Meet John Brecount

In 2015, I left my post as a staff pastor at a rather large Lutheran Church in the Minneapolis area. I left because there was a new senior pastor who wanted to pick his own pastoral staff, which is very typical. Being in my upper 50s I was at a crossroads… I was too old to join the staff of another large church, and I wasn’t interested in being a senior pastor.

Thus, I started a “home church” in my home and started driving a bus for my local school district. I very soon found out that even though the home church option was very energizing, it was NOT going to pay the bills.

It was then that I started “flipping” houses, due to the fact that I’m pretty handy and my wife owns a commercial design business. Together we were the perfect pair! (As long as I listened to her advice). In the period of 3 years we “flipped” houses with different degrees of success. In 2019 a house I was finishing up just wasn’t going to acquire the sale price I had hoped for, so I started looking at other options for the property. Renting didn’t work out. Short-term leases didn’t work out.

And then I went to a seminar at the Twin City Housing Investors Chapter (MnREIA-Minnesota Real Estate Investors Association), where a fella from Phoenix presented the idea of turning a residential home into an Assisted Living facility. Being a person of faith and rather stubborn I began praying if this is what God wanted me to look into. After much research, I decided to move forward. Again, after much prayer, I placed an ad on the website Indeed and received a few applicants for the housing nurse. I connected immediately with my current Nurse/Assisted Living Director Lynn Allison-Peton.

I hired Lynn early in December of 2019 and we immediately began hiring caregiving staff. In January 2020, you may recall that the world started hearing about a pandemic in China and soon enough Covid 19 hit the USA. Not long after that shutdowns started to occur. Because of the concern of infection, people were leery of placing their loved ones in Senior facilities doing Assisted Living. To say that the timing of starting a business during this time frame was bad is a huge understatement! We got our first resident on April 15th of 2020 and by the end of the year we had filled all 6 of our licensed beds!

2021-2022 continued as JBs Homes gained a reputation for providing exceptional care with a setting that is really home because it is! Our faith approach to care is hardly found anywhere else. I’m sure that many people of faith work as caregivers but JBs Homes leads with an approach where every single person is a child of God deserving love and respect. We hear it from OT and PT personnel, along with visiting Doctors and Nurses that JBs Homes is an exceptional place for seniors!

In December of 2022, we opened our second site in Woodbury, Mn. Along with Lynn, and my Director of Nursing Kelly Preble, we have moved the business forward! Might there be more sites for this business? Perhaps!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Covid for sure, was our biggest challenge. Second, many people in Minnesota don’t know that Residential Assisted Living is a real thing. here in Minnesota. We have been fortunate to keep our employees for the most part because we tend to pay them a few dollars more than our competitors.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
As stated I have been a parish pastor since 1990. In all those years I would go visit the homebound in their homes, and visit older adults in facilities and in their homes. Almost every time my senior friend would say something like: “I don’t want to go to one of those places, I want to stay in my home”. I think JBs Homes is the best of both worlds: it’s in a home and we have outstanding care for folks! I love people of all ages, but there is a special place in my heart for seniors. As our society moves away from respecting our elders, we at JBs Homes do everything to bring our friends a sense of purpose even in their last chapter of life.

We place a high value on their lives. We get to know them and grieve hard when they have passed. We have had NO Covid deaths in our 4 years but have had around 12 saints move on to heaven. Being a pastor I have presided at 7 of the funerals. So JBs Homes is a one-shop stop, making sure their stay isn’t just a holding tank until someone passes but a place where the last chapter of one’s life won’t be their worst chapter. In fact, it will be a chapter where folks thrive!

Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Risks? In four years I have yet to make a profit. My wife and I believe in this business model and have been blessed enough to make sure that we have made every payroll for my employees. We are confident that someday soon, this business will provide for us financially the same way it has provided to ouremployees and our residents!