This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 4.
How to become a more powerful business professional in English.
Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English.
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Hey guys, welcome to all ears English. We have a guest on the show today.
Today we have Leanne. Leanne, welcome. How are you doing?
I'm doing great. How are you, Lindsay? Excellent.
I heard you were based in Texas. Where in Texas are you based?
I am in Fort Worth, Texas, which is outside of Dallas.
Oh, very nice, very nice. It's a hot part of the country, right?
Definitely, yes. We have a long summer here.
We're still in summer. Oh, we should have you on another time to talk about the Texan accent.
I guess we'll have to talk about that a different day.
Right, right. So Leanne, so you are a business English professional, right?
You work with students who are wanting to become kind of more powerful in the business space.
Can you tell us a little bit about the students that you work with and some of the things that they're struggling with?
Sure. today, you know, is so competitive in the global market.
And it's really important to have strong business skills.
And so I have several students coming to me who possibly work at a company.
Maybe they work for a company. They are located in Brazil, but their counterparts are in the U.S.
And they feel very anxious when they have to have meetings, have Skype talks, have meetings. different meetings and have to email these counterparts.
They get anxious. They feel like they don't really know the language as well as they should.
They have trouble with writing emails and things like that.
So that's why I'm here to help them. Yeah, I think that's really going to ring true with our listeners because a lot of our listeners are in that same place.
They feel like sometimes their job is even on the line when it comes to using English at work, right?
They have these amazing professional skills.
We have engineers in our community here at All Ears English.
We have you know, doctors, lawyers, but when they're at work working in English, they feel like even just one email could really kind of set things in the wrong direction for their professional reputation.
So it feels like a lot is at stake, doesn't it, Leanne?
Absolutely. They feel a lot of pressure.
And like you said, sometimes their jobs can even be on the line if they don't perform to a level that they need to in English.
Okay. So that's why we've brought you in today.
And we would love it if you would share with our listeners, our business professional listeners, what the three kind of secrets are to being a more powerful business professional in the business space abroad, right?
In an English speaking country, or even if they're in their home countries and they're dealing with colleagues, partners in the US or in the UK, for example.
Exactly right. So the first thing that I like to encourage my students to do is to really study the vocabulary that they need for their particular field.
The vocabulary and idioms are so important.
For example, if they're in the insurance field, they need to know words like liability, premium, policy.
If they're in the legal field, they need to know words like sentencing, brief, plead.
And, of course, there are so many business idioms that we use that are not familiar, such as if someone says, you need to think outside the box.
You need to be creative, more creative. Or take the bull by the horns is one that students often say.
What is take the bull by the horns? And, of course, that means... to be aggressive, to take responsibility for a project or situation.
So it's important that these students know this jargon, the vocabulary and idioms pertinent to their field in business.
Yeah, I like that. I see that in advice in kind of two different buckets.
There's the general business vocabulary, right?
Idioms like take the bull by the horn, and those are used across most fields in English.
And then there are the very specific... vocabulary where in that case, I would recommend that our listeners find a specialist in that field, right?
We've had a few weeks ago, we had a lawyer, a former lawyer on the show.
So if you guys are in the legal field and you feel like you need to expand your vocabulary in the legal area, work with a former lawyer, work with a former doctor, work with people who have been in that field.
But for the general idioms and expressions, you could work with someone who has the general business experience, right, Leanne?
That's correct. That's exactly right. And another thing I always encourage them to do is listen to podcasts like All Ears English.
And also there are some specific podcasts for specific fields.
You know, Marketing Smarts is one, you know, for marketing.
Yeah. I always encourage them and I do a lot of TED Talks in my lessons where I'll have them listen to a specific TED Talk about how to transform business or there is one, the business logic of sustainability.
These TED Talks give great tips. They help with their sentence structure, vocabulary, grammar, and fluency.
Yeah. I love those. Abercrombie's Viral Denim Sale is back.
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Exclusions apply. See details online. Yeah, they're also very inspiring, aren't they?
Yes, definitely. There's some very inspiring TED Talks that give great ideas.
Great. I love that. So what are some other resources in terms of reading or listening that you recommend that your students or our listeners could check out?
Well, as far as business reading, I encourage them to really read the magazines and newspapers that... are out there.
There are so many good ones. They can read articles from Forbes, Fortune, Businessweek, The Economist, depending on their field.
Again, if they're like legal, they would probably do the ABA, the American Bar Association Journal.
Right. And another thing that I encourage them to do is go out and research companies that they're maybe similar to their company or companies that they're maybe wanting to get a job with in the future or that type of company.
For example, I've had students research the business plan of Microsoft or Amazon or Pepsi and see what strategies they use.
What are their business plans? Yeah, well, that would be especially important if we're looking to get a job with those places, right?
We obviously, if we're applying for a job with Facebook or with Apple, we need to go in there knowing their business model and what they're doing, maybe their newest kind of initiatives to bring in new users, right?
We really need to know that like the back of our hand.
