IELTS Speaking for Success - 👨‍💼 Business and entrepreneurship (Part 3) + Transcript

Episode Date: December 14, 2025

2026 New Year Sale: https://successwithielts.com/sale Do you think family businesses are common in your country? What makes a successful family business? What are the advantages of running a family business? And disadvantages? Do you think family businesses will still be popular in the future? Why do some people choose to start their own company? What skills are needed to be a successful business person? Are men better than women at running a business? Tune in and have a great day! - Book a class with Rory here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://successwithielts.com/rory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Our course on Phrasal Verbs: https://successwithielts.com/podcourses Transcript: https://linktr.ee/sfspremium Find an IELTS Speaking Partner: https://links.successwithielts.com/ieltspartner Our social media: https://linktr.ee/successwithielts © 2025 Podcourses Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. Hello, hello, dear listener and welcome in the AIL speaking part three, we're talking about family businesses. Do you think family businesses are common in your country? Not sure, to be honest, though I imagine they're less common than they were, since people are no longer boxed into the same professions that have run in families for decades. People have a lot more freedom of action these days. What makes a successful family business? I'm not sure it's that different to other businesses, is it?

They need a market for their product and good management. I suppose in a family business, it's important not to let family ties get in the way of that, but that's all I can think of. What are the advantages of running a family business? I imagine you don't have to worry about trusting employees as much since you know the people working for you, and you know them fairly intimately. You might benefit from having your family as a source of labour,

which could be cheaper since family members might be more tolerant of being paid less, especially if it helps in the long run. And what are the disadvantages of running a family business? Well, if you have a fallout in the family, that could affect productivity and the strain of running a business might have a detrimental effect on relations in the family more generally, since you don't really have a place to escape to at the end of the work day. Do you think family businesses will still be popular in the future?

I'm not sure they're that popular now, to be honest, but either way, I don't know. It depends on so much. Like, if international trade relations go down the tubes, then you might find local companies run by local families that people can trust are relied on more and more. so it's certainly a possibility. I don't know how certain of a possibility that is, though. Why do some people choose to start their own company?

Well, lots of reasons. It might give you financial independence, a chance to get creative and fuel or channel your passion for something and turn it into a source of income. Oh, and of course people just want to make money and not have to answer to anyone, which is what is, well, that's what strikes. Wiking out on your own can get you, usually.

What skills are needed to be a successful business person? I think that depends on the market sector you're going into. Some of them require great patience and organization, like running a farm, and others might need super specific skills, like running a tech startup. I don't think there's just one thing you need for that sort of thing. Are men better than winning at running a business? I'm not sure, really. it's a bit like

what it takes to be a successful business person in general. It's too broad. However, since men tend to take more risks than women, it might be that in sectors of the economy that reward risk taking. Men would do

better running things there, but that's a very broad generalisation, isn't it? As you know, we now release all of our premium content for free, and it's a available for one month. After one month, it goes into our super secret archive.

To sign up for the archive, click the link in the description below. See you soon. Right, do you listen, if you have nothing to say about family businesses and your country, please Google it, learn about family businesses. Yeah, and just like businesses in general. It's very useful for your assets as well, for ideas. speaking and essays. Family businesses are less common. Roryin, what do you call like if a business is not family business?

I don't know. Just a regular business. Regular business? Yeah, a normal, a normal business. A non-family-owned business. Oh, there we go, there you go. A non-family-owned business. I don't think that's the technical term. There will be a technical term for that, but I don't know what it is. So you can say that family businesses are quite common in my country or they're not common and there are more large companies, a lot of companies which own businesses in my place. But the reason why they might not be so common is because people are no longer boxed into the same professions.

So if you're boxed into something, you are forced to do it. Yeah, you can say kind of like family businesses and non-family businesses. businesses or you can say just independent companies or corporate, like public businesses, private companies. A successful family business need a market for their product. So they need audience, people, and they need good management. That's people running the business. Speaking of running, we skipped over professions that have run in families for decades.

So if something runs in your family, it's like a tradition or something. like a genetic thing that carries on or continues from one generation to another. So here, a profession can run in a family, like one parent is a journalist and the child is a journalist as well, or one parent is a plumber or an electrician and then their children do that. When we talk about a family business, we talk about family ties, family connections. Strong connections. ties, see two word, by the way. Is it?

