This is the All Ears English podcast, the best three-step strategy for socializing in English.
Welcome to the All Ears English podcast downloaded more than 200 million times.
Are you feeling stuck with your English?
We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection, with your American host, Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.
You know how important socializing is to your career success and your salary in the long run.
But did you know that there is a specific prep strategy that will ensure your mind never goes blank?
Find out more today.
New year, new you.
But what about your business English?
Are your emails too formal?
Are you still saying could you kindly when native speakers just say can you?
Do you hesitate in conversations because you're not sure what actually sounds natural?
Do you feel awkward jumping into casual work conversations or even small talk?
If you said yes to any of these, your English might be holding you back at work.
This new year, upgrade your confidence with the All Ears English Business English course.
Sound natural, sound confident, and see the results in your career.
You can save up to $100 off the course, but this offer expires January 11th at midnight.
Go to allearsenglish.com slash business to join now.
That's allearsenglish.com slash B-U-S-I-N-E-S-S.
Hey Aubrey, how are you feeling about the new year?
I love a new year.
A fresh start.
What about you?
Yeah, it's good.
It feels good.
It feels fresh.
Do you typically set goals and are you good at doing that for the new year?
I try to, especially exercise goals.
Whenever January 1 hits, I'll like make some really specific exercise goals.
And I'm pretty good with sticking with them, at least for a while.
What about you?
Do you set goals in the new year?
I don't really set personal goals so much, but business goals.
I think we do as a team sometimes or personally I do.
Yeah, yeah. there's got to be something right that we aspire to for the year.
We all feel that way, right?
When we're hitting a new year, like, okay, this is the year that I'm going to make this change.
Yes, for sure.
And so, speaking of goals, I mean one thing for a lot of our listeners.
A big reason our listeners are learning English is to get a salary increase, get a promotion, make more money, right.
We don't talk about this enough, but English skills directly lead to increased salary.
I mean, there's even data.
Can you give us a little bit of the data, Aubrey?
Yes.
A survey by Pearson found that strong English skills can complete as much as an 80 increase in salary.
Imagine what you could do with an 80% increase in salary, Lindsay.
Oh my gosh.
Imagine that.
That's insane.
Right.
So that's why we're here.
I mean, our listeners know this.
They know there's the opportunity.
But how do we reach out and grab?
It becomes the question.
Right, exactly right.
In order to get those promotions, that salary increase, you need to be able to do all of speak up naturally, in a meeting, organize ideas with clarity and confidence, socialize with clients and colleagues.
Yeah, it's true, i mean, socializing is a big part of business success.
It's not just the hard stuff, it's not just the numbers and the charts and the spreadsheets, it's relationships, Right?
And that's what we're focusing on today.
Right.
We are focusing on socializing in English because this is such a key skill to building your network.
Yeah.
And it's a big it's actually a huge focus.
It's a major module inside our business English course.
Right.
And specifically, we go into multiple lessons within socializing and small talk.
But we do teach a three step preparation strategy on how to prepare people for a social interaction, right Aubrey.
Exactly, right?
Like you said, that module is so rich.
We interview a CEO who has had great success building a network.
He has attended so many conferences, has had such great advice.
But yes, we teach this three-step strategy that we're going to share with you today so that you can be prepared to, to build your social network, to be ready for the small talk or building relationships with people that you have met before.
There's so much that goes into this.
And that's one thing that I love about the Business English course.
You're learning not necessarily just from us.
You're learning from the native speakers that we interviewed, and we bring these recordings to you in the course.
In addition, we surveyed.
We got 100 survey responses Aubrey, from people that we know that are active in the business world, of what are the words they're using now.
That came from them.
That didn't come from us or a textbook, right?
And these words were placed into the course.
So good.
Exactly.
Right.
It's amazing course.
I'm excited to share this strategy with you guys today, but we definitely want to make sure that you're aware of our special new year, new me sale of this business English course.
It is live now and you can save up to a hundred dollars on our business English course.
If you go to allearsenglish.com slash business.
Yeah.
And there's lots of new stuff in there too, that we didn't see last year.
There's a new AI prompts and custom chats in there.
There's AI pronunciation feedback and scoring.
There's lots of good stuff that hasn't been in that course in the past.
So go to allersenglish.com slash business.
The offer will expire on January 11th.
That's Sunday coming up very soon.
So guys get in.
All right.
All right.
Let's dive in to share this three-step strategy.
If you have a conference coming up or a meeting, if you know that you're going to be in a situation where you need to socialize, where you're wanting to build those relationships, build that network.
There's so much that you can do in advanced.
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So let's share step one, Lindsay.
Yeah, I mean, the broad step here is what we call opening your brain box, right?
This came up on IELTS Energy originally, but it's a great concept for language learning in general, because you're kind of mentally preparing for this event.
Isn't that what we're doing, essentially, Aubrey?
Yes, exactly, right?
And there are specific questions that you want to think about answer Before the conversation starts right.
Before you go into a meeting or take a conference call, before a work dinner or a party, you want to ask yourself, for example, where will I be?
