LOE HORNBUCKLE INTERVIEW – Investing in Residential Assisted Living Homes

Welcome to the Next Level Income show, where it's our goal to take your income, your investments, and your life to the next level. I'm Chris Larsen.

And I'm Caleb Welborn.

You can get our free book@nextlevelincome.com A lot of you know that I'm a demographics guy, and I like to follow big title shifts, which is one of the reasons I spent about 15 years in the medical device industry. Also started investing in multifamily about seven years ago. And one of the things we're about to see is one of the biggest title shifts in history, starting really this year. And a lot of all the things that I've talked about has to do with the baby boomers. So on today's show, we have Lo Hornbuckle. Lo is the founder and CEO of Sage Assisted Living and Memory Care. He's also a memory care expert with Residential Assisted Living Academy, where he consults and created an advanced class on memory care. In addition, Lo is a passive investor in multifamily mobile homes and single family rentals. Lo and I have known each other for a while, but we recently met at the RAL National Convention, which is where Lowe spoke with the likes of people like Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad, Poor dad, and also Harry S. Dent, who can be controversial, but he's one of the guys that I originally started following when it comes to demographics low. Welcome to the show today.

Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. So, you know, one of the. One of the reasons we're excited to have you on the show is because one of the things we talk about a lot is what Wayne Gretzky said, which is skate to where the puck is going to be versus where it is today, which is what we're always doing is looking where the next great investment trends are. So we'd love to hear more about what you have to say today on the coming demographic shift that we're going to see.

Yeah. So I think first, I think that most people in assisted living and memory care have a tendency to sort of overstate the baby boomer piece, which is not to say that it's not coming. It's just not coming for a while. So the first thing is that, yes, there are some major demographic things coming in the country. The average age in assisted living is around 87 years old. The oldest baby boomer is not till the oldest baby right now is 74. So the thing to think about is that most of the interaction with baby boomers and assisted living on up is going to be 10 to 15 years from now is when it's really going to start to happen. You have some baby boomers in assisted living now. You have some baby boomers in dementia care and memory care now. But it's not really the wave that everyone's sort of concerned with. So the reason why I say all that is because sometimes in senior housing, we have a tendency to talk, especially when you're not in the business, to talk about senior housing as sort of one, sort of one asset class. But in fact, they're upstream or downstream from each other. So right now, independent living is starting to see baby members come in. So active adult, 55 and up, six student up. Communities that are really just apartments with amenities geared toward people of a certain age, no care provided. Those are starting to really see impact from baby boomers. But assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing? Not really. So while the demographic stuff's really important, when you say skate to where the puck's going to be, it really is true that the puck is going to be there in 10 years or 15 years and then stay there for 20. But for now, the business really is taken care of. You know, the baby boomer's parents. So the baby boomer's interaction with your product is they're making a lot of the decisions on. They're basically vetting you on behalf of their loved one, but not personally interacting with the product. In terms of being the resident, they are the family of the resident.

Yeah, that makes sense. So, Lowe, could you share with our audience your story and how you came to be one of the leading experts in the field of memory care?

Well, first, I hope that I'm not one of the leading experts in the field of memory care. If I am, then that's. That's a testament to how poor the community is. So I don't really think of myself in that way, but so my story is that I have a background in sales and marketing and also in real estate investing and was always very fascinated with real estate, and I just enjoy looking at architecture and things like that. So I was working at a multifamily company and that had about 10,000 doors and was learning the business, but just never really resonated with that part of the business. I'm an ops guy, and so I enjoy operations, but I just didn't really. It didn't touch my heart in any meaningful way. And to say that now kind of sounds silly just because I've always kind of been a business guy, not necessarily the person to talk about my heart and relation to my job. But my dad actually passed away and had a really bad experience on hospice. And I spent the better part of a year trying to figure out, you know, if I wanted to sue the hospice company. And ultimately, you know, when I started realizing this assisted living opportunity, all those same emotions and feelings came back. So there was about a year and a half between maybe a little bit less, maybe a little bit less between when my dad passed and when I started Sage Oak. It wasn't linear. It wasn't like my dad passed away, and I was like, okay, let me go start this company. It was more like I was kind of figuring out what I wanted to do next. And, you know, you're kind of thinking about your life when these kinds of things happen. And the universe just kept pointing me in this direction. And also, that sounds dumb as well. I would never think about stuff like that. But, you know, you know, when you go to a conference and the very end, they say, hey, you know, this assisted living is kind of interesting. It's a multifamily conference, and then you hear a podcast a week later. That's the first time that sort of the premier residential assisted living expert was ever on the Real Estate Guys. Gene was on the Real Estate guys back in 2010, 2015, and I heard the show the week it came out, and so it's like, man, like, why is everything pointing me in this direction? So really just. I'm kind of one of those lucky guys that just happened to really fall into my passion. But, I mean, it wasn't. It was. I had to be the right person at the right time to be in the right situation. And it was just a lot of things kind of came together in that way.

