Hello there.
How are you doing?
How's your week going?
Welcome back to Confident Business English.
My name is Anna and I'm a neuro language coach.
I work with senior managers like you every single day from all around the world.
And this is the podcast where I share my best tips and guidance every single week.
And I know that one of the things you find really difficult is following natural conversation and, as a result of that, connecting with your colleagues.
Therefore, this is a new style of episode I want to practice, which is called Anna reports.
If you've listened to this podcast before or if you're a newcomer, you should know that one of my ways to source content for you is to listen in on business conversations that I hear going about in my daily life and to report back to you about the phrases they use, different things that come up cultural things to help you understand better.
And hopefully, as a result, that helps you feel more confident.
And I'm recording this in a much more relaxed way.
It's going to be a little bit less structured, but that's a deliberate choice.
The idea is this gives you a little bit of a challenge.
It's something different and just keeps you on your toes a little bit.
To keep somebody on your toes, as you can imagine, would be extremely painful, I would assume.
But in this thing, it means just to keep you challenged, not complacent.
So, context.
I was on a train going from London to Oxford, actually, and this was around about Christmas time.
I'd spent the day in London, really nice, catching up with a friend, all good.
And obviously I had to get the train back to Oxford because that was where I was staying, because my dad lives in Oxford.
And, by the way, let's just do a quick insert here because I think it's probably a good point to just reintroduce myself.
In case you didn't know me or maybe you've joined the podcast recently, I was born in Scotland.
But as you can probably notice, I don't have a Scottish accent.
I actually moved back down to England when I was about three months old.
Spent all of my life in England, growing up there, a very small town outside of Oxford.
Nothing very special about where I came from at all.
Then after that, I also lived in Liverpool where I studied and went to university.
Before then, I moved to Madrid.
That might be why I have a hard accent to place.
Sometimes people say okay, you have a really clear accent, really neutral accent, but I can't really place where you're from.
So that is my history in a nutshell.
Anyway, as I was saying on the train back And it was the 7th of January, I think, something like this
So a normal working day in the UK.
So it's a commuter train, which means there's lots of people that work in London and then they commute back during the day.
You might even have a colleague that does something similar.
Lots of people on the train and there was this guy and he was on the phone.
He was obviously having a business call and, to the delight of everybody on the train, was having an extremely loud business call which probably annoyed everybody else.
But, as you know from previous episodes where I talked about this, I thought perfect, this is great.
I'm just going to whip out my phone and I'm going to start taking some notes.
So that's exactly what I did.
I thought I'm going to share it with you, and I'll tell you some of the natural phrases that they use, so that you can understand them next time you hear them.
So from what I could make out, this was more or less what the conversation was about.
I'm going to make an assumption here that I think he was maybe in sales or some kind of job.
He was talking about a deal.
And from what I could make out, they were talking about a big deal.
Now, when I say from what I make out, that means from what I understand...
They had a big deal because he said this.
He said, oh, I'm absolutely buzzing.
I'm absolutely buzzing, to be honest.
It's a really big deal.
To be buzzing is very colloquial.
I think probably quite British.
And I would say even maybe the south part of the UK and England.
I'm not sure.
But anyway, you can literally imagine a bee buzzes, right?
But it moves its little wings really fast.
So it's like that's that's a buzzing sound.
If somebody says they're buzzing, it means they're really excited.
It's very colloquial.
So I'm going to imagine this person was talking to somebody that they know very well.
Like you're not going to ring up your CEO or shareholder and be like, I'm absolutely buzzing.
Well, maybe, I don't know.
I guess it depends on the relationship that you had.
So he's really excited, which is great.
I mean, he was telling the whole train about this.
Then he talks about a presentation, I think, that they had to do the next day to a client.
So he says buddy, which is another way to call somebody a friend in a very colloquial setting, in a business context.
He said, buddy, you are going to smash it out of the park.
You are going to smash it out of the park.
I thought, oh my goodness, I have to talk about this because if somebody said this to you, one of your British colleagues you'd be like okay, I got the smash par and I got park.
I'm pretty sure.
What am I supposed to do with that?
What does it mean?
Well, remember if you've listened to some of these episodes before.
If you haven't, I'm going to give you a baseball reference.
And there's another term in business English, which is, can you give me a ballpark figure?
This means an estimate.
And the origin of this phrase is when they were at the stadiums where they were playing baseball in the US.
They would try to estimate the number of people in the ballpark where they were playing baseball.
And that would be the ballpark figure.
This is another reference to baseball.
And you know, like in the movies where they throw, is it pitch or throw?
I don't really know, but they throw them the ball or serve.
Like, God, I don't even know.
They throw them the ball and then they whack it.
And then you know when it goes out of the park, like it's so far, like they hit it so far that I don't know if that's like a home run or something.
Well, that's where this phrase comes from.
So if somebody says you're going to smash it out of the park, it's like you're going to do a fantastic job.
You're going to do really well.
And you might even hear people say, you're going to smash it, which is kind of a shortened version.
So that's where it comes from.
When you look at the origin it actually starts to make sense, because at face value you're like, oh my goodness, like I've got no idea what it means.
Again, very colloquial.
You're certainly not going to say in a formal context like oh buddy, you're going to smash it out of the park.
