Why I do this
Your child will soon start facing decisions you can’t be in the room for.
My work is to make sure they make those decisions well, by themselves.
Built for parents playing the long game and thinking ahead.
I cap at twenty families at a time, so I genuinely know each child.
What this is
Every athlete has a coach.Every serious musician has a guru.The best founders have one too.
I think a child of thirteen, fourteen, fifteen — standing at the start of everything — deserves the same.
One person mentors your child every week, and stays for the next 10+ years — so your child can make any decision on their own, and stand by it.
What they need someone for
Seven of the big questions your child has to answer.
Your child is already answering them, in hundreds of small decisions.
Fifteen is only the first. Tap any age.
“Science, Commerce or Arts?”
The smaller ones, that year:
- Everyone is taking Science. Does it make me stupid if I don’t?
- I am bad at this. Do I quit before it gets embarrassing?
- Do I ask the teacher, or will they think I know nothing?
- Do I tell Amma about this, or handle it myself?
- They have stopped talking to me. Do I fix it, or let it pass?
- Do I drop the thing I love to make room for tuitions?
…and a few dozen more, this year alone.
Every one of these decisions leads somewhere different.
Do you have someone who can help you and your child work through them?
If not — that is what I am here for.
01/The one rule
I never make a single decision for them.
02/What I do instead
I ask questions until they can decide for themselves.
There are hundreds of them. Some big, some small — and the small ones do the most work.
Almost none of them get answered the first time. The same question comes back a month later from a new angle, and again after that, until they can answer it without me.
When a question is not enough, I put something in front of them:
A fact
the one they were missing
A person
who actually does that work
A situation
that shows them what a conversation cannot
Then I clear the obstacle when they are stuck, and get out of the way.
The answer is theirs. An answer you reached yourself survives a hard week. One handed to you by an adult does not.
An answer your child owns is one they rarely have to undo. Two years on the wrong entrance exam, a degree abandoned in its second year, a first job started over — each costs time, effort and money. I cannot make a wrong turn impossible. I can make an expensive one far less likely, and leave your child better at deciding the next one.
What this looks like
Six months on the first question. Then I stay.
The first month
Free, and it starts with trust.
The month is for building a relationship with your child and with you, and for doing real work — enough that all three of us can see how we work together, and what comes of it. At the end, we decide whether this is a fit for the years ahead. If any one of us says no, it stops there and nothing is owed.
Months 1–6
The stream question, answered properly.
There are 7,005 documented jobs. There is a way to take a child across the whole range of them in six months without it taking over their life — and at the end, a short list of the few that genuinely pulled them.
Then
I stay.
Class 11 and 12, the college decision, the first job, and the harder ones after it. The questions do not stop arriving at sixteen, so neither does this.
An hour with your child.
In person, somewhere they will actually talk. They bring whatever is stuck that week, and we work on it until it moves. And the hour is not the only time I am reachable — a message or a call, when something cannot wait until next week.
An hour with you.
You and I sit down over coffee — what I am seeing, what you are seeing, and where it all seems to be heading.
What comes after the six months
The stream decision is where this starts. After that, it is whatever they walk in with.
Six months answers “Science, Commerce or Arts”. Then it keeps going, and what it is about changes week to week. Some of it is large and years away. Most of it is small and happening now.
So this is measured in years, not months — one person, staying through school, college, the first job, and the harder decisions after it.
The ones you can see coming.
Rare, enormous, and each one arrives exactly once.
- At 15A stream, and everything that follows it.
- At 16Which exam, and two years of their life.
- At 17A degree, a city, a first year away.
- At 20Specialise now, or stay broad.
- At 22A job offer, or holding out for better.
- At 25Whether to stay, switch, or start again.
- At 28Whether they want what they are good at.
…and they keep coming long after twenty-eight.
The ones that fill an ordinary week.
Small on their own. Together, they decide everything.
- A subject that has quietly stopped making sense.
- A friend group that changed over one holiday.
- A result worse than the work they put into it.
- A question they are too embarrassed to ask.
- A talent they have started calling a waste of time.
- A friend’s plan for them that they cannot say no to yet.
- Being tired of the thing everyone knows them for.
- An opinion they hold and cannot yet defend.
- A week where nothing is wrong and nothing moves.
…about fifty of these a year, for as long as this runs.
The ones nobody schedules.
Which is why it matters that someone is already there.
- An opportunity that arrives two years early.
- A rejection that lands harder than it should.
- A plan that stops feeling like theirs.
- An adult who is certain what they should become.
- A subject they fall for far too late to be sensible.
- A confidence that goes missing for a whole term.
- A door that opens because somebody remembered them.
- A year that goes sideways for no clear reason.
…and a fair amount none of us can predict yet.
At twenty-five, when one of these is not small, they still have someone to call. And I will already know the whole story.
All of it is for one thing: a young adult who can decide well when nobody knows the answer. On the days you are not in the room, and long after I am not there either.
I spent years inside career guidance at scale. What a child actually needs is someone who stays.
Product analyst
Product manager
VP of Product
Chief Technology Officer, Mentoria
This
Twenty families at a time.
I know how career guidance works at scale, from the inside — and exactly where it stops. That is the reason this exists.
Ten years of work, several of them at Mentoria.
What a job even is keeps changing, and AI is changing it fastest. I have spent my working life in technology and I follow that closely — so what I put in front of your child is current, not a map from ten years ago.
Hundreds of people mentored one to one, over years, and never for a fee. I did it because I wanted to.
One practice, one person. Twenty families at a time, because twenty is what I can genuinely know.
The other person in this
You are doing it for the first time too.
Nobody has ever parented your fifteen-year-old before, including you. By the time anyone gets good at a stage, the stage is over — and meanwhile you are carrying the fees, the school, the health, the future and most of the worrying.
What I am is one more adult who knows them well and is standing slightly outside the house. Some things are simply hard to see from inside it.
You are not a bystander in this.
You are the second person I work with. Once a month we talk properly — about what I am seeing in your child, about what is coming next, and sometimes about how that has moved away from what any of us expected. That hour is the work, not an update on it.
I am not going to tell you how to parent.
I have never done it, and it is not what I am for. You have known your child far longer than I ever will.
Nothing behind anyone’s back.
You see what I see. Your child also knows exactly what I pass on to you. When they ask me to keep something to myself, I keep it — I do not break their trust. And that trust is the only reason a fourteen-year-old ever tells an adult anything worth passing on.
How it begins
Twenty families at a time. Classes 8 to 10.
Twenty is how many children I can genuinely know, so twenty is the number I hold at a time — a place opens when a child finishes, not on a calendar. Children join in Class 8, 9 or 10, and earlier is better: the part of this that matters most is the part that needs years, and a child who joins in Class 8 gets three of them before anything is riding on the answer.
The first month is free.
That month is where the relationship starts — your child and me, and you and me. I use it to build trust and to do real work, enough that all three of us can see how we work together and what it is already producing. At the end, we decide together whether to carry on. If any one of us thinks it is not right, we stop there, and nothing is owed. The one-month guidance is on the house.
If we go ahead, we start with six months.
After that we carry on for as long as it is working, and that stays a decision all three of us make. Including me.
This is likely to suit you if
you are comfortable with the answer coming from your child rather than from me, you can give it years rather than weeks, and you can hold an hour a month yourself.
It may not, if
what you want is a clear recommendation quickly. There are good career counsellors who will give you that, faster and for less, and there is nothing wrong with wanting it.