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BEC : Free Agent -Vocabulary

Hello, this is AJ and welcome to the vocabulary lesson. In this lesson I’m just going to discuss some of the maybe more difficult phrases that we used in the conversation, just to be sure you understand everything you heard in the conversation. So let me start from the beginning.

First, we have this word a ‘free agent’, free agent. What is a free agent? So free agent, you see this word used in sports business a lot. A free agent is a person, an employer, a player, someone like that, who is free to move to a new company. They’re free to change their team, free to change their job, free to change their company. So it’s the opposite idea of someone who stays in one job, in one company, all of their life. A free agent might constantly change their jobs; change the company they work for.

Next, the phrase ‘to throw cold water on’, throw cold water on an idea. If you throw cold water on an idea you’re saying that the idea is not good. You’re taking away the excitement about the idea. So if we throw cold water on the idea of lifetime employment, you can imagine we have some cold water and we’re throwing it on someone.

Immediately it will shock them and it will make them not warm anymore, not excited anymore. To throw cold water on an idea, it means to kill that idea or to put down that idea. So we’re saying that the idea of lifetime employment is not true anymore. We’re throwing cold water on it.

The word ‘career’, of course, is a common word. It just means you’re lifetime job history, so in the past, now and into the future.

You heard the word ‘mindset’. A mindset is just an attitude really. It’s your set of beliefs about some topic. Your mindset is your attitude about a topic.

You heard the phrase ‘business minded’, business minded. To be business minded means to have a business mindset. It means to have a business attitude. It means you think about something like a businessperson. That’s to be business minded.

You heard the word ‘brand’. This word is used in business a lot as a verb or as a noun.

So ‘to brand’, to brand, it kind of has the idea of to market or to promote yourself. We need to brand this product. It means you need to promote yourself in a special way. You need to communicate about yourself in a special way, sell yourself in a special way. ‘A brand’ is a special product, basically. A brand is a special product or a special name. It could be a special company, but it’s unique, it’s special, it’s different.

You heard the phrase ‘budget crunch’, budget crunch. A budget crunch means a budget shortfall. It means that you don’t have enough money. The budget is going down. The budget is not enough. The money is not enough. So if your department has a budget crunch it means your department doesn’t have enough money.

Okay, a ‘trade organization’. A trade organization is just some kind of organization. It could be a club, for example, that is focused on one kind of job. For example, you might have an advertising organization --a trade organization --and people who have advertising jobs might join that group. A trade organization is not one company, it’s people from many different companies. They come together to share information, to make connections with each other, that kind of thing.

You heard the phrase ‘to know a great deal about’. Know a great deal about your job, for example. ‘A great deal’ means a lot, so know a lot about your job. Know a great deal about your job. Know a lot about your job, same meaning.

You heard the word ‘secluded’, secluded. Secluded means isolated. Secluded means away from other people. Secluded means alone. So don’t be secluded in your job. Don’t be alone in your job. You need to connect with other people in your company, people who also do your job, etc.

You heard the phrase ‘understand the total picture’, understand the total picture.

Sometimes we say understand the big picture, it’s the same meaning. To understand the total picture means you understand everything not just a small piece. So, for example, in your job if you understand the whole picture, if you understand the big picture, if you understand the total picture, it means you understand all of the company.

Not just your job, not just your department, you understand all the parts of the company.

You understand everything.

You heard the kind of slang phrase ‘a purple cow’, a purple cow. A purple cow is something that is very unique, very special, very unique, very different than normal.

You heard the word ‘downsize’. ‘To downsize’ can be a verb. To downsize means to cut employees. It’s a nice way to say to fire people really or to cut them. The difference is if you fire someone --that phrase ‘to fire’ –usually it means the person did a bad job so they must leave the company. To downsize means you’re cutting the employees.

You’re cutting people, but usually it’s because you have a budget crunch. It’s because there’s not enough money to pay them. So maybe they are doing a good job, but the company wants to cut employees to save money. The verb is to downsize. The noun is downsizing, downsizing.

You heard the phrase ‘cutbacks’, cutbacks. Cutbacks, it just means cuts, budget cuts.

If a company has cutbacks it means they are cutting their budget. They must reduce the amount of money they’re spending so they might cut employees. That’s a cutback. They might cut their advertising. That’s also a cutback. A cutback is just a cut in the budget.

