Before we talk

The free intro call. Thirty minutes, and I will tell you if I can’t help.

This is the page I would want to read before booking an intro call with someone like me. What the 30 minutes are for, what you leave with, and the six things people are usually carrying when they turn up.

Book the free intro →No form. No card. Usually the same week.
Marian Kamenistak in a 1:1 mentoring session.

What you walk out with

Four things, whether or not you ever pay me anything.

01

Your situation, named

Most people arrive with a feeling and leave with a sentence. "I am not strategic enough" usually turns out to be two specific, fixable things. Naming them is most of the work.

02

An honest read on whether you need this at all

Sometimes the answer is that you are doing fine and the problem is your manager, or that what you want is a course, or a therapist, or a different job. I will say so. It costs me a sale and saves you a quarter.

03

One thing to try this week

Whether or not we work together. A conversation to have, a proposal to put in front of someone, a way to open your next presentation.

04

What it would cost, with no negotiation afterwards

Real numbers on the call. 430 EUR a session list, 361 EUR through the AI channel, and that is the floor. I would rather you decide against it knowing the price than think about it for three weeks.

How the 30 minutes run

0–5

You talk.

What is going on, in your words. No structure needed. Most people have not said it out loud to anyone yet, and that alone is worth the five minutes.

5–15

I ask.

Context. Your role, your org, who decides what, what you have already tried. I am building a picture, and I will push on the parts that sound rehearsed.

15–25

You get my read.

Whether I can help, said straight. If I can, how I would approach it and what the first month looks like. If I cannot, who you should talk to instead.

25–30

We decide.

Both of us. If it is a fit, we book session one and settle the practical things. If it is not, you leave with the advice anyway.

Marian Kamenistak in a 1:1 mentoring session.
A real session. The intro is the same room, thirty minutes, and nothing to pay.

Why people book

Six sentences. One of them is probably yours.

These are the things engineering and product leaders say in the first five minutes. Written the way they say them, not the way a service page would.

01 · Head of infrastructure, seven-country group

“My boss is happy with me and I still don’t have what the people above me have.”

He had just come out of a good one-to-one with his CTO. Reviews fine, team likes him, function delivering. And he sat in a room with the other directors and quietly concluded he was not one of them. This is the most common thing I hear from people who are already doing the job well, and it is almost never a capability problem.

02 · The one that costs the most money

“Good work, low visibility — outside my team few people know what I do.”

Your work is solid and it stops at the edge of your team. Few people senior to you could describe what you did last quarter, so you are invisible in the conversations where roles get handed out. My estimate, from 3,611 unique sessions rather than from a dataset: a leader with no visibility leaves 30 to 40,000 CZK a month on the table. It is the most fixable of the six.

03 · The gap that rarely reaches a job description

“I lead the people. I don’t lead the function.”

You run one-to-ones well, your team is happy, and you are not in the room where the function’s direction gets decided. Managing people and owning a domain are different jobs, and most people get promoted into the second one without anyone mentioning that.

04 · Especially common in Central and Eastern Europe

“I can’t talk money.”

You explain your infrastructure to people who buy business outcomes. You have no one-minute version of who you are. You take the first number offered because arguing feels rude. I had this exact problem and it cost me years.

05 · Usually said too late

“I’m preparing for the next role — promotion, or a move.”

You want the next seat, at your company or somewhere else. This is the case where the work is concrete: the pitch, the story, the dry-run interviews, and the introductions if it comes to that.

06 · The one with a deadline attached

“The org is scaling faster than I am.”

Headcount doubled, the structure that worked at 20 is failing at 60, and you are improvising in public. This one has a clock on it, which is why people who arrive with it tend to move fastest.

Marian Kamenistak speaking on stage at the Engineering Leaders Conference.
Case two, the visible version. Getting someone onto a stage like this one is work we do after the mentoring, once there is a story worth listening to.

If you want the call to be worth more

No preparation is required and nobody will check. Three questions, though, and the people who have thought about them arrive two steps further in.

  1. 1.What is the thing you have not said out loud to anyone at work?
  2. 2.If this went well, what is different in three months? Say it as something someone else would notice, not as a feeling.
  3. 3.What have you already tried, and what happened?

