Business English w/ Kyle Millar

One needs to know the bare bones of business in order to get by. In the end, everything is a business transaction of sorts; from renting a car to romantic relationships. We’ll break down the brass tacks of business English with my buddy Kyle Millar on this week’s episode of FYI!

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one needs to know the bare bones of business in order to get by in the end everything is a business transaction of sorts from renting a car to romantic relationships we'll break down the brass tax of business english with my buddy kyle miller on this week's episode of f y i welcome to for your info english you got it[Music] hello hello hello my amigos and welcome to another exciting edition of fyi and today we mean business we mean business significa que vamos in serio well we always mean business but today we mean business on a different level and that's because we're going to be talking business we're going to talk turkey to talk turkey if you remember from our thanksgiving episode and i have enlisted the help i should say the aid of a great friend of mine a guy who knows his stuff he knows his stuff and most of you know who he is and if you don't well take note ladies and gentlemen please welcome my good friend kyle miller hey alberto great to hear from you man great to hear from you and great to be a part of your podcast wow we've been talking about it for a while because we've been on each other's radio shows but this is the first time that you've been here on the podcast and it's an absolute pleasure kyle well hey the pleasure's all mine you know we've done yeah a lot of shows together over the years with vaughn and in different places and different projects but it's uh it's pretty cool it's a pleasure to be a part of your your own fyi podcast for sure awesome awesome and we're going to talk about your podcast now because you have podcasts you have radio shows you have books uh you're you're what we would call kyle a jack of all trades how let's say we you know a jack of all trades somebody who does a lot of different things or wears many hats let's say we were in a bar right now and i said hey what do you do kyle how do you introduce yourself you do a lot of things yeah i do a lot of things maybe maybe too many things uh and since we're here to talk about business i guess i can say that i've had a few different business endeavors over the years in terms of media work yeah i host a show called the drive time show on vaughn radio i also do a podcast which is on a little bit of a hiatus a little bit of a break uh i do a podcast or i was doing it during the quarantine during covid uh called the kyle miller show which is available on spotify and i'll probably get back into that in the new year as well and uh i do you know a variety of um media projects with vaughn out of madrid group of rupert belgan and i am the author of a couple of books most recently the business english book called quite simply business english to gi para consiger trabajo i triumvar en los negotios now i also i'll just just say as well i do have uh involvement now in a restaurant business in madrid as well i have this sort of entrepreneurial itch as i say the itch that needs to be scratched and uh so i got involved in a in a restaurant business so i work with them i've also had i also had an export business i was exporting spanish olive oil to the united states for for several years so i've done a lot of things in business uh but my one base over the last many years has been vaughn and doing media and radio work with them which is always a lot of fun as you know well that's great kyle because really i mean you do a little bit of everything you're an adventurer the word you used before was perfect endeavors you're always seeking new endeavors and they're varied that's what i like about you one of the many things i like about you is you know you like to try your hand at different things and that that i think is interesting because well it makes you a well-rounded person you know i think so i think so you know we say in english variety is the spice of life and i think that's true you know you have to try different things and when i'm when i'm 80 years old you know i want to look back and say you know i tried different things i i lived life and that means and i think this is an important business um lesson as well that that also includes believe it or not it includes failure right you you you have to i think embrace failure especially if you're going to be open-minded about trying things business-wise you know in terms of business business-wise and also just professionally in your life if you're if you're not afraid to take a chance you just won't experience that many things so i'm i'm you know willing to accept the fact that sometimes things are going to fail you know sometimes things aren't going to last well nothing lasts forever but hey i want to look back someday and say i'm glad i tried this and tried that some of them will have been successes some of them will have been failures but they all i think contribute to the person that you become and kyle you're a person who likes to go out on a limb uh aries you like to take risks you like to go out on a limb and we're going to talk about what you know why what made you decide to write a business english book because as we just found out you host radio shows you present create radio shows you run restaurants i mean the gamut as we say the gamut is el rango so but firstly let's take a look at the intro at the intro of the show i like to sprinkle a lot of really good vocabulary in there so what i'm going to do kyle is i'll go through the intro and maybe you could uh explain the the words that i've chosen so for example one needs to know the bare bones of business kyle what's the bare bones oh yeah so the bare bones would be the essentials right what is the sentence the necessities right the essentials i would say yeah and then i say in order to get by what does that mean to get by it's a great phrasal verb to know yeah to get by it's like i guess you say salir del paso uh to get by to survive to to manage you know to manage often with maybe with limited resources or well to get by yeah to get to survive or manage i would say absolutely and then i said in the end alfinal