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. You know. You know, you talked a lot, low. About the importance of caring in this space. My grandfather recently passed away. We're actually going to his memorial here next weekend. Yeah, but we went through my. Actually, both my parents passed away as well, and I talk about my father in my book and my mother a little bit, too. Fortunately, my mother had a good experience with hospice. So I'm sorry to hear about your.

Experience to you, man.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And I got to go through the experience of moving my grandparents into the home that they're in, and, you know, we call it a nursing home. You know, low. I've learned a lot about this space over the past, you know, year, six months. Really. Can you please share for the audience what you do and how it's different than, you know, what a Quote unquote, nursing home is.

Well, yeah, so I mean, really, maybe we'll just take a quick second. So there's a few different ways that sort of older folks sort of interact with sort of real estate, quasi healthcare type institutions. So you have independent living, which again, no care provided, you know, kind of a apartments for seniors. It's almost like a cruise ship that doesn't move maybe is the best way to describe it. Then you have sort of assisted living, which is where people need assistance, what's called ADL care. So activities of daily living. So you know, if you need help taking medication or going to the bathroom, or you know, someone has prepared your meal or take out your trash, that's ADL assistance. So assisted living, usually people have two or three or four, sometimes full needs to get through the day. Then you sort of have memory care or dementia care, which is where someone may be mobility wise, fine, but they have some sort of cognitive impairment. Oftentimes a dementia based cognitive impairment. Sometimes it could be something different like Parkinson's or something like that, because that can sometimes mimic some of the effects of dementia. Then you kind of have skilled nursing, also called snf, skilled nursing facility or a nursing home. And that's simply where there is around the clock nursing care. So one of the differences between assisted living and skilled nursing is assisted living is more of a social model. So basically, you know, obviously you're providing care, but you're also not a medical facility. A skilled nursing facility is a medical facility. Some people kind of call it a hospital with a better pain job. And so people live there long term or short term, and they get around the clock nursing supervision. So that's kind of how it's different. So one of the things that's kind of interesting is that really the thing that we're different then is sort of the big box assisted living. So a lot of assisted living places, if you put a fence and a guard tower up, they'd look more like a prison from the outside than they would anything else. And so a lot of assisted living are 100 beds, 200 beds. I think the biggest one is like 1200 beds or something. And so for a lot of people that can be kind of a tough environment. Most of our clients lived in the same house for 40 or 50 years and you know, they don't want to be around 100 or 200 other people. If you're going through cognitive impairment, you know, walking down 100 yard hallway and having breakfast or lunch or dinner with 40 or 50 other people, you don't have your wallet. You don't understand that the meal is free. You might think