Darling Data Three Years In: Some Cool Stuff

Been A While

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I wrote one of these after six months of independent consulting, and then never cared to do one again. You might find the April 1 timing of this weird, but there’s no additional Fools here, just me as usual.

Why bother now? Well, after three years, I figure I’m probably too much of a dandy to ever get a real job again. Since that’s the case, I’ve done a couple things:

• I purchased the domain erikdarling.com for a stupid amount of money
• I hired some nice gals from Brooklyn to make it look professional

Now, here’s the thing: many times in my life spending a significant amount of money on things signaled me about to quit doing that thing. I have many thousands of dollars worth of hobby equipment that sits forgotten in various bags, boxes, and closets.

But not this time! Unless this here PowerBall ticket is lined up with the stars.

When I first started getting set up to do this, I bought an easy domain, hooked it up to WordPress, designed some logos myself that I thought evinced a SQL coach aesthetic or some such, and let it ride.

Turns out that very few people want a SQL coach. They want someone to work out for them.

I never said I was a fast learner.

Number Signs

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Since that first section isn’t much of a blog post, I’ll talk a little about how things are doing business-wise.

I’ve worked with over 500 consulting clients, and I’ve sold training to over 1,500 people. Most of the training sales are fairly low dollar value, but I’m hoping that changes with the move to Podia.

For consulting, I’ve got a couple basic products: a two-day performance analysis, or a bucket of hours. I still don’t do on-call or night/weekend work, but I found that a lot of shops out there want the insurance policy that comes with having time on the clock to use.

There’s no need to get into great detail here, because I often tweak things in response to individual clients, but this has been working out really well.

Anyway, keep an eye out for a SEAMLESS TRANSITION to the new website over the next month or so, and uh… I dunno.

Other stuff.

We’ll see.

Whatever.

Thanks for reading!

Going Further

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If this is the kind of SQL Server stuff you love learning about, you’ll love my training. I’m offering a 75% discount to my blog readers if you click from here. I’m also available for consulting if you just don’t have time for that and need to solve performance problems quickly.