Entrepreneur to Teach Students the Finer Points About Side Hustles

Alumnus and entrepreneur Doug Villhard will return to campus and give all interested students advice on starting and running a business.

“The Art of the Side Hustle” will take place from 5-7 p.m. Oct. 16 in Magruder Hall 2001. Villhard will teach students how to put their passion for entrepreneurship into practice while succeeding as a full-time student. He will discuss how to select the perfect “side hustle,” how to launch it quickly and how to learn and iterate along the way.
 
Villhard started his career at Disney before leaving the corporate world 20 years ago to start companies – and side hustles. In addition to serving as a professor and academic director of entrepreneurship at Washington University in St. Louis, he is the CEO and co-founder of Second Street, a software as a service tech company in the audience engagement space working with more than 4,000 newspapers, radio and TV stations across the country. He is also the managing director and co-founder of Villhard Growth Partners and chairman and co-founder of a non-profit high school he and his wife, Diane, started in their hometown.

Doug (’94) and Diane (’95) established the Villhard Innovation Fund at Truman in 2016 to assist the University in expanding entrepreneurial and innovative opportunities for students. They are the inspirational force behind Truman’s Bulldog B.I.T.E. pitch competition. In the spring of 2019 Doug joined the Truman faculty to teach “The Art and Science of Entrepreneurial Thinking.”

Villhard’s presentation is open to students of all majors. Pizza will be available for those in attendance. Tickets are limited so the courtesy of an RSVP is requested by Oct. 14. To RSVP, visit truman.edu/sidehustle.