Live Class Justification Email for Manager Who Lost a Poker Game

lease register _EMPLOYEE_NAME_HERE_ for Brent Ozar’s Live Class Season Pass 2026 before the 50% launch sale ends on July 10. https://training.brentozar.com/p/live-class-season-pass The regular price is $4,395/person, but the launch sale price is $2,197.50 through July 11, and registration for the first rotation closes at the same time.

The business justification is straightforward: we need stronger SQL Server performance tuning skills in-house, and this training should help us troubleshoot production issues faster, make better indexing and query tuning decisions, reduce unnecessary cloud spend, and avoid expensive emergency consulting. The employee will attend live classes Monday-Friday, 4 hours per day, and I’ll clear their calendar for those sessions.

The personal justification is less straightforward, but still legally binding in several emotional jurisdictions: I lost a poker game to a developer. I had two pair and several shots of tequila. They had a full house and a full glass because they’re better at capacity management. Now here we are.

As part of the wager, I agreed to register them for legitimate professional development classes, and annoyingly, they picked something that actually makes sense. Brent Ozar’s Live Class Season Pass includes Fundamentals Week on July 13-17, Mastering Index Tuning on Aug 31-Sept 4, Mastering Query Tuning on Sept 28-Oct 2, and Mastering Server Tuning on Oct 19-23. I was hoping they’d ask for a novelty keyboard or a standing desk mat, but no, they chose practical skills that could reduce our future pain. Typical employee behavior: technically correct, operationally inconvenient.

There are cheaper recorded training options, but we all know how that goes. People buy recordings, swear they’ll watch them “after this sprint,” and then the next thing you know, the recordings are sitting untouched while everyone continues diagnosing SQL Server with vibes, folklore, and one dashboard someone set up in 2019. With live classes, they can ask questions, stay focused, and actually complete the training. If an emergency pops up, they get the recordings through the end of the year.

Brent has 25+ years of SQL Server performance tuning experience, has trained over 18,000 students, uses the full-size Stack Overflow database, and covers the free open source First Responder Kit tools like sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, and sp_BlitzIndex. The training is built and taught by a real human being, not generated by AI, but it includes practical AI use because apparently the future arrived while I was trying to slow-play pocket queens.

Please get this registered before July 10 so we get the 50% launch sale price, satisfy the terms of my regrettable but honorable gambling debt, and prevent the developer from saying “a deal’s a deal” in every standup until October.