All right, today's toolbox is all about growing your charisma. Why it's so important and how it has an impact on your career, your personal relationships and your ability to grow your social capital, as well as a common myth that many of us believe around charisma and growing our charisma. We're going to break down the three fundamental components of charisma and how you can grow your charisma to be more memorable, to be more interesting, and ultimately to build deeper connections with people. I'm so excited to have Johnny and Michael here today to discuss charisma on this toolbox episode. Now, we've all seen charismatic people. They light up a room and people want to talk to them and connect with them. We seek charismatic people when we're out. So how can we become more charismatic? When we see charismatic people, they can seem as if they're larger than life. They burn a picture in our mind and they tend to grow in our mind. Just by the way, that whole room treats them. When you stand there next to them, you don't think anything of it, but it's just the perception of how they directed the energy in that room makes them seem larger than life. And you can do this too. You can be that person. And it seems always magical. I think every listener knows what we're talking about when we describe these people walking into room, but it's your hard push to decide what actually makes this person, what gives this person this charisma that they take over the room. Everyone looks at them when they come in, everyone wants to talk to them. And charisma is essential to being influential. So if you feel stuck in your career, maybe passed over for promotion, you feel that your social life is lacking, your friends aren't reaching out to you as much, you're not being asked to hang out, or maybe even romantically you're struggling to get second dates, ultimately it comes down to a lack of influence, not being influential. And charisma is the first pillar of influence. The second pillar is communication, how you communicate with others makes you influential. And the third piece is the relationships you have or the social capital, as we call it. When you're charismatic, when you are an amazing communicator and you have social capital, you're influential, you're promoted, you get ahead in your career effortlessly and you make friends easily. So that's why it's so important that we understand the role that charisma has in growing our influence. And that's why I'm excited to break down. How do we actually grow our charisma to become more influential? Maybe let's start here, even though this is a little bit tricky and I'll tell you why in a second. So the definition of charisma, let's start there. Because just like I said a minute ago, when people walk into the room and they do have this charisma, we still have a hard time making out what exactly is it. It's not the limousine that parked in front of the place a minute earlier. It's something else. And this is termed charisma and it was first described by actually a German sociologist. So leave charisma to the Germans. The sociologist was called Max Weber and this was just a hundred years ago. And so he was the first one to work around in this field. And to this day, the concept is quite new and vague. So there was a big research done by John Ano Tonakis and his team where they looked at various a variety of studies and research done around the field. And this was in 2016 and they ended up calling this paper Charisma an ill-defined and ill-measured gift. So the reason charisma is difficult to measure and also difficult to define is that it is something you recognize immediately. And at the same time, it is measured by how you are received. So how charismatic I am in this room as we're recording this is defined by what I'm doing. What gives me the charisma, however, is how AJ and Johnny how you're reacting to me. So this makes it, this is what makes it difficult to actually measure. And so for the purpose of the definition of this episode today, I would like to go with the definition that psychology today has used and they write, Charisma is the ability to attract, charm and influence the people around you. I think that's a good one. And before it was defined, do you know what they called it, Michael? The divine gift. In the music industry and well, entertainment, it was just called the it factor. It was always it, this person. I think Stephen King might have ruined that verbiage a little bit in the 80s. Well, that's what they called it. It was always it. This Michael has it, AJ has it. It's just how they defined it. And that's why it has been difficult for everyone to verbalize and articulate what this actually is. But now the research is out. We have all this data that has been collected and it is now defined as Charisma and the definition that you use, Michael encompasses what it is. Now the problem with it, have it, has a connotation that, well, aren't you born with it? Is Charisma something that you can actually develop? Or do some people just luck of the draw have it and others don't have it? Right. And if you feel right now as you're listening to it, that you might not have it. It's very easy to be hard on yourself. It's very easy to get upset when you see others who seem to have it. But in actuality, it's a combination of three skills that you can learn and develop. And it's something that we do with all of our coaching clients because it's so key to you growing your influence and being successful. I love that, AJ. And that is very important. And this goes back to the days that I was bartending, managing a bar, and I was working in the music industry. I was also a talent buyer. And I was also one of the people who were performing. And I lived in that performance art world. And as a bartender, my world was all involved in the people, the performances, the people that were