Amid the peak of the pandemic, Jennifer Cunningham was pushed into single motherhood due to physical and verbal abuse from the father of her children’s deteriorating mental health: “He left us merely $100 on the kitchen counter and vanished for eight months. Upon his return, he became increasingly erratic, necessitating the involvement of the police,” says Cunningham. This prompted her to obtain full legal custody of her kids and rely on her network of friends and acquaintances to chart a new path.
Cunningham found her financial burdens alleviated by a job she’d taken as a result of a recommendation but longed for more. After discussing her aspirations to pursue a different business venture with a close friend in the tech industry, her friend advised her to check out Turo. Turo is the world’s largest peer-to-peer car-sharing marketplace with an extraordinary selection of over 1,400 makes and models in over 11,000 cities with the goal of minimizing the 95% average idle sitting time spent by nearly 1.5 billion cars annually.
With her people skills and operational background working for a mental health and substance abuse company where she handled logistics for overseas shipments, the idea of Turo resonated with Cunningham. With diligent savings, she purchase two cars, listed them on Turo, and within 24 hours, her bookings started pouring. This enabled Cunningham to make a profit of $1,000 per car on average annually, which set her up successfully to expand her portfolio. Cunningham plans to add 20 vehicles to her fleet within the next 12 months–that will place her at 23 cars–as she pursues her goal of reaching 80 vehicles over the next two years while providing employment opportunities to other single mothers.
Turo: Creating Income Opportunities for Everyday Families
For entrepreneurs like Cunningham, Turo is transforming assets that were once sunk costs into revenue generators by encouraging anyone to become a host. Subsequently, Turo is enabling guests to access a unique selection of cars conveniently available across an unrivaled network of hosts in the US, UK, Canada, France, and Australia. This has enabled Turo to cultivate the world’s largest peer-to-peer car-sharing marketplace in a way that differs from traditional rental car companies.
“Turo has pioneered a new category of transportation and advanced the next era of personal mobility which is driven by convenience and affordability,” says Andrew Mok, Turo’s Chief Marketing Officer. As of March 31, 2023, Turo has over 165,000 active hosts of all sizes including: 1) consumer hosts, who typically share one or two cars with the goal of offsetting the costs of car ownership, 2) small business hosts, who typically list three to nine cars with the goal of generating secondary income, and 3) professional hosts who have upwards of 10 cars.
A 2022 Community Survey conducted by Turo illustrated that 66 percent of hosts identified themselves as male and 34 percent as female with 20.8 percent noting they were immigrants. Of those, 59 percent are of minority descent– notably, Black/African hosts have tripled since 2019 and Hispanic/Latinx representation has also increased. Many of the hosts started hosting on Turo because entrepreneurship was in their DNA and the platform not only served as a supplemental income stream but enabled the possibility of serving as a full-time job or long-term wealth generator.
How Cunningham Has Built Long-term Wealth
When Cunningham first started, she set up a Deleware-based LLC and operationalized a few core business strategies she learned from former career experiences. Then as her business began to flourish she committed to giving back to the community that supported her: “Empowering other single mothers to attain financial stability has become a heartfelt mission and significant component of my work. Witnessing the positive impact I can make on their lives has fueled many of my decisions and expanded my business possibilities,” says Cunningham.
With realizing the potential for further growth, Cunningham has found her interactions with guests have also been a key highlight on her journey. “The countless delightful exchanges we’ve shared have made the work truly fulfilling and rewarding,” the Turo entrepreneur shares. With LAX serving as a major source of clientele for Cunningham, the opportunity to alleviate travel-related stress for people has brought her great satisfaction.
“I make approximately $1,000 per car on average,” says Cunningham who believes that as she expands her business while providing single mothers career opportunities, she’ll be able to “make $500 to $700 profit per car per month on average for a 20-vehicle fleet.”
Turo on Enabling Entrepreneurs to Thrive
To expand opportunities for entrepreneurs like Cunningham, in underserved communities, to scale their interests, Turo has launched the Turo Seed Initiative which has provided over $1M in funding and access to interest-free investment opportunities.
In addition to enabling hosts to scale, Turo has found it important to support hosts throughout the entire business lifecycle from onboarding to listing management, pricing optimization, support services, and providing scaling tools. For example, through its proprietary Turo Carculator, the company helps existing and prospective hosts understand which cars have the highest return on investment within their budget range and in their respective markets. And Turo Business Planner enables hosts to project potential vehicle earnings over a five-year timeline to understand the impact of maintenance, depreciation, insurance, and cleaning costs on their vehicle’s long-term profitability.
“When we at Turo think about enabling entrepreneurs, we acknowledge that every pathway may not be for everyone and it may not be intuitive,” says Turo’s Chief Marketing Officer, Mok. “That’s why we’ve focused on setting hosts up for success by providing hands-on onboarding – whether it’s through coaching with their host success team or at-your-own-pace coursework,” he expands. This sets entrepreneurs up for success before they begin hosting.
Tips Leveraged By Hosts Like Cunningham For Success
While setting up for success is critical, there are a few tried and true tips hosts like Cunningham have expressed move mountains for them and can support any entrepreneur on their journey:
- Make it work for you: Create a flexible but achievable strategy. For example, with Turo, the flexibility to host when and where a host wants makes the entrepreneurial role seamless. And the more available cars are, the more hosts earn.
- Focus on experience: In any business digitally and/or in-person a positive user experience increases the likelihood of more opportunities to scale. Easy check-in/out and hospitable experiences go a long way on platforms like Turo.
- Things happen: Occasionally a car can get damaged or a customer experience may not run smoothly. Documenting your business or each car’s conditions at each juncture can support you in seamlessly responding to the circumstances at hand. In the case of Turo’s platform, hosts are protected when/if this happens.
- Grow Responsibly: Often when hosts get a taste of early success they seek to scale rapidly. Like any business, projecting opportunities for success by leveraging tools like Carculator to decide on a car purchase and a business planner to understand profit and loss margins can be the saving grace from an entrepreneur over-extending themselves.
At the heart and soul of Turo is a vibrant community of small businesses that seek to pursue boundless possibilities by connecting communities with a vast selection of cars and hosts with the tools to set their businesses up for success. When thinking about the possibilities this community has helped Cunningham create, she closes by sharing: “Turo has completely changed my life by helping me maintain a steady income. As a mother, it has been challenging to balance raising and caring for children while also having a full-time job. Turo has provided me with flexibility and financial stability so I can spend more time with my family. I love what I’ve been able to build and hope to empower others to do the same.”
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