Cultural English 436 - Ask an American

Complete Transcript

You’re listening to ESL Podcast’s English Café number 436.

This is English as a Second Language Podcast’s episode 436. I’m your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.

On this Café, we’re going to have another one of our Ask an American segments, where we listen to other native speakers (and yes, there are other native speakers besides me) talking at a normal rate of speech – at a normal speed. We’ll listen to them and then explain what they are talking about. This episode’s topic will be “crowdsourcing,” a new practice for getting money for your projects. And, as always, we’ll answer a few of your questions. Let’s get started.

Today we’re going to talk about a very interesting subject: crowdsourcing. “Crowdsourcing” (crowdsourcing) – all one word – is a relatively new practice of getting a large group of people, usually by contacting them on the Internet, to do one of several possible things. You could use crowdsourcing to get new ideas or new information from people. You could use crowdsourcing to solve some problem that requires a lot of different people. You can also use crowdsourcing to ask people for money that you need in order to run a certain project or even start a new business.

That’s the use of crowdsourcing we’re going to talk about today – people who use crowdsourcing to get money for their businesses. We’re going to start by listening to a woman named Yael Krigman. Yael enjoys making desserts – sweet things that you eat after a meal – and she wants to open a shop, that is a store, where she can sell the things that she makes. We’ll listen first as she talks about how she began to consider crowdsourcing as a possibility for helping her start her business. Try to understand as much as you can, and then we’ll go back and explain what she said. Let’s listen:

[recording]

“I was talking to a friend of mine, and we were discussing the different options for financing my storefront, and we talked about bank loans and investors and he told me about Kickstarter.”

[end of recording]

Yael says that she was speaking with a friend about different options for financing her storefront. She says, “I was talking to a friend of mine, and we were discussing the different options for financing my storefront.” Notice she says “a friend of mine.” That means the same as “my friend.” “Options” are possibilities or choices that you can make in order to do what you need. “Financing” comes from the verb “to finance” (finance), which means to find – or we might use the verb “raise” (raise) – money in order to pay for something.

People talk about “financing” the purchase of a new car. You need to buy a new car, but you don’t have all the money, so you need to “finance” it, which in that case means you usually get a loan from someone; someone gives you money that you have to give them back plus a certain fee – what we would call “interest.” But there are other ways of financing – of getting money for something – especially if you are starting a new business.

Here, Krigman wants to finance her “storefront.” “Storefront” (storefront) can mean a couple of different things. It can mean just the front of the store. So, you have a store on a street, and you obviously have to have a front of the store, the part that people can see as they’re walking or driving by. However, we usually use this word “storefront” to refer to a small store that’s on a street, usually on the ground or bottom floor of a larger building.

So, there might be a building of three or four stories – that is three or four levels. And on the ground level – on the lowest level, the level that you can walk into from the street – you might have a series of stores. These would be “storefronts.” These would be stores that you can walk right into, that are typically part of a larger building, although not always. Sometimes we use this term “storefront” to refer to buildings that are just one level but that have small stores that you can easily walk into from the street.

Krigman wants to finance her storefront – her store. In this case, a place to sell baked goods – things that you bake in an oven – and in particular, desserts. We call a place where you sell bread and desserts a “bakery” (bakery). Krigman is already making the desserts at home, I guess, so she doesn’t need money for researching and developing her product – the things she wants to sell. She does need money to actually open up a bakery, open up her storefront.

She says that she and her friend “talked about bank loans and investors.” A “bank loan” is money you get from a bank that you have to pay interest on. We talked about that possibility a few minutes ago. “Investors” (investors) are people who give you money for your business, but they expect a certain percentage of the profit that you make from your business.

Now, if you don’t make any money, then your investors lose their money, but if you make millions of dollars, well, your investors are going to get a percentage of that money. You have to agree with the investor what that percentage that’s going to be. “Investors,” then, are people who take their money and give it to a business because they think the business will be successful. The investor in effect owns part of your business, because you have to give part of your profits to the investor.

Krigman and her friend spoke about bank loans and investors, and then her friend told her about something called “Kickstarter.” “Kickstarter” is a website for a special kind of crowdsourcing called “crowdfunding.” The verb “to fund” (fund) means to give money to something. “Crowdfunding” would be asking people to give you money for your project. Let’s listen to Krigman one more time as she talks about this.

[recording]

“I was talking to a friend of mine, and we were discussing the different options for financing my storefront, and we talked about bank loans and investors and he told me about Kickstarter.”

[end of recording]

Now we’re going to hear Yael talk about what she thinks of getting a bank loan or going to investors, and why she doesn’t want to do that, necessarily. Let’s listen.

[recording]

“Bank loans are difficult to get, especially for small businesses with not many assets, and investors, you know, you have to give away part of your company, and I’m really proud of what I’ve built and I want to continue to grow it. I don’t just want to be a manager at a bakery.”

