Day 1: The art of entrepreneurship

At 9 AM the coaching session was planned to start. Chahine Majoub from APEFE, already told me yesterday that the participants will arrive late. So most people arrived by 09:45 to 10:30. I was quite nervous for this day as I had been preparing the training materials for days last week in Antwerp. I wanted to present a training session that covered how to develop your business plan in a very basic way including all aspects of entrepreneurship. The easiest universal tool is business model canvas by Osterwalder. I pulled information from everywhere including what we already produced at microStart and developed a full training including what to do if your business is declining.

I was nervous as it is difficult to entertain people for eight hours long. On top of that the trainings are in French. I speak the language fluently but I do have a Flemish/English accent which I am conscious about. Inshallah (adapting to the situation) my coaching went well and the participants thought I had a Canadian accent.

The participants were very interesting and young. Many of them in their early twenties and all master students. 1 wanted to start a window company, 1 a contemporary pret a porter line, 1 a marketing company for events, 1 a public construction company, 1 a digital archiving company… They all had very diverse ideas and definitely potential. At the end of the seminar they all had to pitch their businessplan to each other. I am very honoured that I have the opportunity to coach them! & Inshallah again hopefully they liked it. Actually I hope my coaching was on point as my outfit today.