This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 481.
Make a push to learn these business phrases.
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Hey, Michelle, how are you?
I'm doing well, Aubrey.
I'm excited to record with you again.
Guys, Lindsay is away on vacation and she'll be back soon.
But Aubrey, is All Ears English or Business English, are we making a push to have any new courses?
Yes, we've been working hard on Professional English Level 2.
It's an amazing course.
I can't wait for you guys to check it out.
But this is an interesting way to ask that.
Are we making a push?
Making a push.
Yeah.
So...
We are going to be talking about a common way that's used frequently in business to talk about goals and plans.
So yeah, this is going to be fun today.
Aubrey, I'm excited.
So guys make sure that wherever you listen to the Business English podcast, please hit the follow button.
Yes.
And this is interesting because we use push a lot, right?
At work, like I'm pushing to get something done.
I'm pushing my teammates to work harder, right?
It's crazy how often we use this verb.
Right, and it's not about physically pushing.
I hope it shouldn't be.
But yeah, if you say a push to do something, right?
So I said, is Allers English making a push to have any new courses?
So what does that mean?
When you say a push, an effort, right?
So if you're thinking about actually pushing something hard, you're going to have to put in effort.
We use this idiomatically.
I mean, like, are we putting a lot of effort into something?
Right.
So we often hear things like push yourself to do something, right?
I'm pushing myself to exercise, but I lack motivation.
Right?
But the way we use it when we say a push as a noun, it's a similar idea.
It's putting effort in.
But it's more than a little effort, Aubrey.
It's really in business, especially trying to reach a goal.
Especially it might be kind of quickly or in a very strong way right, Aubrey?
Yeah, we often hear about this toward the end of a project.
Say we really need to push here at the end, or we need to have an extra push, right?
We're talking about trying to maybe meet a deadline.
We have to really make a push here at the last minute.
Right, right, right, right.
But it could also be used to just talk about, you know, putting extra effort as a whole.
Right.
It could be more about a bigger picture.
So putting extra funds into something, extra time, maybe extra people hiring more people.
So it's.
It's often in this kind of a way, I would say it more comes from the top, right?
Decisions that they're making, leaders, supervisors.
So let's just give some examples of different ways you may use this.
So Aubrey, what's the first one?
My supervisor wants us to make a big push.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye. okay, we got to, you know, we need a big push here to get it done.
We were always behind schedule.
So I heard this a lot.
Yeah, huge in the news industry with all the deadlines, deadlines.
Oh my gosh.
Um, so here's a slightly different way, right?
Maybe the other way we were talking about.
So our company is making a push to increase sales by 15% this quarter.
So we were putting a ton of money into marketing.
So this isn't necessarily about a deadline right away towards the end of the project.
This is more big picture, you know, talking about the quarter and big moves that we're making.
So that's interesting.
Yeah.
Push to increase sales, maybe a push to increase the team, like a hiring event.
Any effort that's made can be called a push, whether it's like big picture, like this or, you know, an individual pushing to meet a deadline correct, right.
So yeah, i mean, for all there's english, for business english.
We might make a push to make new courses speak to more listeners, create more content, right.
So it can be, again, that just on a specific project or long-term goals.
But Aubrey, would you use this in your personal life?
Oh yeah, we hear this a lot in sports.
If, like a runner will say this, they need to push at the end or make a push at the end, especially like marathon, long distance running.
I remember when my daughter was playing soccer.
And the kids, like if they're tired toward the end, one game, there were no subs.
There were no extra players.
So they were running the whole time.
This is totally something my daughter's coach would have said, like, you guys just got to push.
We got to make a push to finish the game.
Right.
Well, I mean yeah, that's a good example for sports, because you could also use it in the more long term sense.
Like I'm thinking in the offseason for an NBA team or a football team.
The moves that they're making is all because they want to make a big push this year for the championship.
Right.
So it could also be used for that long term goal.
So it's kind of interesting a different way that maybe you're not so used to.
We're not so used to hearing it, but it's very useful for business, for both short and long term goals.
Very interesting.
I feel like I use this very recently.
I was talking to my daughter about this.
She's really needing to make a push to get good grades in high school because she's very close to getting a scholarship.
And if she can get like really good grades this last semester, then she could hit it.
Right.
So it's like you got to really make a push to improve, to work harder, to improve your grades.
So that's the kind of thing, too.
Right.
Anytime we're talking about performance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, we wish her a lot of good luck.
So you're about to make a trade based on a friend's text.
But which you do you listen to?
Is it, we could buy a house in Tulum.
Get optioning those options.
We could lose everything.
Or let's do a little research.
Get your head in the trade and make the investment decision that's right for you.