it's 1964. That can be a really anxiety, sort of depressing type of experience. So what you see a lot of is people sort of isolate themselves in the rooms. They spend a lot of time in the rooms. They don't come out to the comfort, common area. So our model is different. We do small facilities. So the idea is that you want to keep. Keep numbers, maybe 16 and less. So a lot of residential assisted living is about 8 to 16 people. You know, 10 beds, 12 beds, those types of things. And so what allows you to do is you have a small physical footprint. So it's very hard for caregivers to be very far away from a resident. Whereas in the big building, it's very easy to be 200 yards away from a resident. They call for help, you know, you're not gonna be able to respond in time to prevent something. And also, two caregiver ratios are a big key. So the industry average, it's not published because states don't require this, But a lot of big box facilities, on a good day, they might have a 1 to 10 ratio, but on a more typical day might be 1 to 12, 1 to 15, 1 to 20. That's what they say it is when vendors go and customers go. I mean, you can go 30 minutes without seeing a single staff member at an assisted living facility. I'm sure you probably experienced some of that when you were there. Yeah. So in a residential assisted living model, we kind of focus on keeping ratios during the day at 1 to 4 to 1 to 6. So anywhere from double to triple what you see in a big facility, and then usually one day, one to 10 at night, which is usually double or triple what you see sometimes in a big facility. So smaller footprint, more caregivers to take care of the residents on a smaller footprint is going to lead to better outcomes. The other thing is, is that just imagine if your choice was to live in this big facility where you kind of felt like you were a number, or you live with, say, 10 or 12 other people in a home or something that's designed to appear like a home with an open kitchen. Right? So our residents, when breakfast is on in the morning, the coffee's percolating, they can hear the bacon sizzle, and they can smell the smells, hear the sounds. In a big box facility, it's a closed commercial kitchen. The food might be served on a steam plate. So just loss of quality. You know, you're cooking for 80 is different than cooking for 8. So there's just so many differences between the two models. As far as differences with skilled nursing, you know, they have, they're going to be able to better handle complex medical conditions. But if you go to any skilled nursing facility, there's a chunk, maybe 30 or 40% of people that don't need to be in skilled nursing. They just don't fit in big box assisted living. And so sometimes social workers or discharge planners are not very educated about the residential assisted living model or the small assisted living model. So they say, well, we, we can't take care of you. You've got to upgrade your level of care so people can pay more, end up in basically hospitals with better paying jobs. So we get cross shopped by skilled nursing probably about 20% of the time. People that basically say, hey, I know I don't work in a big facility trying to decide between you and a skilled nursing environment. And we usually win that because a, we're more affordable and B, it's a much better environment to be in, you know, so if your choice is I can pay $9,000 a month and live in this facility or I can Pay, you know, $6,000 a month and be in a home, then most people make that choice very easily.