coming in out of that club. There was a lot of creatives. And we use that term all the time, oh, so-and-so has it, so-and-so has it. But when they were young or we would call it, they have raw it. Yeah, the raw it and the it. I mean, whenever we look at personality traits like this, we always look at nature versus nurture. There are always two components to it. You might have been really lucky in the gene lottery and you've gotten some charisma, some divine gift handed to you when you started out on day one. And then there is also nurtures, like what kind of training do I put into this? Do I surround myself with the right people? Do I get the right mentors to really get this tweaked to perfection? And Angela Duckworth in her book, Grid, she addresses that topic as well. And she says that when it comes to your natural gift, your nature versus your nurture, then training and putting the grid in and working on things always outperforms talent or nature. So it's important to realize that this is a combination of conscientiousness or extraversion as part of our genetic makeup. But then also it's how you interact with others and how others perceive you. So if you grew up maybe as a single child or you didn't have a lot of socialization, you didn't have a lot of great modeling, well, that's where the nurture comes in. So how do we amplify the nurture? How do we actually break charisma down into three skill sets that we can practice, we can hone, and ultimately we can turn on to showcase that charisma when it really matters when we're meeting people for the first time to become more memorable. I think before we break this down into three components, I think it's really important to outline something here for those that are starting out. Charisma can't be faked. You come across as literally as a fake. So there's one study that I really like that is by Sakaro Samp, Kemp and Bader in 2004. And they explored various leadership traits, including charisma. And they also discussed how charismatic traits can be learned, but in their study also they found out that if you fake charisma as a leader or as a person at a social event just trying to connect with new friends, if you fake charisma, you'll quickly come off as creating a lack of authenticity and trust. So what we're about to break down these three skills that we're going to talk about, they can't be faked, they can be learned, and there's something that you want to practice repeatedly so they become something you do unconsciously because the more conscious you are in being charismatic, the less authentic and ultimately trustworthy you are. So that's the paradox that we're working with here. So let's start with the first skill that we need to hone to grow our charisma and that is presence. If you get this one right, you'll be 90% plus ahead of the rest of the population. Why is that? Well, as we've talked about in so many previous episodes, our presence, our ability to be in the moment is being constantly obliterated by devices, distractions, notifications, the world environment going on around us. So your ability to hone into the present moment with the person or group of people you're talking to sets the tone for how charismatic you will be. Now, one of the things that we see in a lot of our clients who join us is they can't quite be present because they're so focused on themselves. In fact, they're inward facing, right, Johnny? Yes, and you mentioned all the extraneous activity and stimulus that is going on that forces us out of being present. And then when we go out and we go to a social engagement, a social event, we have now the added pressure of other people's thoughts and seeing other people's faces. And this will put us in a place of wanting to self soothe due to all of that stimuli. This forces us in our heads and going through whatever it might be that we need to feel comfortable in that moment. However, that takes us out of the present moment and a present consciousness to connect with other people. And one thing we see on video constantly with people who feel like they're stuck in their head or they're inward is there's a degree of self judgment going on. Am I doing the right thing? Am I saying the right thing? How are people perceiving me?  They feel based on your body language and the way that you're self soothing. As Johnny said, closing yourself off to protect yourself, to feel more comfortable and deal with the self judgment you have. You're actually appearing or coming across like you're judging others, which makes you off putting and uncharismatic. So what's the solution here? How do we actually break out of this inward tension that we're feeling and become more present in the moment with someone we're meeting for the first time? Well, the answer is empathy. Empathy means you're able to put yourself in another person's situation. Well, you can't put yourself in another person's situation if all you're doing is thinking about yourself in the current situation you're in. That requires you to actually learn something about the other person, to be curious about who this other person is. What has their journey been like? What destination are they heading towards in their life? It doesn't mean that you agree with them. It doesn't mean that you're agreeable AJ and say, yes, awesome, cool, totally to everything they say. But instead, you're trying to go a level deeper in conversation to really get to understand what makes this person tick? What has their experience been like that led them here? So a big part of empathy is something that we develop at around three to five years old and that is called theory of mind. That is my ability to get into AJ's head and figure out what he's thinking. I definitely need that for empathy. So the theory of mind thing is something that we learn as kids. We learn as adults. We improve. We get better and better