individual rooms. And then, you know, you have the city walk through and you're getting shut down because you violated a WHO bunch of permitting and building rules. So I don't do any, anything like that. If we do upgrades, it's typically just a cosmetic upgrade. We are not changing the structure of homes because I do care about the resale value, but I also don't want to be bombarded with, you know, complaints from code enforcement or have to deal with getting permits, all that stuff. We are just doing traditional homes, the walls that are already there. And then something to think about, especially as sober living becomes more and more prevalent and as states start to mandate things. For example, in about six, six or seven states now, Medicaid is paying for housing for its members who are eligible. And so it actually helps, especially if you want to get into the medical respite stuff that we're doing now, to have some, some accessibility type of features. So maybe having wider hallways, lower countertops. Those are things to think through. Having some ADA compliance for the Future, maybe wheelchair ramps, things like that. We're getting a lot more people with wheelchairs than with walkers. I've mostly had single story homes for that reason. We are now getting to a place where we have a couple more two story homes. And that just houses more people, allows us to do more, especially for women and children because you know, single moms with multiple kids, they kind of need their own space. And so we can't have more than two or three single moms with multiple kids in a smaller home. So that's why we're looking for bigger stuff now. But I'd say if you can and you're thinking about doing that type of work and maybe have some, some, some clients with a little bit higher acuity than your super independent people exiting treatment, then you might want to think through some of those ADA compliance things. Secret number three is the first 30 days are the most dangerous and critical. And what I mean by that is new residents are at their highest risk of exiting your home in the first month. They really just need to come in, chill out, get used to the setting, get used to being in a home like this, following the rules, abiding by curfew, all of those things we actually really like to have in the first week. Are people just going to be homebodies? Stay at home, get used to it, be there. Like don't just be out all the time. Like get used to the accommodations. And that usually does a really good job of making sure that they're going to stick around long term. If they come in, then they disappear all day every day. They only come back at curfew. Sometimes we're wondering like, okay, well where are they all day long if they're only in by 10 or 11 at night, like what have you been doing? And so we ask those questions, we want to find out what's going on. This is part of our intake process. So we just ask these questions, what's your schedule? If they have work, we ask them to send us their schedule. Especially if it's going to be something that's like grave shift and then they have to make accommodations with their code working on the front door so they can get in at night. Because we do have curfew and we do enforce it. And so things like that. Just to make sure that everybody understands the rules. We're all on the same page, we know where everyone's at, they're all accounted for and you're good to go. I would also say that like I mentioned at the intake process, having a structured onboarding and then accountability throughout the course of their stay is super important. We have case managers now who meet with our individuals all the time. Literally, it's almost like every day we're at the homes, checking in on them, making sure they're okay. When I first started, that was me. I was literally going to every house every day and walking to them because they were in my neighborhood. I even had my kids help like donate things because we always allowed for single parents. And so they were donating toys and books and all kinds of stuff and I would just walk to the homes every day and check in on things. So it's not that you need to is more of a want to, but I really like making sure that things run smoothly and that if anybody needs anything, that you know, there's any issues, if there's just maintenance stuff, if they're out of cleaning supplies, that we order the right cleaning supplies so that they can stay on top of their chores. It's the little thing. So if that's not you individually, like personally, when you first start, definitely hiring a manager or having somebody who can help you with those things is super helpful. I eventually did that and added in a camera system so that I could see and hear what was going on in each of those common areas in the kitchen, make sure that things were running smoothly even if I wasn't there. But I would definitely make sure that's the case. As far as your accountability goes, just check in with people. We do a weekly group text as well. I mean we're getting text from that group in each home more often than a week. But we just want to make sure we're at least checking in, hearing what's going on, if they have any needs on a weekly basis. Secret number four is that your documentation is your best friend. And what I mean by this is having a license agreement that allows your people to come in and not have to sign a long term lease and be locked in, but gives you the flexibility to enforce your rules, but also gives them the flexibility that if they find permanent housing, they can take off immediately. No, no punishment, no money owed, they can go and move into that permanent housing that they found. Now usually they're going to give you some kind of, you know, update on hey, I got approved for a apartment, I'm going to move in next week or on the first of the month. So we do ask for notice, like they shouldn't just be leaving same day. But