life quest

Epic Life Quest: Level 8 Achieved.

July 12, 2016

Following Steve Kamb’s lead, I treat my life as a video game with a series of levels. Whenever I unlock five new achievements, I count it as a level-up. Company retreat in Napa Valley Level 8’s 5 new achievements: Pass 50,000 Monday email subscribers. The Brent Ozar Unlimited mailing list has over 70,000 subscribers, but it feels pretty magical to know that over 50,000 folks want our favorite links in their inbox every Monday morning. Completed February 2016. Tour a winery in Napa, California. The Brent Ozar Unlimited team went to Napa for the 2016 company retreat and had a blast. My favorite…

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How to Measure Your Career (SQLSaturday Israel Keynote)

April 5, 2016

career, life quest

My name is Brent Ozar, and I help people make SQL Server go faster. That basically means I measure things for a living. If I’m going to make something faster, I have to start by knowing exactly how slow it is. When I first started working with SQL Server, I just measured it with Perfmon metrics. I spent so much time capturing metrics, interpreting what they meant, documenting them, setting up email alerts about them. Then I found out about DMVs – SQL Server’s dynamic management views. I started querying those, and wow, there was so much information available about internals, what…

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Epic Life Quest: Level 7 Achieved.

March 1, 2016

life quest

Following Steve Kamb’s lead, I treat my life as a video game with a series of levels. Whenever I unlock five new achievements, I count it as a level-up. Level 7’s 5 new achievements: Breakfast with Dad & Caryl in Mexico Become the sole owner of Brent Ozar Unlimited. Sounds kinda funny to be the only owner of a company with my name on it, but Jeremiah Peschka & Kendra Little were equal owners with me. (The company just happened to have my name on it since we started it from my blog.) Completed December 2015. Grow the company to 5…

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A million dollars.

January 19, 2016

Brent Ozar Unlimited, business, life quest

In my Epic Life Quest, sometimes I post [Redacted] achievements. It’s stuff that I’m really proud of, but I’m not quite ready to talk about publicly yet. Back in level 4 in 2013, I wrote: [Redacted] – I set a 2013 revenue goal for Brent Ozar Unlimited this year, and we made it! I’m not sharing the goal publicly yet, but I’ll circle back in a couple/few years and blog about it in my Life Quest category. Completed 2013. It’s been a few years now, so let’s un-redact that: the company hit one million dollars per year of revenue. To be specific, this wasn’t…

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Epic Life Quest Task Achieved: one straight year of weekly blogging.

November 25, 2015

blogging, life quest

Ernie recharging in Tulum Yesterday’s post marked 52 straight weeks of blogging every Tuesday. I’ve also got a blog over at my day job, but that’s separate and doesn’t count – here is all about my personal experiences, branding, consulting, tech, yadda yadda yadda. It was surprisingly hard. Usually I counsel bloggers to have at least 3 posts in the queue before they publish anything, and to try to keep at least a couple posts in the queue at all times. If you let the queue get down to zero, you start writing crappier stuff just to ship. There was…

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Epic Life Quest: Level 6 Achieved.

August 25, 2015

life quest

Sas Christian Peephole #1 Life’s a lot more challenging when you turn it into a game and start keeping track of your progress. For a few years now, I’ve been on an Epic Life Quest: I made a list of future achievements I want to unlock, and when I unlock five in a row, I level up. Here’s the five I pulled off over the last several months: Acquire small Sas Christian paintings – I started with some of her pencil sketches in 2013, and this year I was able to pick up two of her smaller paintings, Peephole #1 and #3. (And a couple…

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Launching an Online Course: Behind the Scenes

June 23, 2015

business, life quest, marketing, training

Friday, Kendra and I launched our newest online training course, The DBA’s Guide to SQL Server High Availability and Disaster Recovery. Here’s a quick glimpse behind the scenes at the work required in launching something like this. Designing and Building the Course Materials November – Course design started – Kendra wrote a profile for the ideal attendee, describing her experience, job duties, and current pain points. This determined the material we’d cover – and the stuff we’d ignore. For example, Kendra wrote, “What’s NOT included? How to install these things. I can figure out how to run a wizard.” November – EU…

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How the Company-Startup Thing Worked Out For Me, Year 3

April 28, 2015

Brent Ozar Unlimited, business, consulting, life quest, personal

It’s time for my annual update on the wild ride. A brief recap of what’s happened so far: April 2011 – started the company. April 2012 – year one finished, but I didn’t blog about it right away. I wanted to get it into the rear view mirror for perspective before blogging. April 2013 – year two finished, so I blogged about year one. April 2014 – year three finished, so I blogged about year two. April 2015 – year four just finished, so I’m blogging about year three – April 2013 to April 2014. When last we met The company logo…

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Epic Life Quest: Level 5 Achieved

March 3, 2015

life quest, personal

Inspired by Steve Kamb’s Epic Quest, I’ve been working through my own Epic Life Quest since 2012. I’ve set up a list of future achievements, and whenever I cross off five of them, I advance one level. Here’s what I’ve unlocked in about the last year: Level 5: Completed February 2015 Me in Tulum, 2014 Marry Erika – After over a decade together, she finally caved in and let me put a ring on her finger. Completed in October 2014 in a drive-through chapel in Las Vegas. Take Erika back to Tulum, Mexico – we had the time of our lives here,…

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Broken Arm = Less Brent for a While

May 10, 2014

life quest, personal

I tripped while carrying a monitor, and before you could say “banana peel” the top of my humerus bone was smashed: As they say on Mythbusters, “There’s your problem.” The surgeons think it broke completely across, but they don’t want to pop me open to do screws or anything – just stuck in a sling for the next month while the bone grows back together. There doesn’t appear to be any muscle or tendon damage. The tingling feeling means it’s working. It’s my left arm, and I’m right handed, so it could be worse. However, this means a sling until early June,…

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life quest

Hi. I’m Brent.