Well, what have been some of the biggest challenges you faced in this space of memory care as you and your staff are dealing with people who are in a pretty tough time in their lives for themselves and their family and maybe close to death or even actively dying?

Sure, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely a big task. And I think the thing to understand is when you're dealing with memory care, and of course I do assisted living and memory care, but when you're dealing with memory care, that person really can't be their own advocate. Right. So like a famous example is if you burn someone's toast and they're in assisted living, they're like, hey, you burn my toast, make me some more toast. You know, if they're feeling really froggy, they might call a state like, hey, this chef's over here burning my toast. We got to get somebody in here right now. But in memory care, obviously a lot of those clients can't, can't tell you that, or if they know that you burned the toast, they don't have necessarily the cognitive processing will say, hey, you burned my toast. Maybe some more. They just eat the toast or they don't eat it because they don't like it. And obviously that's a small example, but you can imagine, like, if someone maybe was taking someone to the restroom, and they're a little rough in how they handle them. Not on purpose, but just they're a big guy, and they kind of pick them up in a way that makes them feel afraid they may not be able to express, hey, you were kind of manhandled me there. So the first thing you have to understand is if someone can't be their own advocate, then your staff and your team have to be an advocate for them, so does their family. As far as challenges go, I think the thing to really think about is that, number one, good staffing is hard to find, and it's a problem all over the country. We have a caregiver shortage, really have a health care worker shortage in America. That's a massive problem. It's gonna be caregivers, nurses, all kinds of things. And so that's something you have to kind of fight because the same demographic benefits to assisted living. There's also a demographic challenge, which is that caregivers are typically women of a certain age. And if you look at the numbers, the women of that certain age versus the people that need care, there's a huge imbalance between the two, really. So we'll have to solve some problems on that front. Realistically speaking, the only real solution to that problem, there'll be two. Is sort of automation. So on the lower end, you can maybe have one caregiver for 20 residents and then have one robot for every four residents, because there's a lot of things a robot can do. There's a lot of things a robot can't do. So you still want that human presence, But a robot can give someone their medication. You know, robot could go take someone's blood pressure, or a robot could, you know, theoretically cook a meal or whatever. But, you know, if you want a shoulder massage, you probably want a person to give you that, not Caleb. So I'm good for now, though. Thank you. But. So automation will be a piece. But the other solution is going to be immigration. So there's a lot of people that want to come here and want to. Want to take care of people. There are several countries that historically have had basically a culture of being caregivers. So there's half a dozen countries that I can think off top of my head that they have a tendency to send folks here that enjoy being caregivers. So there's an immigration solution here. Potentially possible, but we have to have the political will to do that. And generally, we like to see a lot of pain before we make Any changes. So I'm sure that'll, that'll come, come home sooner or later. But then the other challenge, you know, that you can run into in this space is, you know, outside of staffing really is understanding that it's a 24 hour business, it's a service business with a real estate component. So you have to understand that, you know, you've got to be all in and you have to, you have to be fully committed to this process. You know, it's not like, you know, someone's gonna be worried about your business all the time. And I think some owners position themselves to be, for them to be that person. And no one person can worry about a business 24 hours a day. So you've got to have a good team in place so that you can kind of hand off like you're gonna worry about it on Saturday, I'll worry about it on Sunday. Because that's just the nature of the business, right? There's, it's a dynamic environment. You're taking care of people, you have staff, you have residents, you have families. And families are often, as you kind of mentioned, going through a process, right? So they're often either in denial, they feel guilty. And so a lot of what we're doing is processing those emotions. I mean, if you live with your spouse for 40 or 50 years and at some point along the way they're like, never put me in a home. And they say that to you. And then 20 years later they have dementia. And as a spouse, you're just worn out, you're not sleeping, you're not eating. There's actually some decent studies that if you take care of someone with dementia, you're more likely personally to pass away first than they will because it's so hard on the unpaid family caregiver. And so at a certain point they reach their wits in. They're like, I can't do this anymore. And they make a choice. It's very difficult. And so there's a lot of emotion tied up to that. Kids kind of process things better. I'm not going to say that sometimes kids aren't, don't bring their own stuff to the table, especially if it was a weird, you know, relationship with their parents. But usually spouses are generally the hardest because they just, you know, they oftentimes become dependent upon each other. Right. And especially in this generation, you had really defined gender roles, right? So, you know, men do this, women do this. It was very siloed traditionally. And that works out really well until someone can't function. And now all of a sudden, it's like, the husband doesn't know how to cook himself a meal. He can't take care of himself. The wife's like, I don't even know where our money's located. And that's not to say that there weren't men or women that didn't share roles. I'm just saying traditionally, that generation was very, very siloed in their roles. And so we see all kinds of interesting situations where the one's like, I don't even know how much money we have, or, you know, he's like, I. My wife never let me cook a meal, so I don't know what to do in these situations. So usually what happens is when something happens to spouse one, spouse two is not that far behind because that dependence breaks down, it's like, all right, well, I need someone to take care of me too. So it's very interesting to see these sort of stories just sort of play out in very similar ways, sort of over and over and over again.

Can you share a story of a challenge you faced along the way that might have shifted your thinking or mindset on the space?