we also want to be have that flexibility to enforce the rules, make sure that people are staying Clean and sober. We do drug tests. And so if they have a negative test, well, we are able to have a conversation. And if they choose not to go to detox and not to, you know, abide by the rules, they have to leave immediately. And so we've never really had issues with that. We've been able to enforce it. Honestly, if people have slip ups, they tend to just leave anyway and just disappear, not come back. And so we just want to make sure that we are able to enforce the rules as we see fit. Now what this usually means is having again a license agreement. They have a license to shared space in the house. A lease is an exclusive right to exclusive private space. That is not going to make sense for a home like this. They have access to basically a bed in a shared environment and use of the utilities and all of those things. That's why we call it a license agreement and co living and pad split and things like that. You'll hear about a membership agreement. It is literally the same basic code of federal compliance law and that allows us to basically have them be members or you know, have a license to make use of certain space we make available without them necessarily having anything beyond tenants rights. In California we actually have something called the Transitional Housing Misconduct Act. So if you are a nonprofit or government agency or funded by, hired by, with a contract, a nonprofit or government agency, you can actually hold people, people accountable to this Transitional Housing Misconduct act and again not have to evict people ever, but instead go through a process to swiftly get them out for not following the rules or for endangering others by not caring about their, their own recovery. Meaning if somebody's, you know, relapsed, they're choosing to stay in addiction, something like that. You are running a behavioral health home or a sober living home where you have people exiting a treatment scenario and they do relapse, literally. You can use that, that act and everything inside of your license agreement. Just swiftly move them out immediately. They know that before they ever move in. If you're doing your intake, well that shouldn't happen often, if ever. But again, like it does happen sometimes in, in recovery, relapse and slip ups can happen. And you want them to make the right choice. Go to detox where they can be away from the home, spend seven or ten days doing that and then welcome them back again with consistent drug testing and making sure they don't have any more slip ups. We've experienced that where they've gone to detox, come back, they're so grateful we didn't just kick them out and they literally stay clean for the next 18 months and move on to permanent housing. Some have even become leaders inside of our homes because they just did such an incredible job. And it stems from that, that just gratitude for us giving them that second chance. I would also say that talking to an attorney, especially in your state, would be really helpful to have them review the agreement. Inside of our coaching program, we actually provide an agreement that's been vetted by multiple attorneys and is an adherence with federal fair housing laws. And basically it's been, it's being used by our students across the country with no issues. But it's always good to have a local attorney check it out just to make sure. For example, Massachusetts has a sober living home law where you want to make sure an attorney locally understands that law and reviews your documentation just to make sure you can actually enforce it in your area. So that's, that's the one caveat. Always make sure you have a local attorney review the paperwork secret. 5, 80% of your revenue will come from the first 10% of your decisions. The way you launch a sober living home truly does matter and can affect its ability to one, create profit to be sustainable. Three, help a lot of people over time. Four, allow you to scale a successful, you know, consistent model to multiple homes. For example, the wrong pricing model literally can be a constant struggle. I get calls all the time from sober living operators in my area where I am. We have consistent meetings. We all get together, or at least the ones who actually care about running great homes. We all get together, we talk through struggles, challenges, great things, great outcomes, things that are changing inside of our local county government because we all have contracts with different county departments and things like that. But I know some people who literally cannot fill up their homes. They never had a model to get referrals from multiple sources and have multiple relationships. So when one program changed the way they did things, kind of hit pause on referrals, which that one program did multiple times. It completely blew up their business and they were shocked, struggling, thinking I might have to shut down. I never want anyone to be in that position. So we always talk through how to fill up with the 90 days by having multiple referral partners. We provide our students with a list of 50 or 60 that they can contact in their area with a template on how to contact them, how to build a relationship, all those things. But we want to make sure that people simply are thinking about and planning on having multiple referral sources knowing what they can charge. I also talked to somebody, like literally one program is paying $1,400 per bed in our area for certain people. That means you have to provide meals and some other things. But that's the scale. You can get up to 1400, 1450 from that particular organization. This one individual was still charging $900 per bed, like literally 4 or $500 less than everyone else. And she's been charging the same amount since, let's call it five, six years ago. Even though utilities have increased, inflation is crazy. And