Meet Philipp B.

“A few years ago, I had an extra car with a $700 payment that served no purpose except driving my mom to Costco every two weeks. Around that time, I came across a Turo ad that really spoke to me. It had a G-Wagen in it. G-Wagens do something for me. Maybe because of my Russian blood. They were, and still are, the icon of success in the 90s in Russia. I saw an ad of one of them going through the LA tunnels, and I thought, ‘This is really cool.’ So I started looking into it.

"I called every single person I knew who could loan/sell/lease me a car, and onboarded five or six cars within the first couple of weeks, and we were rolling. Things were flying and amazing. From the beginning, I thought of this as a side business for my family.”

“At the moment, I have six cars listed. Right now, I’m focused on economy vehicles. I’m really focused on highly reliable cars that don’t require day-to-day maintenance — the biggest time sink. This also allows me to easily move things around. I’m not stuck upgrading someone to a significantly nicer vehicle or losing a customer to another host.”

“I looked at the tasks that would take me the longest to accomplish and could be automated. Building relationships, such as the one with my mechanic, was also very important. I’ve also had other businesses in the past and operated with other partners. Partners don’t necessarily need to be shareholders in your company, and if they’re shareholders they don’t need to actually do anything within the company. That was how I wanted to structure my Turo business.

“I wanted to be the middleman for people who had additional cars and wanted to share them. They would be “shareholders” and then we would have agreements that specify what I would be responsible for, what kind of documentation I would need from them, what liabilities I would take on, what liabilities Turo would take on, and what they would be responsible for.

“I opened a corporation that would handle payments and liability management. This is how I work with one of my partners: The corporation belongs to him. All the cars belong to him on paper. But I’m Acting Manager and have power of attorney on all the vehicles. So I can process everything related to it – I’m taking care of the admin stuff, and he’s just dumping in all the cash.

“Something that comes up often when talking to hosts is, “Oh, I don’t want to pay Turo’s 30% fee for insurance.” This is the number one question of people who want to scale and generate more revenue. The 30% you’re paying to Turo is not only for insurance. The insurance is only one part of the amount. You’re getting fraud protection, verification, a booking system, access to a marketplace, and 24-hour support, so you don’t have to do those things yourself and focus on sharing cars. You don’t need to have tow truck partners and other standing operational relationships. At the point where you have three cars, you should really think about scaling.”

“A lot. But let’s return to the earlier question of, “Where do you want to go with this? Do you want to generate income?” If yes, at this point you shouldn’t have any emotional attachment to your car and you should have a really good understanding of the by-laws and how the system operates and what your limitations are. You need to be open and willing to ask a lot of questions to either your mentor or other hosts. There are a lot of resources out there and eager people to help you.”

“I have a car rental company as well. Having operated that for two years, I am so grateful for all the things Turo provides. When you open a car rental company, it’s because you like cars and you want to have a business, but at the end of the day, you become a collections agency. Your day is calling people who owe you money and going to tow yards and managing lawsuits. I’m able to push a lot of the risks onwards to Turo. Sure, things aren’t the way they were a year ago, but I still see the value proposition that I’m getting back, and there’s still revenue.”

“First, ask yourself one question when you’re listing your car and saying you want to make this a business, “Do you want to make money or do you want to drive something nice?” By answering this question, you’ll be in a different mindset in terms of emotionally dealing with whatever’s coming at you.
 
“Second, trust the process. The most beautiful things in the world are exactly at the borderline of what’s scary. Once you cross that line, beautiful things happen. There’s a bliss, an opportunity of growth, and an opportunity for learning things that may not even be related to cars. It may be building great connections with guests and hosts that are in completely different fields, but you’re still collaborating together, building businesses, and building projects. I think human connection is one of the most beautiful things that you get out of this.”