235.How to Make $300k Net Profit Renting Cars You Don't Even Own

0:00Natalia Zorina:Listeners, here's something that will mess with you. My guest owns 68 cars but says you can start this exact business tomorrow with$0 and zero vehicles. She's done$250 ,000 months, turned down private equity and built a brand so trusted in Miami, a market notorious for rental scams, that she's got over 500 five-star Google reviews. She's going to walk us through the whole thing step by step today. this is ryan atkinson and you're listening to help the podcast where we lay the blueprint of successful businesses so you can do the same and today i am so excited to welcome natalia zorina to the show today natalia thank you so so much for being here so so excited to have you yes thank you so much for inviting me on this podcast it's always a pleasure to share my story and inspire new or existing entrepreneurs and showcasing my case and my story and how i do things.

0:56So hopefully this one can also be a good introduction or inspiration for somebody who listens to this.

1:02Natalia Zorina:I remember when you were on the YouTube channel back in like September or so October, it was a huge inspiration for me. And I was so lucky I actually got to interview you. So I'm excited to have you on the podcast today. But for someone that didn't watch the YouTube channel, we're gonna talk a lot about you today, but lay the foundation for them. What exactly do you do? Yeah, so I am a co-founder and COO of the car rental company here in Miami. And this all started eight years ago. So I run the company for eight good years. Yeah, so my specialty is getting good cars on board, renting them out, provide great service to the customers.

1:40And also I do a co-hosting thingy when I manage cars for other people for revenue share split.

1:49Natalia Zorina:revenue. What did you guys do in 2025? Give us an idea of like the revenue you're pulling in because it is a big number. Yeah. So it was a 3.5 million gross and we are at a little over $300 ,000 net. Incredible. So let's dive into how someone can get started here today. I think that lays the foundation like really nicely. So let's go back to like early days for you. Like how did you like get started in this business? Like how did you discover this business model? Yeah. So it all started with one car and a car sharing platform, Turo, where I posted my very first vehicle. And that vehicle was renting very good.

2:31Maybe it was timing, maybe it was platform, maybe it was the car, maybe it was me. I'm not sure, but everything went amazing. And it was very simple entry level venture for me. I posted a car, started renting that to people and I started seeing some cash in my pocket. And that inspired me to buy a second car and a third car. All of those cars were financed at first, no investment, no cash investment into cars. And then later down the road, of course, we already had some investors who joined our game and also some leasing companies and financing opportunities that we had down the road. But everything started with just one car.

3:09And that's why I really like to say that this business is so easy to start with your own car. You don't even have to buy something specific to start today.

3:19Natalia Zorina:So for someone that's listening right now that has a car, let's just assume someone has one car. They're like, okay, like, this sounds interesting. Like, what do I do here? Someone has a car and they want to rent it out. Like, what should they be doing like their first month? And like, where should they go? Like, how do they make money? Give us like a high level overview of that. So for the vehicle owner, two routes. First is register to account yourself, post the car on the platform, and start getting bookings right away. If your price is competitive, your pictures are looking nice, and the car overall is something interesting for your market, I'm sure that you will get reservations right away.

3:55Yes, of course, you have to manage it correctly. You have to manage customer service, talk to the customers, keys hand off, so it will involve some work, but you can start it right away. The second route for the vehicle owner is you can find somebody like myself, bigger company and give your car for management. There are a lot of companies who do this now. In the past, there was just a few of us, but now it's a big thingy all over. So you can give the car to somebody and that somebody will rent the car for you and share the revenue with you.

4:26Natalia Zorina:If you could advise someone that's like just getting started, what would you advise them to do? Should they do the Turo? Should they go to the management company? What do you think is best for a bad individual? Obviously, everything's case by case, but what would you suggest? I would suggest to determine what is your end goal. If you're trying to build a business, even a small business out of all this, then of course you have to do it yourself, at least at the very beginning, to learn about how everything works. So you got to make that profile on Turo and rent the car yourself so you learn and possibly you will grow this and scale yourself.

4:59If you are not planning to develop this as the business, and this is something that you just want to, for example, help yourself with the car payments at this specific point of time, then of course, it's more reasonable to give the car to somebody else so they can manage you and you don't invest your time into this venture.

