Hey everybody, welcome to another phrasal verb episode.
I hope that you've found these phrasal verb episodes useful so far.
I hope that you've enjoyed learning these phrasal verbs, naturally through repetition, while you're listening.
I think that this is the best way to learn phrasal verbs and that's why I'm making these episodes.
So today, we're going to look at three different phrasal verbs.
The first one is agree on.
So what does this mean?
To agree on something means to agree or share the same opinion about something.
Pretty simple.
So, for example, I could say, we all agree on what our goal should be.
This just means that we share that same opinion.
We agree about this goal.
Okay, so that's the first one.
And then we have two that are similar.
The first one is aim at.
And this means that you intend to achieve something.
But specifically, we like to use this with ing verbs afterwards.
Okay, so for example...
I'm aiming at reducing our costs by 20%.
Okay, so I'm aiming at reducing with ing.
That means that I intend to reduce our costs by 20%.
Okay, so that's how we would use aim at.
And then one other phrasal verb we're going to look at. is aim for.
So this is very similar to aim at.
It means that we plan for something or we intend to achieve something.
However, we use this with a normal noun afterwards.
So for example, we always aim for success.
So in this case, instead of using an ing verb afterwards, we just use a normal noun.
We always aim for success.
So now I'm going to talk about a different topic.
I'm going to talk about different ideas that people have regarding running a successful business.
And I'm going to include these three different phrasal verbs throughout this time that I talk about this topic.
You'll hear me repeat these phrasal verbs multiple times in different sentences.
And so hopefully, by the end you'll have a better feel for these phrasal verbs and you'll feel more comfortable using them correctly in your own sentences.
So let me talk about running a successful business, especially an online business.
That's what I'm more familiar with.
So people have different ideas about this.
People do not agree on all the details, that's for sure.
People definitely don't agree on the details of what it takes to run a successful business.
By the way, we say what it takes to to mean that what is required, what is necessary, what it takes, okay.
So people definitely don't agree on what it takes to run a successful business.
They don't agree on all the details.
And many times people don't even agree on what the goals should be, like what goals we should have.
So people don't agree on the details and they might not even agree on the overall goals, the bigger things.
For example, someone might aim at increasing their revenue by 50%. every two years, for example.
For some people, especially who have an online business, they might view that as their goal.
They might aim at increasing revenue by 50% every two years.
And for them.
If they can't do that, if they aren't able to reach that goal, then they've failed.
Or some people aim at reducing expenditures whenever possible.
For some people, it's really important to always try to cut their costs, to spend less, to not need to use as much money, so that they can keep more money in their business or they can pay themselves more money.
They have more margin, as we might say.
And in general, some people just aim for higher goals than other people.
Some people aim for goals that are a lot higher than than other people's goals.
For example, many people might aim for a seven-figure revenue.
When we say seven-figure, we mean that there are seven digits in the number.
So in other words, a million dollars or more, because if you count the digits, the figures in that number, The number one million, there are seven, right.
So the first one plus six zeros afterwards.
So that's what we mean when we say seven figures.
So some people aim for a seven-figure revenue, right?
And for other people, aiming for seven figures might seem crazy.
They might say, why would I ever need to earn millions of dollars with my business?
That's not necessary, especially if they just have a small business and they work by themselves.
They work alone, for example.
They don't have to pay all these different employees.
For them, aiming for a seven-figure business might seem really crazy.
But for other people, aiming for a seven-figure revenue might seem like too little, especially if...
Someone really wants to have a big business.
They're aiming at increasing the size of their business every year.
They're aiming at hiring plenty of employees in the future.
For these people, aiming for seven figures might not be enough.
They might be aiming for an eight or nine figure revenue, depending on the size of their business.
In some industries it might not be very realistic to aim for a nine-figure revenue, let's say, because there might not be that much money in that particular industry.
But in other industries, it might be entirely possible, right?
So, of course businessmen entrepreneurs, people that are starting something or they already have some type of business they're never going to agree on all of these different things.
