Feel free to read the tldr at the bottom.

To give some context to my question, I'm currently a 19 year old college student who's super into sports photography videography (making cool little highlight reels). I go to a big D1 ACC school that I'd consider to be top 10 in a lot of major sports, and I've been shooting photos / videos for the school newspaper and a club on campus.

One of my favorite creators who's been pretty inspirational is this guy "@kfitz" on Instagram, and he has this email list where he explains a little bit about how he got started, where he gets clients, his editing process, etc. Recently, in his last email, he mentioned he had a mentorship program and provided a link to an application. I thought that sounded super cool and filled it out.

This is where things get a little weird. About 2 hours after filling it out, I got a call from someone who basically interviewed me about why I was interested, how I started with sports videography, etc. I thought it was a little strange that I didn't get any warning about this call / an interview time, but went through and thought I answered the question well. Anyways, the guy ended up scheduling me in for a second interview over zoom with someone else after the call which I thought seemed a lot more normal.

On the second call, for the first half, the guy interviewed me with pretty standard questions about why I wanted to be mentored, what I thought could get out of it, where I'm at right now, etc. and prefaced it by saying if I did well on the interview, there wouldn't be a waiting process and he'd get me connected with kfitz right away and I'd be able to start the mentorship program. He then detailed the program to me which basically consists of 7 hours of learning modules teaching video editing skills, how to reach out to players, etc. and then for 2 months, weekly calls in a small group with kfitz. I told him it all sounded great and I'd love to be a part of it. He said after my interview, he thought I'd be a great fit

Then here's where it got really weird imo. The guy sent me a link to pay for the mentoring for $3,000! I didn't even know it would cost anything. I explained that I'd need time to think about it and would need to get back to him in a few days, and he went on to spend like 20 minutes trying to convince me why I should buy it now.

Let me give some highlights of this part of the conversation:

- When I explained that I didn't even know it would be payed, he told me no mentorship is free (maybe true and I was naive to think it was free?)

- When I told him I'd need to speak to my parents about this before making a decision, he said kfitz knows more about the industry than them- When I told him I didn't know if there were better optinos out there, he asked if I was just looking for someone worse with less connections who could do this for cheaper
-When I said I don't konw if I can afford $3000 right now, he asked what my credit score was

He also said that once I bought it, he'd get me set up with everything, but he wouldn't be able to do another call / allow me to buy it if I didn't go through with it on this call. I continued to probe him, and basically after a while of continuously telling him I needed a day or two to think about it, he told me I could pay a $300 non refundable deposit while I thought about it, but I told him that I couldn't do that either, since I literally haven't looked into any other source of mentoring to know if this is a reasonable cost.

After about a total of 35 minutes of debate on all this, he seemed pretty pissed and said it sounds like I'm just not ready to invest in myself and said goodbye and we ended the call.

Here's where I'm confused. Kfitz is a super reputable guy in my opinion (look up his instragram) with a huge social media following and who works with professional athletes like Tyreek Hill, TJ Watt, the NFL as a whole, etc. so I do feel like the mentoring program might be worth 3k. I just thought the way it was presented seemed really weird, and I couldn't commit to putting down 3k on the spot after just hearing about it. In my opinion, kfitz seems to big to be running a scam / something sketchy, so I'm not sure if I missed out on an oppritinty by declining this. Any insight would be appreciated

TLDR (read it if you read the whole thing because I included a little extra in here):

I applied to a mentorship program from a reputable videographer I admire, but after a surprise interview, they asked for $3,000 with high-pressure tactics. The interviewer showed me the Instagram profiles of three of kfitz’s former mentees, who he helped connect with professional sports teams like the Raiders and are now leading successful careers in the industry. Although I believe it would be difficult to break into this industry on my own and the mentor has an impressive reputation, the unexpected fee, pressure to pay immediately, and demand for a $300 non-refundable deposit made me hesitate, leaving me unsure if I missed a great opportunity or dodged a red flag.