5:17Natalia Zorina:I'm going to ask the question here because I know people are going to be wondering this as well. Okay, I'm going to rent my car to someone. Holy smokes, they just totaled my car. Am I out of money? How does that work? I'd be curious. I mean, I know how from the YouTube channel, but for our listeners, how does it work? I'll be happy to share. If we're assuming that everything is done right, correctly and properly, there is an insurance coverage for every single rental. Every time somebody rents the car, the car is insured. Whether it's insured by the Turo insurance or personal insurance of the customer or over-the-counter product that they purchase when they walk into our company and in case they're international and they don't have insurance in the States, They just buy it.

6:02That's called over-the-counter. In all these instances, the car is insured. And if it is total, just like you suggested, then it's not a big worry because insurance company is going to pay the actual cash value off your car. So you have money returned to you or returned to the bank. And if you owe to the bank less than actual cash value of the car, the portion of that money actually goes to you as well. so you are protected there is insurance coverage all over the place and that's how it's supposed to be of course some people may take a huge risk and rent with no insurance but i don't talk about those cases as i do things right and eliminate as much risk as possible yeah i feel like that's

6:45Natalia Zorina:like really important part of all this is like how do you eliminate risk and like i'm thinking my own car like if i lost my car because i was renting it out like oh i'd be crushed so that makes me happy to hear there's something there. Okay, so someone's doing this for a while, they're on Turo, they get their first car, like, okay, I'm ready to like expand after this. I'm actually going to go buy a car to add to my fleet. What's like a good like vehicle make model year that can like hit that sweet spot for something that's like always in demand? I won't be able to name a specific car for every market because every market is so much different.

7:16I can definitely give advice at what to look for at the first moment when you're thinking about buying a car. And the answer is depreciation. There could be a great car, which you think is a great fit. And competitors listings show you that it is in demand and it's being rented all the time. But if that's like newer Range Rover, let's say, do not buy. Because you're going to lose a lot of money. These cars depreciate. How? Right? Every electric car, don't buy it new or even close to new because you're going to take all the depreciation. And if you fairly calculate how much money you're really going to earn throughout the three or four years, depending on how long you keep the car, you will see that there is no revenue in there at the end of the day.

8:01That's why I prefer not to name a specific car maker model as it is really different market to market. But that's my biggest advice. Look at the depreciation right away over anything else.

8:13Natalia Zorina:Are you working a nine to five, but dream of entrepreneurial freedom? Look no further than the UFLIP Academy, the number one entrepreneurial platform with 20 plus step-by-step courses taught by active business owners, live workshops, hands-on skill training, a business idea database, and a thriving entrepreneur community to keep you accountable. Click the link in the description below to join the UFLIP Academy today and make this the year you stopped dreaming and started building your business without guesswork. It's fun how like you finance some of your first car. So you kind of give us like like a story about like how you did it early on.

8:51Yeah. So when I did it early on, I had no social security numbers, so I could not get proper good financing or leasing. So I had to accept very high interest rate deals that was eating up my margin at that time.

9:09But to make vehicles financed. And I would simply go to the car dealership and open the vehicle loans, very often multiple loans at the same time under each name. So it was under my name and my husband's name. And then we started introducing the co-hosting. As I said, that was the big thing is you can have more cars with zero investment and zero commitment to the banks.

9:36Natalia Zorina:That's super cool. It sounds like it's such like a fun business model to like be in. But like, what are some of those things that people get wrong, like early on? And I'd love to hear any stories from you. Like, are there any costly mistakes you made early on in your journey with us? Yeah, the costly mistakes with all these damages, total losses and car accidents and theft that is happening in this business a lot. And I've heard even from very experienced hosts with over 10 cars when they just fail on the part of doing their due diligence with the renter. For example, if you're working with Turo and you don't check driver's license, you may release the car to somebody else.

10:17And then if something happens, there is no coverage to that rental. That means that they damaged the car and this loss is yours. And that's a huge mistake that may cost you the whole business that you're trying to build, right? Same thing if you're doing private rentals, not Turo, and you fail to verify insurance properly, and you release the car to somebody who apparently does not have no insurance coverage, then this person damages the car. And if they return you a car not in one piece, this is your loss and your responsibility, and nobody's going to help you out because there's no coverage to that.