at perspective taking as our own experience in life grows. Fun fact here that has nothing to do with science, but one of the leading researchers in theory of mind is Simon Baron Cohen, the brother of Sasha Baron Cohen, who's known for his work as Borat and Ali Ji. So that's something to be said about this thing. But to break it down just a little for empathy, for theory of mind, you need to be able to take perspective. You need to be able to see the world through the eyes of someone else. So even if you're disagreeing with someone on something, maybe I disagree with AJ on the fact that Italian food is really great, right? That might be the case, but theory of mind, perspective taking empathy allows me to see the world through AJ's eyes and how I don't know what might give rise to his proclivity towards Italian food. But by thinking on a different level about this, going a little stepping outside of my own head for a little bit and ask myself, what made AJ say that? What could I ask him to find out what made that happen? That is the level of empathy that we need to bring into the conversation. And at its core, this is what we call value. Attention, approval and acceptance. When you bring those three As into any interaction by giving value to others, showcasing that you actually want to get to know them on a deeper level, instead of just focusing on yourself, and even worse, focusing inward on yourself and maybe not saying anything, you become more present in the interaction. And the best part is when you actually interact with someone who's charismatic, take note of how little it is that they talk about and how much interest they express in you. That's the most amazing thing about charismatic people. They actually don't spend much time talking about themselves and instead they spend a lot of time getting to know you on a much deeper level. So we can use this presence to our advantage and bring empathy into the interaction to make that leap towards becoming more charismatic, to unlock your own inner charisma. And what's so cool about this is that this change that happens when people suddenly switch on their empathy and they train it. This is something that we at the Art of Charm see every month in our implementation sessions and our improv sessions, where you suddenly do have to really train what is the other person thinking right now? What do I need to listen for? What can I ask? And the session usually starts with everyone being a little bit timid, not being really sure, what should I say? And then we do the first couple of practice rounds and people are like, oh, this is how it works. This is what I need to listen for. This is how it's say it. And then 60 minutes later, everyone's like, well, that was easy, why didn't I learn this 20 years ago? This is fun. They don't even want to end the session. We're done guys, you did great. I was like, no, let's do another round. There's so much more we need to discuss or we don't even run out of stories anymore. What I love about the X Factor implementation sessions is it allows our clients an opportunity to learn what to listen for. Because here's the issue. When you're self soothing, you're focused inward. So what does your body language do?  It's difficult for other people to talk to you. But here's the issue. It's like, okay, well then what is my body language supposed to be? Well, if you wanna be able to be receptive, you have to open up your body language.  You have to look into the other person. Here's what's difficult. Everyone's like, okay, now what do I focus on? What am I training myself to listen for? Well, in the implementation sessions, right, we learn how to focus our attention to the emotional bids that allows people that theory of mind to have an understanding of what it is to feel like that other person, to see things like that other person. And here is where the emotional connection happens. Because in order for me to have an understanding of how AJ feels, I have to feel those exact same emotions as well, and by discussing them puts me in that state. While I'm in that state, we are sharing now in an emotional state that we're both in, in the present. And there in lies the connection. And in our X Factor Implementation Sessions, not only do you learn what to listen for, but you also learn the cues to look for, to show you that these concepts are working and that there is a connection happening. When you begin to see those cues, you can start to feel comfortable, right? That your ability to connect with people, it's now happening. And you know, you can feel good about, I had a great connection with Michael the other night. We were hanging out, it was so awesome. And of course, Michael was like, wow, hanging out with Johnny. I had no idea he was so intuitive of the room. And there was just a natural response to being able to share that emotion that we both share. And we remember that. That's the connection. Exactly. When you bring presence and empathy into the interaction, the other person remembers you because you make them feel good. You make them feel validated. You make them feel heard. You make them feel understood. And that's why we're communicating in the first place. No one wants to leave an invite or an event or a social gathering feeling misunderstood, feeling unheard, feeling invalidated. So that's why this skill set is so important. And the more you practice it in various contexts, whether inside the implementation sessions or with friends, family, people you already know, coworkers, the stronger this skill of presence is gonna become. And as we said, since so much of the modern world is destroying our ability to be present, you set yourself so further than everyone else on this planet by developing this skill set, which is the first step to unlocking your charisma. Let's talk about the second pillar to unlocking that charisma. That's