Like mentally put yourself in that place.
What do I know about this place?
What do people talk about in this situation?
And who will I have a chance to talk to there?
Exactly.
So you are literally mentally rehearsing it.
This came up in a conversation I was having just last night.
The person I was talking to used a word that had come up in a prior conversation we had had two days before.
And I was like, oh, here's why you use that.
The brain box is the reason that word came up.
She wasn't interested in the brain box concept as much as I was.
But but it's like the words are bubbling up.
Things are bubbling up.
Right.
This gives us an opportunity to prepare.
Exactly.
Right.
And when you're thinking about who you'll be talking to, you want to ask yourself you know, what do I already know about them?
Do I already know their job, if they have a family where they live, what they like to do in their free time?
This will help you recall anything they have already told you or give you ideas for questions to ask them.
It's so simple and it seems very elementary, but it's not.
I mean, you can also think about what do I not know about them that I would like to know.
So this will help us prevent the moment that our mind goes blank, which is something I think a lot of our listeners stress out about.
Right.
Absolutely.
Right.
So, for example, if you know someone named Jennifer is going to be there, you'd be thinking OK, she has mentioned that she loves skiing.
So I'm going to ask her when she started skiing and when she went last.
And then you're going to feel confident you're going to be prepared.
You can come up with the phrases you would maybe ask her.
Love it.
And no big deal if it doesn't come up or it doesn't feel like it fits you.
That is totally fine.
We don't have to ask this question.
This is just a mental exercise we're doing to settle ourselves into that moment.
Okay.
Exactly.
All right.
What else do we do? you are going to decide how you're going to start the conversation, right?
This is where we can eliminate awkwardness by knowing ahead of time like okay, I know who I'm going to talk to and how I'm going to start.
And you can take notes about what you might say, write out possible role plays of how the conversation might go.
Just like Lindsay said, it might not go exactly this way.
You might, sort of on the fly, think of a different way.
Something else to comment on to start the conversation.
But this is going to help you build confidence because you have ideas.
It's going to help you be more spontaneous because you know you have a backup plan, right?
You have a little bit of a backup plan of what you could say.
It's going to give us that freedom of mind that I think we're looking for when it comes to speaking and connecting in English.
So here's what it could look like.
You're going to walk up to Jennifer and you're going to say, hey, Jennifer, how's it going?
Then you might say, I remember you told me you love to ski.
How long have you been skiing?
Nice.
And think about how just remembering something someone told you in the past.
Everyone knows you're meeting so many people.
This is going above and beyond, right?
She's going to feel cared about that you remember this.
And it's going to be a fun conversation for her because you're asking about her interests.
It's huge when you remember what someone said before.
Most people or many people just don't do it.
They don't bother to.
They're a little too maybe self-involved or just distracted.
So you can really stand out, remarkably so when you do remember what someone has told you about themselves.
And if you don't do this preparation, you might not be able to do that either, because you might have to sit and think for a little bit to remember who's going to be there and what they've told you.
And if you get there and that's the first time you think about it, you might not recall that she had shared that with you.
Very true.
And then what would be the third step in this process?
All right.
So third comes when you start that conversation, it is to be an active listener, right?
When you ask them a question, listen to the answer, respect the person that you're talking to.
You want to avoid thinking of what you're going to say next and really listen actively.
Yeah.
We get a lot of questions of what should I ask?
What follow-up questions should I ask?
The follow-up questions are right there in what the person's saying.
Right.
If you don't know what your follow up question is, it means you're not really listening.
And this is where it comes back to our philosophy of connection, not perfection.
You can't be focused on perfection while trying to connect the brain.
I believe we believe here that the brain can't do both.
The brain can't be lost in self-consciousness and also be connecting at the same time.
It's so true.
Right.
So this example of Jennifer is a good example. you don't know exactly what she will say.
So you can't write out every you know you could imagine some possibilities, but then you need to be ready to listen.
If she says she started skiing when she was a young child, then you could ask her who she first went with or where she skied, where she lived, and you know how was the snow.
There are all kinds of follow-up questions that could come up depending on how she answers.
Oh, there's so much we could do here.
But a big part of it is giving ourselves that leg up by going through this step of this series of steps of preparation.
It's a system, right?
It's a tactic here.
Exactly right.
There's so much you can do ahead of time to be prepared and to feel confident in that moment.
So follow this three step strategy.
This is straight out of our business course and it works.
And it's just like a tiny, tiny portion of what's in that course, right?
The course is big.
It's robust.
It's ready for you.
It's got new AI practice opportunities right there waiting for you.
And right now this week, you can get up to $100 off depending on your plan choice.
So Aubrey, where can we go to get the deal?
Yes, go to allersenglish.com slash business, B-U-S-I-N-E-S-S.
All right.
Good stuff today.
Great strategy.
And we'll see you back here very soon.
Aubrey, have a good day.
Awesome.
See you guys next time.
All right.
Bye.
Thanks for listening to all ears English.
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