Expectations
If you can learn it from Youtube, go learn it from Youtube. If you can learn it from the documentation, go learn it from the documentation. My focus is on helping people develop strategic decision-making skills, not intro-level instruction.
I expect the people I mentor to actively self-educate between meetings. This is so we can use our hands-on time to go over the things that don’t fit into your typical tutorial or class — the contextual, big-picture, decision making that comes up when you have to apply your skills and knowledge to real projects.
In terms of specific software and tools, though, my expectations are fairly simple. You’ll need:
- A real text editor.
- Rider, Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text, Notepad++, NeoVim, Emacs — show up with something suitable for reading and writing code.
- Software for asset editing.
- I don’t care if you’re using Maya and Substance Painter or Blender and Krita. Software for editing 2D and 3D assets are a bare minimum. A proper Photoshop equivalent is highly recommended.
- Something for screen sharing.
- I don’t care if we use Google Meet, Zoom, Discord, Teamviewer, Parsec, or Jitsi. We just need something that’ll let us work hands-on.
- Some kind of Version Control.
- I don’t care if it’s Git, SVN, or Perforce. I don’t care if it’s connected to Github, Azure DevOps, or a box in your basement. Just have something.
While there are some programs I strongly recommend (PureRef, Excalidraw, Flameshot, Obisian/Trilium, Figma, etc.), I don’t expect everyone to show up with those programs pre-installed and ready to go.
Pricing and Time Commitments
I charge based on average contact hours (time spent in calls, discord feedback, etc.), but you should asses mentorships in the context of the total time commitment required. I like to shoot for 1.5-2 contact hours per week for the initial stretch of a mentorship and scale back to less frequent, longer, sessions once we’ve got the ball rolling on a project.
And in order to get your money’s worth, you should be looking to put in at least 1.5 hours of solo work for each hour of contact time. Preferably more.
At six contact hours ($450) per month, that gives you a soft total-time floor of fifteen hours a month. At eight ($600) it gives you a soft floor of twenty. This works out reasonably well if you do small, consistent, work sessions throughout the week, and quite poorly if you try to do it all at once before/during a video call. Marathon sessions don’t give either of us enough time to plan, practice, and execute.
How to Actually Pay For Things
I currently handle billing via Stripe, since it works with just about every payment system. I’m not a fan of payment platforms like PayPal or CashApp, since they complicate the paperwork on my end, but we can make something work if there aren’t any other options.
As a general rule, I’m more open to price negotiation the further you pay in advance. Retainer setups are ideal on my end, but the usual approach is to do a week or two as a test and then go monthly from there.