so just knowing your pricing model, increasing your price appropriately as there's inflation, inflation, as things change over the years, I started off at 1200 a bed. We increase later to 1300 and then 1350. And just to account for the fact that I literally have staff, qualified, certified staff, we do trainings all the time. We provide a ton of services inside of our home that no one else does. And the fact that we have multiple homes, we have, we give people optionality. They can choose what city they want to be in, what neighborhood they want to be in, depending on what makes the most sense for them, access to, you know, wherever they go to work. If there's parking and they, they have a couple car, but we're in a, you know, there's two homes in an area and there's one with less people with cars, we're going to put them there so that there's not parking issues. These are the things that we think about and it's options that we have because we've grown that we didn't have initially. And so many other competing sober living homes can't offer those things. So we get the majority of phone calls. So these are all things to think about, especially if you plan on growing so that you can set the right foundation and be able to grow again consistently, sustainably without having to worry about, well, what if one program goes away? What if this happens? I never want to see anyone who's serving people, helping, helping change people's lives have to shut down simply because they're not making enough money to keep the doors open and pay the bills. Secret six is house managers can make or break your business. When I first brought in my first house manager, she was part time. She'd already volunteered at sober living homes for years. This was more like a second career passion project. And she was great, but she got to a point where her husband was like, hey, you're retired. Can we please go enjoy retirement? And she stepped away. And so then I hired somebody else. That person was a registered drug and alcohol treatment professional. But it also got to a point where they had some, some personal things going on in life and it just didn't make sense anymore. But we also started getting some complaints about the way they were talking to certain people, things like that. And so again, your house manager can make or break your home. The way they treat your individuals, which should be with a little bit of tough love, but also like speaking to them kindly, giving the motivation and encouragement, making, making sure, you know, with, with their skill set, motivational interviewing, asking the right questions, essentially coaching them to do the right thing, take the right next step in their lives. Those are all very important things. And if you don't have somebody who number one is giving them the tough love, that first manager was more of a very sweet grandma. And so not a lot of tough love. A lot of help, a lot of support, a lot of transportation, a lot of let me go buy you some clothes and make you, make sure that you can, you know, go to your interview and look appropriate, things like that. But not a lot of the. Just because of, you know, lack of skill set, didn't have the training for it. Not a lot of the. Have you talked with your counselor today? How are you doing? Are you attending your meetings? That kind of thing. And so you want to have. I like hiring actual certified substance use counselors because they're going to be the best with lived experience, typically and with experience just with this demographic knowing with all the things that are going on, right, mental health, behavioral health, physical disabilities, all the gamut of backgrounds that people have inside of these homes, they're going to be best suited to do all that. With me not having a recovery background, it was really important to bring somebody in who understood all of that. And they essentially ran the show from there. I was just like doing the CEO things, the founder things, and they, they took over the day to day and the interaction with individuals and did it way better than I ever did. Secret number seven. Sober living is a business, so treat it like one. Yes, we want to help people. That's the whole reason we do this. It's not worth it if you're not in it to help people. Honestly, if you're getting paid by local government, it can take quite some time to get set up on accounts payable. We were floating the mortgage for probably three months before we ever received any kind of payments. And so you have to really want to invest and do this and take a risk. Now at the same time, not every local government program operates the way the ones that, like my county did initially. In fact, it's awesome because I have students who literally, their county paperwork says net 30 when my paperwork and my, my area literally had no timeframe. So like they were not held to anything in the time frame to pay us. And so there are ways to mitigate this. But just know that it's a business. You really do need to run it like a business. What that means is reviewing your P L monthly, actually making sure you're tracking income and expenses appropriately. You're getting cash, accounting for that, putting it in QuickBooks, doing things like that, staff and resident performance tracking. Having KPIs that you track in your business are very, it's very important to know the success of your business, the trends, which programs are sending in the most referrals, your outcomes, having a place to log UAs, your drug test, things like that. And so if you're truly going to do so, reliving, you have to from the very beginning treat it like a business. That might also mean setting up a business bank account, setting up an llc, treating it completely different like a business because it is one. We use profit first the way we do all of our financials. And I think that's the best way to make sure that you're running it like a business. Not