How I Run My Group Homes Remotely

Hi I’m Katrina with Group Home on Autopilot where I want to share with you all of my secrets on how I run two successful group homes remotely. I live in California and my group homes are in Texas. And they earn me $80,000 a year on the side of my full-time job. So I want to share with you how I do that remotely. The biggest question that I get is, “how do you run two successful group homes remotely?”

First, let me answer the question: WHY do I run two group homes remotely??

I’m naturally a workaholic. I know that if I had group homes in my city or in my state, I would be there all the time getting into the weeds and working on everything, but I knew when I started my side business, that I wanted to work on my business, not in my business. So it forced me to look for efficiencies and find the most productive way to get things done without having to do everything myself because that’s my natural personality is wanting to do everything myself.

How do I run two successful group homes remotely?

Nowadays I have an operations manager who I’ve hired to run things on the ground for me. But let’s rewind back to when I first started this business back in 2020. There was a full year that I ran the business all by myself. How did I do that?

1. I used technology. I had keyless locks on my doors. I have Ring cameras in all common areas. I have the Ring app on my phone. I would look at that all the time to see what’s going on.

MiLocks TKK-02SN Tkk-Sn Digital Door Knob Lock with Electronic Keypad

Ring camera

2. I also had a Resident in Charge. One person who was a resident and lived at the house who I gave a discount on his rent so that he would be my eyes and ears on the ground. He was the only resident that had my personal cell phone number. Anything was going on that needed me to intervene, he would call me or text me or ask me permission if he needed to call the police for example or anything like that.

3. Use the phone. I would ask myself: what really requires me to be onsite? For maintenance issues, I would call it in just like I would if I was there on site. I would call a contractor to come and help with maintenance. They don’t need to know that I’m in California while the group home is in Texas. And I set a contractor code for the keyless entry for the locks and the contractors can use their own code to go in the house and fix whatever needs to be fixed.

4. Lastly, I would travel. I would travel every 3 to 4 weeks and go out there and do all the intake at that time. In between my traveling I would be on the phone. I would be marketing, doing the intake questionnaire over the phone with people over the phone who were interested in renting out a bed. But I only did the actual in-processing during the time I was there in Texas so that when the people came to the house and wanted to move in, I could look them in the eye and explain to them the house rules and just make them feel comfortable like I’m there for them. They don’t need to know where I am in between the 3 or 4 weeks when they don’t see me. I would just pop up every 3 to 4 weeks or so and do a visit at the house.

That’s how I ran my group home remotely.

Let me know if that helped!

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