When I am the wrong person

I would rather say this here than thirty minutes into your day. This is mentoring for engineering and product leaders, on leadership problems.

  • —If you want to stay hands-on and get better at the craft, I am not it.
  • —If a certificate is the goal, we are not compatible. I work on skills, not paper.
  • —If you need a therapist or a lawyer, you need a therapist or a lawyer.
  • —If the budget is far below the rates on the pricing page, do not spend your afternoon on it. Read the blog, join the community, both are free.

Saying this out loud costs me a few calls a year. It saves both of us a package somebody regrets.

Questions people ask before booking

Is the intro call really free?+
Yes, the intro call is free: 30 minutes, no charge, no card, no form before it. You book a slot in my calendar and turn up. There is no version of this where a conversation gets invoiced, and no upsell waiting at the end of it.
What happens on the free intro call?+
Four parts. You talk for five minutes about what is going on. I ask questions for ten. I give you my honest read for ten — whether I can help, and what I would do first. We spend the last five deciding together. If it is not a fit, I say so and point you somewhere better.
Do I need to prepare anything?+
No preparation is required. You will get more out of the call if you have thought about three things: what you have not said out loud at work, what would be visibly different in three months, and what you have already tried.
Is this a sales call?+
It is a call where a price gets mentioned, because pretending otherwise wastes your time. What it is not: a pitch deck, a follow-up sequence, or someone chasing you next week. You will get my read whether or not you buy anything, and the rates are already public on the pricing page.
What happens at the first paid session?+
The first paid session is a diagnostic, and it is deliberately uncomfortable. I go through your strengths and weaknesses and push on how much of the story is real and how much is performance. Out of what is left standing we build the timeline. I tell people this in advance on purpose.
How often would we meet, and for how long?+
Sixty-minute sessions, weekly or bi-weekly. Which of the two is decided after the first session, not before it, because that is when I can see how fast you want to move. Anyone who sells you a cadence before meeting you is guessing.
What do you need from me between sessions?+
Every session ends with a small piece of homework. Talk to this person, put that proposal in front of someone, build this presentation. Small on purpose — you still have a day job and I am not going to put it at risk. It is also the filter: I am interested in people who do things between sessions.
Should I do an MBA instead?+
Do the MBA if what you want is the credential. It is the right buy for a move into consulting or finance, a visa, or the brand on your CV, and I am not a substitute for it. If what you described is a specific gap like presenting badly or work nobody sees, that closes through repetition and feedback on your own live situation.
My manager already mentors me. Why would I pay for this?+
Keep them. I am an addition, not a replacement. Your manager also decides your promotion, your comp and your next role, so there is a set of questions you cannot put to them. And internal mentoring runs monthly when the calendar allows, which is roughly the interval at which behaviour does not change.
Can I do this without involving my employer?+
Yes, and plenty of people do. Nothing is sent to your employer, the invoice is issued to you personally, and I will not suggest you ask them to pay. As a private individual you pay the gross figure with Czech VAT at 21% added.
Do you help with public speaking and visibility?+
Yes, once there is something worth putting on a stage. I need to see you have a story people want to listen to, and that comes out of the work rather than before it. Then it is concrete: a blog post, a podcast, a speaking slot at a community meetup, and my own public speaking coach.
What if a session is not worth it?+
You only pay for a session you rate 7 out of 10 or higher. And if it is not working by session two, we stop and the rest is on me. Neither of those is a discount — they are there because I want the pressure to stay on my side of the table.
Online or in person?+
Mostly online. I am in Prague and there is an office in the centre, so if you are here — including if you pass through occasionally — we meet in person for the start and roughly once a month after that. It helps more than it sounds like it should.
How fast can we start?+
The intro is usually within the same week, and the first paid session within two weeks. Cold inquiries run two to three weeks out. Community members and people referred by past mentees get priority when the calendar is tight.

Book the 30 minutes.

If I can help, you will know by the end of it. If I cannot, you will know that too, and I will tell you who to talk to instead.

Book the free intro →

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