Yeah, I mean, I think one thing I tried to do consciously that makes me a bit different is. And I had this. So when I went through my training class back in 2015, there was another. Another couple that was gonna get started at the same time, very accomplished couple. And we had a discussion. You know, they're like, we're gonna be hands off. We're just gonna, you know, build the team, hire the team. We're not gonna be hands on in the business. I said, well, I'm going to be hands on, like, well, yeah, but, you know, why are you going to do that? Do you want to be a caregiver? Do you want to deal with this? You want to deal with that? It seems you're giving yourself a job. And I said, well, yeah, no, that's fine. I mean, but I want to learn the business enough that I can step in if I need be, but also too, like, how am I going to guide and grow and scale a company if I don't really understand it at its core? And so we had this kind of debate and I wanted to, you know, I'm kind of a gamble man, so I wanted to craft some sort of a bet on how this just going to go. But fast forward a couple years, and their. Their. Their manager really didn't work out. They had to fire him, and they had to become hands on. And so, you know, they may not say this or they may not even think of it this way, but I think had they been hands on in the beginning, they might have, could have. They might have been more prepared when the phone rang and they had to respond to an emergency like, hey, the manager's not working out. So the challenge for me is I was willing to pay the toll, so to speak. So I was willing to, you know, sit with residents and help take care of them. I've never really been a caregiver, but I've assisted. And sometimes if you have some behavioral stuff like someone's being aggressive or agitated, I will go in and try to help calm them down. But I did deal with a lot of families, so I've toured several hundred families. And so for me, one thing I'm not worried about is I know that if any project gets in trouble, that if we're not having success in filling the property, that if I give it attention, that I'll be able to fill the property, because I've done it before, right? I've gone through the challenges of filling a property that maybe isn't the best property in town. I've got three or four properties that are probably the premier facilities in Dallas, but I've also got a couple that are not as nice. And so when you go through the process of going through the sort of occupancy highs and lows, then you have confidence that you can do that again if you need to. And I can't imagine the terror of owning a business and not really understanding how to operate it if you need to. So for me, the biggest challenge was just taking the time and learning as much as I could about the business. And these days, I'm not in operations much, but that year and a half that I was very actively involved in operations really set the stage that I can kind of toggle back and forth. And obviously, since the show has some merit to raising money or taking your business to the next level, when I'm on these webinars or I'm having a conversation with an investor, I think they can appreciate the fact that I can toggle back and forth between talking about internal rate of return and ADL care. I can talk about national trends, but I can also tell a story about a resident where our model was successful. And I think that anytime you can take data and anecdote and kind of put it together, I think it's helpful. And I think that's really what storytelling is all about, is setting the stage for what's happening in the world. And then figuring out how that applies to your little corporate corner of it. Right. So that's kind of my philosophy.

Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that and kind of your unique perspective on that. So let's, I'm going to ask a two part question. So the first is for anyone listening that may say, hey, I'm interested or I have a need for my parent or family member for this. What from an operations side and with your knowledge, what advice do you have for those individuals that are looking for that?

Yeah, so I think, number one, the vast majority. So let me be clear. I'm not against big buildings. I say a lot of negative things about them. But I want to clarify something. They have their place. My problem is they have too much market share, meaning they have too many residents that don't belong there. So I think the first thing you got to do is decide how independent is mom or dad, how independent is your spouse or whoever you're trying to care for. If they're 80% independent or more, then they probably will do okay in a bigger building. If they need a lot of care and a lot of attention, they probably need to be in a smaller setting where they can get a little bit more personalized attention. So that's the first thing. The second thing is trust your gut. I don't really pay that much into the marketing. I pay attention. So when you go into a house or house or facility, there's going to be an energy level there. There's going to be, you know, you're going to notice things. And if you just pay attention, then you can just kind of see how staff interacts with residents. You can kind of see how you're greeted. You can kind of see how things go. I think too many people just like, like, well, I like the marketer, but the marketer often times doesn't have anything to do with operations. So focus more on what's going on around you. You know, if you're gonna, if you're trying to make a decision and you have time go at different times of the day, you'll see different energy levels and that'll be good to see because if you, sometimes you can go and a facility can feel like a ghost town because you know, everyone's taking a nap and it's pretty, pretty normal for that to be happening. One thing that I, my company tries to do is we, when we tour, we have operational presence on the tour. So either the person touring is both marketing and operations or we have both in the room at the same time. And the reason we do that is because what we've experienced is marketing says, yes, yes, yes. And then operations like, no, that's actually pretty hard for us to execute. Now you have a dissatisfied customer. So one of our kind of unique selling propositions is that we combine ops and marketing into a tour process so that the very person telling you, yes, we can do that is also responsible for that deliverable. So it doesn't. So because the baton handoff between the tour person and, you know, the move in coordinator or the resident care coordinator is pretty important in this process. So that's kind of one of the ways we try to solve that problem. So notice that. I mean, if they have a nurse sitting in on the tour, that's probably a good sign. If they have someone that's got a clinical background or someone that's responsible for operations sitting on the tour, that's probably a good sign.

