May 27, 2026 · 17 min · 10 segments
This week, I want to train you on three business verbs that professionals often confuse: **maintain, keep and stay**.You’ll learn how native speakers actually use them in meetings, management and…
As with nearly all my episodes, this was inspired by a client who literally asked me, "How do I use these verbs?" As I said in the introduction, it's really important for you to feel comfortable when you have a doubt about the technical part of the language, because especially if you are somebody that hesitates when you speak up, you kinda need to know that it's the right option, otherwise you're not gonna feel secure, and that lack of security is gonna come across when you speak.
And it can also affect your fluency because perhaps you hesitate or you sort of say, "Oh, what was that word?" Or whatever.
So if we can fix these things, it's gonna push you to speak more, hopefully it'll be smoother, and you'll speak with more conviction, which gives overall a better impression as a senior manager.
So the three essential business verbs we're gonna have a look at today are to maintain, to keep, and to stay.
I wanna go through them one by one with examples, then I'm gonna illustrate it with a story, and hopefully that helps kind of knit it all together nicely.
The goal here, of course, is to get you using these verbs as naturally as possible.
The biggest common error that you should know about in advance is that professionals tend to overuse maintain when actually we would use other options.
This generally doesn't lead to a breakdown in communication, but today we'll go through what are the right choices.
As with nearly all my episodes, this was inspired by a client who literally asked me, "How do I use these verbs?" As I said in the introduction, it's really important for you to feel comfortable when you have a doubt about the technical part of the language, because especially if you are somebody that hesitates when you speak up, you kinda need to know that it's the right option, otherwise you're not gonna feel secure, and that lack of security is gonna come across when you speak.
And it can also affect your fluency because perhaps you hesitate or you sort of say, "Oh, what was that word?" Or whatever.
So if we can fix these things, it's gonna push you to speak more, hopefully it'll be smoother, and you'll speak with more conviction, which gives overall a better impression as a senior manager.
So the three essential business verbs we're gonna have a look at today are to maintain, to keep, and to stay.
I wanna go through them one by one with examples, then I'm gonna illustrate it with a story, and hopefully that helps kind of knit it all together nicely.
The goal here, of course, is to get you using these verbs as naturally as possible.
The biggest common error that you should know about in advance is that professionals tend to overuse maintain when actually we would use other options.
This generally doesn't lead to a breakdown in communication, but today we'll go through what are the right choices.
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