I’ve never been one to half-ass anything worth doing.
My entire life, I’ve been the kind of person who loves trying new things, whether it’s a new job, or a new city to call home for a while, or a new business idea. I can usually tell fairly quickly whether or not a new endeavor is going to be something worthy of my focus, time and energy. And once I do, and it is, I go big, all the way, to win. This was the case with my Turo business, that began as merely a way to cover the payment and insurance on a backup vehicle, to a fleet of twenty vehicles fifteen months later and an early retirement from the corporate world.
What follows are the ten things that I did, and that I see other winning hosts doing, to be at the top of the game.
They read, learn, know, and follow the Turo Terms of Service.
If you have no idea what your’e doing, what you’re permitted to do, what you’re prohibited from doing, and just generally the way things work, you’re in for a rough road ahead. As a Turo host, you are a guest on the Turo platform, and as a guest in their house, you’re expected to follow house rules.
Top Turo hosts took the time to study the Terms of Service before listing their first vehicle. They take the time to refer to it often when questions arise. And they religiously follow the rules, to the detail, to avoid putting their business at risk of fines and possibly even removal from the platform.
They choose the right vehicles for their market.
Every day I hear aspiring hosts asking what vehicle they should choose for their market. It’s the right question, and the hosts who rush out and acquire vehicles without asking this question first are the ones who often end up in trouble, with vehicles that don’t work in their city, and payments they can’t cover.
Every market is different. There are some staple brands, like Toyota and Jeep, that do well in most markets. But even those don’t perform as well in some cities. And within every brand, there are specific models that do well in one city, but not in another. Top hosts take the time to do a through market analysis and only choose the vehicles that are going to be successful, long-term, from day one.
They create a professional image with their Turo profile and listings.
Top hosts understand that their Turo profile is the face of their business, and each vehicle listing is that vehicle’s “dating profile.” Their profile picture is a clear, welcoming professional headshot. They’ve taken some time to write a paragraph or two about themselves. And they’ve carefully crafted that image to show someone as a businessperson that can be trusted.
These hosts also understand that every vehicle listing should be crafted in such as way as to make people stop in their tracks while scrolling through the hundreds, or thousands of vehicles in their city, crave their vehicle, and choose it ahead of all the rest. Such a listing will have amazing photos, a friendly and welcoming description, fair guidelines, and nothing but 5-star reviews.
They interact positively and professionally with every guest, good and bad.
It’s easy to be polite and friendly with awesome guests who treat you and your vehicle with respect and are easy to work with and end up being 5-star guests. But what about the guests who are more difficult to work with, high maintenance, or even disrespectful of your time or your vehicle? The true winners are the ones who have learned to respond politely and professionally to even the most difficult of guests, even the ones they plan to give one star and never host again.
They over-deliver to guarantee a five-star experience for every guest.
There’s good, and then there’s great. The top host is going to over-communicate with the guest, and not leave any room for the guest to wonder what they’re supposed to do next. The great host is the one who is going to be a little early with the vehicle, not just on time. They will be the host that makes sure that the vehicle is impeccably clean, not even a few crumbs from their shoes on the floor mat from when they were prepping it. They 5-star host may even have free amenities such as bottled water, or umbrellas, or phone chargers.
The hosts who always win are the ones who leave every single guest amazed at how well they were treated.
They over-communicate to help guests through this thing called car-sharing.
I touched on this in the last one, but this is important enough to deserve its own conversation. Car-sharing is still a new concept to most people. Everyone knows how to go to the rental car counter, check in, and drive away in your vehicle. The idea of going to someone’s house, or a grocery store parking lot, and picking up a vehicle, possibly without even meeting anyone, and checking in on an app, can be a little overwhelming. And most of your guests are going to be taking their first Turo trip with your vehicle.
Top hosts communicate all along the way, from the moment the car is requested or booked, leading up to check in time, and as the end of the trip approaches, so that the guest knows exactly what to do when and how to do it.
They become known and liked by Turo personnel.
It’s easy to be friendly and respectful toward the Turo customer service rep when the hold time was short, their english was impeccable, they were well-trained, and handled your issue perfectly and quickly. But what about the new rep still in training who answers your call after a 45-minute hold time and stumbles through the process, with static in the line and a baby crying in the background on their end, and take far longer than you think they should? Can you still be polite and professional? Or what about the claims rep who makes a bad call on approving or denying a supplement and you have to escalate to their supervisor?
Top Turo hosts have learned to manage their emotions, keep their cool, treat everyone at Turo professionally, and with courtesy, and as a result, enjoy a high internal score in Turo’s database. Yep, you have one.
They document everything.
We learned in the first item on the list how important it is to follow the Turo TOS, but top Turo hosts have leaned how to document everything to be able to prove, in any circumstance, that they followed the Terms of Service.
When that guest texts directly to our phone asking us to engage in a grey market transaction, we reply with a firm “no” and then screenshot the conversation and upload it into trip photos. When we request late return fees, we make sure we’ve uploaded a screenshot of our GPS app showing the date and time the vehicle was parked back in our location. There are dozens of examples of times you need to document things to cover yourself. Just like communication, over-document rather than under-document.
They know when stars matter more than dollars, and vice versa.
One reality in this business is that there are times when it is to your advantage to sacrifice a few dollars for the sake of maintaining your 5-star status. And then there are times when it makes the most sense to risk a retaliatory review for the sake of your profit margins, or to protect yourself or your vehicle.
Top hosts have learned how to distinguish between the two situations and make the best decision every time.
They know how to mange their business financials.
A business that is hemorrhaging money won’t be in business for long. And the difficult truth is, many hosts don’t know how to build a monthly profit and loss report to know for certain that their Turo business is, in fact, profitable.
You may think that because your Turo earnings are higher than your payment and insurance, that you’re profitable, when in reality, you could be covering those two items, and still be losing money every month because of the dozen or so other financial factors you failed to take into consideration. Taking the time to learn the financial side of your business is the most important discipline you need to master to be successful long-term.