Is it a collocation family ties? That's a, oh my God. Family ties. And night. So the friendly feelings that people have for other people or special connections with places as well. Like diplomatic ties, close ties, family ties. Pretty much like the connection you have with your family. It's different from the connection you have with your friends.

And sometimes family ties get in the way. So they disrupt the business. Sometimes. The questions could be about the advantages and disadvantages of running a family business. So you can paraphrase benefits and drawbacks of running a family business. And the benefits are that you don't worry about trusting employees. So usually you trust your family members, your relatives, again usually. So trust, they are honest with you.

You know people intimately. So you know them quite well, you are close to them. And you can use a verb benefit from. You can benefit from your family as a source of labor. Labor means work. And the family labor could be cheaper. your family members could be cheaper than other people. So you just pay less to your family than you pay to other people.

This is horrible, actually. Could be true, though, yeah. The drawbacks, you can fall out with your family members, which means that you can argue with them, have disagreements, arguments. And they could get worse because you are intimate, you're close, lots of, you know, things, parents, children, people often fall out with their family members. And disagreements could have a detrimental effect on relations and business. So have a detrimental effect on means to have a bad effect negative.

And you don't have a place to escape at the end of the day. Because where do you escape? You go home and you see your family. They are at work. They're at home. So they're everywhere. Oh, they're too close. Too many of them.

No escaping. Go down the tubes. That's a lovely idiom, Rory. Right? It's a medium. That's an idiom. Hopefully it's C2. But even if it's not, it should be.

And going down the tubes means something is getting worse or not going so well, going very badly. Fail completely. So if this business went down the tubes, it failed, went bankrupt. And here you can say that if international trade relations, so if international business goes down the tubes,

then family businesses will be more popular. And you can say that people, tend to trust family businesses. Like people tend to trust local families. They rely more on family businesses. You can start your own company or you can set up your own company. So kind of start your own business, set up your own business. You can strike out on your own, which is an idiom for being independent.

Oh yes. strike out on your own. So some people prefer striking out on their own. Well, they want financial independence. So they want to be independent from corporate, from the corporate world, from private companies. So they want to be creative. And they want to channel their passion for their own thing.

So if you channel your passion somewhere, you kind of focus your passion. Use the passion, Maria. And they usually turn something they are passionate about into a source of income. So it's kind of like choose something that you enjoy doing and you will not have to work for the rest of your life. A successful business person could be a man or a woman. Needs to be, yeah, like a business person. entrepreneur should have great patience

and organization so to run your own company you need to be patient, organized and you need like a person needs super specific skills what are super specific skills

being able to code like code yeah like if you are an IT specialist right so being able to set up know, newsletters and to create a website or a land page. Basically, everything our producer does. I have no idea how that works. You can also say that a successful business person should be a leader,

should have strong problem solving skills, strategic thinking should adapt well to everything, should be responsible, resilient. Do you remember? There is now we talked about this word. Was that a C2 level word? Absolutely. So basically like time management skills, leadership skills, financial skills, decision-making skills, networking skills or communication skills.

And we say like a successful business person should have strong communication skills. And like this technical skills, like Rory told us super specific skills. So you can say technical skills like specific skills. You can talk about hard skills and soft skills. So hard skills like technical skills, financial, like computer skills and soft skills, leadership, communication. Organization. Yeah.

I have good organizational skills. I'm not good at anything else. Yeah, Rory, you have banned 15 organization skills. The last question is, you know, interesting. Like, are men better than women? Like, I don't people? Yeah, where did that come from? She's just like, are men better than women?

Are women better than men? Dangerous questions, do you know? I know, that doesn't sound like a very good question for IELTS, which is usually sensitive and neutral. Yeah, they are usually neutral. But if you are asked something about men and women, who is better at what? It's better to be neutral. It's better to say men. Man.

