From Side Hustle to $10K/Month: Inside the Rental Car Business with George Madden and Car Rental Coach

Summary

Podcast Summary: From Side Hustle to $10K/Month – Inside the Rental Car Business with George Madden & Car Rental Coach

Podcast: Right About Now – Legendary Business Advice
Host: Ryan Alford (The Radcast Network)
Episode Date: January 20, 2026
Guests: George Madden, Car Rental Coach

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the real nuts and bolts of building a profitable car rental business, moving well beyond the “side hustle” hype to the tactical steps, risks, and lessons learned. Host Ryan Alford sits down with George Madden, a.k.a. the Car Rental Coach, a hands-on entrepreneur who’s turned a handful of rental cars into a full-time, scalable business—all while teaching others to do the same. Together, they deconstruct the myths, walk through best practices, and compare the car rental opportunity to other “sharing economy” models like Airbnb.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Genesis of Car Rental Coach & the Power of Coopetition

• George’s Path:

  • Initially operated Pittsburgh’s largest car rental fleet through Turo and traditional methods ([02:02]).
  • Met his business partner, originally a competitor, via a Facebook ad. Discovered complementary client bases—one serving airport rentals, the other local rentals ([02:02]–[03:07]).
  • United through shared goals and launched Car Rental Coach to train others on building their own fleets, inspired by Alex Hormozi’s "Gym Launch" model ([03:36]).

• Emphasis on Real Mentorship:

  • George has both received and provided mentorship; sees immense value in helping others avoid classic errors with insurance, asset purchase, and customer vetting ([03:36]–[04:49]).

  “We help everybody overcome mistakes. We help them get set up with the proper insurance. We make sure that they're picking the right cars.” — George Madden ([03:36])

2. Content, Transparency, & Hands-On Guidance

• Educational Philosophy:

  • Most “course” content is offered for free on YouTube; Car Rental Coach’s value is personalized, 1-on-1 training and weekly community calls ([06:01]).
  • Training covers everything: insurance, car selection, market analysis, claims, theft recovery, and financing.

• Diverse Clientele:

  • NFL players seeking tax deductions, couples replacing their day jobs, and high-earning professionals wanting extra passive income all find unique fits ([06:01]–[06:44]).

  “No two people are alike. Everybody’s at different starting points, has different goals.” — George Madden ([06:01])

3. How to Start: Crawl, Walk, Run (Not Leap)

• Sound Scaling Advice:

  • Don’t buy dozens of cars right away—even if you have the capital. Start with 1–5 cars, optimize your systems, and only then consider scaling up ([07:13]).

  “Get one car, put it on the road, learn the system, see if you like it, and then start to scale from there.” — George Madden ([07:43])

• Avoiding Overwhelm:

  • Buying too many “fixer-uppers” at once is a pitfall—have every car ready to rent quickly.

4. What Cars Are Most Profitable?

• Sweet Spot:

  • Older, higher-mileage, dependable economy cars, purchased for $8,000–$12,000 ([08:03]).
  • These cars can rent for nearly the same price as $25K–$30K cars but deliver much better ROI.

• Best Examples:

  • Mitsubishi Outlander Sport (2017): Purchased for $8,300 and generated $15,000 in revenue in one year ([08:41]).
  • Fleet staples include Hyundai Elantras, Mitsubishi Mirages, Kia Souls—avoid overpaying for vehicles that’ll be “totaled” before wear and tear matters ([08:03]–[09:19]).

  “These $10–12,000 cars are renting for the same amount as a $25 or $30,000 car.” — George Madden ([08:03])

5. Insurance, Liability & Legal Protections

• Commercial Rental Insurance:

  • Essential to have true commercial coverage—recently available in many states ([10:29]).
  • Never rely on personal auto insurance for rentals; this can void claims and result in policy cancellation ([11:18]).
  • Costs: ~$100–$110/mo (full coverage); $60–$70/mo (liability only) per car.

  “If your personal insurance finds out about that…they're going to probably cancel your policy…when you have a claim, they're going to say denied.” — George Madden ([11:18])

• Best Practices:

  • Use LLCs for ownership.
  • Dedicated vehicles for business; avoid mixing personal and business use ([11:18]–[12:22]).

6. Passive Management: Is It Like Airbnb?

• You Don’t Have to Be Hands-On:

  • Co-hosting services exist: Experienced operators in the Car Rental Coach network can manage everything (cleaning, turnovers, repairs, communications) for about 25% of revenue ([12:55]).
  • Example math: A $10,000 car earns ~$1,000/mo gross; after co-host, insurance, and wear/tear, net ~$400–$500/mo plus depreciation tax advantages ([12:55]–[14:18]).

