In the last several weeks, there’ve been two that have been eating up most of my free time: tutoring and honey.

My tutoring company, No Excuses Tutoring, has had an unexpected bump in activity recently. I had several web leads that came in, and as a result I found 3 more students to tutor this semester. Which meant that I had to go out and find/vet/interview tutors for them, and in general become more serious about the company. This of course is great news, and my next challenge is making the website better. Easier to find on Google, easier to navigate and more focused in terms of what the company is and why it exists.

The other project, has been to help a local beekeeper sell honey to new, and hopefully more upscale, markets. The first thing we did is re-label the honey. In order to differentiate honey from all of the other honey options out there, we decided to tell a story of what makes the this honey special. Through the new label of Grampa’s Gourmet we can tell the story of a multi-generational beekeeper based in a unique location (San Luis Valley) – and attract a higher price as a result. I’ve been busy building the website, and looking for partnerships with other companies to sell the honey.

There are many reasons why someone would want to be a vegetarian, and I don’t necessarily want to have that discussion here, but I’ve been thinking about it long enough that it’s time to actually try it.

This is kind of a big deal to me, as I never thought that I would even ever try it. I grew up eating meat everyday (like most people, I think). But my wife is vegetarian, and so are some close friends. And living in Boulder (voted #7, on America’s Best Vegetarian-Friendly Small Cities) for 6 years certainly helped erase some of the stigma.

So, all and all I am pretty excited about it.

I decided to watch a lecture called “Why Not?” in the Economics category. It was great! Very intertaining and the quality of the video was actually very similar to hulu.

Given that they already have a lot of fascinating subjects online I am definitely coming back for more.

During the seventies, eighties and nineties, it was common for large corporations such as Hewlett Packard, IBM, and Compaq etc to put their new sales recruits through a twelve to eighteen-month training program.

Today, salespeople consider themselves extremely fortunate if they receive an initial two weeks of induction training or product familiarisation workshops.

So what has changed? Have companies discovered that training is not necessary?

On the contrary, training appears to be even more important today than it was thirty years ago and it is becoming more critical all the time.

One of the instructors at Three Value Logic is a product of the IBM sales training program, from back in the days of IBM sales training programs. He’s expressed a very similar sentiment.

When I was looking for my way into the profession, I focused mostly on applying to entry-level positions at companies I thought I’d enjoy working in. I was looking for companies that had a product I could get excited about, and seemed to offer some prospect of professional growth.

But what I quickly discovered is that simply applying for a job is only half the battle. The other half is focusing on yourself – and really thinking about whether you have what it takes to succeed on the job.

After applying to only a couple of jobs, I found myself at an interview with the CEO and the Sales Manager of one of those companies, having to demonstrate what I knew about Sales. How would you carry yourself on the phone? What would you say? What insightful and thoughtful questions would you ask a prospect? How would you engage with them, and gain their trust? And these questions weren’t hypothetical, they actually made me participate in a role-playing exercise to see how I would do in real-time.

Needless to say I didn’t do too well on that interview, and after a few more embarrassing role-playing exercises, I was referred to a company called Three Value Logic Sales Institute in downtown Denver.

Three Value Logic (3VL) is an unusual company that provides free intensive sales training. They are also a sales outsourcing company, providing their clients with qualified appointments with potential prospects.

It’s my third week here, and so far I am learning a lot, and enjoying the experience. I am very impressed by management here, and will write about what’s like to go through their sales training in future posts.

Now I’ll have even more opportunities to advance my education. The company I work for rewards (with cash) employees who pursue and complete applicable professional designations, and in my case they are CEBS and CLU.

CEBS: Certified Employee Benefits Specialist. To attain CEBS I have to take 8 correspondence courses and 8 exams. Since I am new to the industry, and to corporate culture in general, I view these classes as a way to speed up experience – to learn a lot in a compressed period of time. It’s not rocket science, and it’s not a graduate degree, but it’s a lot of practical and useful knowledge to make me more confident at work.

CLU: Chartered Life Underwriter. I’ve only recently began to research into this designation, but I am intrigued because it would give me an opportunity to learn more about insurance and how it’s rated. CLU is something I will consider pursuing after I get my CEBS.

Eventually I would like to go to a proper graduate school. But the professional degrees will have to do for now. Besides, this will allow me to practice “night school” for if and when I decide to attend evening classes for a JD.

I guess it doesn’t matter which test I take (though I am inclined to take both), as long as I continue to study. And I’ve been able to keep up my studying thanks to a great website with interactive memorization flashcards.

In related news, I’ve volunteered to give a public presentation in Philadelphia for work… in Russian! Now, it’s true that I grew up speaking Russian and speak Russian to my mom and grandmother – but I’ve never used it at work before. Wish me luck, because I only have a week and a half to prepare.

The next step is to create a plan of study I can execute before the day of the test.

It’s hard to believe that it has been 11 years since I seriously studied Japanese, and 12 years since I left Japan. During this time, I felt the language slowly wither away – every time I would watch a Japanese movie or TV I would notice that I understood less and less.

It would be a tremendous loss if I don’t take advantage of my luck, of having lived there as a child for 3 years. So, I have decided to seriously begin studying it again.

The Plan

Every year the Japan Educational Exchanges and Services and the Japan Foundation administer the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (日本語能力試験, nihongo nōryoku shiken) or JLPT. The JLPT is a standardized test to evaluate and certify the language proficiency of non-native Japanese speakers. It is held once every year, on the first Sunday of December. The next test will be on December 2nd, 2007. I intend to take it. The JLPT has four levels beginning at level 4 and progressing to level 1 – the most difficult:

I honestly have no idea where I would fall in the ranking above were I to take the test today. I don’t have enough confidence to even say that I would pass Level 4. So, my first order of business: take a practice test and find out how much Japanese I really remember.