12 Common English Expressions for Work

hi everybody welcome to inkvid.com i'm adam in today's video we're going to look at some business english expressions but not technical business we're going to look at business idioms because remember even in business you still have to have some casual conversations some everyday situations and when you're when you're talking or dealing with your own staff or with co-workers you're still going to be very you can you can be very informal still and use idioms however you're not going to use most of these in in writing some of them you can and i'll point out which ones but most of them are a little bit too informal for formal writing so let's start with the first one to get all of one's ducks in a row and you can put all of or without the of both okay get all one's ducks in a row now ducks are like the little animal but with i'm not really sure where the expression came from but i think it's from like games where you have to shoot the ducks if you put all your ducks in a row means you get all the pieces ready so that you can begin doing something so before you start a project you want to make sure you get all your induction arrow you have your in your investors you have the people who are going to work on the project you potentially have a client ready to buy whatever it is you're making or the service you're providing so you have everything ready and then you actually begin if you don't have all your ducks in a row there may be problems down the line or there may be no point in even starting this project because it's not going to go anywhere so basically get everything ready have all the pieces in place before you begin something now that is actually very much related to the next idiom which is dot the eyes and cross the t's so what you're going to do you're going to dot the eyes make sure there's a dot and cross the t's basically it means make sure that all the details have been taken care of so especially when you're talking about paperwork you want to make sure there are no errors nothing is missing nothing is uh misspelled for example in a contract if you misspell a word and you mean something other than what you intended it could be a huge problem a contract is a legal document so you want to make sure everything is perfect and correct before anybody signs before you go on with whatever business so make sure all the details the eyes on the the dots on the eyes the t's are crossed nothing is missing because if you don't do this if you don't take care of the details and you don't have all your ducks lined up you may end up going back to square one back to square one means back to the beginning you have to start over so if you made mistakes along the way it doesn't matter how much work you did if you have to go back to square one back to the beginning to start the whole process from scratch oh that's actually a good expression too from scratch scratch means from nothing you're starting from complete zero and you're building your way back up back to square one similar to from scratch so that's a not a good situation now when you're doing business some companies or different companies operate in different ways some companies do everything by the book by the book means legally according to the rules exactly as it's supposed to happen they follow the standards other companies cut corners means they try to take shortcuts or they try to do things to save money so for example if we're talking about a building a lot of builders try to cut corners by using cheaper material or by not installing certain things or by hoping that the clients don't really notice that something is broken or not working properly they're trying to cut corners usually this ends up costing everybody more at the end doing things by the book might be a little bit more expensive and might take a little bit longer time but you will have no problems when the project is finished when the production is finished so again bad good to do now to get something off the ground so uh especially if you think about like a startup companies but it doesn't have to be any business or any individual who wants to get a business started or to get a project started he's trying to get it off the ground off the ground means working right so the first thing you need to get a project off the ground is money so you get investors you get people to uh some the banks maybe even to give you a loan you get all the money so that you can get the project off the ground and get it started get it building towards the completion if something comes with no strings attached strings basically means conditions so usually for example if you go to the bank they they will give you a lot of conditions there's a lot of strings about getting a loan from a bank you're paying interest there's a deadline there's a monthly fee they own you have to sign over your house or some sort of collateral if you go to a loan shark you say here's their money no strings attached except for one if you don't pay me the money back with 50 interest i break your legs something like that in relationships people often use this expression in relationships some people say you know let's just be together no strings attached means there's no commitment no conditions just have fun and when it's over it's over does it work i don't know some people yes for some people know there's actually a movie called no strings attached you can watch that and decide but this is a very common uh expression when somebody wants to you to do something for them and they say no strings attached remember there's probably some strings attached somewhere think outside the box now this is a very very important expression a little bit too popular to be honest a lot of people use this expression in their resumes or cvs they say oh i'm a very creative person i like to think about outside the box if you write on your resume that you think outside the box then actually you don't think outside the box because everybody is writing the same thing to think outside the box means to think differently to get out of cliche to get out of the standard to be very creative or very innovative a box has limits outside the box limitless so this is just a key if you're writing a resume don't tell them you think outside the box because every other applicant might be saying the same thing word of mouth so the best way to advertise a product is not to spend a lot of money on ads and promotions and tv spots and youtube spots and all that the best way is word of mouth when a happy customer tells his or her friends about your product and they tell their friends and they tell their friends and your reputation grows and awareness of your product grows as people tell each other and as one person tells the other it's called word of mouth i'm telling you i'm telling you and it spreads and it's spread and it's spread best advertising and free if you can do it let's go cutthroat when we talk about competition some companies are very successful because they are big and they can afford to offer cut throat prices cut store means like the cheapest of the cheap so that the nearest competitor can't actually compete with them because the prices are so low to the customer that if the competition decides to offer the same price they will go out of business this is how big companies destroy little companies they offer customers cutthroat prices the small companies can't compete they lose customers they go out of business and you can also think about cutthroat approaches somebody does something in a way that can't no one else can compete with them it's very i guess you could say it's mean but business people are generally a little bit mean i think if you're going to be a successful business person you have to be a little bit mean to be the best and last one it takes two to tango tango is a type of dance but you can't dance this dance by yourself you need two people to make this dance work just like you need two people to make certain relationships work so a business for example a business cannot succeed without the customer being involved so if a business owner or a manager tries to do something because he or she likes likes it it doesn't matter if the customer doesn't like it you're going to go out of business because it takes two to tango both sides have to enjoy or want to do something in order in order for it to work also if let's say there's an industry where there's really only three big companies if i want to push one of the companies out basically make them go out of business i'm going to need the help of the second company because by myself i don't have enough power and if the two of them get together they can take me out so i need a partner because it takes two to tango it takes two to get something done okay so there you go there's some good business expressions for you think outside the box word of mouth um get something off the ground buy the book cut corners these are all usable or basically these are the most usable ones in terms of writing all the rest can be used in uh speaking a bit in formal situations okay if you have any questions about any of these idioms please go to inkvid.com you can ask me in the comments section there there's also a quiz where you can test your understanding of these uh idioms and uh yeah i hope you liked it this video give me a like if you did don't forget to subscribe to my channel and ring the bell for notifications of the future videos and come back soon i'll give you some more idioms vocab grammar tips etc see you bye

Channel: Adam’s English Lessons · engVid

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Keywords: get off the ground, ducks in a row, square one, cut corners, by the book, no strings attached, think outside the box, two to tango, cut throat, cutthroat, word of mouth, start from scratch, business, work, expressions, idiom, English, ESL, Learn English, grammar, English grammar, native speaker, vocabulary, English lesson, English classes, IELTS, TOEFL, native English, conversation skills, speaking, slang, English pronunciation, pronunciation, comprehension, engvid, Subject (grammar)

Id: OKE3Q1avXg8

Length: 11min 5sec (665 seconds)

Published: Mon May 24 2021