  “That’s an option too… these $10,000 cars can bring in about $1,000 a month revenue…after co-host and costs, $400–$500 a month on a $10,000 investment plus the tax write off.” — George Madden ([12:55])

7. Keeping Costs Down (and Cars Reliable)

• Main Recurring Expenses:
  • Tires and oil changes.
  • Teach negotiation with commercial service chains (e.g., Meineke); create commercial accounts for better rates ([14:24]).
  • Use gently-used tires for better value; routinely shop for the best deals ([14:24]–[15:16]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Starting Small:

  “Get one car, put it on the road, learn the system, see if you like it, and then start to scale from there.” — George Madden ([07:43])

• On ROI Calculation:

  “A killer car for me, last year this car brought in over $15,000 in revenue. This was a 2017 Mitsubishi Outlander Sport that I got for $8,300.” — George Madden ([08:41])

• On Car Choice Philosophy:

  “The case is they're all going to be dead before the wear and tear actually matters.” — George Madden ([09:19])

• On Misinformation Online:

  “You’ll hear a lot of these guys online, they're saying, oh, you can make $3,000 a month on an economy car. That's BS.” — George Madden ([13:42])

• On Insurance Risks:

  “If your personal insurance finds out about that, they're going to probably cancel your policy...and deny your claim.” — George Madden ([11:18])

• On Teaching as a Business Model:

  “If you've got knowledge that's actually valuable for an industry like this…you can't fake your way through this stuff.” — Ryan Alford ([04:49])

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [02:02] – George’s entry into the car rental business and meeting his business partner
• [03:36] – Building the Car Rental Coach brand and methodology
• [06:01] – Structure of coaching and diversity of client needs
• [07:13] – Advice on scaling: How to start and avoid early mistakes
• [08:03] – What cars to buy for the highest ROI; real-life profitable model
• [10:29] – Navigating insurance, legal protection, and avoiding pitfalls
• [12:55] – Passive investment options and expected net returns
• [14:24] – Tips on operational efficiency, expense reduction, and maintenance

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Learn More / Contact

• Car Rental Coach: Apply via www.carrentalcoach.com; 60-sec survey and personalized consultation ([15:23])
• Full Show & Clips: ryanisright.com

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Tone & Takeaways

The conversation is no-nonsense, highly practical, and grounded in lived entrepreneurial experience. Both host and guest cut through the BS to share what works, what doesn’t, and how anyone—from professionals to hustlers—can turn the car rental model into a legitimate side or main hustle. The episode is a must-listen for anyone considering alternative income streams or looking for a scalable, hands-on business.

“Business the way it really works. Real people. Real wins. Real screw-ups.”

Transcript

[A]

We do a market analysis in every single area because it can change. But if we're looking at just the United States in general, what I've seen become the most profitable and how I've built my business. We're talking economy cars here that are older, higher, miles and we're trying to find them for about under $12,000 with everything said and done to have the car ready to go. Because these 10 to $12,000 cars are renting for the same amount of money as a 25 or $30,000 car.

[B]

This is right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over 6 years in over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now.

[C]

Hello and welcome. It's 2026. It is right about now. This is Ryan Alford, your host. Hope everyone's doing good. We're getting into the year. We've been doing some of our best of series. But hey, it's all about legendary people doing legendary things and legendary business advice. We cover things that you've heard of and legendary people doing something that you probably know what it is and you're like, damn, how did they do that? And then there's stuff that you're like, I've heard of. That seems like an interesting side thing. What the hell? We're talking to car rental coach. He is George Madden. What's up, George?

[A]

Hey, how's it going? Great to be here.

[C]

Hey man, I'm curious. This is an interesting thing. If you've the app turo, which I have. I always thought that was brilliant idea. It was right when they first started. I was like someone should have done this where you've got your car, you're not using it, you're in a big city or you got an extra car, hey, rent your car, do all that. It made a ton of sense to me. And then I noticed there was like these people that had multiple cars fleet if you want. Okay, I see what's happening here. And then I got busy with the million other things that I'm doing. And that's about where I left off with it. I have rented a couple turos in big city. But that's why we went to the expert here. George Madden's going to tell us all about it. George, talk. What the hell exactly is a car rental? Everybody knows that people beat the hell out of rental cars. Are you going to teach Me how not to beat the hell out of one. What are you doing?