coming funds, a building business, credit even, and just doing things the right way so that come tax time, you're not surprised. But also you have the ability to go out and get finance and get corporate credit, do what you need to do to expand because hopefully you're helping people in a very good, sustainable way. Why not help more if you have the ability to? Not enough people are starting homes like this. The need is huge if you get into it. My hope would be that you not just start one home, but like our students, many of our students start three, four or five of these homes to really provide the amount of help that people need. I personally never expected to have 10 homes in my area, six homes, seven homes in one city, because we didn't have a clearly visible need. But again, a lot of these people are marginally unhoused. They have a roof over their head, but it's considered sheltered homelessness, meaning they don't have a consistent roof over their head. They might be in their car, they might be couch surfing, they might be 14 days away from getting kicked out or having to relocate and not have a place. They might be exiting hospitals. Then you're dealing with social workers trying to place them and making sure they're in a safe, clean space. So this is why there's such a massive need. This is why governments are paying for things like this. And it's why you should really think about how to run like a business so that you can scale in the future. Best operators, build a machine that can run without them. If you're constantly every single day focused on one home, it's really difficult to think about expansion because you're just doing the day to day, every day. So that's why we provide a plan and want to help you build a portfolio of sober living homes. But also we include all of the employment documents, the policies and procedures, all of the roles that happen inside of the home so you don't have to be the one person doing all of that yourself and you can actually get your time back. Make good. Make a good living doing it because it should be sustainable. That's why we talk about profit. I don't want you to have to shut down later, but I want you to be able to grow as well. Secret number eight is going to be building a community network. It's always great to have other partners in the community who you can rely on. I also think it makes sense to connect with some other sober living homes locally who might be able to take people when you're full or send people to you when they're full or just if it's not the right situation, not the right fit. Maybe there's a personality conflict between an individual and your house manager. That person, instead of being made homeless, can go to another great home that you know of and vice versa. They can send people to you who maybe it's just not a fit or the location makes more sense. These things we can work together to fill the need. We don't have to feel like competitors. I also really love having local community partners. For example, our county probation department is amazing in the support that they provide to people who are on probation. Now they have a social worker. They've really changed the way they do things over the years that we've worked with them. We don't work with them nearly as much as we used to, but instead of just having a PO drop somebody off at a house, now there's a social worker who sits with them, talks through their notes, their case, what their hopes and goals are. They might put them in classes literally to get like an H VAC certification or, you know, different jobs skills. They have group therapy, they have journaling sessions. Then they have something in my area called the center for Positive Change where a lot of this stuff happens, which is pretty amazing. And so if we're ever taking any kind of probation client. Now we're making sure they are a center for positive change client. They are bettering themselves, they have all the support they need. It's not like some of the previous people. We used to have people coming straight from prison with no support, which I didn't know was a thing until I asked the question. And they had been sending people like that and I was like, no one heard. Wasn't working out my first six months in 2021 we completely changed course and so have they. And now you're getting people who are literally like sometimes a year or two clean and sober, actively working on going to school, bettering themselves and again just trying to like stay straight, not go back to jail, things like that. And people can be on probation for like three or four years. And so it is not unlikely for somebody to get placed by probation, literally be two or three years clean. They just need to save space over their head, that's all. It might also make sense to collaborate with AA or na. They're technically not supposed to endorse any particular sober living home, but we actually just had somebody else who was like, hey, I got somebody in my AA group, they've been cleaning sober for years but they're sleeping on a couch and they're going to lose it pretty soon here. So do you have a space? And they were hunting for a home and we called, we got the call and brought them into our home. Healthcare partnerships are also super important. Making sure that you can get people either the psychiatric help that they may need, the medications they may need, knowing the ombudsman phone number for Medicaid to make sure that they're getting the coverage that they need, especially if they're transferring counties. Like all these little things matter. It's stuff that we never used to get paid for before we started dealing with medical. It's just stuff we had to do to make sure that our people were successful. And what's awesome is now that Medicaid or Medi cal in California has the ability for us to do some of these things like care coordination and making sure that we're connected with primary