622: $1k/Month Per Client: The Case For Starting a Niche Virtual Assistant Service

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1:21What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to Side Hustle Show. We're part of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. And if you are looking for realistic ways to make extra money, you're in the right place. There's a lot of talk about 1 ,000 True Fans. It's this classic essay by Kevin Kelly that argues you don't need millions of followers to make a living online. You just need 1 ,000 true fans. These are the people who support your work year in, year out, but it can take some time to build up that fan base. So today I want to contrast 1 ,000 true fans with the idea of 10 true clients. This is something I picked up from the Tropical MBA podcast years ago.

1:5710 true clients, or maybe even starting with one true client at a thousand bucks a month. Today's guest did just that. Did it in a really unique niche. He had a bit of background in trucking, so he started a virtual dispatch service serving drivers all around the country from learndispatch.com. Roman Shmunjak, welcome to the Side Hustle Show. Hello, Nick. Thank you for having me on the podcast. You bet. Stick around in this one. We're learning how you might come up with your unique service idea, how to connect with potential customers, how to find those first true clients, right? And how you might be able to scale your operation beyond hours for dollars.

2:35Your free listener only bonus for this week is my big list of 101 service business ideas that you might be able to apply some of Roman's tactics to. That's at sidehustlenation.com slash Roman, or just follow the show notes link in the episode description, and it'll get you right over there. So Roman, you came at it from a unique angle with the background in trucking, having owned some semi trucks yourself. But there's this, I made it moment, this moment of, hey, look, I always dreamed of working remotely. And there you are, you're sitting on the balcony, overlooking the Mediterranean. And there's this realization, hey, I'm serving clients in the US, I'm living the nomad lifestyle, working remotely.

3:12Talk to me about what it took to get there. Absolutely. Well, obviously, when I was getting into the trucking industry, I had no idea that it would lead to a realization of my dream of remote work. Around 2010, I had an opportunity to purchase some semi-trucks and I was learning about the industry. It was very interesting business, especially for me, someone who is coming from a background in real estate sales. But I learned as problems were coming at me. But one of the most important things for a trucking company, in order to make money, you have to make sure that your trucks are constantly moving.

3:54Because a sitting truck... Yeah, if you're not on the road, it's similar to an airplane, right? If it's not in the air, it's not making money. Exactly. It's even worse. It's losing you money because you have to pay for the equipment, you have to pay for fuel, you have to pay insurance, you have to pay driver, you're paying for all kinds of permits. So a sitting truck, not only not making you money, it is losing you money. So it has to move all the time. And that is one of the primary challenges of a trucking company owner is to move all the trucks. We did an episode on trucking and that was like, okay, go buy this used freight liner.

4:28She called it a freight shaker. See if you can find one used for$35 ,000 to$45 ,000. And then, oh, great. Then you book it up for a thousand bucks a week. And you're like, okay, I'm listening. That sounds like a great ROI. But it's like that question mark in the middle of how to fill that up. And that's maybe where the dispatch part comes in. I got to play matchmaker between people who need stuff shipped and then the trucking supply and the truckers to actually do the moving. That is correct. With trucking companies, in most cases, either the owner will be taking care of finding freight, finding business for his company, or they will need to hire someone to do it for them.

5:03And in my case, again, I have discovered as I was trying to expand my trucking business, we were advertising, looking for owner operators, other truckers with their own trucks and trailers to come on board and join our company. I've learned that a lot of them did not necessarily care about running under our license or using our insurance. What they did care about is having consistent freight for their truck. That was their main pain point. With some of them, we did start working where basically we would make a deal. Look, you can operate your trucking company in any way you want. We will just help you secure the cargo.

5:46we will keep your truck busy and you will pay us a percentage of your gross revenue or a flat fee depending on how we set up the agreement. Okay, interesting. So it was almost by accident where it's like, well, that wasn't the initial intent. The intent was to find other owner operators to kind of expand our fleet, basically. But then the pain point, the entrepreneurial spidey sense starts tingling and say like, well, everybody's complaining about this one thing. Like, how do I find enough freight? So you're like, oh, shoot, maybe if I could solve that pain point, that's another side hustle opportunity, another business opportunity.

6:18Yeah, absolutely. It was exactly a side hassle because I would just do it kind of in parallel with finding freight for my trucks. I would just look for freight for some other trucks as well. And I did not think too much of it initially. But as I gained more clients and kind of analyzed the whole situation, I just saw how great this business model is versus trucking. Because with trucking, you have to purchase equipment, which costs a lot of money. You have to hire drivers. You have to find the right kind of drivers because otherwise they will destroy your trucks and your business. You have to go through safety audits.

