This is the Business English Podcast, episode 166.
Back to the drawing board, starting over in English.
Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English.
Get the English skills you need to achieve your dreams in global business.
For a presentation, a meeting, or your office party, this is Real Business English with your favorite American hosts, Lindsay and Michelle, coming to you from New York City and Colorado, USA.
Still translating in your head when you speak English?
It's time to change that. The Connected Communicator course from All Ears English helps you train your ear, speak naturally, and finally connect with real people.
In our tailored study plan, you'll hear unscripted interviews from tattoo artists to entrepreneurs from all across America. and you'll use new AI tools to practice speaking anytime you want.
No more stiff, scripted English. Build confidence, fluency, and cultural insight all in one course.
Plus, get real-life speaking experience at our Open Conversation Club every single week and build community with Allers English teachers and students.
Go to allersenglish.com slash connection to save $50 this week only.
Offer ends August 10th. allearsenglish.com slash connection.
Hey, Lindsay, how are you? Awesome. I'm feeling great today.
What's going on in your world, Michelle?
Not too much, not too much. Lindsay, do ideas sometimes not pan out in the business world?
Yeah, all the time. Oh my gosh. We've had so many ideas over the years and a lot of them don't pan out ultimately.
Right, Michelle? Yeah. Yeah. What does that even mean to pan out?
I think of panning for gold because I'm over here in mining country out here in Colorado, right?
Yeah. So it just means it doesn't work out.
Maybe you have a trade idea. It's no follow through.
Yeah. No follow through. Or for some reason you find out that you can't execute on this idea and your company just changes course.
Right. Yeah. Could be a bunch of reasons.
Yeah. For sure. For sure. So today we're going to talk about what you can say if someone throws out an idea that isn't great or maybe about yourself if you tried something and need to change the plan because something isn't working, something isn't panning out.
Yes, I love that idea. And there is a key expression that we're going to talk about.
But first, I want to remind our listeners that they should hit follow right now on this podcast.
Why, Michelle? What does that do for our listeners? make it easy on yourself.
Let the podcast episodes come to you. You don't have to search for them.
They'll just come right to you when they're out.
It's so much easier. You don't want to forget about Allers English.
Don't forget about Business English. Get into the habit of listening with us.
We show you how to connect as a human being in the working world, always coming back to connection, not perfection.
So hit that follow button now, guys. All right, Michelle.
So what is this expression that we're going to go for today?
This expression is a Back to the drawing board.
Yes. Where do we use this expression typically?
Well, I mean, this is great for work. I mean, it can be used outside of work as well.
But this is good for meetings, a large meeting, a small meeting, or even you might say it to yourself sometimes, right?
For sure. Oh, my gosh. I think I've said this like three times this week.
I mean, yeah. Ideas are cheap. They say in the business world, ideas are cheap execution.
I mean, how many people had the idea for Lyft or Uber or Airbnb?
Lots of people. Right. But it's just, are you able to execute?
It's like one in a million. They are able to actually really go for it and make it happen.
Right. Yeah. That's okay. That's just business.
Right. Exactly. Exactly. So we're going to talk about this more in a second.
But guys, we had just recently we had episode 156 was can you use howdy in business English?
So that's a fun one to listen to to learn about greetings.
Yeah. So go ahead and listen to that one after this.
So But now let's get back to the back to the drawing.
Get back to the drawing board. Let's give our listeners a little sample sentence here, Michelle, when it comes to how do we actually use that?
And here it is. So that didn't work for Q2, unfortunately.
So back to the drawing board. Right. And there's a little bit of an intonation here.
Right. So back to that. There's some enthusiasm, hopefully.
Yeah. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So that's just saying we'll think of another idea.
We'll start over and that's fine. Lindsay, how do you know if an idea isn't working or if maybe you need to come up with something else?
I mean, I think ultimately as a business, we can always come back to revenue, right?
Or conversion rates. And we're talking about marketing, like how many people are actually buying this product or are people catching on to this?
Are they excited about it? What's the temperature in the room around this concept, right?