everything is a business transaction of sorts and it's true even like when we're kids and we're negotiating that cookie with our moms we're like listen i'll clean my room if you give me cookies or ice cream we're always negotiating and then i said from renting a car remember guys the british say to hire a car quesadilla in the united states we would say to rent a car do you say rent or hire kyle yeah yeah we would say rent so we would rent things and typically hire people okay i think good you'd hire you'd hire a worker i guess you'd probably say the same right you'd hire a worker you'd hire a person but you'd rent a a car or an apartment absolutely and and then i went i think maybe i i went out on a limb over here kyle and i said even romantic relationships have a business element did i go too far or is that partly true that's you mean you're selling yourself right you're selling yourself and you're you're trying to find uh a partner but you're offering yourself and you're looking for something and someone in return so sure i think like anything else like you've said these are all anytime there's an exchange going on it's kind of like a business if you will but a transaction sure sure sure even like okay well i'll take out the trash if you do the i mean we're always negotiating and as you said we're selling ourselves and that's what it boils down to and then i said in the end of the intro we'll break down to break down this glossary it's a great business word to break down the brass tax and this is another way to say the bare bones the brass tacks of business english with my buddy mikolega kyle miller and that's what we're doing so guys kyle is an author if you if you haven't heard his radio show it's called drive time it's on vaughn radio he's got the kyle miller show he's got restaurants in madrid the thing you should do is follow him on social media and kyle before we get into the question the dire question i'm because i'm dying to know what made you write this book tell us where we can find you on the internet on social media well you can find me on well on instagram or twitter believe it or not i still use twitter um and it's on those accounts it's i'm kyle miller so i am k-y-l-e-m-i-l-l-a-r so my last name is miller with an a it's written like miyar if you were spanish me yeah so e-m-e lemi i am k-y-l-e m-i-l-l-a-r and uh i also have a facebook group called english with kyle so i'd encourage people to check that out english with kyle and i post some videos in there and i collect questions from uh from you know listeners or or members there and i either answer them in the group or on the radio program or on the podcast whatever is most fitting so anyone who wants to improve their english if you're using facebook you can join the english with kyle facebook group excellent excellent guys i'll put some links to kyle's stuff in the show notes but what we came to focus on the most today was as i said before we mean business vamos inserio and kyle wrote and i said it and i'll say it again and i've said it a million times the definitive business bible in english if you don't have the book you've got to pick it up you can pick it up at von tienda or wherever fine books are sold kyle tell us about this book what was your motivation what made you decide i'm going to write a book a very comprehensive book about business and how to do business in english well i had been teaching with vaughn for quite some time but my background my my academic background is in business i actually studied finance and uh i worked in a bank in canada before i came to spain i studied finance and i did an mba as well so i found that there was a need you know with vaughn working with vaughn a lot of the the students um or i mean with any anytime you're teaching english in spain a lot of the adult students are professionals and they need business english they need english in the workplace let's say and i felt like there wasn't a definitive book that had everything in one place so i thought well this will be a chance for me to bring together my teaching experience and with my business background and create a resource that will be useful to these people so it's more of a it's not it's not a it's not a don quixote right where you sit there and read and read it from front to back it's more of a reference tool so there are very focused chapters here on negotiations on email on meetings on numbers and money and then advanced topics like economics accounting marketing focused business areas i should say so this is something where if you have a meeting coming up you can say okay i'm just going to grab the book and i need to prepare a few things quickly a few key phrases or some concepts for presenting my ideas and so you can skip right to that chapter right to that section and find relevant information that you can immediately apply in the whatever the business circumstance might be you know right it has an index or where you can reference so if you're preparing a job interview or you have some negotiations coming up or or maybe you just need to prepare a presentation yeah so i felt that this product was needed i felt like um a lot of the business english products were sort of a collection of kind of like office talk you know which is great and there's a lot of that out there and that's wonderful and you know but but i felt like this book i mean even for a native english speaker i actually get it gets a little bit academic like i get into for example accounting and i explain you know the accounting cycle for example and i explain explain investments i explain uh financial analysis and things that if you work in that field you'll know that topic but if you don't you might not even know even in english you might not even know that topic like i have people native english speakers who have read the book and say wow i learned a lot about finance or about investing or about accounting or about marketing you know swot analysis and things things like that they learn essentials of business through the book but if you do work in that area you're probably going to be familiar with these terms but what you need is to know them in english so this really gets in depth in these business areas i think unlike any other product on the market it's great it is uh as i said comprehensive it's complete and you can