10:51So those mistakes with insurance coverage and following policies of platforms like Turo can cost a big dollar to everybody who does this business. That's why avoiding these mistakes will really save you from failing in this business. But avoiding them is quite easy, by the way. You know, you just really have to structure things out, learn them and follow so you don't fail on these.

11:17Natalia Zorina:Did that ever like happen to you of like, did you ever like overlook a driver's license or something and a car got like completely totaled or anything? Has that ever like happened to you? Well, when I never had a situation when we gave the car to somebody wrong, not nothing like that. The only story that I can think of and share with you, we have it ongoing now. We had a Corvette that was rented to an individual with verified insurance coverage over the phone was his private insurance. I believe that was Geico. And the vehicle was stolen from the renter. Oh, wow. He was young. I think he was like 24 or 25.

11:53And he got really scared of the whole situation. So he started hiding away. And he was not collaborating with insurance company in order for insurance company to pay our loss because the vehicle was never found by the police. So what happened is now it's been over two years. We don't have a car and we don't have a coverage. And I have to keep paying monthly payments every single month to the bank because the car is leased. And the leasing company doesn't even know that the car is not existing no more. So what this is about is even though we made everything correctly, there is a risk. Now, will I get my money at the end of the game with Geico and this renter and everything else?

12:36Yes, of course I will. The attorneys work, there's a lawsuit against the renter, against the insurance company. We're going to get paid. But all this time, we're making monthly payments and paying the interest rate, which we are not supposed to pay. Now, what this story is about is that I never had a mistake to be done, but still the risk is there. This type of situation, you know, I have it once in eight years. But if you on top of that will fail to verify something, then it may really cause a big harm to your business.

13:08Natalia Zorina:Oh, my gosh. That sounds like a headache to say the least of like something that you have to deal with. Yeah. This side of the business, it's a tough side. But if you look on the opposite side on, you know, how easy it is to get into this business with no cash, right? But this co-hosting structure that I talk about all the time, that gives a big opportunity for anybody who wants to deal with cars and car rental business to get involved and build something big. That was going to be my question is like anyone can get involved with this. I mean, did you ever think you were going to be involved in something like this?

13:42Natalia Zorina:Or like, I'd love to hear that because obviously you've grown it to over$3 million a year now. I mean, did you ever think you'd be doing such a large business with this exact business model? No, I didn't really plan. As I explained, that was quite spontaneous. Just one car and start building on top more and more and more. Now, what happened to me and I think what's happening with a lot of folks in this business, And that's a vision for somebody who wants to do it in the future. Once you finance or co-host, let's say, 10 cars, then you can go to the bank or the leasing company and present yourself in a good standing.

14:18Like, hey, look, I'm already renting this many cars. Here's my profit margin. This is how I do it. These are my expenses. And little by little, leasing company by leasing company, you start growing, right? So at first, I worked with a few banks who were financing my cars. Now I have a bunch of leasing companies, a bunch of banks who are financing cars for me. And there are so many opportunities where you can take this case to this business to show that to them. And they will give you funds to grow and scale.

14:50Natalia Zorina:You're bridging me nicely here because I was also going to ask, it's one thing to have one or two cars. But actually scaling this to however much you want to do a month. Like what have been the biggest difficulties that you have faced when it comes to actually scaling? Like what should people what you know now? Like how should people scale this like in the best way possible? You know, if you would ask me this question in the past, I would say, oh, my biggest difficulty is that I need more capital. But now I have more than enough access to capital. But my biggest boundary now is really labor. it's really interesting but i replace a lot of labor with ai now and building huge projects with automations and replacing humans by ai because to scale i need to eliminate human factor as much as possible even with this insurance verifications and luckily now we have access to all these technologies that were just released like few years ago if you think about it this ai did not exist even a few years ago.

15:57So yeah, my biggest thing now is that elimination of the human factor and how people need to sleep at night and cannot answer messages. I need 24 hours customer support. So my biggest limitation is really people because I feel like I can build so much more if I automate and outsource it to the technology rather than people. That's where I'm looking at right now.

