The Truth About Training (and Building a House?)

While attending a class led by an excellent, professional trainer will likely help you learn to use your word processing, spreadsheet, email, or presentation software, it is unlikely to get you where you need to go when it comes to database design and implementation. The body of knowledge and level of mastery required to produce a stable, efficient, and expandable database is enormous.

Think about it like this: Your local big-orange-box home improvement store offers workshops on the weekend. You can learn how to sponge paint your walls, install laminate flooring, or replace a window. But there's no workshop on how to build a house. Why? Because there's too much information to cover and if you're going to lay a foundation or run electrical wire, you'd better know what you're doing, right? Same thing applies to databases.

But I Still Want To Build It Myself! Sort of. I think....

Of course, there are a lot of advantages to creating, implementing, and maintaining your database yourself. Most small businesses can't justify the expense of employing a competent database administrator. Hiring it out to a consultant is also costly and there's no guarantee that consultant will be available when you decide to expand or make changes to your database.

If you have the aptitude and enjoy database work, the up-front time and monetary investments required to learn database concepts and software will pay off in reduced maintenance and design costs down the road. You'll be better able to determine which work to hire out and what you can do yourself. And, when you do hire out changes, you'll probably be able to understand what the consultant did.

Again With The House

If you really wanted to build a house yourself, you'd have to learn about and master: selecting a buildable site,operating a bulldozer and excavator, laying a foundation, framing a house, building walls, roofing, installing electrical and plumbing infrastructures, etc. Could you do it? Of course. And if you did, you could take care of and improve that house better than anyone else.

Do you want to do it all? By yourself? Maybe not. Perhaps you'd be just as happy if you learned enough to understand the overall process and major issues, and then worked with a professional builder to actually build the house. You'd learn a few critical skills really well and do a lot of the work under the supervision of your builder. Because you'd be right there, you'd see his work and understand how every part of the house was built. In the end, you'd be able to do a lot of maintenance and improvement and you'd be a lot more comfortable hiring out certain jobs.

So How Does Coaching Work?

Well, first you meet with a coach and discuss your goals.  Your coach will give you a ballpark estimate (no pun intended) of the number of hours required to get started. Now, it really is an estimate and it usually changes because client goals usually change during a project and sometimes outside events interfere with the flow of a project. The study and work time you put into the project outside of meetings greatly affects the number of coaching hours required.

Coaching sessions start with a review of the homework from the previous meeting, presentation of a new concept or two, exercises to reinforce the concepts, and a homework assignment applying that concept to your database.

Let's Talk Turkey - Do I Need a Mortgage?

We hope not. Obviously, the number of coaching hours required (hence, the cost) varies greatly by project and client. There are two major issues to consider: First, the complexity of the database (where the actual data resides) and the user interface (program you use to access the data). Second, your computer and database experience, aptitude, commitment level, and availability. Having said all that....

Coaching is billed at $65/hour with a 10 hour minimum. Sessions are scheduled in 2 hour blocks. 

Bulk discounts include:

Buy a 20-hour block and get 2 hours free.

Buy a 50-hour block and get 6 hours free.

Buy a 100-hour block and get 15 hours free.

Bulk discount blocks must be paid in full before the first bulk session in order to receive the free hours. Non-bulk sessions must be paid at each session.