[A]

Car rental coach. I ended up creating this business with my partner about two years ago. This was after I was already renting cars out for about five years. What happened? One night I was scrolling through Facebook and I saw my business partner's ad come up saying, hey, if you have a car and want to put it in our fleet, we rent them out at the airport. And he was taking on investors and growing his fleet. This was in the evening time. I may or may not have had a glass of wine or two. And I saw him and I thought, oh, wow, there's more competition. Because at that time, I was the largest in Pittsburgh. And now I finally saw somebody else. I'm like, okay, he can work an ad on Facebook. He might be somebody competition coming in. So I filled out his survey to see as if I were a client. He ends up calling me. We start talking about business. I was transparent. I let him know that I have a fleet. I wasn't, you know, spying too much, but I said, hey, come on down to our car lot one day and let's just meet and see what you're doing. So we both started talking about our goals with growing the rental car fleets. And we had two completely different clientele. So I didn't feel. Feel weird sharing information with him. He was dealing with airport. Yes. I deal with like 90 local people.

[C]

I love coopetition, you know.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm always about, yeah, working together. But then we started talking. I said, do you get messages from people all the time asking you how to start this business? Because at this point, I had family members, friends, and then, you know, random people from high school from 12 years ago that I barely talked to saying, how are you renting these cars? Because I was sharing the rental business on social media. I started helping a few people for free. He was doing the same thing. And at that time. Are you familiar. Familiar with Alex Hermosi?

[C]

Yeah, I know Alex.

[A]

I started reading his books and gym Launch where he had a bunch of gyms. Then he decided to turn that into an educational business, teaching other people how to do it. We decided to follow a similar suit, and we started Car Rental Coach to help other people start and scale their car rental business while building ours. Because I've always been somebody heavily involved with mentorship, I've been to acquisition.com for their workshops. When I first started Turo, I paid a guy in Phoenix, Arizona that I still am in contact with now. And he mentored me, saw A lot of value in that. And what we do, we help everybody overcome mistakes. We help them get set up with the proper insurance. We make sure that they're picking the right cars. So we do a full market analysis. We do weekly coaching and group calls with our community so everybody can learn from each other. We give best insurance practices on how to handle a claim, how not to panic, how to make sure that you're receiving every single dollar you're owed. We set them up with the right tracking system, the right hardwired trackers in these cars, so when they're stolen, because it's not if they're stolen, it's when they're stolen, we're able to get this car back as fast as possible and put it back on road making money. Because time on the road being rented in this business is, number one, we have to keep these cars consistently rented to keep the cash flow up. And we help with funding, financing, and anything our clients need, we're there for them.

[C]

We have two lessons here that George is teaching the audience. Number one, he's created a business, he's learned things, and while he's going through it, he's documenting. So he's created a coaching platform because he's learned some best practices. And why not document what he's doing to create content that's valuable for social and otherwise, but also that can be used to be sold because it's useful information and he has learnings that can be shared. There's a lot of coaches out there that are bullshit, that aren't teaching things that are that valuable. Talking to you, life coach number 647, that shit you can get anywhere. This is actually teaching a new concept in business. And this is valuable information because it could be a side hustle, it could be something there's a lot of curiosity, a lot of questions on and a lot of pitfalls. A lot of them if you don't know what you're doing. So, George, I like this from two fronts. The process of you creating the content and documenting it and then creating the course. There's some learning just from in a business standpoint, anyone out there that's looking for something else, if you've got knowledge that's actually valuable for an industry like this, that has a lot of things that people could slip, slide and be in a real bad spot if they didn't know, you can't fake your way through this stuff. And then number two, the fact that it's actually a business that can be done effectively if you know the right Way to do it.

[A]

What we really like with car rental coach too. I'm a believer in courses. I love them. But we put out pretty much all that information for free on YouTube what other people charge for in courses. And we specialize on one on one personalized training. So you're getting on calls with either me or one of our other coaches who have also built successful rental car fleets. And we're working together on a custom plan, we're getting on weekly calls and no two people are alike. Everybody's at different starting points, has different goals. I've had NFL players that I've worked with where they're just doing this because there's such tax deductions on rental cars and they're not worried about making a huge profit. They're happy about lowering their tax liability. Then I've worked with other people, like husband and wife couples who quit their jobs to do this full time. Every situation is unique and that's why we like the one on one training.