‘To implement’, to implement, you heard that word. To implement is a verb. To implement means to do a plan. It means to take action on a plan. It means to make the plan happen. So first you plan something. I’m going to do this and this and this. Then you implement the plan. It means you do the plan. You actually do what you plan to do.

Okay, you heard the phrase ‘move up the supervisory ranks’. Maybe you want to move up the supervisory ranks. So the phrase ‘move up the ranks’, move up the ranks, that just means to go higher in your company or go higher in your career. So maybe you start at the bottom and then you want to move up. It means you want to get a higher paying job and then maybe you want to get another promotion. You want to go up again to a higher paying job. You are moving up the ranks.

‘Supervisory’ just means management, so move up the management ranks. Usually the managers get paid more than the lowest level workers. So maybe you want to move up the supervisory ranks. You want to go into the management part of the business and then move up higher.

You heard a couple accounting phrases, ‘accounts receivable’. We’ll talk about this more in a future lesson, but ‘accounts receivable’ and ‘accounts payable’. These are just accounting terms. We’ll do a future lesson about this. You don’t need to know exactly the meaning of those if you’re not an accountant, but we’ll teach them later. Just know they’re accounting terms, they’re accounting phrases.

You heard the phrase ‘long term’, that’s very common in English. We have short term and long term, so if you focus on short term it means you’re focusing on now. You’re focusing on the present. Right now, maybe the next few months, that’s what you’re thinking about. Long term means you’re thinking a lot about the future, this year, next year, five years from now, 10 years from now.

So in the lesson we said ‘you need to think long term’. It means you need to think about your career, your jobs, into the future, far into the future. You need to plan your career for the next three years, the next five years. Don’t just think about right now, think about what will happen next year or five years from now. That’s thinking long term.

‘To pay off’ kind of has the idea of succeeding. If you do something and it pays off, it means you get a reward. You get some payment for your action. You get some good result. So if you say my hard work paid off - that’s the past, paid - my hard work paid off, it means your hard work gave you a reward. You got some good benefit from it.

You heard the phrase ‘reality check’, a reality check. You need to make a reality check.

You need to have a reality check about your career, about your job, about your skills. A reality check means to be very realistic about something. It means to look at it very honestly and to be very honest.

So we all like to dream. We all like to imagine. We like to think that our own skills are very great and wonderful, but sometimes we need a reality check. It means we need to think really realistically and be honest about our weaknesses and be honest about the problems. So that’s a reality check. A reality check is like an honest viewpoint.

You heard the phrase ‘generate a buzz’, generate a buzz about yourself. You want to generate a buzz about yourself. ‘Buzz’ is this sound zzzzzz. That’s what the direct meaning is, but this phrase to generate a buzz means to generate excitement about yourself or to generate, to create talk about yourself in a positive way, of course.

So if you generate a buzz about yourself it means you get a lot of people talking about you. If you do a great job then maybe your boss will talk about you, other workers will talk about you. There’s a lot of positive talk about you. That’s a buzz. That’s a positive buzz about you. So, again, buzzing about you means talking about you. If people are buzzing about you it means they’re talking about you a lot. Now, it can be negative too.

You can have a negative buzz. You do something terrible and everybody will talk about it. That’s called a negative buzz, but of course you want a positive buzz.

And, finally, ‘to bring something to the table’, you need to bring something to the table for your company, for example. To bring something to the table means to bring something useful or to contribute. It really means to contribute something positive.

Some people might ask the question, what can you bring to the table? That means what benefits can you offer? What positive things can you do? So, bring something to the table means to contribute. It means to bring positive benefits.

And that’s the end of our vocabulary. Just listen to this vocabulary several times. You can read the text if you need to. Take notes. Just relax about it. You’ll need some time for all of these phrases to become easy and natural, so just listen each day. Then listen to the vocabulary again and then listen again. Listen to the conversation each day at least one time every day.

I recommend you repeat for at least 10 days the same lesson set. So you might listen to this conversation on day one and then you’re going to listen to the same conversation again tomorrow and you’ll listen to this same vocabulary lesson tomorrow and then the next day you’ll repeat them again and then the next day again. You’ll learn very deeply.

So after a week or after 10 days this vocabulary will be very easy for you.

So don’t worry. In the beginning it might be difficult. Maybe it’s easy, I don’t know, but even if it feels easy to you please repeat each of these every day at least seven days.

Ten days is better, 14 days is great for each lesson set. Then you’ll learn it deeply and then you’ll be able to use some of these phrases when you speak as well.

All right, see you next time. Bye-bye.

The End.