$3k a Month Renting Out Mobility Scooters Part-Time (Greatest Hits)

15:46Lenny Tim:Yeah. So a brand new scooter, the ones that I'm using, and I'm using Pride. So they're really good brand, very good scooters. I would recommend them. A brand new one is about$1 ,500 right now. A little less, a little more. But I actually bought mine used. And I look for about$500. I go on Facebook Marketplace or any other local marketplace. And I'm looking to get it for about$500. So as you can see, I pretty much got my money back within one, two, three rentals.

16:19Pat Flynn:Yeah, I'm thinking, yeah, if it's$250 a week plus$75 delivery, Like a couple of weeks later, I'm in the black on this on this unit. How many how many do you have at this point?

16:29Lenny Tim:Right now, I only have seven. So I say only.

16:32Pat Flynn:I mean, that's like that's a pretty serious fleet.

16:35Lenny Tim:Yeah, it's not bad. I have seven right now and I, you know, I make it work. I could definitely have a lot more, but I just I don't I keep it completely a side side business, you know. Yeah.

16:48Pat Flynn:So they're pretty bulky. So you have a storage unit or keep them in the garage. It's got to take up like a decent chunk of space.

16:54Lenny Tim:Yeah, I actually have. Luckily, I live in an apartment building and we actually have storage units that we can use. So in the parking area, I can rent out a storage unit and they're like five by five. So luckily, I have it right there. It's like right next to my parking spot. And I keep I have two storage units and I keep my scooters there and I could shove five of them in one. And then I have a couple in the other.

17:15Pat Flynn:And does it fit in the back of an SUV?

17:17Lenny Tim:How do you deliver them? So we have an SUV. um that's the car that we started with and i can put two i actually got three um in there one time but i don't recommend it i don't it's i have to uh disassemble the scooters and kind of like shove them in there but uh two is fine i could put two in the back and then my other car i just throw one in the trunk and that's how i do it i just put in the trunk of my car and i just uh deliver it

17:42Pat Flynn:uh that way yeah that's the other consideration here i remember our bounce house rental guest was, well, I started out with my Civic or my Accord, basically. I had to get this little trailer attachment thing because it was a 400-pound inflatable. And it was something to consider. And Steve, the hot tub guy, was like, yeah, just kind of stick it in the back of the truck. And that's how he had to make it work. But a bigger vehicle would be required to deliver some of those bigger items. But that's really cool. This ROI pencils out a lot faster than a traditional rental house where it's like, yeah, I can break even on my entire purchase costs within just a couple of rentals and I'm off to the races.

18:24Pat Flynn:More with Lenny in just a moment, including how many hours a week it takes to run this business and some of the tools and tech he uses to manage it all. Coming up right after this.

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20:44Lenny Tim:That's shopify.com slash side hustle.

20:48Pat Flynn:Walk me through a day in the life or a week in the life. If there is such a thing, trying to manage the inventory flow and the pickups and the drop-offs and I don't know, is there such a thing?

20:59Lenny Tim:Well, I keep it very simple, to be honest. It's not that demanding. Some weeks are busier than others. I have more rentals. So a customer, you know, they call or they email. They're like, hey, I need a scooter. I'm coming in and so on. So I'm going to stay at this hotel. And I'm like, OK, delivery date, delivery time, location. I have the scooter. Boom, they book it. And, you know, I have them sign a rental agreement. Just, you know, has a bunch of information like their responsibilities, these mine and a little bit of that, like, you know, liability language. And they signed the rental agreement.

21:36Lenny Tim:And that's pretty much it. The time comes, you know, I grabbed the scooter, throw it in my trunk. I drive it over. Usually it's a hotel. I leave it with front desk. I'll put a little tag with the, with the guest's name, with the customer's name on it. Okay. Just in case. And I just drop it off with front desk. They always take it. They put it like where they put the luggage and that's it. I just drop it there. And let's say a week later. And I tell the customer, I'm like, Hey, just drop it off with them when you're done. And a week later I go pick it up. So it's pretty simple. People call me, they email me, I booked the rental, I rental

22:14Pat Flynn:agreement, payment request. And the rental agreement is like an online checkbox or DocuSign or something?

22:21Lenny Tim:It's a PDF. I send them a PDF that they could sign. So they just put their name, billing address, and a signature, basically. And they send it back to me. Okay.

22:30Pat Flynn:And how are you processing the payments?