enthusiasm. It's the next piece of the puzzle. Now, of course, when we think about enthusiasm, we might have a common pitfall or an idea that, oh, enthusiasm means, I just have to talk about how great I am, how amazing I am, all the awesome things and fun things I'm doing in my life. And that's a common pitfall we see with our clients, right, Johnny? Absolutely. And the other part of that is, if you've been focused on your career, then you've allowed other things to your other interests to fall by the wayside. This leads then to you feeling that you're boring because the only thing that has been on your mind is work, that promotion, getting ahead, solidifying and stabilizing your lifestyle, all of those things, and if you have a dog or a pet or even a more responsible yet, a family, all of those things come down to you being good at your job. So that's where you're gonna put all of your efforts. So if you're feeling that you're boring, it's gonna be very hard to be enthusiastic outward in conversation when meeting people. So that's something we have to break. And it starts with how you actually feel about yourself. When you understand that even if, right at this moment, when you compare yourself to others, you feel like you haven't reached the same level of accomplishments, you haven't gone on the fun trips or you haven't done the cool things that other people around you have done, if you're viewing yourself as boring, you're then killing your ability to be charismatic when meeting other people. Because that self-judgment, again, robs you from your ability to not only be present, but then also be enthusiastic in other people's presence, to allow them to feel good around you. And the reason that enthusiasm is so important is because it's contagious. When we bring enthusiasm into the interaction, when we celebrate others, when we make them feel good for what they're discussing, what their favorite things are, what their accomplishments are, they then in turn want to make us feel good. It's reciprocal. So that's the beauty of it. By putting your focus on others, instead of self-judgment, I'm boring, I'm not enough, I haven't done anything interesting. Instead, if you celebrate everyone else's interest, accomplishments, trips, things that they are so excited to talk about, or as Johnny said, their emotional bids, you actually become contagious as a person. They want to spend more time with you. They want to express more interest in you. Now the thing here is, however, that not only are these enthusiastic emotions contagious, no, in fact, all emotions are contagious. So this fact of being contagious, which a little bit after the pandemic is still a weird thing to say, but the idea that emotions are contagious can also backfire because that means that if you are in a group of people and you are the boring person, the pessimistic person, the one who drags everyone down, everyone else is going to catch those emotions. Guess where they're going to go? Away from you and towards someone else. And this is why utilizing this enthusiasm within Charisma to create those positive emotions that people say, I don't know why exactly, but when I'm standing next to AJ, when I'm standing next to Johnny, I suddenly feel enthusiastic about my life. I feel so much better. I leave the party and I'm just, I could high five everyone. I feel so good about myself. And this is particularly important in people that are in leadership positions as a study in the leadership quarterly showed that was titled Charisma, positive emotions and mood contagion. And they found that charismatic leaders utilize positive emotions to influence their followers. That's obvious, but they also found that mood contagion was a key mechanism in that form of leadership. And they, to quote them at the end, they write, our results confirm the idea that charismatic leaders are influential by virtue of the emotions they induce in followers and the emotional climate they create. So let's unpack this.  People you're meeting for the first time, friends and family, coworkers. Yes, that's right. You create an emotional climate. Your emotions are contagious. So if you're feeling that you're boring, odds are you're not creating a positive fund, warm, inviting emotional climate around others.  And as we know Charisma leads to people wanting more time with us, chasing us, seeking us, giving us promotions, giving us leadership roles because they enjoy our presence.  So how do we do it?  AJ, I have an anecdote to this that I wanna share that I think will enlighten our audience. You and I, several years ago, had the opportunity to interview Kobe Bryant. And you were a huge basketball fan and of course, Kobe, what's to say about Kobe? I mean, the guy was an impressive figure in many different aspects of his life. In fact, we were interviewing him because he now was putting together a series of children's books. Now, I remember that day and we were both really nervous. I was trying not to even think about the interview because I didn't wanna put myself into a nervous state. But I gotta say that when we got there and there was so much nervous energy in the room because of this man who was coming in and who had all the accolades and all the awards and an impressive figure. There was a lot of children there that were excited to meet Kobe. We were there to do our interview and it was an interesting setup. And so just a little background on Kobe, he and his father played in the European leagues and it was a famous basketball player in his own right. So Kobe was brought up in this world. So what had happened is when he entered the room, him and his entourage went to the back room and there was not really any interaction with anybody. This was to give Kobe an opportunity that turned off a few switches that allowed him to take care of business and to turn on some switches in