Start Small: Building Your Side Hustle | Side Hustle Series
Many successful side hustles don’t start with a big leap—they start small, practical, and low-risk. This one-hour workshop is designed for beginners who are curious about entrepreneurship and want to explore whether a side hustle could fit into their life right now.
In Start Small: Building Your Side Hustle, we’ll walk through how everyday skills, interests, and lived experience can become simple income-generating ideas. Using real examples and an interactive activity, participants will learn how to identify viable ideas, understand the basics of business registration and taxes, and think clearly about branding without feeling overwhelmed.
The session emphasizes experimentation over perfection. You’ll leave with a clearer sense of what’s possible, what’s required to get started in Ontario, and one small step you can take next—whether that’s testing an idea, doing more research, or simply gaining confidence.
Through the lens of the 6C’s, we’ll reflect on:
Critical Thinking: Identifying real problems worth solving
Creativity: Turning skills and interests into simple offers
Communication: Explaining what you do clearly to early customers
Collaboration: Finding communities, platforms, and support resources
Commerce-mindedness: Understanding money, registration, and tax basics
Character: Building confidence, consistency, and resilience through small steps
Who should attend:
Students new to entrepreneurship
Anyone curious about freelancing or side income
Creators, designers, service-providers, and skilled trades
Those who want to explore ideas without high financial risk
✏️ Interactive Activity: Side Hustle Starter Card
Participants will complete a short guided worksheet to:
Identify a skill or idea worth testing
Define a small, realistic starting point
Name one concrete next action they can could take this week
Takeaway:
A practical starting point—and a clearer sense of whether (and how) a side hustle fits your life right now.
This session is facilitated by Pat Robinson, an entrepreneurship educator, Academic Coordinator, and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Centennial College. Pat teaches Creative Entrepreneurship at the Story Arts Campus and brings two decades of experience supporting students, creatives, and early-stage founders as they explore entrepreneurship as a practical, low-risk pathway for personal and professional growth.