22:32Lenny Tim:So I was doing it through PayPal, honestly, for a little while. When I started, that was finding my first rental. I'm like, I had to do it quickly. And I actually did my personal PayPal account. But I use Square now. I just create an invoice and I send them a payment request. And I charge up front and that's it.

22:51Pat Flynn:Okay. So that's done kind of in advance of delivering the thing, like the, both the agreement and then the payment, I guess it's similar to, you know, rental car. I'm going to reserve the rental car. And okay. Yeah.

23:01Lenny Tim:Yeah.

23:01Pat Flynn:I charge them up front. And what's cool about this, cause we talked about people doing the Turo business too. It's like, I got to go, somebody wants to rent my car and they're coming into the airport. So I go take the car to the airport and now I got to take an Uber home because I left, I gave them my car at the airport. It's like, no, I could still take my car home because I just dropped off the scooter instead. So that's a little bit more attractive to me or like fewer, fewer moving parts in that sense. So that's cool. On the liability insurance side of things, I guess, you know, dealing with people with mobility issues, like if the scooter breaks down, I don't know how common that would be, but like, is, is that a factor here?

23:42Lenny Tim:So that was definitely my thought getting into this business. So that's, I guess, a naturally anxious person. And that's exactly what I think about sometimes. So there are pros and cons with every business, every piece of equipment. I do think about, I worry about them giving me a call in the middle of the night. Hey, my scooter broke down or something's wrong. Come and fix it. Come and take care of it. But luckily, that's just mostly in my mind. that doesn't usually happen I mean it's happened once or twice where the battery was kind of faulty and the scooter wasn't running that well but I was able to you know take care of it nobody was upset nobody was stuck anywhere they gave me a call I brought him a new scooter I swapped it out yeah I mean luckily there's really not that much not that much issue that that goes on these are really good scooters there's not that much that can go wrong like I said I definitely was thinking about these things like, hey, what if something goes wrong, right?

24:41Lenny Tim:These people are out riding in the middle of, you know, who knows where.

24:45Pat Flynn:Yeah, they're going down Hollywood Boulevard or they're going to do the Walk of Fame or something.

24:50Lenny Tim:What if it fails in the middle of the thing, you know? But a lot of times people, they don't really necessarily go far. They go with family. They go in a car. They go with somebody else and they go, you know, maybe they don't necessarily, you know, venture out on their own like really far or anything like that. So usually I think it works out. There's really no, haven't really had any issues like that. I have thought about the liability of the business and there's always that question. You know, these are maybe older people, right? They might have mobility issues and you're renting them a mobility scooter.

25:24Lenny Tim:But again, you know, it's like you overthink it. There's mobility scooter rental companies that have existed forever and they're doing just fine. And that's kind of how I look at it. All these businesses that you think, well, what about the liability? Because you always want to think about that. But there's a ton of companies that have been doing it forever. So they're OK. I've always been surprised how inexpensive a general liability policy would be.

25:49Pat Flynn:I don't know if it would be like a product liability policy in this case, but something like that. Is that something that you carry for the business?

25:56Lenny Tim:I have, yeah, business insurance is general liability, but I don't have anything beyond that. I have a, like I said, a rental agreement. And again, I know that that doesn't necessarily mean much legally, but it lets the customer know that this is serious. At least they take responsibility also for the scooter.

26:15Pat Flynn:Okay, but a general liability policy, that makes sense. Protect yourself. Put that rental agreement up front. Just treat it seriously. Make it look legit, because it is legit. I was going to ask, so most people are finding you through Googling LA Mobility Scooter Rental, and you're like, hey, it pops up there. Did you do anything specific with the Google business listing or with Yelp, either posting updates there or soliciting reviews or adding images? I like the whole world of local SEO is it's quite fascinating, like all of the different little tweaks and levers that you can pull.

26:50Lenny Tim:Yeah, no, I'm definitely fascinated with SEO and I'm always looking for ways to improve things. But the Google My Business page, I think that's probably the main thing. And I filled out as much as I could. I put up some pictures, some great descriptions, filled out, you know, everything that I could on the profile. And yes, I definitely did solicit some reviews from, you know, my first customers, some friends, family. And I think that's important. I definitely, you know, focused on that. And I think that definitely helped get my business out there. So that's I think that's very important. Yelp.

27:23Lenny Tim:I just I wouldn't say that's a big factor for me, but it's still there. and I still get some requests for there, but I'm not focused that much on it. I would say Google my business and just, uh, I was able to, to rank. I want to say hopefully, cause I did a pretty good website. The current competitors, they're a little bit, um, old school and they don't have, they did not invest so much in their online presence. So the websites are a little bit, um, older. I don't think they're as optimized. So I think with me building a pretty nice, um, new modern website, I was able to just outrank them pretty easily.