6:54Again, it's a very cash intensive business because you have to buy a lot of fuel. You have to turn invoices. So, and here, all I need is really a computer, phone line, and reliable internet connection. Nothing else. I don't have to buy anything. I do not necessarily need to hire anyone. My job is just provide this service, make sure that clients are happy and receive the money. And as you already mentioned, suddenly I realized that this can be done from anywhere. I can be in the US or I can be in Mexico or I can be in Europe. It doesn't matter as long as I have reliable internet connection. I can do my job.

7:36That's interesting. It reminds me of, I mean, trucking has been around for ages, so I don't know if I would consider it a gold rush, but it reminds me of a selling shovels into the gold rush mentality, rather than being the miner in this case, buying all those expensive equipment and licenses and like dealing with that. It's like, okay, what's the picks and shovels or what's the service that I could sell into that industry? And it came up with this dispatch thing. And to bring it a little bit broader, it might not be trucking in your case, it might be, but you might have a front row seat to whatever industry you're involved with and saying, well, what are the common pain points here.

8:10And like, you start to pay attention to those things and what comes up over and over again. And that's how I've come up with different product ideas, different episode ideas, content ideas. And it could be the same thing in your case. Just keep those ears to the ground and see what people are talking about. So it starts out with looking for other owner operators to join the fleet, and then they sign on. I'm not super interested in that, but if you can help us fill our trucks with this freight stuff. So what happens there? Like, how do you even go about doing that? If that's a pain point for them, what makes it easy for you or is it easy to do?

8:40Most of our clients are small trucking companies. Sometimes it's just an individual, a truck driver who owns one truck. He is spending most of his time driving this truck. He does not have the time to sit in front of the screen, looking at various load options, making phone calls. And then once the load is booked, some paperwork has to be completed. So it's not very convenient to complete paperwork while driving an 80 ,000 pound machine down the highway. For this type of client, it is essential that there is somebody else who provides this back office support and takes care of their business. Okay.

9:21And then for you, there's freight marketplaces, there's relationships with distributors. How do you go about playing that middleman, especially if people are all over the country? Knowing nothing about the trucking industry, it sounds kind of daunting to try and shoot. Yeah, I can play matchmaker for you. I can find you stuff to ship. Absolutely. Well, there are many electronic marketplaces called load boards where shippers and freight brokers post freight that needs to be shipped. And they basically work kind of like a search engine. You can set up the origin location of your truck. You can set up a destination if you want this truck to head in a particular direction, and it will show you available load options.

10:05Now your job, again, is to call, learn more about this option, get all the details such as commodity weight and how much this shipper is willing to pay for the load. And if it is matching criteria of your client, then all you have to do is book it and complete all the paperwork related to the load. Okay. So they may say, I want to stay within a thousand mile radius. I want to be home by Fridays, kind of like that type of criteria. Yeah, absolutely. So I'll give you two scenarios. So you may have a trucker who will start his work week on Monday in Atlanta, and he may say, look, Roman would like to leave on Monday.

10:43I don't care where I go. I want to run all week. I want to come back on Friday. So then we're going to set up as his original location being Atlanta, Georgia. We'll give it certain radius where he's willing to travel to pick up the load and we'll look at all kinds of available options. Then let's say coming Thursday, wherever he is, we're going to be looking for a load that would be heading back toward Atlanta, Georgia, so he can come back home and spend a weekend at home and then restart following Monday. Okay. Yeah. It's just a remote admin assistant in a very specific role, a very specific industry.

11:18Absolutely. It's quite simple. It's not a lot of our students in our online school, they concentrate a lot. They say, I want to learn the load boards or the software. And I tell them that those functions are very basic. This is not rocket science, just about anyone can do it. You set up, you just basically search from where you are to where you want to go. And that's pretty much it. And is it typical to charge hourly for that? Is it on a performance basis? Hey, hey, we booked you$2 ,000 worth of freight, so we're going to take a percentage of that. What's typical on the pricing side? The most common is to take a percentage of the gross revenue you book for the trucking company.

11:56So if you book, let's say, five loads, each paying$1 ,000, that means you booked$5 ,000 worth of loads for the trucking company, and you can charge percentage of this revenue. The percentage currently range anything from 3 % to 8%, probably with 5 % to 6 % being kind of right in the middle. So by booking$5 ,000 worth of loads for a client, you would make about$250. Alternatively, you can just charge a flat fee. let's say someone has a specialized type of equipment and they are in a high margin, high gross niche of trucking industry, they might be grossing$10 ,000 or$12 ,000 a week. So they may not be willing to pay you the percentage.

