This is an as-told-to essay based on an interview with 38-year-old Anwar Ali, a pastor at Kauai Baptist Church and owner of Ali’i Rental Cars, which primarily rents out cars on Turo. This story has been edited for length and clarity.
In 2014, I was a youth pastor at a local church on Kauai and had zero assets. I was living in low-income housing because I was below the poverty line in Hawaii.
My wife and I wanted a big family and wanted to afford a home in Hawaii. Some side hustles are you trading time for money. I wanted to reach a point where I could scale a business while maintaining my ministry job.
I was using a budgeting tool, Mint, and saw an ad for Relay Rides (later Turo) that said you could rent out your second vehicle and make some money. I listed my only vehicle, a 1998 Isuzu Rodeo, thinking, “Who would want to touch this 16-year-old vehicle with a 10-foot pole?”
The next morning, I woke up and had a $200 reservation. I literally ran to the garage, vacuumed the car, cleaned out the sand and our surfboards, and took it to the airport. And they paid me. It was weird. It was like magic.
Now I have 213 cars and made $2.95 million in revenue from vehicle rentals in 2025. I have 10 employees, and I’m no longer working in operations at all.
Scaling from one to over 200 rental cars
Within two months of renting out my car, I bought another, a 2004 Honda Element. People love those on Kauai because it’s the ultimate surf car. I bought it for $3,500 bucks, and within three days, it got booked for two weeks straight.
I wanted to keep scaling. I started looking closely at car prices online and where demand was. I was one of the earliest Turo hosts on the island, so I had to do a lot of research. I found out Jeep Wranglers were the most in-demand car in Hawaii. You could buy them at the time for about $36,000, take out a $600 monthly loan, and rent them out for $1,500 a month. In 2016, I got my first loan and built up to having 12 cars.
Eventually, I was working almost full-time on Turo — cleaning cars, checking guests in, and handling customer issues. In 2018, I hired my first employee. The pandemic happened, and I was able to store my cars. When travel came back in 2021, we were doing gangbusters business. We leased a commercial property, scaled to six employees, and grew to over 100 cars.
Early on, I didn’t need commercial space because most vehicles would be rented. If you’re pricing them correctly and you’re at a good utilization rate, you won’t ever have 10 cars back at once. As I’ve scaled, I’ve found a general rule: designate parking for about 20% of your fleet.
Renting cars has freed up my time for my church and family
Now my wife and I have six kids. We own a five-bedroom home. I am the senior pastor at our church. I help coach basketball in the afternoons and pick up the kids.
Because I worked so hard for 10 years and set up this business with great employees, I can now focus my energy there.
My company also keeps Sundays blocked off — no car pick-ups or drop-offs — so my whole team gets them off. Some come to church with me, or to their place of worship, or just have a day off. The booking calendar just fills in around. Our success has also allowed us to provide cars to single moms who are having car trouble or people who are just in a tough spot.
I think Turo is a great side hustle because you can customize it to your goals and lifestyle. Also, with Turo, the money mostly stays in the local economy, which is a sensitive topic in Hawaii because we have large hotel chains and rental car agencies where a big chunk of change goes off-island.
Going from “Hey, I just need help to cover some diapers, wipes, and other household items,” to growing this business has been a journey. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I actually got a vehicle just for me, because every car that I ever owned before then was an asset I used to make money.
People see the nice house and nice vehicles now, but there was a season of seven years when it was a lot of late nights. Now my wife and I look back on that time with a lot of fondness, even though we knew it was a grind period. We’re really thankful.
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