This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 512.
Get a move on with these business English phrases.
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 aubrey, coming to you from arizona and colorado, usa.
Hey aubrey, how's it going?
This next one's for all you carmax shoppers who just want to buy a car your way, want to check, some Want to pretend you know about engines.
Nah, I'll just chat with CarMax online instead.
Want to get pre-qualified from your couch?
Want to get that car?
You want to do it your way?
Want to drive?
CarMax.
I'm great, Lindsay.
How are you?
Good.
Aubrey, I have a question for you.
You ready?
All right.
Yes.
So is there anything that you've gotten the hang of lately?
Ooh, yes.
I cooked a turkey in my Instant Pot for Thanksgiving.
So that's a pressure cooker.
If anyone has an Instant Pot.
And it's so moist and delicious.
Sometimes turkey can be too dry.
But if you cook it in a pressure cooker...
And you just hit the button.
And then an hour and a half later, it's done.
That's amazing.
That's a major hack.
Did you take the full turkey or did you cut it up and, you know, into pieces?
And like, how did that work?
So I did this last year and I had a small enough turkey that it fit in my Instant Pot.
I did get a bigger 10 quart Instant Pot for it.
But this year, I accidentally bought a turkey that was too big.
So I did have to cut it up.
Yeah, both my smaller Instant Pot.
It was a bit of an ordeal okay, but if you have a small enough turkey the whole thing will just fit right in there, but it worked.
That is such a brilliant hack.
I love that because people do.
I remember when I was a kid my mom would have to get up at like 5 30 in the morning on Thanksgiving morning to put the turkey in the oven, so it would be ready by two or three all day.
All day.
There's so much, oh my gosh.
There's always a moment of stress in every home at Thanksgiving and it's usually when the turkey comes out.
It's related to the turkey.
Right, exactly.
It's like timing and turkey.
Yeah, yeah.
Is it too dry now?
Is it done before all the sides?
And no one even wants turkey anyways, you know what I mean?
When it's dry, no one wants it.
Exactly.
So that's something I have gotten the hang of is making a nice moist turkey.
If you guys have a pressure cooker, try it.
Check it out.
All right.
Okay.
I'll think of that for next year.
Love that.
So today we're here in a part two of a series.
We did part one on idioms with get.
Right.
Did you and Michelle do this one?
Yeah.
Get something off your chest.
I think this was you and I, Lindsay, but you can listen to these out of order.
So stay to the end if you missed that one.
We'll give you details to make sure you hear those as well.
But today we're sharing a few more that we use in business English.
And because this is a series, you obviously don't want to miss any future series.
You never know when we're going to have bonuses that you could miss if you're not following the show.
So hit the follow button now.
Yes, definitely.
Awesome.
Let's dive in.
Our first one is get a move on.
So this is fun.
It means to hurry.
And this is a little bit casual.
So, depending on your relationship with someone you know or, you might say it, about yourself, I need to get a move on.
But it's probably not something you would say to your boss, like get a move on.
Yeah, this is definitely a very casual way to say hurry.
A little casual, a little direct, right?
Right.
Um, so we need to get a move on if we want to finish this proposal by five.
Now you're warning your colleagues.
Maybe it's like four o'clock.
Oh my gosh.
Right.
So if you're included in the group or if you're saying about yourself, then this will always work.
Right.
But to be careful, don't just say it to someone else as a way to hurry them along.
It's a little forceful, a little, a little, um, too informal maybe.
Exactly.
What would be another example?
The client presentation starts in 20 minutes, so I need to get a move on with the slides.
And it's a fun way to say, I need to hurry.
Ooh, I need to hurry with these slides.
Need to hurry, need to hurry.
And then the second one would be get down to business.
I mean we've seen this our listeners may have seen this phrase to start focusing on the most important tasks, right.
Stop kind of messing around, being distracted.
Let's really focus.
Yes.
But what I really love about this is whenever you use an idiom, it does take a little bit of the formality out of things.
So like a business meeting, if you do need to say like okay, you know, let's get serious, or anything else you might say might feel a little too formal or too forced.
Whereas an idiom is just enough more, you know, it's a little more casual.
So that's why we use this a lot.
We hear it a lot.
Yeah, this is even the title of a I'm going to.
This is a free plug for one of our colleagues, our friends over at Down to Business, English right.
There is a whole business podcast called Down to Business English.
I believe that's what it's called.
The host of that show has been on our show.
We've been on his.
And so you see this in titles, you see this.
You know word plays things like that, as well as idioms in spoken English.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
A couple examples here. you know, let's get down to business so we can finish the meeting on time.
It's a good thing to say at the beginning of a meeting.
You know it's the same as like let's get started.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or the CEO always starts our meetings by saying, all right, let's get down to business.
Okay.
That's like their catchphrase.
And then get the hang of something is what I asked you at the very top of the show to learn how to do something after some practice.
So clearly it's something that's new because you're learning it, right?
You haven't used the Instapot for turkey every year since you were young.