12:48So in such situation, you can agree on a flat rate. We can say, okay, we will charge, let's say$300 a week flat fee, and we'll book all the loads you want for that one truck. And that's another model. There are also some people that just charge a flat fee per load. They'll say, I charge$50 or$60 per load I book, regardless of how much it makes. Gotcha. And then it just becomes a matter of booking consistently and then growing the fleet or growing the number of drivers that you're working with. Is that kind of where the marketing would start if I wanted to get in with this? just connecting with owner-operators?

13:27Yeah, absolutely. Marketing is the most important thing. This is what I see a lot, again, with aspiring dispatchers. They believe that once they learn dispatching, they are all set. Learning dispatching is not difficult, okay? But just learning a skill does not make you an entrepreneur. Truck dispatching is just like any other business. You have to market it. You have to convert your clients. That will basically propel you to success. Depending on your skill set and your knowledge, you can implement different strategies to acquire clients. And I can go in greater detail on that if you would like to hear.

14:05More with Roman in just a moment, including those specific marketing strategies and how many clients it took before he took this side hustle full time. Right after this. as a business owner you worked hard to make that phone ring but missing a business call it's like watching money fly right out the window that's why today's episode is brought to you by quo spelled q u o it's the smarter way to run your business communications quo is the number one business phone system built for 2025 not 1995 in fact it's rated the top choice for customer satisfaction with over 3 ,000 reviews on G2. Quo works right from an app on your phone or computer, and it means your team can share one number and collaborate on calls and texts, just like a shared inbox.

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16:11If you want to give your customers the best shopping experience this holiday season, you need Shopify. This Black Friday, join the thousands of new entrepreneurs hearing for the first time with Shopify. Sign up for your free trial today at shopify.com slash side hustle. That's shopify.com slash side hustle. Go to shopify.com slash side hustle and make this Black Friday one to remember. Yeah, yeah. Do you have an example or two? Like I'm imagining taking flyers down to the truck stop. That's a few exits down the highway from us. But it's like there may be a more efficient way. Like what do you see effective for connecting with those drivers?

16:47It's funny because I hear the story about flyers quite often. And no, I probably would not find that to be the most efficient or effective strategy. And here's why. If you go to the truck stop and leave flyers there, okay, someone may see it. Okay. But the question is, does this person need your service at this particular moment? If they don't, they will pay no attention to it. Just kind of like with the social media, a lot of people say, should I advertise on social media? Yes, you can. You can basically put your ad in front of a target group, which would be, let's say, interested in the trucking industry.

17:25The problem is they may not be in need of your service at this particular moment. Will they remember you two months later when they need you? Maybe, maybe not. The most effective way, when you need something and you need it now, what are you going to do? Well, most of us will go to Google and just going to Google, in our case, truck dispatching service or truck dispatching service in Atlanta, okay? Because you will not do such search for fun. You're doing it because you need this service and you needed at this moment. So really, I know it's online advertisement basics, but just Google ads, they do the magic.

18:05As long as you have a good looking website, which looks attractive to your potential clients, you can easily drive traffic to the website, and then you will be receiving emails, phone calls, and you just have to convert. Got it. I've got to imagine if somebody is Googling truck dispatching service, they're probably, you know, seeing the ad results, but they're also seeing organic results from people who've been doing it for forever. There's probably companies overseas. How is a new provider competing in that space? Well, you just mentioned SEO. Again, if you are trying to target some specific keyword, let's say, truck dispatching service in a particular area, some trucking companies prefer to work with people locally.

18:48So they will look for someone who is close by, and the keyword difficulty may not be that high. So there might be some opportunities. However, with Google Ads, yes, you will be competing against other people, but as you know, Google will just serve up a certain number of options. Here, what is important is to have the right kind of website, okay, with the right kind of content. You have to differentiate yourself. You basically have to explain to people why they should work with you. If you intend to work on your own, let's say you're not hiring a team, you're not a team, very often it's good to just make a website about yourself.

19:29Just tell them who you are because a lot of truck drivers, they like to work with this one individual. Okay, you're kind of building a relationship there. They don't want the big, huge company where you have 20 dispatchers and every time someone picks up the phone, they don't know who that is. They want this personalized approach. So if you are just a guy or just a girl and you're planning on doing it on your own, tell them about it. Tell them, look, here I am. My name is Joe. And anytime you call, I will answer your call. If there are going to be a problem, I will be solving your problem. So this kind of differentiates you from all the other companies that are out there.

