We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sara Van Ells a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sara, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about serving the underserved.

The overwhelming majority of my customers are women who run a side hustle. That’s no coincidence – women start more than 1,800 per day in the US. Even still, women are still chronically underfunded and often denied entry to traditional brick and mortar.

I say it all the time: Women start businesses that make money, and men start businesses that get funded.

It’s an honor to be a little piece of the bridge that makes it a little easier to access a retail storefront.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I actually used to run a van conversion company (turning vehicles into tiny vacation homes) with my husband and we were getting so many inbound requests for professional builds that I was blown away. Of course, our team could do that, but most small business owners couldn’t afford it. After a while, I realized that this was a hole in the market that we were uniquely positioned to fill. All the pieces of a rental model came together pretty quickly so we just went for it.

We bought an old USPS truck from an auction (definitely my strangest online purchase!), built it out in a few weeks, developed a social media plan, and hit the ground running.

We put the first Hustle Truck out on the road in 2020 and it’s been wild ever since.

When I first started looking into commercial real estate prices in LA, I was appalled! Talk about making it impossible for the little guy to succeed. As a small business owner myself, I’m really proud to have created a concept that lowers the barrier of entry for my community.

While my husband gets into other ventures, I’ve taken over the lion’s share of the business here now, Hustle Trucks is a one-woman show!

I still work with the same team to create custom mobile storefronts.

I’m really proud of my ability to just go for it when it feels right. I am a mentor for Los Angeles veteran entrepreneurs. I’m also a wife, mother, friend, aspiring boxer, home chef, and avid reader — being the type of person who gets it all done has been a blessing.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

With zero marketing budget, social media has been my biggest client grabber. Every day you get to make a little commercial for yourself, so why not?

As Instagram slowly morphs into a commerce platform, my customers have really adapted well to the changing tides, and honestly, I just follow their lead. I stay on the platform for two reasons: It’s free, and it’s where my customers are.

Meeting your customers where they are is so important – I’d be wasting my time on LinkedIn or dropping tons of cash on FB ads. Instead, I focus on creating content that shows the value of my product and how a person can use it to grow their business. In the end, we’ll grow together.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I am a mother to two elementary-age kids — and I also used to be a professional writer. When schools closed down in 2020 and then went fully online, I had to make a choice: Was I going to stress out about deadlines when I didn’t have the bandwidth (literally and figuratively) to complete the freelance work — or was I going to change it up and give myself the freedom to focus on what’s actually important.

That ultimately was a simple decision to make (family, duh), but the actual mechanics of it all were harder. How would I replace my earnings? How would we survive in such an expensive city? There were definitely scary moments at first, but we all pulled it together and our family came out stronger, closer, and tougher in the end.

I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hustletrucks.co
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/hustletrucks