Learn more at FINRA.org slash trade smart.
Okay.
All right, Aubrey.
So what else could we say?
What are some similar ideas for business?
Yeah.
So if you're running a campaign that's more like an actual project, you might say we're running a campaign to get people to refer friends to our company.
So, yeah, this instead of saying like we're making a push, we'll often say this.
We're running a campaign means a big project.
It's the specific thing that's being done.
Right.
There's also an initiative.
So our company is making an initiative to cut spending by 5% this year.
Yeah, that's really good too.
These are so, they're definitely bigger, right?
Like an individual employee who's like at the newspaper, is a good example where we wouldn't say a campaign, we wouldn't say an initiative, because these are individual tasks that we're pushing to complete on time.
But when it's a bigger project, these are perfect, a campaign, an initiative.
The campaign, I always think of politics, right?
When it's long term, it's going to be several months.
But at work as well, when we are running a big campaign, there's a lot going into it.
Right, right, right, right.
Or one more is a concerted effort.
Do you ever hear that, Aubrey?
Definitely.
Yeah.
Like my team is making a concerted effort to save money on office supplies.
That sort of means we're all in it together, right?
We're working collaboratively to meet a goal.
Right.
So Aubrey, which one of these would you say you're most likely to use?
Hmm, I like concerted effort.
And I do say that, right?
I'll say it with even with my kids.
I know it sounds very formal.
But if maybe we're in on like a road trip and everyone's complaining, I might be like, all right, we need a concerted effort to have positive attitudes here.
That's hilarious.
Yeah, I think I like to make a push.
I don't know, but they're all good.
They're all useful in their own ways.
So on that note, should we put them all together in a role play?
Yeah, let's do it.
You and I are meeting about our company's plans for the next quarter in this role play.
Okay.
So I think we need to make a concerted effort to really increase sales by at least 4%.
Totally agree.
Maybe we should run a campaign.
Ooh, great idea.
We really need to make an initiative to save more and spend less.
Yeah, I heard our team leader is going to make a push to calculate our costs earlier.
Got it.
Nice.
Yeah.
Talking about goals.
And it's interesting how this is the type of thing where you need more than one way to say this right.
For this conversation.
You can't just keep on saying.
Exactly.
You couldn't say make a push over and over and over, right?
We need a variety of this.
Yeah, you guys are at the level where, of course, you're going to want to learn how to say things in many different ways, to vary things and be interesting when you speak.
Yeah, so you first said we need to make a concerted effort to really increase sales.
So you could say there, we need to make a push to increase sales.
But this is a very professional polished way to say that a concerted effort.
Yeah.
And then you said maybe we should run a campaign.
So a campaign is kind of almost part of a push, right?
If you think about it, might be one idea that you're going to do.
You're going to have an email campaign, you're going to do some sort of special ad or some maybe contest to get.
Clients or whatever it may be.
Yeah, there's a lot of different things that could mean.
It's probably going to be like planning an organization of multiple tasks with goals, benchmarks to meet.
Yeah, yeah.
And then I said we need to really make an initiative to save more and spend less.
Yeah, and this is interesting.
There are two different ways to pronounce this.
This is probably about regional dialects, at least in the United States.
You sort of say like initiative, like there's two syllables and I say initiative initiative oh, really interesting.
So yeah, this is just probably depends on where someone lives.
You're, that's probably maybe more east coast pronunciation, but yeah, both are correct.
I hear both.
Yeah, interesting.
That is funny.
And then what did you say with make a push?
Yeah, I said our team leader is going to make a push to calculate our costs earlier.
So more planning, a strong effort to have some of this available to us earlier.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
So all of these are really useful.
And yeah, you could also, as Aubrey just said, you could say make an effort, a strong effort.
Yeah.
Another way to say that a little less formal.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
So I'm glad you brought that up.
Of course.
So guys, if you haven't yet, check out episode 475 of the Business English podcast.
That's Is Your Job on the Line?
How to Talk About Risk at Work.
Yes, great episode.
And, of course, you guys hit follow if you aren't yet, so that you never miss any of our episodes.
Three episodes every week and bonus episodes that, if you're not following the podcast, you could miss out on some of these.
That's right.
So yeah, takeaway for today, try and use some of these super good, super useful for business.
Use them in a meeting, use them when you're, you know, really planning something very good for that.
Um, but yeah, I think that all of these will help you in your work, uh, and, and personal life.
Yes.
Right.
Make a push to use these phrases.
Yes.
Make a concerted effort.
Sounds like a good, uh, good title.
Awesome.
Thanks guys.
Thanks michelle.
Always fun recording with you all.
Right bye, bye.
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