[end of recording]

Krigman begins by saying, “Bank loans are difficult to get, especially for small businesses with not many assets.” The key word in this sentence is “assets” (assets). An “asset” is something of value, something that usually can be sold for money – or, simply, money. Money is one kind of asset. You might have other assets as well. You might own the building – the building, which can of course be sold for money, is also an asset. The furniture that you have in your office is an asset. Your computer equipment is an asset. All of these things could be considered assets – things that are worth money.

In the case of getting business loans, you need to have assets that are worth something that the bank can take in case you don’t pay your loan back. So, for example, if I’m going to buy a new car, and I don’t own anything else, and I don’t have a job, and I don’t have a bank account, the bank will probably not loan me any money, because if I don’t pay my loan back, there’s nothing they can go and take and sell, because I don’t have any assets. A small business, especially one just starting out, doesn’t have a lot of assets, and so it’s difficult to get a loan from a bank.

Krigman also explains that investors are problematic as well. “Problematic” here means they cause problems or at they have difficulties associated with them. The difficulty associated with investors, she says, is that “you have to give away part of your company.” “To give away” is a two-word phrasal verb meaning to give something to another person, so that you no longer have any control over it. You no longer own it. “To give away your money” would be to give your money to other people. “To give away part of your company” would be to give part of the ownership of your company to someone else.

Sometimes, “give away” is used when you don’t expect anything back from the other person. Here it’s used a little bit differently. You’re not actually giving away, for free, part of your company. You are exchanging ownership in your company, or partial ownership in your company, for the money the investor is giving you. So, it’s not quite correct to say that you are “giving away” part of your company, if we think of giving away as meaning giving something to someone without getting anything back – giving a gift, essentially. Krigman says that she doesn’t want to give ownership of her company to an investor.

She says, “I’m really proud of what I built and I want to continue to grow it.” We used the verb “to build” (build) to refer to the act of putting something together or of constructing something such as a house or a building. “Building” as a noun, of course, is related to the verb “build.” However, in this case, Krigman is using the verb to refer to putting together, if you will, her company. She’s taking the different pieces of her company and putting them together so that it will make money.

She also uses the expression “to grow it.” “To grow” (grow) something normally refers to a plant or a flower. You put a seed in the ground, and from that seed, a plant grows. You can talk about people growing. “You’ve grown a lot since I’ve seen you last” means you are now older and you look older. Usually, we say that to children. In fact, we also have the phrasal verb “to grow up” which means to get older, especially as a child and as an adolescent.

Here, we’re using the verb to mean to expand – to make bigger or larger. “To grow your business” means to make your business larger, to expand your business. Krigman wants to continue to grow her business.

She says at the end, “I don’t just want to be a manager at a bakery.” A “manager” is a person who runs a business but doesn’t necessarily own the business. That’s what Krigman does not want to do. She doesn’t want to just work for someone else. She wants to own her own business, her own bakery. Let’s listen one more time to what she says.

[recording]

[end of recording]

Not only are small businesses using “crowdfunding” to get money, but so are some larger companies, including some here in Hollywood, here in Los Angeles. Companies that make movies are starting to use Kickstarter in order to get money for their movies. We will listen now to a famous actor and comedian, Zach Braff, who raised three million dollars using the Kickstarter website to make a small movie called Wish I Was Here. Let’s listen to what he has to say, and then we’ll explain.

[recording]

“Maybe this could be a new paradigm for filmmakers who want to make smaller, personal films without having to sign away any of their artistic freedom.”

[end of recording]

Mr. Braff thinks that crowdsourcing could be “a new paradigm for filmmakers.” A “paradigm” (paradigm) is a way of doing something, a model for others to follow. Braff is talking about crowdsourcing and crowdfunding as being “a new paradigm for filmmakers.” A “filmmaker” is, you can probably guess, someone who makes films, someone who makes movies.

Braff says that the idea of “crowdfunding” could help filmmakers who want to make “smaller, personal films.” I’m not exactly sure what he means by “personal films.” Perhaps he means made by one individual and not a large company – a large, what we would call, “studio.” He explains that by using crowdfunding, you can make your movie “without having to sign away” one’s artistic freedom.

“To sign away” means to put your signature on a legal document and give someone else the right to use what you’ve created. The phrasal verb “to sign away” is almost always used with a negative meaning. The idea of “signing away” something is almost like giving something away. It’s often used to describe a situation where you don’t really want to give legal rights to what you own to someone else, but you don’t have any choice.

Braff is saying that people who make movies have to “sign away,” or give, some of their artistic freedom in order to get money from the movie studios, the movie companies. What is artistic freedom? He doesn’t define it here, but in general it means the ability to do what you want as an artist without someone telling you, “No, you can’t do this” or “No, you can’t do that.” That would be “artistic freedom.” If, however, the filmmaker gets his or her money from lots of other people who don’t have that kind of control, then you can have more freedom to do what you want as an artist. Let’s listen to Braff one more time.