use it it's a resource that just you can use for decades to come and if i'm not mistaken and correct me you know sometimes my memory is a bit foggy but i remember doing some videos so this it's more than just a book that you read it's kind of like a multimedia material am i correct here it is i think it's one of the few books that has both uh audio included and also videos so we were i think we were kind of ahead of the ahead of the trend with qr codes now they're everywhere you know in restaurants you scan your qr code to see the menu but we put this in the in our book years ago and you scan the qr code and it takes you to an instructional video and i'll i'll admit there are some humorous moments as you would know in some of those videos we have most of the videos are sort of a don't do this instead do that sort of format where we have some uh some some common mistakes in the business setting like the way you introduce yourself um and uh we had uh a few we relied on a few interesting characters to help us uh make those points and it became a lot of fun actually making those videos was a lot of fun and you may recall working on those yourself i remember that you type cast me as the lazy or the the bad employee but i had a lot of fun as you said guys you got to check it out kyle tell us the title of the book again so people can google it or they can go to von tienda and pick up a copy yeah so it's called business english which i think is the perfect title business english and the subtitle is tu guia para conseguir trabajo etrium so i just will add that you know originally i just wrote the book with just the business all the business content but then i was asked they said the the publishing people said could you add content on finding a job because a lot of people are looking for work so i said okay and we we built out or i wrote out um more sections on cover letters job interviews cvs and even the job search so that's in there as well so it's not just a tool for people that are working but also if you're searching for work and you need and you want to apply in english for jobs there are resources for that as well you know i remember our acting teacher said what's your job and of course everybody said to act right as an actor she said no to look for a job so really everybody's job even if you're you know in a job that you love right now down the road who knows you might have to interview send a resume again sell yourself in any kind of situation so what i want to do here on the pod today in the in both parts of the show in the first part and then and then in the bonus part we're going to take a look at some of the key sections from the book and just uh just scratch the surface which is a really good expression with means we're not going to go in depth but just give you some of kyle's advice some of his insight about well things that he's learned throughout his experience working and studying in this world and also writing this book so let's start where you said kyle with getting a job which might be the hardest part sometimes isn't it yeah yeah i think so especially you know with the way the economy is and has been for the last few years it's challenging and the world is more and more competitive so you do have to stand out right you have to have a profile that stands out and so you have to have a strong cv or as we typically say in america american english a resume um uh you have to have a strong resume or strong cv and and and also a i would say a concise cover letter a good cover letter but a concise cover letter that gets to the point and attracts yourself you know it's important when you're applying usually there are many many many applicants so you really have to do something to to stand out and a lot of the a lot of the time the sort of textbook uh qualifications and when i say textbook i don't actually mean from a textbook but i mean typical you know uh common qualifications like well i've got the degree that's needed so i'm qualified well that's not necessarily the case but the typical qualifications probably everybody that's applying is going to have so in the end it often comes down to the personality differences or the chara the real uh character qualifications that that might make you stand out and give you the edge when it comes to getting that job the edge that's a great word the competitive edge and it's true that's why i guess in the united states and i imagine in canada they're always pushing extracurricular activities clubs because they say okay your grades are one thing but let's see what else are you doing you know what kind of person are you are you motivated are you doing work with charity you know they want to see that like you said anybody can get good grades you study the material and that's that and as you said it's competitive or as as we say when something is highly competitive it's cut throat so i guess what you're what you're saying too you want to stand out and all you have is a resume and a cover letter to do that and you have to be concise as well so kyle some do's and don'ts for cover letters and resumes yeah well first of all i think one great thing you can do to make yourself stand out and also show off your english a little bit is to use descriptive adjectives so when you're when you're talking about yourself not just no instead of saying you know instead of listing your university degree instead you know and saying well bachelor's degree you know you can say i i you know excelled in my so in such and such a course or i achieve and also when describing i guess better when describing work um professional experience you know i accomplished this i i i increased sales by x percent so you're using descriptive words to just really describe what you did not just not just saying well i i had this job but laying out in bullet points what you did in that job what you accomplished what you what you achieved and then also when describing yourself in your in your cover letter using descriptive adjectives words like determined hard working driven trust trustworthy yeah driven motivated team player absolutely right right so your choice of words i mean in the end that's what you're saying is your choice of words is so important because really how are you selling yourself with a resume and a cover letter on paper in black and white