28:02Pat Flynn:Yeah, it's a good looking site. And this is kind of echoes what Nick Huber has said, like, well, who do you want to compete with? Do you want to compete against the, you know, brick and mortar, you know, blue collar service based businesses that are operating with websites that look like they're 20 years old? Or do you want to compete against Silicon Valley engineers who are using AI to produce this stuff? Like, I'm going to go for the lower competition business model every time. And same thing, Johnny Robinson was doing the window washing business in college and had built it to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

28:31Pat Flynn:It's like super go getter. And what he mentioned was, you know, once you have that online presence nailed down, so much of the branding happens online. It's your website. It's your reviews. It's your photos that as long as you show up and provide a good service, people are already impressed with you. Like they felt that they were making a savvy decision because they went with the customer, you know, with the company that looked good, you know, on their digital presence. And that's kind of the box that you're checking here. So that makes a lot of sense. As you see, you have like different tabs about your scooters.

29:05Pat Flynn:You have the, you know, the Explore LA tab, just some content that says, you know, it's about the scooters, but it's also like about LA, like trying to cross pollinate, like this is what we are. This is where we do it. Like trying to say, you know, here it is. And then the number that's on the site, is this Google voice? Is this just ring your personal cell? Like what happens if somebody calls this number?

29:25Lenny Tim:Yeah, that number goes through. I have a, I think it's talk route. So it's like a phone number service and it does, it's an app and it goes basically directly to my phone. And it also has a voicemail box. And I think the voicemail also pops up into the email. So basically, you know, there's like a transcript. So I just, I use that app for the phone number. Yeah. And it goes straight to my phone.

29:49Pat Flynn:Are there any upsell opportunities for somebody coming into town who needs this thing? Like when you go to rent a car, they're like, do you want the collision and damage? Like, do you want, do you want a car seat? Do you want like, you know, the other things that come with it? Do you want the, you know, toll tracker? I just try to increase that customer value as somebody comes through. Just trying to think of other ways to increase the average ticket here.

30:17Lenny Tim:I try to keep it simple and I try to not get into things that don't necessarily make a lot of a lot of money. Do you know what I mean? You can definitely do maybe small upgrades. I don't know, like like a charger, right? You can let them charge their phone or you can add like a canopy or something like that, things like that. But those would be maybe 10, 15 bucks, 20 bucks. And I think it's a lot more work for you, right, to manage those things and to offer those things. And some people want them and some people don't. So I keep it simple. It's kind of like an 80-20 rule. I just rent them the scooter and I get the most money for that.

30:54Lenny Tim:And I keep it very simple for me. I don't have to worry about accessories or any kind of additional add-ons because you just – I don't think it would add that much value, that much money to the rental. I don't think there's really anything you can offer with a mobility scooter that would make it much more lucrative.

31:14Pat Flynn:I was trying to check the Google reviews for it, but it's defaulting to Seattle area for me. There's a few people. This guy in Tacoma has got 43 reviews for the mobility equipment supplier. Check out the local competition here. Oh, this guy's only 3.9 stars. Like, here we go. There's an opportunity to come in and provide five-star service. on the review front, we've heard that, you know, prioritizing the Google reviews over the Yelp reviews, because Yelp, unless that customer is a habitual Yelp reviewer, it's probably not going to get shown. It's like, oh, you know, yes, it's my first review and it's five stars.

31:51Like, you know, we should try to game our system.

31:54Pat Flynn:But Google will take almost all comers. It sounds like, is there a processing place after that rental is complete? And after the customer is back home. It's like a follow-up email to say, hey, you know, hopefully it was a positive experience. If you wouldn't mind dropping in a review, curious if there's a process around that.

32:11Lenny Tim:Yeah. In the beginning, if I, you know, if I had a good, um, good interaction, if I made a connection with, uh, with a customer, I may follow up with an email after I'm like, Hey, you know, thank you so much. Usually I'm very nice. It's all about customer service. And I may ask them, Hey, if you want to, you know, if you want to help out or something like that, you can leave a review here on Google or Yelp. And that's how I did it. But I don't do that anymore. I think I have enough at this point where I don't really follow up or anything like that. But I did a little bit in the beginning. Yeah, I've got your I was able to get away from the,

32:44Pat Flynn:you know, Seattle location tagging here. And yeah, 25 star reviews here on Google. So yeah, that's fewer quantity than the competition, but greater quality. And so yeah, it shows up as the top as the top result. So that's great.

