When I started my entrepreneurial journey in June 2016, one thing became apparent really quickly, that I had to learn alot of things, and I had to learn them very quickly. Coming from a corporate background, all I knew about starting and running a business I learnt from watching business shows.

Keeping my motivations and objectives close at heart didn't prepare me for the extensive sacrifice I had to make over and over again to see the success of my first business venture. I went from comfortably working 40 hours to over 100 hours weekly including the weekends.

Finding a delicate balance between managing all the aspects of business including technology development, marketing, meeting investors and other responsibilities towards family, friends, and community was more challenging that I expected. I quickly realised passion doesn't run businesses, strategy does and I desperately needed help becoming a strategic thinker.

Luckily, entrepreneurs - especially first timers like me, don't have to do it alone and when our start up was accepted by the Enpact Entrepreneurship Program it was not only relieving but it was a validation of all the hardwork our small team had put in.

The Enpact Startup Mentoring program is an 8 month long program that started with a 5-day entrepreneurship camp in Berlin between 28th August - 1st September and ends in March 2018 with a final 5-day camp in Nairobi. Coming back from the first entrepreneurial camp, I want to highlight in this post some of the features that I not only found beneficial but can be applied in your own entrepreneurial journey with or without the luxury of a bootcamp.

One-on-One Mentorship

The Enpact Program promised to connect every one of the 29 selected entrepreneurs with a mentor and they delivered as promised. Our startup, PhotoMasters KE was matched with Christopher Kaalund, CEO of Triptale a mobile solutions building company for the travel & tourism industry.

During the course of the five-day camp, we had several one-on-one sessions designed to optimize communication & support channels. Each session taking on a different format, my mentor and I were able to discuss the intricacies on my business allowing me to tap into his experience with planning and strategy, marketing, finance, sales, and management.

Christopher's insights led me to fixing the common pitfalls startups like ours face. His recommendations fit like a glove. Since the end of the camp we've implementated some of these recommendations in our business and the impact was immediately visible:

• We updated our processes which made the business more efficient and allowed us to focus more time on what we love the most – serving our customers.
• We revamped our lead generation process and we have already seen a jump in our pre-booking revenue.
• We are finally able to update our prices structure to reflect our experience, so that both parties are honored best.

This one-on-one model provided our startup the critical individual support and attention from our mentor, and the best way I can describe is invaluably.

Mentor Speed Dating

Another great feature from the camp that I enjoyed greatly is the mentor speed dating. In this model,entrepreneurs were given a 20-minute speed mentoring session with a business mentor of their choice. With over a dozen mentors to choice from, entrepreneur had the oppourtunity to tap into the mentors more than 50 years of combined experience over a wide range of industries.

I was able to deliberately match myself with mentors of seemingly similar experience, skill sets, goals, personality and a variety of other factors. My favorite of the three speed dates was my match with Enrico Bernardo, CEO of WEVENTURE a digital marketing performance partner.

Going in I had a list of questions to pose to him - top of them was How do we maximize our digital marketing opportunities to transform our revenue performance. After implementing some of his recommendations our business transformation was immediate.

It's a feature I'll be glad to have at the second camp.

Trip To Zalando

On the 4th day of the camp we were treated to an entrepreneurs trip-to-the-town. Entrepreneurs and mentors were spilt into various groups and assigned a series of tours to explore the entrepreneurial landscape of Berlin.

Our group had a tour that had at stop at Zalando - where I had one of the most fruitful experiences in the duration of this camp. At the reciptiont, I spotted a nice pair of shoes sitting on top of the reciptionist desk. Inside this pair of shoes were a dozen or more zalando branded pens. Out of sheer curiosity, I asked why it was there. Admittedly, I was stumped by the answer. I wasn't expecting to hear "We at Zalando put ourselves in our customers shoes"

When it comes down to it this is what successful business is about, always putting yourself in your customers shoes. It'll be good to never forget that!

Attending Afrolynk Conference

On the 5th and last day of Camp, entrepreneurs and mentors of the program we're exclusively invited to the Afrolynk Conference. It was the second chapter of this annual event whose objective is to power the growth and development of Africa through high-performance entrepreneurship.

Like most conferences Afrolynk had a packed schedule offering attendees a wide variety of panel discussions, speakers, pitch-session and more. I personal enjoyed this conference and hope to return to future iterations of this event series.

All in all, I can comfortably say that as far as entrepreneurial bootcamps go their value to an entrepreneurs journey can not be overstated. Especially if such a bootcamp is keen on offering amazing features like one-on-one sessions, mentor speed dating, and entrepreneurs-to-the-town which is exactly what Enpact StartUp Mentoring has done.