care, we actually have access to their, their electronic health record. Some pretty cool stuff. Now we can try truly help them with what they need and get compensated for it. And we were able to hire staff and provide higher level service for a lot more people instead of trying to just fit it in in the little time that we had with the limited amount of staff because we were only getting paid so much. Per person. Now it can actually get paid fee for service for all these little things we're doing. Of course you have to document it, you have to prove that you did it didn't happen if it's not inside of your ehr. And we've paid for third party auditors to come in and make sure we're above board on everything, just optionally because we don't want to ever feel like we're out of integrity with any of the policies and procedures or codes of ethics that we follow. But these are things that are super important and the kind of, you know, relationships you want to build in the community and with your individuals to make sure that they're successful in your homes. Secret number nine is creating a home like environment. For us that means renovating the home first before we go in and have people house there. So it is the most beautiful dialed in home that they've ever stayed in. But it also means having chores, making sure that it's truly feels like home. We cover WI fi, we have a washer and dryer and laundry detergent that we have delivered every single month. And we never want it to feel like a facility. It should feel like a nice residential area so that when they go out and get their own home, they're going to feel right at home. Right? We want people to go from our location. Honestly, I always tell people I want this to be the last place you're ever living before you move into your own permanent housing. So you shouldn't be bouncing around to other suburban living homes. This should be it for you. Stay right here, focus on what you need to focus on, do what you need to do, then move on to your own place and feel extremely comfortable being able to do that. Lastly, secret number 10, I think is investing in staff development. If you have staff or if you yourself are managing a sober living home, making sure that you're bettering yourself, making sure that you are building up both cultural competence so that you can deal with people from all kinds of backgrounds, but also the right kind of core competencies to actually serve the people that are in your home. Now if you're hiring staff the right way, you should be looking for people with lived experience, experience with actual, you know, trained experience, with casework and just different models for doing that to make sure that you have a competent and compassionate staff. Again, the way they talk to people, the way they document things, making sure that they're documenting things, double checking their work is really key. That's why we paid for this third party audit that I mentioned before just to make sure that everything was being done above board, encouraging self care and peer support because this can be very emotional work. You're dealing with people who literally as you're talking to them, in many cases they're crying, telling you their life story, telling you their hopes and their goals, telling you that, you know, maybe a day in court didn't go so great and they're not going to get their kid back and there's another in a court date in three months or six months. You're dealing with a lot with people as they're rebuilding their lives and sometimes that can weigh heavy on you. So self care, making sure that they, they know that they can, you know, there's meditation, float spas, massages, taking a breather, taking a day off, going on vacation. We encourage these things. Basically you just want to make sure your staff is encouraged, trained and you want to help them avoid burnout. It's also really good to schedule regular team building activities and workshops that your team can attend. We actually work with a couple of local consulting firms that come in and do workshops for our team. They train them on both how to get better in their jobs, literally how to do better at their jobs, how to do better with state guidelines that change from time to time. Especially with the work we're doing now. Part of an initiative inside of Medi Cal to provide the services and non licensed homes. But outside of that, I think anywhere in the United States you can find local nonprofits and different organizations that will come in, talk to your team, train them on local community resources, train them on classes that they can attend, that residents can attend. And it's just good to to constantly be working together as a team to improve, not just constantly focusing on your residents. You got to focus inward sometimes to make sure that you're taken care of. If you found these insights helpful, please like subscribe. Definitely hit that notification bell. Subscribe you see when the next video comes up and then share this video with people who you think would benefit from seeing it. For personalized guidance, feel free to reach out to our team at the link below to schedule a call and see if you are fit for our sober living riches community where we talk through not only how we start and scale successful sober living homes, fill them up within 90 days, but also how to avoid all the mistakes I made early on. None of my students have ever had to evict somebody deal with people using drugs inside of the home. Basically they've run completely smooth like some of them for well over a year now since we've been doing this smooth. Sober living homes filled up within 90 days and have reported back like there was no way they could have done it or gotten past the fear of doing it without having a community of like minded people across the country focusing on this work, doing it the right way. Thanks for joining us today. We'll see you next time.