32:58Lenny Tim:Yeah, no, exactly.

33:00Pat Flynn:I was going to ask if there is a strategic partnership plan with the hotels, like if people don't book this in advance, like, could you, you know, leave your card with the front desk and say, Hey, um, if any of your guests ever need this service, like I'm here to help. And so they're like, um, because we talk about the strategy of going towards those lead fountains who are going to be the steady stream of customers over and over again, versus like trying to find one-off customers on the internet.

33:27Lenny Tim:There's a lot of opportunity to reach out and to solicit business and hotels is big. I thought about it again. I don't necessarily am focused on, you know, growing and expanding the business that much. I kind of like where it is now, but there's definitely so much opportunity for going out to hotels, approaching hotels, you know, letting them know, hey, if you have a guest that is looking for a scooter, give us a call. well, here's a little flyer or maybe even put a little flyer on your, you know, on the front desk for people to see or anything like that. There's definitely a lot of opportunity.

34:01Lenny Tim:I did not really get into that because like I said, I am pretty okay with how much business I have now. But if I do want to expand, which at some point I might, if I want to take it to the next level, you can definitely do that. You can get in touch with, with all these things. Hotels is great, but there's a lot of other customers. It's not just people traveling. We're in the middle of LA here and productions, you know, movie productions, they rent scooters and they probably rent them also for props and different reasons, different customers all the time.

34:35Pat Flynn:Yeah, that's such a cool, I just am fascinated by things that you can buy relatively inexpensively and still command a high, you know, rental rate on a weekly basis. I think it's really cool.

34:47Lenny Tim:More with Lenny in just a moment, including how many hours a week it takes to run this

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36:06Pat Flynn:We've got weddings, sports, travel, kids off school. But what I found is it never really slows down. The timing is never going to be perfect, which is why you got to force your own agenda. Thankfully, our partner Shopify makes it easy to get your business up and running in the time you do have. With Shopify's templates and built-in AI tools, if you can point and click, you can set up a storefront. Plus, every Shopify store is automatically integrated with ShopPay for checkout, which increases your conversions and makes life easy for your customers. And if questions come up, Shopify's built-in AI assistant called Sidekick is ready to help you build, troubleshoot, and keep moving.

36:43Pat Flynn:And if you prefer a human, that's of course an option too with Shopify's award-winning customer support team. All you need is the idea. Shopify handles the rest. If you're serious about hearing your first, start your free trial at shopify.com slash side hustle today. You heard that right. Start your free trial today at shopify.com slash side hustle. That's shopify.com slash side hustle. Do you have an estimate of the average hours per week that you're putting into it right now?

37:13Lenny Tim:It varies. I think the majority of the work is just driving, you know, delivering and picking up and it's up and down, you know what I mean? Some weeks are more than others, but I would say I have one delivery or pickup a day, maybe two once in a while, and it'll be maybe a few days. It won't be every day. So I would say five hours, six hours, seven hours for the week. I try not to go that far. So I keep it as local as possible. That's the job, you know, that's the request that I like to take. So, you know.

37:50Pat Flynn:Yeah. So if somebody comes in like, Hey, we're coming to, for Disneyland or something, you're like, Oh, I'm not going down to Orange County.

37:55Lenny Tim:I don't do that. There's a lot of Disneyland guys down there, uh, rentals. And that's far from me. And I try to stay away from those one day rentals. It's just not worth it for me. So I try to go at least a three, four day. Um, that's my sweet spot. I like those four days to a week cause you can get the most, but they're not get, you know, taking your scooter for that long of a time. So you get the best amount of ROI there, rental rate there. And yeah, so that's what I try to do.

38:22Pat Flynn:That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. What surprised you the most over the last couple of years of running this thing?

38:28Lenny Tim:To be honest, I don't know. I think that it's not that it shouldn't be that stressful. I, like I said earlier, I think I'm kind of a stress, stressful person. I think, Like, oh, they're going to call me. Something's wrong. But they don't. People usually don't have issues. They don't call me. And I'm like, they're going to call me in the middle of the night. And no, like these people don't hang out in the middle of the night. You know what I mean? So I shouldn't worry about that. Nobody's going out in the middle of the night on their scooter. So it's been pretty smooth. I think the most surprising thing is there's no issues and the customers.

39:04Lenny Tim:You get different types of customers. It's not just somebody with a mobility issue that's traveling. It's different, different types of customers.