16:23Natalia Zorina:How are you using AI like within your business? Because obviously people might hear like, oh, car business, like, you know, I can't really use AI. But obviously there's usage cases on the back end for it. So how are you specifically like using AI to replace humans? You can use AI now for anything, but talking about what I do is my AI runs all the, for example, chargebacks monitoring and answers to the chargebacks and seeing the trends, why we're getting them and how we can eliminate that in the future. Then we do fleet revenue analysis. So unit by unit, which unit is profitable, which is not. And this is all in real life, meaning that I don't need a person no more to sit down and run all the analysis.

17:09It's being done on the background at all times. And I'm getting reports being sent to me three times a month. On a daily basis, I'm getting reports of this like sales reports. and I want to see every morning how much per day I need to sell in order to be at the target of at least$250 ,000 per month gross sales. So AI always looks for those reports, puts everything together and gives me numbers on how successful we are this month. And then I also have HR AI who actually It analyzes the performance of the live team.

17:46Natalia Zorina:Wow. Yeah, and also tracks the payroll for the team. All my emails are monitored by the AI claims management. It's very cool how AI reminds me about deadlines on the claims, where I have to follow up with what email. That is a big part. And to reach all these, even these that I just described, goals with real people, you need to train them. you need to give them instructions, right? And they're very limited to certain things rather than AI is just able to do it in seconds compared to how much time human needs. On top of that, all the inbound calls are answered by the AI. So if you call the phone number on my website, there is no human picking up the phone.

18:30It's all AI. And AI can answer questions, what cars we have, how much, what colors, how to book, like all the questions that you usually would get, they all answered by the AI. And then text messages are also monitored by the AI. So if my sales rep is busy on the phone, let's say, and not answering messages right away, AI steps in and answers in the message thread right away by reading all thread, like all the conversation in this thread, understanding what they were talking about previously and answering so much like it's all perfectly so all these is replaced and also the follow-ups we do morning follow-ups with all the leads 9 a.m in the morning everybody getting a message with the follow-up that's all technology is doing i'm curious because we've been starting

19:20Natalia Zorina:to use ai for like our own like outreach and stuff and like lead generation whatnot for that 9 a.m text what's being said like what are they yeah what are they saying oh it's like hey do you still want to make the reservation or like, hey, are we booking that 911 for you or not? Something that we were talking about, or if last night we finished the conversation at the moment when we are requesting documents. So let's say we request driver's license, insurance and email, then in the morning is going to be a message like, oh, you didn't send that to us, by the way. Can you please send so we can finalize your reservation?

19:54Natalia Zorina:Do a quick reflection for me on this, because you have done like a lot in entrepreneurship, like, you know, kind of like an underdog story, just like immigrating here to the US and everything. I mean, talking about like the personal development and growth you've seen for yourself over the past eight years and even beyond that, just from day zero to where you are now, like talking about that personal growth. Yeah, well, when I started this business, I already had some professional skills that I learned during getting my two degrees in economics and international business. But all of that knowledge was very theoretical and not practical at all.

20:29With this business, I was able to practice everything that I learned during my university studying time. And I can tell that it's not just, you know, learning numbers and doing the day-to-day work. It's about negotiations. I learned to negotiate so much, especially with banking institutions and insurance companies. Also, you know, I just with the experience that I've had with all the case studies throughout the years, I learned from A to Z what can happen in this business, what can happen with the customer, what can happen with insurance claim, what can happen with the car and condition and maintenance and, you know, selling of the car.

21:12That gave me knowledge and confidence that I carry every single day. And that helps me to scale this business and increase my profit margin substantially more and more. Also, the amount of great people that I learned throughout this course of the years, that's huge. I mean, I have phone numbers of big folks and I can just call them like, hey, can you help out with that? Or, hey, do you want to do that together? I think throughout the course of eight years, these skills, knowledges and experiences are just glowing through my skin.

21:46Natalia Zorina:Well, let's end with that and let's head to our Fandablitz questions. And listeners, if you want to join in on world-class entrepreneurs, email us at podcasts at upflip.com and we will get all of your questions answered there. But Natalia, ready for our last five questions here? Best car under$30 ,000 to start a rental fleet with today? BMW 4 Series convertible. Simple enough. Turo or go independent from day one? What do you tell a beginner? Turo. What would be the first hire you'd make? Local ops person or a remote VA? A remote VA. One metric you check every single morning before anything else.

22:23Which reservations popped up through the night.