yeah and another and another great trick is to carefully read the job description that you're i mean this may seem obvious but to some people it isn't but carefully read the job description that you're applying for and then prepare several different cvs and that's easier that's much easier to do when in now in the in the age of the word processor on your computer microsoft word you can have one version of your cv that's directed towards a specific type of job or specific uh you know specific skills that they're looking for and then you can you modify that plugging in keywords related to what the job posting says they're looking for and you create a slightly different version and then you save that so at the end maybe you have 10 different cvs it's not 10 times as much work maybe it's twice as much work but not 10 times as much work because you're just copying pasting modifying and so then you have a a cover letter and even a cv that is adjusted to the job it's it's tailored as we say right to the job that you're that you're targeting well it can be something i mean i'm using a silly example but it can be something as simple as if you're applying to a job at vodafone which is a british company and you write the word color using a u because that's how the british do it and that's a british company now is it wrong if you don't no but like you said you're adapting you're trying to stand out and that's another great point you said a lot of people i mean a company will tell you what they're looking for they'll tell you look at their website their mission statement and as long as you say something along those lines you'll get their attention absolutely i i had a job interview once with the bank it was with the bank of montreal and i went to their website and there there was literally a section on the website that said questions you may be asked in a job interview with bank of montreal oh my you can't make it any clearer now i don't i don't expect i don't expect every company to have that but it it's a it's a little it's there to reward the people that are they're telling you too it's when you're recording a girl when you're courting a girl look at it the same way you like a girl she'll give you signs she'll tell you what she likes you got to be paying attention and in a company they're going to tell you this these are our values this is our mission statement we come here every day to do this so if you align what kyle is saying don't change who you are but align what you do and who you are with the goals the the the ideas that that make that company that you're interviewing for yeah and another thing um if you do get when you do get to the interview stage is to make sure that you have questions for the company uh having having questions is a great way to you you form it as a question but you use it as an opportunity to prove that you know something so instead of saying you know what's the pay what are my hours instead of don't when is our vacation yeah yeah exactly instead of asking questions like that ask something that proves that you you've done your homework for example uh when i was interviewing for this bank i researched and i found out that they were buying another bank in the country they were actually in the process of negotiating to buy another bank and so i said i i said look i know i realize that you're in the process of buying out this other bank i'm wondering how that may affect career possibilities in the future or the or the the strategic vision for the company so yes i i want yes i kind of wanted to know the answer i did want to know the answer to that question but more importantly it proved that i'm aware of what's happening in the industry you did your homework and here's a good expression i have my ear to the ground right i have my ear to the ground on what's happening in the industry and i know what's going on so rather than someone who rather than giving the impression of someone who's okay i've just applied to 20 jobs today and i'm just throwing out the same cv to everyone to see what happened no i'm i'm i'm here because i want to work with you i understand your industry i've done my homework and i'm ready and and that sort of thing doing your homework checking the website asking intelligent questions is a great way to establish that great great kyle this is i'm telling you this is indispensable advice the only thing is we have to wrap up we've reached the end of the first part i'm telling you kyle every show flies by for me but i can't believe that we've already gotten through the first part of today's show it's fascinating for somebody as you said who already speaks english to talk about all these different concepts about selling yourself about negotiating and we're going to look at that in the bonus part of today's show we're going to look at negotiations presentations using english on the phone marketing and some of the most common business idioms and if you guys would like to join us in the bonus part remember you can become a patron go over to patreon.com alberto alonso and you can get bonus content pdfs with all the vocabulary weekly and monthly classes with me and so much more you can find out more on patreon.com alberto alonso and a big shout out to my super duper students mara javier roberto david jose maria mila alex patricio edgar and lolas and don't forget about my interstellar students paco diego carmen and diana keep up the great work and remember guys if you want more information or just some free samples drop me a line it's patreon.com alberto alonso and you are going to learn so much more i'm going to learn so much more in the bonus part and kyle i just want to repeat the information again before we take a quick break give us your your social media give us the name of the book because i really think everybody should know this information all right great thanks alberto yeah the book is uh business english tu guia para conseguir trabajo i triumvar en los negotios in english and folks can find me on instagram i'm kyle miller i am k-y-l-e-m-i-l-l-a-r m-r i-m-k-y-l-e m-i-l-l-a-r that's on instagram and on twitter and they can also join me on facebook in my free group called english with kyle all right well that's great stuff so many resources and so much more to look at in the bonus part of today's fyi[Music][Applause] you