20:15And if trucker likes what they see on your website, they will make that phone call. They will send you an email. Yeah, I think that's true of really any solo service provider. It's like, why you versus some random person on Fiverr or wherever else? If you got somebody to your website, you did a lot of things right to even get to that point. And now if you can showcase your unique value proposition, I think that makes a lot of sense. what did it take for you in terms of client volume or dispatch volume before you're like forget it forget it with these trucks i'm going all in i'm selling the assets i'm selling the trucks and i'm just going to do this remote dispatch thing in my case i think somewhere around once i had about five clients and they were generating around five thousand dollars in revenue at that point i was like okay i know i will be making less money than with a trucking company but I will also relieve myself of a lot of stress.

21:10Also at that time, me and my wife had an idea that we could go and travel. That would be definitely enough money for us to go abroad. At that point, I decided to terminate the trucking business and sell off the equipment and just concentrate on dispatching. All right, five clients, 5 ,000 bucks a month. Do you have an estimate of the hourly load? trying to get a sense like, if I'm going to go do this, what is it going to take time-wise realistically to do a good job for those customers? A lot of this depends on the market conditions. So for example, if we are working in a good market when there is a lot of freight and trucks are in demand, it is extremely easy to book load.

21:53Okay. So you may start at eight o 'clock in the morning and by 10 a.m. everyone is booked and we can say you're done for the day. Now, there is a little caveat to that. You're done for the day unless something goes wrong. And if something goes wrong, you may have to go back to your computer and address the situation that came up. In a more difficult market, the situation may be different. You may book some trucks right away, but you may have a truck in some sort of a challenging area where there is very little freight and you may end up sitting for hours making phone calls trying to find a suitable option for your client to get them out.

22:34Part of that is like, well, if you're parked in the middle of nowhere, part of that's on you, Mr. Client or Mr. Client. You got to go where the goods are if you want to get some shipments. It's also partially on us because we probably booked that load. Yeah, if they're out there in the middle of the week. It just happens that sometimes market conditions change. You send a truck to one location and you know that historically it's good, but then something changes and tomorrow there is just no freight there. In other instances, just like you said, sometimes you will get a call and your client will tell you, I just booked myself a load to Florida.

23:08It was paying great. And you're just saying, well, that's fantastic, but there is no freight in Florida. So what are we going to do tomorrow? For the return trip. Okay. They're like, well, yeah. And then we have to solve the problem they have created. This is an interesting logistical puzzle. And part of my brain says, I like that challenge. And all of these moving chess pieces and trying to make sure everybody's optimally filled and booked. And then the other part of me is like, dude, that sounds like a lot of moving parts with a lot of variables. It's not that difficult as it seems. Once you get the sense for the market, and this is unfortunately comes only with experience, as you do this more, you will know where to go and what to do.

23:54As you move trucks on the daily basis, you have a sense if you are making the right choice or the bad choice. So the whole process is very simple and it's pretty easy to learn. The rest is just gaining experience doing it. Does some of it become recurring where I'm picturing like a Walmart, they have probably obviously have their own fleet and they're not dealing with independent dispatchers and stuff. But like if they know every week, this many units of a particular item is likely to sell, so we're going to have to restock that. And it seems like it might be somewhat predictable week after week.

24:29Like, is there any sense like that where it's like, okay, a certain percentage is going to be booked with these like easy, low hanging fruit recurring type of jobs? Something you need to consider. There are actually two markets, two freight markets. One is considered to be contract market and another one is a spot market. What we've been talking about previously, where most independent truck dispatchers work, is a spot market. That's someone that needs something moved today or tomorrow. Okay. It is not a regular freight. They just need, I don't know, a scrapyard needs a load of recycled aluminum.

25:04Okay. It's not regular. They just need one tomorrow and it gets posted on the load board. Then there is contract freight. That's exactly what you just mentioned. It's a store that is shipping something or a plant production plant that is shipping something on a regular basis, day by day. Now, it's a bit different because in most cases, in order to tap into contract market, it has to be a larger trucking company. That shipper that has a production plant and sends out a load every day, they need to make sure that that load is going out every single day. So if Joe, the trucker, comes in with one truck, they will never give him a contract because if his truck breaks down, They will not be able to ship out what they need to ship, and they may have all kinds of problems.

25:53Also, with the contract market, it's usually a bidding system where you kind of have to make a bid for the lowest possible rate that you're willing to transport. So there is an urban myth among truckers that that's the holy grail is the contract rate, but they don't realize that in reality it is not. Now, there is also an exception where sometimes these two things, the spot market and contract market, sometimes cross. For example, I had a client who lived in Charleston, South Carolina. Every Monday, he would leave Charleston. And we would book him a load going to Arkansas. And then he would return home for the weekend.