You might say something like, I think you'll do a very good job.
I think you will definitely be capable of doing this.
Anyway, our friend on the train let's call him John Didn't actually talk to this guy obviously, because that would be a little bit weird, wouldn't it?
If I was like, oh, well, just taking notes for my business English podcast.
I think he might think I was a bit weird.
Then he switches to some specifics.
So he starts asking the other person on the end of the line a couple of questions.
So he says, so Michael, and I'm assuming they're talking about the deal here.
So Michael, what's the timeframe on that deal?
And I thought I've been waiting for the opportunity to talk about this noun because it's one that comes up a lot in business English but often I don't think is used, or maybe you feel a bit nervous about using it because you're like okay well, what's the difference between timeline timeframe schedule, timetable?
So let's break it down right now.
The important thing to keep in mind here is they're all about time management in business.
But the key thing to distinguish them is, are you describing how long something takes?
What happens when?
The exact dates or a fixed routine?
For example, let's start with timeframe.
That question that he asked, what's the timeframe on that?
I want you to think about timeframe as like a window.
It tells you how much time you have, but not what happens inside it, right?
So imagine a sentence could be we're going to aim to complete the project within a six month timeframe.
It's a general window.
Then if we think about timeline.
I want you to think about that like a story.
It's the story of a project.
It shows what happens first, next and last.
Time frame doesn't do that.
So you could say according to the project timeline, which again sets out what happens first, next last,
The testing is going to come before the final rollout, obviously.
Otherwise, that would be kind of the wrong way around, right?
Then if we look at schedule, you can think about the schedule as like a calendar.
You have a schedule, for example, your work schedule, the thing where people book meetings and they take up all your time, and you have not even five minutes to take a breather during the day.
It shows exact dates and times.
So your schedule will fill up probably during the week and your schedule is always different, right?
It's not a routine.
And that's important.
Because if you think about timetable, a timetable is about a routine.
It's something that's fixed and it repeats.
So imagine maybe you work on a project where they have a weekly reporting timetable.
Every Friday morning
Now, you could say schedule here and I would understand you as well, but that's the difference.
It's fixed and it usually repeats.
We also use it in different contexts.
Timetable is quite common in a school and education context.
If you have kids, they'll probably have a timetable of lessons because it's fixed.
It's a routine.
It repeats.
Whereas, on the other hand, a schedule changes.
It's still got exact dates and times, but it changes depending on the project or situation.
Both are about giving exact dates and times, but schedules move and shift, but timetables don't.
Let me give you a paragraph example then, including all those words, but talking about the same project.
So you could say we're working within a six-month timeframe.
The window and the timeline includes design, then testing and finally we'll do the rollout.
The detailed schedule that you have confirms the launch meeting is on the 15th of June and we have an internal timetable which requires weekly progress updates every Monday.
Okay.
Then John starts to move the conversation along.
And really at this point I mean he's like the gift that keeps on giving, because he mentions a phrase I've actually wanted to talk about before on the podcast.
The context to this is he's mentioning that there's a problem that they need to sort out.
I think it's with a client or maybe somebody in the team.
But he's nervous about bringing it up.
And he says you know, we really need to sort this out, but I don't really know how to broach it with them.
I don't really know how to broach it with them.
First things first.
Let's look at the spelling, because it might be hard to pin it down just from hearing me say it.
The pronunciation is broach, to broach something with somebody.
And it's B-R-O-A-C-H.
It's quite an unusual verb.
It's definitely not one of these kind of classic core verbs that you're going to be hearing.
But it means essentially to bring something up, but something that is sensitive delicate, difficult.
So what he's saying, I don't really know how to broach it with them.
I don't really know how to bring it up with them because it's a difficult topic.
This word has a really interesting origin and I want you to stay with me here because it's going to make more sense as to what it means.
Way back in the 14th century.
To broach means to make a hole in something, to pierce something like a barrel of wood with beer inside.
You would broach it and that would extract the liquid.
And also you have another noun, which is a brooch, which is something with a pin that you can put on your clothing.
Sometimes people wear brooches on scarves as kind of a decorative item, an accessory to their outfit.
Right.
As time went on it evolved to take on a different meaning, which is not only the literal meaning of making a hole in something to extract the liquid, but almost like popping a balloon.
Imagine you know the elephant in the room and then you pop it, you make a hole in the balloon and it bursts and you bring it to everybody's attention.
It kind of took on that new meaning of broaching a topic is bringing something up sensitive and difficult that could cause potentially some conflict.
So I don't know how to broach it with them.
I don't know how to bring it up with them.
That brings us to the end of the episode then.
And I hope that you enjoyed the first episode of Anna Reports.
You've learned some new phrases which hopefully, if you hear them now, you'll be able to connect the meaning and not feel lost, which helps you feel more confident going into conversations with native speakers.
What can you do now?
You can sign up to my weekly newsletter, which will be coming around this Friday, and you will get a written summary of the key points from this episode.
I would also recommend if you found it challenging or you want to do a bit of a deep dive, you can go into the transcript of this episode.
The link to do that also is below in the episode description.
Thanks as always for tuning in and making Confident Business English part of your week.
It was great to be here with you and I will see you same time, same place next week.
Bye-bye.