[recording]

“Maybe this could be a new paradigm for filmmakers who want to make smaller, personal films without having to sign away any of their artistic freedom.”

[end of recording]

Now let’s answer some of the questions you have sent to us.

Our first question comes from Ilyas (Ilyas) in Brazil. The question has to do with three words: “inn,” “motel,” and “resort.” All three of these words are related to a place where you would stay – where you would sleep overnight away from your house.

Let’s start with “inn.” “Inn” (inn) is a place where you can sleep and spend the night, but is usually small. At least, the traditional definition of “inn” is a small hotel, basically, where you can stay overnight. A “motel” (motel) is a hotel that is usually located near a road or a freeway. If you think of the word “motor” and “hotel,” and combine them together and get “motel,” then you’ll understand that a “motel” is a hotel that’s specifically designed to be close to a freeway or a road so that people can arrive there and leave from there easily.

A “resort” (resort) is a larger place of business, usually with a large hotel but also swimming pools and restaurants and other nice places to go that you would want to have for a vacation. When we talk about a “resort,” we’re usually talking about a large area which has a lot of things that you would enjoy on a vacation. Many resorts are designed so that you don’t have to leave the resort during your entire vacation. They have food there. They have swimming pools. They have nightclubs and bars – all of that can be found in one large resort.

All three words, then – “inn,” “motel,” and “resort” – are related to hotels or places that would have a hotel in them. “Hotel” is a general word that you could really use to describe all three of these. “Inn” is probably the least common of these three words. It’s a little older in terms of a way of referring to a small hotel, but you’ll still see it in the names of small hotels.

You’ll actually also see it in the name of some large hotels that have taken the word “inn” and use it in their name, even though they’re not a small hotel. “Holiday Inn,” for example, is a very large hotel “chain,” we would call it – a whole group of hotels that are owned by the same company. It’s not an “inn” in the traditional sense of the word “inn,” however. They use the name because “inn” is a word that gives you a sense of comfort, of being taken care of, and that’s the idea that these hotels are trying to convey.

Our next question comes from Ilya (Ilya) which is the same spelling almost as the previous questioner’s name, without the “s.” Ilya from Ukraine wants to know the difference between “captivate” and “allure.”

“To captivate” (captivate) means to grab the attention and interest of someone. “To attract,” “to fascinate” – all of those are related to the idea of “captivate.” We might talk about a beautiful lake or a beautiful river being “captivating,” meaning it grabs your attention. You want to look at it. It attracts you. We often say, “I am captivated by this beautiful lake” (or the view of this beautiful lake). Notice we use the preposition “by” typically with this verb. “I am captivated by your beautiful voice,” or “I’m captivated by your beautiful face.” Oh, isn’t that nice?

“Allure” (allure) can be both a noun and a verb. As a verb, it means “to attract,” but in a way that implies or suggests some sort of seduction or temptation. You are trying to get someone to do something that perhaps they shouldn’t do. As a noun, “allure” means to be very attractive, almost in a mysterious way. “Allure” as a noun refers to a very powerful attraction, perhaps even a romantic or sexual attraction to a certain person. However, “allure” is not used very often as a verb. It’s almost always used as a noun.

The difference between “captivating” and “allure” is that “allure” describes a very powerful, almost mysterious attraction. You’re not sure why, but you’re very attracted to this thing or this person. “Captivating” is a more general term to describe something that’s very interesting, that holds your attention, although it may not be mysterious or necessarily related to any sort of romantic feeling that you often associate with the word “allure.” “Allure” can also be used to describe a place or a situation: “The allure of Los Angeles is Hollywood and the stars and all of the beautiful people.” Well, they’re not all that beautiful. Me, for example – not really beautiful.

Finally, Daniel (Daniel) from Brazil, which I’m sure is very beautiful, wants to know the meaning of the following terms: “leaving,” “going away,” and “going out.” All three of these verbs are phrasal verbs are related in meaning (have similar meanings).

Let’s start with “to leave” (leave). “To leave” is the most common, most general way of expressing the idea of someone exiting from a certain place – of someone being in one place and then moving to another place. “To leave” means to go from one place to another but you’re emphasizing the idea of going – going to a different place. “To go away” also means “to leave.” It could mean to leave for a short time. It could mean to leave for very long time. “To go out” is almost always used to mean to leave, but for a very short amount of time.

If someone says, “I’m going out tonight,” they mean they are going to leave the house, perhaps to go to a movie or to a bar, but you know they’re coming back at the end of the night. If someone says, “I’m going away,” they often mean they’re going to be gone for several days or weeks, or perhaps even months or years. You don’t really know when someone says, “I’m going away.” But when someone says they’re going out, they usually mean for a short time – for a couple of hours within a single day’s time.

