Is Joining Clay Bootcamp Essential for Learning GTME and Building Real Sales Automation Workflows?

Hey everyone! Sania here. I've been into Sales and Marketing for the past 3 years (particularly working with an agency) I started out as a cold email copywriter in that agency and then claimed up to full account manager managing end to end sales finnels. We didn't use any automations or stuff like that. It was purely manual and involved 6-8 hours of research on a single prospect. My cold emails have opened conversations that closed Figure worth of projects. Not to count the countless positive replies (part of which used to rave about how relevant and specific the email was) It's been around a month since I dabbled my feet into GTME. But almost every successful GTME I see has been a Clay Bootcamp alumni at some point in time. My question is: Is it mandatory to join @clay bootcamp to slash the learning curve and get your hands dirty with real work (instead of JUST learning)? If yes, what's the procedure to secure a scholarship into the bootcamp? And if not, how can we step into the execution mode and start building real workflows. Because starting out, I think nobody has the budget to invest in these tools' paid plans. Would it be a better alternative to join an agency as an intern and work under their mentorship? I don't want to carry the baggage of 3+ years in sales and marketing and think I'm too ahead to become an intern but I feel like I do have a solid understanding of sales, customer journey, human psychology, what I need to polish is working inside these tools, AI, automations and those sorts of things. A detailed response would be highly appreciated