However, I think that entrepreneurs people who are running businesses can mostly agree on certain essentials.
There are certain things that are just obvious that you should be aiming for.
Things that if you don't have them, you're probably not going to have a successful business.
So one example of this would be aiming for a high level of customer satisfaction.
I think that everyone would agree on this.
Every business person would agree that we want our customers to be happy, right?
We want our clients to be satisfied.
So aiming for a high level of customer satisfaction will usually help guarantee success for our business.
If our customers are satisfied, that means that we're probably selling a good product or a good service and people are going to want to buy it and they'll be happy with it.
And we might get repeat business from certain customers.
This just means that they buy things again from you.
Maybe you have more than one product and because you were aiming for a high level of customer satisfaction, you were able to give them a good service, let's say, the first service that they bought from you.
And then they were so happy that they bought an additional product from you that you were selling.
So that's something that can happen when your customers are happy, right?
So that one's obvious.
I think another way you can think of this is It's good to aim at keeping the number of complaints low, because if you think about the opposite side of this, if you have customers that complain that aren't satisfied, then you're probably going to lose money because people aren't going to want to buy from you again.
People will probably write negative reviews about you and other people will see those negative reviews and they might think twice about buying your product or whatever.
When someone thinks twice about doing something, this just means that they hesitate about doing something.
They have doubts about doing it.
So if your customers are complaining, if you didn't aim for a high level of customer satisfaction, you didn't aim at keeping the number of complaints low, then then you might get a lot of negative reviews and other people won't buy from you.
And in addition to this, it's important to aim at reducing the number of refund requests.
So when people are so unhappy that they actually ask you to return their money, to give them their money back, right?
So I think that most people would agree that it's good to aim at reducing how many refund requests you have every month, right?
The fewer the refund requests, the more money you get to keep.
So if you have a lot of people requesting refunds, that probably means there's something wrong with your product or there's something wrong with the service that you're offering.
So these are things that pretty much everyone can agree on when it comes to customer satisfaction and complaints and keeping the number of refund requests low.
I think regardless of the person, these are things people can agree on.
I'm sure business people can agree on these essentials, right?
So people can agree on those.
And I think people can agree on the fact that each type of business has its own unique challenges.
So there aren't solutions that will always work 100 of the time for every single business, because our businesses are different.
Our industries are different. our customers are different, and our goals are different.
So I think we can all agree on this fact, and we can agree on the fact that there are some things that are going to work for certain businesses that won't work for other businesses.
So if I'm always trying to just copy things other online entrepreneurs and do exactly what they do, this probably isn't always going to be good for my own business, right?
Because their business is not my business.
Their problems are are not my exact problems.
Their clients aren't my same clients, so it's not going to be 100 the same right.
We can all agree on the fact that each type of business has its own unique challenges, right?
Some challenges that I face are challenges that another person will never face, for example, depending on their business model and their goals, etc.
So we spend our time dealing with different types of problems, depending on our own industry, our own business.
Of course, we all aim for success.
I don't think that there is a single entrepreneur that doesn't aim for success.
Of course, we can all agree on the fact that we want to be successful, right?
But we define success differently, differently as well, so we don't agree on what success is.
So some people have a different idea of success.
They might think of success in purely financial terms how much money they can generate from their business, but Other people define success as how their business can help them have a more balanced life.
And for other people, that's their definition of success.
So we're all aiming for success, but we don't necessarily agree on the definition of success.
We're all aiming at having success in our business, maybe growing and keeping our customers satisfied.
However, the overall goal of wanting to be successful, aiming for success, that looks different for each person, depending on their own definition of what success is.
So there are a lot of things we can agree on, but there are definitely some things that we won't agree on, because we're all different people.
We all have different businesses.
All right.
All right, I hope that while I was talking, you were able to hear these different phrasal verbs and get more comfortable with how they're used and their meaning, and hopefully you can use them in your own sentences now.
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