It's the first time or second time.
Yeah, I've done it a couple times, but it's interesting.
If you've like, tried to make turkey lots of other ways and you'd be like okay, I'm finally getting the hang of this.
I've figured out a better way to do it.
Yeah, that's really good.
It took me a while, but I finally got the hang of our new CRM system.
And that can be true when your company adopts some kind of software.
That can be hard to get the hang of that sometimes.
Exactly.
And this is a great way to say that instead of like, oh, I'm finally getting used to it.
I finally figured it out.
These all work as well.
But this is just a little more informal.
I finally got the hang of it.
Yeah, I love that.
Or how long did it take you to get the hang of the new invoicing system?
It is overwhelming when you enter a new position, a new company.
You have to learn all of their software, all of their systems.
It is a lot.
Yes.
And sometimes we want to know this when we are learning a new system.
We want to know how long it took other people to get the hang of it, to give ourselves an idea of how long it's going to take us.
Yeah.
To know how you measure up and making sure you're staying here.
If you need to do extra work studying a system on the weekend or something then that's what you have to do.
Right.
To catch up.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
OK.
What would be number four?
All right.
This is our last one.
Get away with something.
So this means like to do something wrong, but without having any serious consequences, without being punished or caught or having there be like disastrous effects.
We need to hit this deadline.
We've already asked for three extensions and we can't get away with that forever.
Right.
It would be a great time to use it.
Right.
It's like, oh, we need to get serious about doing this on time.
We're not going to get away with these extensions forever.
Yeah, exactly.
Or the intern tried to submit incomplete reports, but he didn't get away with it because the manager double checked everything.
So they did.
They took a shortcut that didn't work and they didn't get away with it.
They got caught.
Yeah, that never works.
Right.
Usually not.
Yep.
Yep.
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, Aubrey, we are back from break.
So here we are, coworkers.
We're in a meeting that is just about to begin.
Okay.
Perfect.
I'll start us out.
Okay.
As much as I'd love to keep chatting, we should probably get a move on.
We have a lot to cover.
Sounds good.
Let's get down to business.
All right.
First up, has everyone gotten the hang of the new analytics dashboard?
I know it was tricky.
Yes.
At first I tried to get away with skipping this first screen, but then I realized you have to complete that.
Yes, I did the same thing.
Mm hmm.
Very common conversation.
And so you started off by saying, hey, let's get a move on, meaning let's start the meeting.
And that's OK, because you're in the meeting, too.
Right.
Exactly.
Right.
If I say I need to get a move on or we let's get a move on.
Totally fine.
But if someone else is being slow, I would never say, hey, you, you need to get a move on.
Right.
You wouldn't say, come on, get a move on.
Right.
It would sound rude.
That would be rude.
Yeah, that'd be rude.
What else did I say?
And then you said, sounds good.
Let's get down to business.
So I really like how it's this is really a very positive way of saying this, right?
Let's get started.
Let's get down to business.
It has a pretty positive collocation or pretty positive connotation.
It's kind of fun, right?
It's kind of fun.
And then you said, first up, has everyone gotten the hang of the new analytics dashboard?
And that's a good.
If you are a leader in a meeting, maybe you want to soften what you're trying to say instead of saying does everyone understand?
Yeah.
Or even has everyone figured it out?
There's sort of an implication with both of those that it was difficult.
People were taking too long.
This doesn't have that implication.
It's less condescending.
Yes.
I love it.
I agree.
Yeah.
And then you said first I tried to get away with skipping that first screen, but then I realized you have to.
So this is often, it's not that we're trying to take unnecessary shortcuts or cheating anything.
Often it's this, we're trying to get away with saving time.
And then we sometimes find out it doesn't work.
Trying to find hacks.
Every software system has its own little tricks and hacks and things you can do, things you can't do.
And so that's what you were trying to figure out, right?
Exactly.
Exactly good episode today, just because these phrases just come up a lot right, Aubrey?
Yeah, I use them a lot, all of them, but be sure not to miss part one.
This was episode 506.
It was do you get the short end of the stick at work?
And we taught other phrases with get, get off on the wrong foot, get something off your chest.
So scroll up if you missed that one.
Yeah, And I think for a takeaway today, I really think the word get and any phrases that come after it probably make up what do you think, Aubrey?
Like 65 of English?
There are so, so, so many.
Yes.
So this is a smart use of your time to study idioms and collocations like this with get.
Yes, especially where they often do something for you, like removing the awkwardness or removing the condescension.
Like you said, there often is a reason that we've come up with these other phrases because the original verb has some kind of implication we don't want.
And we really kind of have to be wordsmiths at work, especially if we're in a leadership position.
We need to make sure we understand how the words we're choosing could impact people.
Right.
So there's a lot to be done here.
For sure.
Yes, exactly.
These phrases are going to help you build connection at work.
So definitely practice using them.
All right, Aubrey, you have a good rest of your day.
I'll see you soon.
Awesome.
See you next time.
Bye.
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.