[C]

If you're going to treat it as a business and you're going to buy a fleet of cars or maybe you have a couple extra cars and you're going to start it, 1. Is there a way to wade your way in the waters of this thing versus okay, I'm going all in. I'm going to go buy seven cars and I'm going to do it. What's the council there? Number two, I'm sure the fear is, okay, if I let someone use my personal car, it's going to go to crap. They're going to take care of it. I'm sure there's like these common barriers that probably most people have. How would you sort of go? That's fear, not reality.

[A]

I've had clients have come to me, they've wanted to start with a couple million doll dollars and just buy hundreds of cars to start right off the bat. And I always like to realign expectations and tell them that's not a good idea. I want to see them scale, I want them to do well. But I always say start with under five cars. One to five cars really isn't that much different to manage. But don't buy a bunch of fixer uppers and not have any of them ready and then they all sit there and not being rented. Get one car, put it on the road, learn the system, see if you like it and then start to scale from there.

[C]

That's good advice. I know it probably depends on the market. Yeah, I'm sure that does. They'll go buy Ferraris if you're in Greenville, they're probably going to sit on the shelf. Greenville's up and coming, but it's not la. I've always wondered what the sweet spot is. You want it to be practical, you want it to be affordable, but you want it to be reliable. But then those cars also only get 30 or 40 a day. How do you find these sweet spots of what cars to get?

[A]

We do a market analysis in every single area because it can change. But if we're looking at just the United States in general, what I've seen become the most profitable and how I've built my business. We're talking economy cars here that are older, higher miles and we're trying to find them for about under $12,000 with things said and done to have the car ready to go. Because these ten to twelve thousand dollar cars are renting for the same amount of money as a 25 or $30,000 car. For an example, a killer car for me, last year this car brought in over $15,000 in revenue. This was a 2017 Mitsubishi Outlander Sport that I got for $8,300.

[C]

Hey, double to, hey, double what you paid for the car plus the tax.

[A]

Write off on it too because depreciation in this business is huge. So a lot of this can be, don't want to say tax free. You have to speak with on that. And everybody's situation's different but there yeah great deductions with depreciation but besides that. So my fleet's built out of 2018-2022. Hyundai Elantras, Mitsubishi Mirages, Kia Souls, all these cheaper economy.

[C]

I'm hearing all the secondary cars. I'm not hearing Honda, I'm not hearing Ford, I'm not hearing Chevy, I'm not hearing Toyota because those carries too much value.

[A]

I do have two Honda Accords, but I'll only buy them if I can buy them out of steel US 30 to 40% more than an Elantra. And the thing is they go for around the same amount of money and I'm all just looking at return on investment because we're not putting these on there to rent for the next 10 years. Realistically, somebody's going to total this thing in the first three years of it being on the platform and then you're going to get your money back and then you're going to rinse and repeat as long as you bought it right? Buy another car and keep it cash flowing and sometimes profit off the difference from what you bought it and what insurance pays You. So if I was looking in to say these cars are never going to get in an accident ever, sure, I might invest more into buying Honda Accords and Toyota Camrys and things like that. But the case is they're all going to be dead before the wear and tear actually matters.

[C]

How do we ensure these cars and protect ourselves when you're not the one driving it and I know the insurance fires the car, not the person. I get all that. You know how it is was this way with Airbnb and other things at first. Like none of the industries liked this. No one embraced it. It was a very up and coming way to make money and do things. But none of the other industries cared for it because they didn't know who was liable. And so how do we get insurance? How do we get cover and how do we protect ourselves?

[A]

Every state's going to be different with what insurance carriers actually allow this. When I started five years ago, there was only really one option. Now there's several companies. There's three different companies that I've used myself and clients have that do commercial off trip rental insurance. So this is insurance that covers the car when it's not being rented and it's sitting there and you're using it for business related activities or employees using it for business related activities. And there's three different companies. Depends on what type of cars you have and what state you're in. For me to give the recommendation. Recommendation. But that insurance for full coverage usually comes to about 100 to 110 bucks a month on each car. And then liability only is usually about 60 to $70.

[C]

The way you said that it screamed a little bit like loophole, but not necessarily like embraced. Is that an inaccurate statement of what I heard?

