Your Online Side Hustle International (YOSHI)

During this course of 20 weeks you receive opportunities and coaching from Saxion Centre for Entrepreneurship (SCfE) to develop and build your own company/ brand alongside your studies. You also learn skills needed to be successful entrepreneur.

In addition, SCfE organizes training sessions, network meetings and you get a flexible workplace in one of our incubators in Enschede or Deventer.

• Weekly online meetings supervised by a coach
• Individual (online) coaching (at least 5 times)
• Access to a large network
• Events and network meetings
• Workplace within one of our incubators

You can enter the program on your own or with a partner. Participation is free, but commitment is mandatory.

The program is structured as follows:

1. Your online side hustle: Introduction - We will go over the aim of the course, the course content, and explain what an online side hustle is.
2. Your goals, your niche - We will dive into what it is that you are trying to achieve through an online side hustle. Are your compasses aligned and are you set to take off?
3. Market research and validation - Having, what feels like a great idea, is only a first step in the right direction. Before you invest more resources into bringing it to life, you should do some more thorough research to validate your idea, improve it and gain a better understanding of the market.
4. Business model and launch plan - Now, how to get started? What will you need? How will you make money? How will you deliver your product? What channels and platforms will you leverage? Answering these and more are what amounts to your plan.
5. Branding and content strategy
6. Setup your channels 
7. Funding
8. Sales and distribution - How will you realize sales and deliver your product or service
9. Grow your audience and drive traffic
10. influencer marketing and other tactics
11. Expand your offer
12. Grow sales through conversion optimization

• YOSHI is an extracurricular but exclusive program with a worth of € 1.500, -.
• Participation is free, but commitment is mandatory.
• You can register year around, as there will be different starting times.
• The knowledge sessions are organized online and will be released every Monday at 12:00, followed by a live Q&A session from 16:00-17:00 later that day.
• Additionally, every other Tuesday (15:30), there will be optional offline Share & Reflect sessions that include Guest Speakers (such as Entrepreneurs), and practical topics such as building a website and legal requirements. These will be held mainly in Enschede and occasionally in Deventer.
• The program can be followed by all students in all years.
• Possibility to transfer to the minor ‘StartUp Entrepreneur’ and to graduate within your own company.

A bit of a cliché answer, but unfortunately that is how it is: you decide all by yourself. Starting a business takes time. One succeeds a little faster than the other. There are examples of (student)entrepreneurs earning an income with only a few hours of work per week, but there is also an example of a student who has arranged her studies in such a way that she can fully be an entrepreneur and study at the same time. In only 2.5 years, her turnover exceeded half a million euros. But, of course, her working days contain a lot of hours. In short: there is not one answer to give, but what is certain is that you must put time and effort in it.

Knowledge sessions are released online every Monday at 12:00, followed by a live Q&A session from 16:00-17:00 later that day. Additionally, there are optional live sessions in Enschede or Deventer every other Tuesday from 15:30-17:30.

It is also a cliché in terms of investment. After all, you can start with products that only cost 1 euro or with products that cost 200 euros each. In both cases you can also choose the quantity (1 piece or 100 pieces?). In short: here too, you can start with little (experimenting) and then scale up.

As a Saxion student, you can participate for free.

You can stop at any time, but we hope not! That is why we emphasize at the beginning of this program that it is not easy. Most of the time is spent finding a ‘winning product’.

Every student can join, whether you are a Dutch or an international student. The language of instruction is English.

• Active participation of the sessions as well as completing the exercises will make you eligible for the YOSHI certificate of participation.  

No, this program is extracurricular. You follow it in your own time, and you do not receive credits for this.