Yeah, that makes good sense. So shifting gears a little bit. So for investors that are listening, in my book, I have a whole chapter talking about demographics and why multifamily has been strong and why it's going to continue to be strong going into the future. And we've talked about that multiple times in the show in the past. You have an understanding of the multifamily market low. Could you compare and contrast that in your mind how these differ from an investor's perspective?

Sure, yeah. So multifamily is a real estate play with the business component, I think is a fair comparison. So if it's 80% real estate, 20% operations, and I'm just making that number up, maybe flip it for assisted living, you know, 80% operations, 20% real estate. So very different in terms of the demographic pieces. You know, I don't know. I don't know if independent. I don't know. I don't know if independent living really should be considered multifamily or if independent living should be in this subcategory of senior housing, I think independent living almost is more multifamily in my opinion. But just because it's just basically catering to a certain different graphic. No different than student housing is really kind of multifamily.

That's a good point.

So, I mean, ultimately there's going to be some big differences in the two. Number one, a lot of multifamily deals generate their return off trading. Right. So a lot of. There's not that. I mean, everyone says differently, but in my experience looking at multifamily deals, a big chunk of them are not cash flowing that well. And the goal is to bump the net operating income a little bit so that you can flip it for a big return. And that seems like that's kind of the play these days. Two to five year hold times kind of in and out. I think assisted living right now because of what we talked about beginning of the show. If the demographic changes are coming in 10 or 15 years, then the idea is to cash flow now and then exit at the peak of the wave. And so there's not a lot of multifamily deals that project 10 year holds. So that's one of the main differences, which is kind of interesting because some people don't like that and other people are like, look, I don't want to constantly, every two years be flipping my money into new projects. I don't want to be dealing with the tax component of that. I don't want to be trying to 1031. I don't want to be having to underwrite a new deal sponsor. You know, last year you're in Jacksonville, now you're in Memphis. For a person that truly wants to be passive, the set and leave in investment component of assisted living certainly has some advantages for the investor. I actually got into a conversation on a thread of the day where someone said, as a passive investor, you should review the financials of the project every single month. And I went on this long, long deal and I said, well, I disagree. As a passive investor, you should choose a sponsor that makes you feel like you don't have to do that. Good point. Now the other thing I said was like, don't be prescriptive, right? So if you should just say, I like to look at the financials every month. Because what's the point of being passive? You're literally diving into the financials of your investment every month or every quarter. If I'm investing passively, sure, I'm gonna have some oversight, But I don't want to spend my time. If I'm going to spend my time pouring over your financials, I just want might as well be running the deal. That's my philosophy. So some people really like the idea of just setting it and leaving it, not having to worry about it for a long period of time, you know, getting your communication, getting your checks, your ACHs or whatever you choose to do, and then not constantly having to. To worry about, you know, when are we selling, how do I tax plan for that? You know, that's a big piece of the multifamily. I think that's kind of a challenge right now.

Yeah, absolutely. And a lot Of a lot of our investors in particular. You know, they're professionals, they're doctors, they're. They're running their own business and, you know, they can do it, but they don't want to. They don't want to be looking at stuff every month. To your point. So that's a good point.

Yeah.

And the operations heavy. That's something that we talked about a lot a few weeks ago out in Phoenix, and now it's very. Operations heavy, obviously, so. And that's for good reason. Right. These are people's loved ones that need a lot of help.

Yeah, absolutely. For sure.

How old are you right now, though?

Trick question. How old am I right now?

Yeah, yeah.

Right Now I am 37 years old.

Okay, cool. Yeah. So we have a question that we ask on every episode, which is if you could go back in time with everything you've learned over the years and give your 25 year old self only one piece of advice, what would that piece of advice be?

Man, you're going to hate this answer because it's so bad. I hate this question. The reason why I hate this question, not your question concept is everything that happened to me made me who I am.

That makes sense.