And we have to be honest with ourselves.
I guess this is similar to the theme that we were talking about over at All Ears English, self-honesty, right?
Being honest. And this is the version of it with the business.
Like if something is not going well, we need to go back to the drawing board, try again, right?
Don't get attached to things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, that's hard. That's a real life skill is being able to know when to just drop things.
Because you might get attached to the idea of something.
You might like it and think, oh, you know, you really love this.
This is your baby. It's your, you know, idea.
But in the end, if it doesn't work, you have to, ah. it kind of hurts, right?
Oh my gosh. We fall in love with our ideas every day, right?
Like our live events. We loved our live events, but we haven't quite been able to figure out how do we make that a permanent part of all ears English, right?
In terms of the amount of work it takes to plan those live events is just unbelievable.
Yeah. And so I'm still hopeful, Michelle, but for now we have gone back to the drawing board and gone more to working on the app and the podcast and other things.
Maybe in the next year or two, we'll reinvent our live events and they'll be a little bit different in format, but we'll still get to meet our listeners live.
Right. So that's a good example. That would be so great.
That would be so great. So, yeah, I mean, could it ever be a bad thing to use this?
I mean, I think it's better. I personally think it might be better to use it about yourself or maybe if you're a manager, like I wouldn't say this to your boss about your boss.
Like if you're saying it about like, oh, if you're saying like, oh, back to the drawing board about yourself, that's one thing.
But like if your boss has an idea and you I wouldn't say that.
I don't know. Right. Right. Yeah. Like as a way of responding to the boss's idea, you mean like, yeah.
Oh, I don't like that idea. Let's go back to the drawing board.
Yeah, probably not. We need to know where we are in a company and just the vibe of the company.
You know, I think these days organizations are becoming a little more horizontal for sure.
And everyone's voice is getting heard more and more.
But yeah, You have to fully explore an idea before you can go back to the drawing board.
Right, Michelle? Exactly. And yeah, it's about, oh, that's tricky to know.
Like, when is it time to say to go back to the drawing board?
But I mean, I think it's just all about being humble and knowing when it's time to just try something new.
For sure. Abercrombie's Viral Denim Sale is back.
And Spotify listeners get an extra 15% off with code SPOTIFYAF.
Abercrombie is known for their denim. With 30-50% off all jeans, find out how denim should feel.
Shop the viral denim sale in the Abercrombie app, online or in stores.
Valid in stores and online through August 11, 2025 in US and Canada.
Excludes clearance, price reflects discount.
Code valid in US and Canada through August 11, 2025.
Exclusions apply. See details online. Self-honesty.
That is the key. I think that's the theme of our recording day today.
Yeah, it really is. It's funny how that happens.
Isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is funny.
So how else can you express this idea? What are some other things we can say?
Okay. Back to square one. I like this one.
Very common too. Let's go back to square one and brainstorm.
And sometimes it's refreshing. You know, you clear your whiteboard, erase everything off and let's start fresh.
You know, exactly, exactly. Or call it quits.
So this is a little bit different. This is just saying like, we're done with this.
So this is, but you could say, let's call it quits on this and try something new.
Yeah, for sure. For sure. Or start from scratch.
Let's start from scratch. Do you have any new ideas?
Right? Yeah. Yes. And I think especially when this episode is airing, I believe we're in October here, the fall is a good time.
Kids are going back to school. If you run a business or if you're part of a company, it's kind of a Time in which we're sort of cleaning things out.
You know what I mean? And I think it all is English.
We're reevaluating a few tasks that we do, whether or not do we need to keep doing all of these tasks?
Do they really help our bottom line? Do they move our company forward?
Maybe not. Maybe time would be better spent in another way.
That's a great, healthy conversation to have.
For sure. Yeah, for sure. It's a good time of year to think about those kinds of things.
But yeah, I think that people do get very attached to their ideas.
They, you know, not sure, not sure when to let go of something.
I know. I mean, even for me, like, I remember writing papers in school or something like that.