Right. And I have them look up the companies, like you said, look up their business plans, research them, and then we'll do some mock interviews and I'll ask them questions, you know, pertaining to that company.
Okay, so you do a little bit of interview preparation in addition to just the general business English.
Absolutely. If they're looking to get a job, I have a lot of students who are looking to change jobs, and we do a lot of interview prep, which is great.
Oh, I like that. I like that. Okay. So, so far your advice has been to be able to talk the talk of your specific field.
I love that expression, talk the talk, understand the vocabulary, not just of general business English, but also obviously of your specific niche.
And your second tip was to immerse yourself in materials and read about the business, the field that you're going into, just understand and immerse yourself in materials.
So what would be your tip to become kind of more powerful professionals in the English speaking space.
Yes. My third tip, Lindsay, is about writing, especially business emails.
Students tend to want to write maybe too long, like they're writing an essay.
But when you're writing a business email, you really want to make sure that it's brief, it's to the point, it's formal, and it's polite.
But it shouldn't be more than about five sentences because you want to show the recipient that you value their time and you know everybody's busy.
And so you don't want to write an essay.
You want to get right to the point. You want to have accurate wording.
It should be formal. It should have no mistakes with spelling or grammar.
You want to make sure it's accurate and even read it aloud before you hit that send button, because as you know, once you hit that send button, it's gone.
It's gone. That's right. You know, this is so I'm so glad you brought this up, the writing effective emails.
And I think we could have you on the show again just to talk about emails.
This might be the single biggest cultural difference in business.
It's very true what you said. I just want to highlight again what you said, that people don't want you to waste their time.
Time is such a commodity here. And whether we like that, respect that or agree with that, it really is irrelevant what we think about that.
It's just true. It just is the way it is, especially when you're dealing with a business person in places like Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., the big cities.
You just can't waste their time. So I really like your tips here, Leanne.
Have you seen your students make mistakes with this?
Yes, they have. And so I really encourage them and we practice to practice getting to the point immediately.
So when you're writing an email, you know, dear Mr. Smith, I sent you the proposed budget last week on our advertising.
I would like to see if we can meet via Skype today, this afternoon at 345 to discuss some budget items.
I look forward to your reply. Respectfully yours, you know, and your name.
It should be brief, to the point. and not wordy.
Exactly. I like that. And there are certain phrases that we can use and drop into our emails to remain polite.
Like I look forward to receiving your reply, for example.
Right. And so we can mix in just being direct and to the point with using those kind of pleasantries or those nice phrases that maintain the rapport.
Exactly. It's a balance of being pleasant and accurate and formal.
Yeah, we're going to have to go into this again.
I really like this topic and we don't talk about it enough on this show because we know that all of our listeners are writing emails.
Many of them are writing them in English and we want to conquer this area.
But thank you so much, Leanne. This has been great.
So just to recap again, we need to learn to talk the talk, understand the vocabulary of business and of our field, immerse ourselves in materials and read about our field and also get the emails down.
Understand how to write an effective, concise email.
I love it. That is the way to be a powerful business professional.
Any final words of wisdom for our listeners who are trying to break into the business scene in English?
I'd say start out with a lot of research, researching the companies you're interested in and what they're doing.
And you can pull up so many things on the Internet today.
You can pull up some sample emails, you know, from companies.
Also, interviewing skills are so important if you're trying to change jobs.
So I would encourage, you know, taking lessons, learning how to make a resume, an effective resume, learning how to write a cover letter, interview skills are so important also.
Absolutely. There's a lot to learn. So we want to make sure we invest in our success because just relying on free materials is not going to get us to where we want to be with our career goals, right?
That's right. Yeah. And so to that end, we want to encourage our listeners to go on over and check out Leanne's business English class.
You have a specific class here that is just for business English and it looks like it's pretty popular.
You've taught this session quite a bit. So let's So for our listeners, guys, if you want to book a time to work with Leanne on your business English skills to become more powerful, your first step, step one is to go to allearsenglish.com forward slash I-T-A-L-K-I.
If you register there as a new user, you'll get $10 off your second lesson with Leanne.
Your second step is to go to Leanne's profile and book your lesson.
Leanne, can you tell us how to find your profile on italki?
Sure. Well, you'd go to italki.com and you can do it a couple of ways.
You can search for different languages and scroll through.
But a little bit easier if you're looking specifically for me is you can go to italki.com slash italki. teacher.
And my number is 1244791. That's my profile number.
Good, good. So just to say that one more time, it's italki.com forward slash teacher forward slash 1244791.
And they will see a photo of you there and they can go ahead and book that session.
Wow, this is great. There's so much to learn when it comes to business English.
And it's the little nuances that make the difference in our success, isn't it, Leanne?
It's so true what you said, Lindsay. Yeah.
Well, thanks so much for coming in. We appreciate your tips here and we hope to see you again on the show soon.
Thank you. I appreciate the time, Lindsay.
Have a wonderful day. Thanks a lot. Have a good day.
Thanks. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
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