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Anwar Ali, a pastor from Hawaii, turned a car rental in Turo into a seven-figure business.
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Ali earned $2.95 million in 2025, scaling from one car in 2014 to 213 cars.
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Ali said he no longer works in the operation and can focus on his family and his church.
This is an essay based on an interview with 38-year-old Anwar Ali, pastor of Kauai Baptist Church and owner of Alii Rental Cars, which primarily rents. Cars on Touro. This story has been edited for length and clarity.
In 2014, I was a youth pastor at a local church in Kauai and had zero assets. I was living in low income housing in Hawaii, being below the poverty line.
My wife and I wanted a big family and wanted to buy a house in Hawaii. Some side hustles are you trading time for money. I wanted to get to the point where I could scale the business while maintaining my ministry job.
I was using a budgeting tool, Mint, and saw an ad for Relay Rides (later Touro) where you could rent out your second vehicle and make some money. I listed my only vehicle, a 1998 Isuzu Rodeo, saying, “Who wants 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, emptied the car, cleaned up the sand and our surfboards, and drove to the airport. And they paid me. It was strange. It was like magic.
I currently own 213 cars and have $2.95 million in car rental revenue in 2025. I have 10 employees, and I am no longer working on any operations.
Within two months of leasing my car, I bought another one, a 2004 Honda Element. People love Kauai because it’s the ultimate surf car. I bought it for $3,500 dollars, and within three days, it was booked for two weeks straight.
I wanted to keep measuring. I started looking closely at where the car prices and demand was online. I was one of the earliest tour hosts on the island, so I had to do a lot of research. I found that Jeep Wranglers were the most sought after cars in Hawaii. You can buy them for about $36,000, take out a $600 monthly loan, and rent them for $1,500 a month. In 2016, I got my first loan and built 12 cars.
Eventually, I was working almost full-time at Touro – cleaning cars, checking in guests, and handling customer issues. In 2018, I hired my first employee. The epidemic happened, and I was able to store my cars. When the trip came back in 2021, we were doing gangbuster business. We leased a commercial property, scaled to six employees, and grew to over 100 cars.