39:14Pat Flynn:I love that. We build up the fear in our heads of like, you know, all of the worst case scenarios that could happen. And then when you're actually doing it, you're like, oh, OK, another rental down. Everybody was happy. Like, OK, along those lines, like have there been any horror stories, so to speak, or just, you know, mistakes, things you would have done differently?

39:34Lenny Tim:No, I mean, I had maybe a couple of times people calling me saying something's wrong with the battery. It's cutting out or it's not going uphill very nicely. I think we need a new scooter. And they were very nice because I approached them very nice. Customers, I'm very patient, very, you know, I don't know, kind with them. And I people are not going to I think because of that, people are not going to call screaming or anything or upset. They're like, hey, something's with the scooter. And I'm like, OK, I'll either bring you a new battery or a new a new scooter. And when, you know, later that day or the next day, I did a couple of times, I just swapped out the scooter for them.

40:11Lenny Tim:And that's it. I mean, and they're happy. They're fine. Never complained. And that's kind of the that's the biggest thing that ever happened.

40:19Pat Flynn:Yeah, that's helpful to hear. It's like, OK, it's not it's not as scary as we maybe make it out to be in our heads. But what's next for you? So you got the scooter business. You got the e-com business. You got the Struggling Entrepreneur YouTube channel. what's uh i mean where do you want to take this thing well it's a good business and at some point

40:37Lenny Tim:i might expand i might focus on it but to be honest with you i'm thinking of other equipment that i can get into things that are bigger ticket you can make more money out of and uh that are maybe bigger you know that could that are more interesting and more uh higher ticket so i am right now coming up always trying to find new ideas and i'm actually working on some some other stuff with a friend of mine. We're trying to get into another equipment rental business, actually.

41:09Pat Flynn:Oh, very good. Is the site live already? We can plug it for you.

41:13Lenny Tim:We're doing generators, you know, those portable, towable types of generators that, and we're still trying to figure out who the customer is, but it could be either, again, movie productions or parties, right, or events where they need a generator somewhere out in the, you know, there's no power and they need to power some equipment or whatever they're doing. And it's LA generator rentals, just like LA mobility. Yeah. We keep it, you know, keep it simple. And that's what we're working on right now. And we're just, just like the other business, we're trying to see where the demand is. And we have a few generators.

41:49Lenny Tim:We don't have all of them that are advertised. So we're starting with a few and we're, we're kind of going from there. And we've already had some rentals going.

42:01Pat Flynn:Yeah. I love this idea of just putting something out there, seeing what kind of reaction it gets, even if people actually want the thing, and then going out and buying the inventory for it. I think it's a really creative approach. So again, lamobilitiescooterrentals.com. You can check Lenny out at The Struggling Entrepreneur. We'll link up his YouTube channel as well. Thanks for stopping by. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation.

42:27Lenny Tim:Sure. So I always listen to these number one tips that everybody gives and it's always hard to come up with something, but I'll keep it simple. Just like we talked about, you don't have to invest money up front. You don't have to buy a bunch of equipment or whatever it is you're doing, whatever business you're trying. Start with a minimum viable product, throw up a website, but make sure it's good. Invest in that and then see if you get demand and you can do that for any business. I think that's very important. And And I would say that's my number one thing and see what works.

43:00Pat Flynn:Yeah, I think that's probably the big idea to take away from this is how can you validate demand really affordably? It costs almost nothing to put up a website these days. And as long as you do it right, you know, the branding, positioning, the, you know, just I filled in the blanks on the Google or the GoDaddy website builder. And all of a sudden that was enough because it was, that was, you know, there was so little competition doing that same thing. So, um, yeah, fascinating. I'm just smiling and taking notes along the way. It's like, shoot, what else? What other website, uh, could I spin up around the same idea?

43:34Pat Flynn:And if you're thinking the same thing, I've got my list of 25 other unconventional rental ideas. Maybe something in there will strike your fancy. I don't know if industrial equipment is on there. It might be, uh, but these are other products that people are renting out for a profit. and that is your listener only bonus for this week. You can download that for free at the show notes for this episode at sidehustlenation.com slash Lenny or just follow the show notes link in the episode description. Big thanks to Lenny for sharing his insight. You can hit up sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.

44:06Pat Flynn:And thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. It really does help. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, make sure to text a friend. Hey, we should totally start a business like this. until next time let's go out there and make something happen and i'll catch you in the next edition of the side hustle show hustle on