[A]

It's completely legal commercial insurance. It's just newer products that have come to market in the last two years that never existed before. So if you were to try to do this on your personal insurance, which a lot of people come to me, they're not set up right. The car is not under an ll. They're putting it on their personal insurance. If your personal insurance finds out about that, they're going to probably cancel your policy or what they're going to do, they're going to let you keep paying for your policy and then when you wreck the car and have a claim, they're going to say denied and they're going to keep all the payments you gave them already because you breached contract. But thankfully we do have this. I don't recommend people using their Personal car and renting it on Turo. Half the time going back and forth, it's really just buy a car for this. Maybe if you want to test it out with one or two trips to see if it even works, use your personal. But really you should have a separate car for this that you're not driving for anything personally related and it should only be business. And that's how it's set up. And that's how 90% of our clients are a car rental coach. They're doing this. A lot of them build a primary source of income and sometimes just a secondary. We have a lot of people that do well. Doctors, lawyers, professionals. They're looking for an income where they can even make an extra couple thousand dollars a month with minimum work.

[C]

I'm just comparing, because there's a nice comparison with the Airbnb thing a little bit that becomes such an industry. You've got house cleaners and managers and all these one offs that manage the whole thing for you and you still end up making money. Might make a little, but they manage it all. With this, I'm thinking, okay, I've got a fleet of five cars. If I'm making it my primary, probably can manage it all. But maybe I'm a lawyer, a dentist or a doctor that's listening to this and going, well, I ain't washing five cars every week. So is this similar to the Airbnb thing? You find a manager and do you still make money? Talk to me about how you keep up with all this.

[A]

If you were somebody that wanted to invest in car rentals and you wanted to have nothing to do with it, and you didn't want to build out all the systems and employees yourself, we actually offer a service that's called co hosting. What we we do, we will match you with people in our car rental coach community that have built very large fleets. We have one partner we refer a lot of people to that have over 50 cars themselves and run a very, very tight ship in Tennessee, they're absolutely killing it. Some of the best numbers I've seen in the United States. People will ship their cars to them. They'll manage the whole thing, I believe for about 25% of revenue. And then the person that invests just simply gets the check and the tax write off for it and they do every single thing for them. That's an option too. So just to give people listening, realistic math of these $10,000 cars can bring in about $1,000 a month revenue. Now, let's say you pay them 25%. So let's just say 250. Insurance, that's 100. So now we're at 350. Just some wear and tear. Let's talk like one or 200 extra bucks. So maybe your bill with them is around 500. You're still getting maybe $400 to $500 a month on a $10,000 investment plus the tax write off. So it makes a lot of sense. You'll hear a lot of these guys online, they're saying, oh, you can make $3,000 a month on an economy car. That's BS. You could bring in about 1,000 DOL. There's 30 to $40 price points. That's where we get at the end of the month, which is still great, great money. When you're talking about something that costs.

[C]

This much, do you help coach people on how you keep your cost low but you keep your cars reliable?

[A]

When it comes to expenses with these cars, there's two things that are going to always be expenses. That's going to be tires and oil changes. Obviously there's mechanical things that go wrong, but those are the consistent things. We'll look at discount tires around them. We'll look at used tire shops. Makes a lot of sense to buy used tires. People don't realize that sometimes you can buy them 80 still, but 50% off. So we're always looking for a deal on that. A lot of people don't realize you can negotiate with some of these commercial chains. When you look at a Meineke or something that you see in all the states, people think, oh, the price that Meineke gives me is final. But if you open up a commercial account with places like this, you can actually negotiate. They can call and they have room on all of this stuff. Sometimes it's like 20% lower than what they quote you. They can't say that to you. But then they'll say, let me get approval from my manager and they'll take off 20% off the bill. So we teach them how to negotiate, how to shop around to get the right commercial accounts and then how to find the right people, people in their area.

[C]

George where can everybody learn more about what you're doing? If they want to hire you as a coach or learn about your content, etc.

[A]

To apply to work with us guys, you can go to carrentalcoach.com we have a 60 second survey you can fill out on our site that's going to see if you qualify to work with us or not. If you do work with us, you'll get set up with a call for our team where we will speak with you, see if it's a good fit. And if you are somebody that we 100 know, we can help. We'll take you on and you'll join our community and work with us one on one.

[C]

Appreciate you coming on the show.

[A]

Appreciate your time, Ryan. Big fan of the podcast cast and love what you've been doing here.

[C]

Appreciate it, brother. Hey guys, you know to find Rus Ryan is right.com you'll find highlight clips the full length of this episode. We appreciate you for listening. We'll see you next time on RIGHT about now.

[B]

This has been Right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast network production. Visit ryanisright.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities. Thanks for listening.