Oh, I know. I have an example. Now I've been recording a lot of videos on our Instagram or Facebook, and sometimes I'm trying to stick to a certain time limit.
And so I'll think, oh, no, this is good.
But I just have to cut it like I have to kind of be brutal and say, no, I need to cut this section because, you know, it's it's not going to fit the time.
So you just have to know when to say, OK, it's OK.
Like, yeah, not everything can work. That's a good point.
Yeah. That shows like maturity and getting better at your craft, right?
Kind of editing sort of, right? Good editing.
Editing. I think it's easier to edit somebody else's work and to say, this is needed than to do it on your own.
Right. We get attached to things. We get attached because we think they're so unique and so great.
It's like, oh no, but I need this. Yeah.
That's a good point. Yeah. So let's do a role play.
Lindsay, here we are in a meeting and we are coworkers.
Right. Okay, so I loved our marketing idea, but it didn't work.
I know. I guess it's back to the drawing board.
Yeah, we should just call it quits on this.
It seems so promising, though. I know. Well, I guess let's just start from scratch.
Yep. It's back to square one. Okay. Nice.
I like that. So maybe we said, hey, we're going to start marketing on TikTok, right?
And just for example, just to be more specific, right?
I love that TikTok idea, but it just didn't work, right?
I think a lot of people are finding that TikTok is maybe not the marketing channel they thought it was, right?
It's different than that. And so that would be a practical example.
So what did we use here, Michelle? Okay.
Well, I said, I guess it's back to the drawing board.
And remember that intonation back to the drawing board.
Yep. Important intonation. And then, yeah, we should just call it quits on this.
It seems so promising though. I added though, we didn't have that in the role play and we could revisit this.
Yeah. We could revisit this or maybe in business English and this podcast, we could revisit though the use of though at the end of a sentence.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one. So at the end, I'm taking notes.
And then I said, well, I guess let's just start from scratch.
Yep. And then I say, yep, it's back to square one.
So that intonation is interesting, right?
And you used it too. I guess it's back to the drawing board, right?
So there's a little bit of a sing-songy-ness there.
I don't want to go overboard with it, but it does show a certain, we say like nostalgia.
I don't know what the feeling is there. reluctance and also like just recognizing this is part of life in that intuition.
Yeah. I think it's some sort of like, yeah.
Showing that you're accepting something.
Yeah. In a way. Yeah. Yeah. It's just part of how things go.
I mean, this happens all the time. It's normal.
If we're not going back to the drawing board, we're probably doing a thousand things that aren't working.
Right. Yeah. Which is not good. Yeah. Oh, this was this was fun.
I mean, I think the takeaway is that starting over isn't a bad thing.
It means you tried. And we talk about that mindset all the time on the podcast is, you know, just it's okay if something doesn't work out.
It's all leading you to the next to the next better thing.
It's totally fine. And we've mentioned before, I mean, we don't exist in the Silicon Valley world, but we know that when it comes to startups getting investment, usually investor, like venture capitalists want to invest in people who have actually invested Right.
Right. That is interesting. And it's kind of refreshing.
I mean, I think that's good that I feel like this is becoming more public, like more like more of a I don't want to say trendy thing, but just more common to hear people talking about these failures and why it's good.
And I think that that's just so going to be really helpful also for the next generation.
So. Yeah, for sure. I love it. So let's go on that inspiration today.
It's totally okay to fail. It's good to fail.
And then the question is, do you go back to the drawing board?
Do you get right back up guys and, you know, connect with your ideas, connect with the people around you.
That's the key. Love it. All right. Love it.
All right, Lindsay. Well, I will talk to you soon.
Bye guys. Take care. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
Want more from All Ears English? Don't miss our biggest and best podcast with 8 million monthly downloads.
Just search for the All Ears English podcast and hit follow to get four new episodes per week on fluency, American culture, grammar, and so much more.
Or tap the link in the show notes. Remember, we believe in connection, not perfection when it comes to learning English.
Follow the All Ears English podcast now.