“To go out” can also be used to mean “to date someone” – to be romantically involved with someone before you are married, and hopefully before the other person is married, too. “To leave,” then, is the most general term. It can be used in almost any situation to express this idea. “Going away” is used for someone leaving typically for a long period of time, at least more than a day or so. “To go out” means to leave for a short amount of time, usually a few hours.

From Los Angeles, California, I’m Jeff McQuillan. Thank you for listening. Come back and listen to us again right here on the English Café.

Glossary

to finance – to find, raise, or secure enough money to be able to pay for something, especially to start a new business

* Our soccer team is trying to raise money to finance a trip to San Francisco to play a team there.

storefront – the part of a business that is shown to the public

* We need to have a really attractive storefront that will encourage people to come in and make a purchase.

bank loan – money received from a bank temporarily, with the expectation that the money will be paid back over time with interest

* Do you think we can get a bank loan to buy a car?

investor – a person who invests money in a project or business because he or she thinks it will be successful and wants to have some of the profits, usually by becoming a partial owner

* Even though Harold created the business, he has to get the investors’ approval before he makes any important decisions.

assets – something of value, or something that can be sold to make money, including bank accounts, cars, and homes

* Excluding their home, they have assets of about $80,000.

to give away – to give something to another person so that one no longer has control over it or ownership of it

* New employees have to sign an agreement stating that they’ll never give away company information.

to grow (a business) – to expand a business; to help a business become bigger, more profitable, and more successful

* If you’re serious about growing your business, consider opening an office in California.

paradigm – a way of doing something, a model for others to follow

* His work presented a new paradigm for black-and-white photography.

filmmaker – a person whose job is to make movies

* Paurin dreams of becoming a filmmaker, because she loves telling stories.

personal film – a film made by an individual, not by a large film studio

* Ollie made a short personal film and posted it on a video-sharing site, and he was pleasantly surprised when thousands of people started watching it.

to sign away – to sign a legal agreement that gives someone else the right to use one’s work, or some other right

* Always read a contract thoroughly before signing, because you don’t want to sign away your rights unknowingly.

artistic freedom – free artistic expression; one’s ability to create something artistic (like a film, book, or painting) in the way one wants, without following others’ directions or ideas

* When Meghan started her own graphic design business, having complete artistic freedom was a great feeling.

inn – a small place of business offering rooms for travelers to sleep and to spend the night

* Most of the rooms in this inn are decorated with pink roses and lace.

motel – a place of business usually located near a road or freeway offering rooms that are arranged in low blocks with a parking lot located just outside

* We stayed at a cheap motel, but the sound of cars from the freeway was so loud that we couldn’t sleep well.

resort – a place of business where people frequently go as part of vacations, usually offering very nice rooms, restaurants, spa services, and more

* They enjoyed gourmet meals, massages, and salon treatments while they stayed at the beach resort

to captivate – to fascinate, attract, and grab the attention and interest of someone or something

* Michael was immediately captivated by Parina’s beauty.

allure – the quality of being powerfully and mysteriously attractive or fascinating

* What can we do to decrease the allure of cigarettes?

to leave – to go away from an area or a place

* Why did you leave the party early?

to go away – to leave and move to another place

* Please go away. I want to be left alone.

to go out – to move outside a room or an enclosed space; to date someone

* We need to let the dog go out for a little while before she goes crazy.

What Insiders Know

Types of Crowdsourcing

“Crowdfunding” (fundraising through crowdsourcing) may be one of the most common types of crowdsourcing, but crowdsourcing has been used for many things in recent years. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary is using crowdsourcing to “unearth” (find and discover) information about the “origin of words” (where a word came from; when a word was first used). People are asked to submit information about word origins, and then editors review their “submissions” (information sent in) for accuracy.

Crowdsourcing has been used in many other language-related tasks, such as “compiling” (gathering) lists of “proverbs” (sayings) in certain languages, or in creating scientific vocabulary for “American Sign Language” (a way of communicating by moving one’s hands and arms, used by people who cannot hear or speak).

“Geneological researchers” (people who are interested in tracing back family lines to identify “ancestors” (people who came before, like great-great-great-great grandparents)) have been using crowdsourcing for years, asking people to submit information about their ancestors. The Internet has “accelerated” (sped up; increased the pace of) that work, because people can share information more quickly and more easily than before.

Scientific researchers are also “harnessing the power of” (taking full advantage of) crowdsourcing. For example, the Genographic Project, led by the National Geographic Society, is trying to understand human “migration” (people moving from one area to another) by asking people around the world to submit “DNA” (deoxyribonucleic acid; the substance that carries genetic information) samples for analysis.