So I don't know, if I try to shortcut the process, what would fundamentally change? Like, every dumb thing I've ever done, every mistake I've ever made has sort of led me to a certain place. Maybe if I was going to give myself advice, like be more health focused, that might be what I would tell myself, you know, just because it's so much easier to be healthy if you just start earlier, you know, Like, I wish When I was 2 years old, my parents were just like, fed me brussels sprouts and asparagus only instead of taking me to McDonald's. But yeah, probably just focused on health. But in general, I think in terms of business advice, every mistake, every key moment, I'm still here. So the whole purpose for me is that I think I learned more by messing things up. And all the worst things ever happened to me when I was in assisted living. Like, I bought a place with an illegal fire suppression system up. I constructed an addition that caused a house to flood. I see those all as positive because, you know, now I'm doing a development and I'm conscientious of the fact that when you put an impermeable surface on land, it's pretty important to ask, where does the water go? You know, I'd rather take that. I'd rather have a house flood on a February, when it's. When it's vacant because we're going through licensure, than have it be some big development that I could have easily playing around if I hired the right team, you know, now I know how to do due diligence on a fire suppression system, for example. So.

That's a great answer.

It's all about us. Well, yeah. So you're either gonna hate it because it really doesn't. It challenges the paradigm of the question. You're gonna like it. So, you know, hopefully you enjoyed it, but I just think that I learned so much from all the mistakes I've made now.

We like that. We like that answer a lot. And I have a similar philosophy because, yeah, you learn. You learn so much. We ask our kids in the evening, like, what was your biggest failure today? Because we truly believe that you learn a lot more from the failures than from the successes. So I think it's a great answer. But the health. Hey, man, kudos. I saw you in the gym in Phoenix, so I know you're focused on your health.

Well, yeah, you know, this year's been a difficult year for me, and so it's. I've tried to get back on track, so I'm going to see a nutritionist tomorrow. I've got a whole wellness team coming in. I'm just going to, you know, do what I do, hire the team, get in shape.

I love it. I love it, man. So low. For the listeners that have heard you today and said, hey, I want to learn more about you. Can you please repeat what your company's name is, how they can get in touch with you? And then if they want to learn more about the RAL Academy and learn it from the education side and also from an investment side, how can they get in touch with you?

Yeah, so that's like a lot of answers. So the first is the company is called Sage Oak Assisted Living and Memory Care, and the website is the t h e sage s a g e o a k dot com thesajoke.com my email address is loe@thesayjoke.com and if, look, if somebody's in Kentucky and they like, hey, I'm looking for an assisted living facility or memory care for my mom or my dad, feel free to email me. I can try to connect you with a local provider if I have one, or just give you some general advice, I'm happy to answer those types of questions. Obviously, some people are interested in learning more about getting on our investment list. Right now, we're solely focused on assisted living or memory care. So that would be the only offerings that we do. We're going to have a little bit of a, you know, kind of a couple year, two or three year period of time where we may not be doing any assisted living offerings and may put out a few different other asset classes that we're interested in or that I work in. So maybe some opportunity there. But then as far as learning how to start your own assisted living or memory care facility, the best place to go is the Residential Assisted Living Academy. Their website is just residentialassistedlivingacademy.com it's a company that I support and I'm on the team to help their students. But frankly, I am a assisted living operator, syndicator, developer and spend a small portion of my time on education. This company is really focused on education. They do a wonderful job. I really couldn't support students without their support because they have spreadsheets and ideas and concepts and materials and I just get on the phone with you and talk to you for half an hour to work on your paradigm. So that's a great place to go. Residential Assisted Living Academy, obviously that's how we were able to meet was at the national conference and that's a great place to go. And they offer free kind of conversations where they can do a discovery call and just kind of figure out how they can help you. And if they're not a good fit, then they'll tell you. So that's a good place to go for that.

Awesome. No, it's been instrumental in getting us together. Lowe for listeners. We're going to have all of what Lo just said in the show notes, his contact info, his website, and again, you can get a free copy of our book@next levelincome.com low thank you so much for being on the show today. Really enjoyed the conversation.

Caleb, it was good to see you again. Chris, thanks for having me on the show. Really enjoyed it. Hope you guys are well.

Likewise.

Appreciate it.

Lo, thanks so much.