No, but if, kind of, if statistically, I think, is around. more men in business than women. I don't think that necessarily means to better, are you? Have you seen the economy of my country? You can say, I'm not an expert. According to Google, there are more men than women

in business, but again, like, it doesn't mean that men are better at business. But according to some... Some guy on the internet, a trusted source. Three years ago, 40% of people

think that men make better business executives than women. Again, you listen to that, it's just, you know, nonsense. Yeah. So we do not know. And you can just express your opinion. You can say like, I'm not sure really. Because any person could be a successful business person, a successful entrepreneur. Or if you believe that men are better at running business, okay, explain why.

You can say like men are more practical. logical, they are less emotional. Or for example, we say women are better at running business because they are softer, kinder, more beautiful, I don't know. So what do you reckon? What do you think about this? Verori here is very careful and cautious, neutral, and he says that men tend to be risky, so men tend to take more risks and that's true actually.

That's like according to, if you read some, psychology, that's true. Like, women don't prefer to risk, right? But as often as men, it's all relative. Exactly, exactly. That's why in the business it could be, you know, dangerous because men will risk it and can lose everything, but also they can win. But women tend to be more stable.

So they kind of, they save stuff. So they tend to risk less often than men. So this is a very good idea. So you can say, like, who is a risk taker, who is not a risk taker? And you can say that, well, that's a very broad generalization, isn't it? So we are generalizing. We kind of like talk about all people in general. And you can just say, be like save yourself and say like, well, that's a very broad

generalization. And you can use a tag question, isn't it, isn't it? Isn't it? No, it would be low intonation, isn't it? Because you're confident that it is a broad. broad question. Oh, you just look at the examiner and say, like, what kind of question is this? Sexist.

That's what it is? Sexist, yes. And also, Rory, like, questions like, who is a better driver, a man or a woman? Who is a better cook, a man or a woman? Well, how do you decide that? Like, I mean, I imagine women would be better drivers if you say they have fewer accidents. But the accident's like the worst case scenario. Like, it could be who makes more mistakes when driving on the road.

Now, that could be women. We don't know because there's no statistics on that. So how do you prove that one way or the other? It is a silly question. Do not be caught up in the silly questions. Dear viewer, listener. A very good answer is like, we don't have any statistics on that. We don't have any statistics, but we do have quality, business vocabulary and grammar. Oh, yes, we do. Thank you very much for listening.

We'll get back to you in our next episode. Okay. Bye. Do you think family businesses are common in your country? Not sure, to be honest. Though I imagine they're less common than they were, since people are no longer boxed into the same professions that have run in families for decades.

People have a lot more freedom of action these days. What makes a successful family business? I'm not sure it's that different to other businesses, is it? They need a market for their product and good management. I suppose in a family business it's important not to let family ties get in the way of that, but that's all I can think of. What are the advantages of running a family business? I imagine you don't have to worry about trusting employees as much since you know the people working for you,

and you know them fairly intimately. Anyway, benefit from having your family as a source of labour, which could be cheaper since family members might be more tolerant of being paid less, especially if it helps in the long run. And what are the disadvantages of running a family business? Well, if you have a fallout in the family, that could affect productivity and the strain of running a business

might have a detrimental effect on relations in the family, more generally, since you don't really have a place to escape to at the end of the workday. Do you think family businesses will still be popular in the future? I'm not sure they're that popular now, to be honest, But either way, I don't know. It depends on so much.

Like, if international trade relations go down the tubes, then you might find local companies run by local families that people can trust are relied on more and more. So it's certainly a possibility. I don't know how certain of a possibility that is, though. Why do some people choose to start their own company? Well, lots of reasons. It might give you financial independence,

a chance to get creative and fuel or channel your passion for something and turn it into a source of income. Oh, and of course, people just want to make money and not have to answer to anyone, which is what is, well, that's what striking out on your own can get you, usually. What skills are needed to be a successful business person? I think that depends on the market sector you're going into. Some of them require great patience and organization, like running a farm, and others might need super specific skills, like running a tech startup. I don't think there's just one thing you need for that sort of thing. Are men better than women at running a business?

I'm not sure, really. It's a bit like what it takes to be a successful business person in general. It's too broad. However, since men tend to take more. risks than women. It might be that in sectors of the economy that reward risk-taking, men would do better running things there. But that's a very broad generalization, isn't it?