Blog Posts

My First and Second Consulting Projects

September 27, 2016

First, the projects that didn’t count: For a couple of years, I acted as an internal consultant at a hotel management company, jumping around from project to project and hotel to hotel. I treated my full-time job as a series of consulting projects, but that doesn’t really count here. I did side work for past bosses – that doesn’t count either. I ended my presentations with “for help, contact me” and that got me a few half-day gigs on the weekends For a project to count, I figure it had to involve multiple days, and at least 3 zeroes on…

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500-Level Guide to Career Internals: Attendee Questions & Answers

September 20, 2016

career

In my 24 Hours of PASS session, 500-Level Guide to Career Internals (video), I got a few great questions that we didn’t have the time to answer during the live webcast. Let’s talk through ’em now. Q: Does speaking at SQL Sat, etc. and learning presentation skills help with blog writing skills? Yes, and vice versa – it’s all about: Learning who your audience is Learning what their pain points are Learning the best ways to relieve those pains Learning how to teach the audience how to get pain relief Presenting helps you learn the audience better by hearing what their questions…

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What Career Success (and Misery) Means to Me

September 13, 2016

career, happiness

To me, success means: Doing challenging work that I love While surrounded by people I admire Working for a company that I respect Getting a fair trade between the hours I put in, and the reward The ability to make that tradeoff choice myself Success doesn’t have to mean starting a company or being a freelance consultant, and indeed, for me, starting a company was never something that was important to me. I can achieve those five bullet points – or rather, as many of ’em as possible – regardless of the organizational structure I’m in. I am successful at Pandemic,…

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Why My Latest Project Uses NoSQL

September 6, 2016

aws, azure, dynamodb, heresy, nosql, serverless

I really like building free stuff to make Microsoft SQL Server data professionals’ jobs easier and more enjoyable, and I’ve been picking up speed: 2011 – sp_Blitz®, easy free SQL Server health check script 2013 – DBAreactions.com, DBA life in animated GIF form 2015 – SQLServerUpdates.com, easy free way to find current patches 2016 – First Responder Kit, an open sourced set of scripts for health checks and performance tuning We’re about to announce our first free online service, not just a web site or script, and that comes with some interesting design decisions and restrictions. My free projects have to be…

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Networking Doesn’t Scale. Coding and Blogging Do.

August 30, 2016

career, networking, people skills

I hate networking. Even just typing the word makes me cringe because it makes me think walking up to a complete stranger and striking up a conversation. I hate approaching strangers. Ever since the time with the van and the candy, I… I’d rather not talk about it. Networking is a time suck that doesn’t scale. Whenever you want to make new connections, you have to go to a location, be mentally present, and you can’t be doing anything else. It’s an active task, not a passive task. You don’t have time for more active tasks because your day job is already overworking…

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How to Find Out if Independent Consulting is Right for You

August 23, 2016

career, consulting, freelancing

Wanna be a freelance consultant? Wanna do the same thing you’re doing today as an employee, but on your own, getting your own clients directly? There’s an easy way to tell if you’ll be good at it: start doing it today in your full time role. Here’s how. Step 1: Treat your internal users like customers. Think about these people as paying your check. Rather than cringing when your phone rings, you want to get into the frame of mind where you’re excited. Try to figure out how you can make them happy, make them want to work with you again,…

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I Bought an Audi RS6 From BringATrailer’s Auctions

August 16, 2016

audi, bringatrailer, c5rs6, cars, rotiform, rs6

I’ve watched the BringATrailer.com auctions since they launched, and every week I’ve had to bite my fingers to keep from bidding. They curate a phenomenal list of cars, and at any given time, there’s at least one or two cars that I’d love to own. The comments are half the fun, too – the BaT readership is well-informed and loves to share stories. Special delivery: 2003 Audi RS6 When this Audi RS6 came up for bids, my heart fluttered. I really like sleepers – cars that don’t get a second glance from most of the population, but us real car fans recognize…

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Wanna Own a Blog Topic? Here’s How to Pick One.

August 9, 2016

blogging, expertise, specialization, writing

One of my training class attendees had an interesting observation: “All this week, when questions have come up about niche topics, you’ve been able to immediately give the name of one person who specializes in that topic. For example, when columnstore indexes came up, you immediately referred us to Niko Neugebauer’s blog post series. When Extended Events came up, you referred us to Jonathan Kehayias’s blog post series. If we wanted to start blogging about something, what areas are wide open for the taking?” With every release of SQL Server, Microsoft brings out cool new features. No one person can…

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Working ON Your Business vs Working IN Your Business

August 2, 2016

business, management, startup

Working IN your business means being a revenue-producing, product-fulfilling member of the team. Working ON your business means designing, planning, refining your business, but not directly producing revenue. Independent consultants typically work IN their business. When you’re a lone independent consultant or contractor, it’s easy to fall into the trap of spending all your time working IN your business. You find one or two good clients, and they’re willing to buy as much of your time as they can get. You work for them long hours, maybe 40-60 hours per week. Then one of them changes tacks, and doesn’t want…

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Lessons Learned from Running Week-Long Online Classes

July 26, 2016

presenting, training, webcast

Over the last several years, I’ve been steadily amping up my teaching skills: 2010 – teaching day-long pre-cons alone 2013 – teaching 2-day in-person classes with others 2014 – teaching week-long classes with others 2016 – teaching week-long classes by myself Now – teaching 4-day classes online Here’s some of the things I’ve learned so far. Writing and Rehearsing the Material Test the material in person first. Teaching online is way harder than in-person because online, you can’t tell what material is working, what attendees aren’t understanding, or when you need to change tacks. Online, it feels like all your jokes are bombing and your…

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Blog Posts

Hi. I’m Brent.