Business English: Mixing Business with Pleasure!

Hi, everyone. I'm Jade. What we're talking about today is mixing business with pleasure.

So what does this mean? This can mean when you go for a business trip, you also have

a little bit of fun while you're there. But it can also mean that when you go out with

your clients, it's not all talk about work, work, work, business, business, business.

You also get to know each other a bit, maybe have a few glasses of wine or something like

that. I don't know what you do on your business trips. But it's not just about work. So I'm

going to give you some conversational tips for your next business trip where you may

decide to mix business with pleasure.

So I've broken it down into different conversation topics. So we'll just go through those, and

you will get some questions that you can ask to make yourself a dazzling conversationalist

when you're next with your clients.

So I was thinking: When do these kinds of business meetings happen? Often, they are

in restaurants. So it could be the evening. It could be a lunch meeting. So anyway, you're

in a dining situation. You get in the restaurant. What do you say? You can say, "Have you been

here before?" Or you might say, "What an impressive/charming/fascinating place!" This one's an exclamation. You're

making an observation about the place. If it's impressive, I would imagine that it's

quite a fine dining, expensive kind of place. If it's charming, it's original, and you've

not really been somewhere like that before. If it's fascinating, what could that mean?

Just maybe something unusual for you that you haven't experienced before.

If you're the host, and you are taking your client to that place, maybe you want to say

something about the place, and the reason why you decided to have your meeting there.

You could say, "This is the best seafood restaurant in town." So you're trying to impress your

client and show them that you're taking them to all the best places. So you could change

seafood. It could be a Chinese restaurant --you know, whatever, wherever you're going.

So imagine you are in the restaurant situation. A really common conversation for you to have

is talking about food in general, your likes and dislikes, and also making comparisons

between countries and cuisine styles from different countries. So here are some questions

you might ask. You can say, "Do you like English food?" Well, the joke there is that people

around the world say that they don't like English food and it's really bad. So I wouldn't

be that hopeful for a very positive answer if you ask that question.

When you're looking at the menu, especially if the menu is in a language that you don't

understand, you could say, "Could you recommend something?" Often it's quite polite -- at

least in British culture -- to let the host decide what you're eating. So you might want

to make that offer and say, "Can you recommend something?" You can also ask this to the waiter

in the restaurant, as well, if you really don't know what to choose.

And here's another general question you could ask about food. So let's imagine your client

is from a different country and you don't know much about the food culture of that country,

you could say, "What do Italian people like to eat for breakfast?" You know, you might

not know. This could start a conversation about food. Or, you know, it doesn't need

to be a specific meal. It could be a particular celebration that you could talk about. Perhaps

it's near Christmas -- it's in the run-up to Christmas. You could say, "What do Italian

people eat for Christmas dinner? In Britain, we like to eat something called a 'roast dinner',

but what do you eat?" So that could get your conversation flowing a bit.

I must say that in my life, I've never had that many conversations about sports. It's

not in my world, talking about sports. But I know two general questions you could ask.

"Do you follow any sports?" This means, "Do you watch them on television?" Or you could

say, "Do you play any sports yourself?"

So now, you've been talking about sports. Perhaps you've discovered that you share a

common interest. That means that you're both interested in the same thing. So you could

both be interested in football, for example. Here's a question for you. "What did you think

about the latest signing at Manchester United?" I know this about football and sport, when

they get a new player, it's called a "signing". So you could bring that into your conversation.

"What did you think of the latest signing?" Talking about football.

But perhaps you're a music fan. What would you say in that case? You've discovered that

you both really like a particular music artist. You could say, "What did you think about the

new album?" I found a mistake.

And you could -- what if you're a fashion lover? A fashion lover, Darling! You could

say, "Did you like the new collection?" "Collection" is the word we use to talk about a designer's

designs for that year. So you could say, "Did you like the new collection?"

What other topics do we have now? We've got travel. This one is especially relevant if

you've traveled to meet your client in a new place. Here are some general questions you

could ask. "Have you visited the U.K.?" You know, just replace that for your own country,

and that will get you talking. Or you could say, "Do you travel much?" And then, start

talking generally about travel.

What about family? Perhaps you'd like to know a little bit more about the personal life

of your client. You could say, "Are you married?" You could say, "Do you have kids?" This one

feels a little bit more personal than the other topics, so you'd have to be the judge

if you wanted to talk about that.

You may also wish to talk about news and politics. In dinner party situations in Britain, it's

said that it's impolite to -- no, not impolite. That it may not be a good idea to talk about

politics or religion because people disagree, and it can get people arguing. So sometimes,

politics may be a risky subject for you. But use your discretion here.

Let's look at this. "Are you feeling the pinch?" A "pinch" is when you do this to your skin.

But that's a phrase economically for, "Are you feeling the difficult times financially?"

Or you might say, "What do you think the outcome of the election will be?" Perhaps you've got

a political event coming up in your country or in the other person's country or more generally,

like in the U.S. and you could just maybe start talking about that.

And moving on. Once you've had a delightful discussion about all different things -- travel,

family, your likes and dislikes -- now, it's time to get down to business. What does it

mean to "get down to business"? I don't think you should shout it, actually. "Let's get

down to business!" I don't think you should shout it. But you know, at some point during

your business meeting, discussion, maybe you do need to talk about the details or your

proposal or the offer. So that's a good way to transition it to finally talking about

the whole reason that you came there for. Maybe you say this at the end of the meal,

for dessert. Another transition you can use is "on that note". Perhaps you were talking

about this. Maybe you're talking about the economy, and then you could say, "On that

note, have you considered our offer?" That means, "Let's talk now and discuss the details

of my proposal."

Here's one -- these ones are a little bit more fun. I've heard them said in movies.

I don't know if people actually use them. But you could say this. "Look. Let's not beat

around the bush. It's time to sign the contract now." This means, "I'm just going to be very

direct with you. I'm going to be very straight. I'm going to cut all that small talk. I don't

care about your wife and kids. It's time to do business."

If you want to get to that part where you finally strike a deal, you can say this, "So

do we have a deal?" You can shake their hand? And you can say -- when they're happy, you

can say, "Let's shake on it."

So this can prepare you for that client meeting, that social client meeting, mixing business

with pleasure. It could be in a restaurant. It could be playing golf. It could be something

like that. It could be in a karaoke bar. I don't know.

Well, what I'd like you to do now is go to www.engvid.com so you can do a quiz on this

lesson. Plus, I'd like you to subscribe to my channel here. And also, I'd also like you

to subscribe to my personal channel because I've got two channels. So you need to subscribe

in both places, really. Yeah. That would be great for me. And I hope you come back and

watch me again soon here, on my EngVid channel. So I'll see you later. And now, I'm going

to catch up with my clients. See you.