his mind to allow him to be present. And when he exited that room and came out, you could see the difference in his demeanor and how he behaved in that room because he knew what to turn on to be present and to be successful in that arena. And I remember how he engaged with each one of those kids and how he took interest in those kids and those kids in the sports that they're in and their studies and he chatted with them and he was asking all these questions and all of those kids were lighting up. And this only made me even more nervous because I was like, we are dealing with somebody who understands this at a very fundamental level. In fact, his aura, a character had been created not only on the court, but off the court. And let's be honest, Kobe had a few off court issues early in his career that he had to make up for. So it was important for him to get this right and it was impressive. But everything that we are talking about in this episode was exhibited in Kobe in that moment. And just watching somebody who had a lifelong experience with this turn it off and on, it was amazing. I love it. This is what is so special about this because you can be Kobe. You can learn how to turn this on. Now, what's something else that Kobe had to go along with that enthusiasm? Optimism. Oh yeah. Even after all the missed shots, even after all the failures, he was optimistic that the second he stepped on the court, he was gonna win. And that optimism is something that we have to work on because if you're right now feeling that you're boring, it's gonna be very hard for you then to beat back that pessimism that you're feeling about yourself. And as Michael said, emotions are contagious. So if we're self-reflective, if we're self-judgmental and we're focusing on how we're boring, odds are we're starting to view things in a very pessimistic light. And that pessimism is also contagious. So that pessimism is gonna be very hard to hide in an interaction with others. So boring is actually a very slippery slope. If you start to call yourself boring, if you start to slip into a pessimistic state of mind, that pessimism is what people are gonna remember about you, which is not charismatic. So we have to become optimistic. When we're optimistic, we actually turn up the volume on our charisma. And optimists believe no matter what, there's always choices. Not that there's always positive outcomes, but that there's always choices to be made. So whatever the end result is, the choice you have is what am I taking from this? What perspective can I take from this? What lesson can I take from this? How am I turning that negative event into something reflective that I can look back on in a positive light? And lastly, optimists are able to laugh at themselves and not in a derogatory self-deprecating way, but in a way that allows other people to drop their guard and feel more comfortable around them. And this is something that we work hard with our clients to break, because when you're feeling boring and you're starting to fall into that pessimism trap, it's very hard no matter how much you work on other skills, listening, networking, what to say in conversation, it's very hard to develop that charisma that makes people wanna spend more time with you. So we have to break free from that pessimism trap and that ability to view yourself in a boring light. And this reminds me of our client Adam, because when Adam joined the X Factor Accelerator, he literally told me on the call that he was not a people person. In fact, he wasn't very enthusiastic at all around meeting new people. And when I dug a little deeper, I asked him why and he was like, because I'm boring, AJ. When I meet other people, they have so much going on when I go to their social media, they're doing all these fun trips, they have all these accomplishments, they've done all these things with their life. And when I think about myself, I just don't stack up. And since I don't stack up, well, I don't really wanna spend a lot of time around other people because I feel that they're then in turn gonna judge me like I'm judging myself. And the big key takeaway for Adam from X Factor Accelerator was not so much around becoming the most adventurous eater or going on the craziest trips or slaying the greatest dragons as Michael likes to say. Instead, it was how can I be more enthusiastic about other people that I'm meeting in my life? My friends, my family, my coworkers and then strangers that I'm now talking to through the program and through the implementation sessions. And what Adam found was that the more enthusiasm he expressed around strangers, people who's meeting for the first time, the more enthusiasm they expressed around him and the more time they wanted to spend with him. And all of a sudden, through that feedback loop of other people seeking him out, wanting to spend time with him, saying yes to hanging out, he actually started to break free from that pessimism around other people and stop viewing himself as boring because if people wanna hang out with you, well, you can't be that boring, right? You actually have to be pretty interesting and pretty fun if people wanna spend time with you. So that was actually a huge takeaway from the program for Adam. It was not what many of us think building this crazy life resume of all these wild adventures and being the person who has a long bucket list and you've accomplished all of it and talking about yourself, but instead switching from pessimism to optimism, bringing that enthusiasm into the conversation with others actually made him more charismatic and made people more interested in spending time with him. The last point I just wanna make on this piece, which is that switch from a pessimistic attitude to an optimistic one is one that needs to be practiced. It is something that you have to begin doing every day to strengthen that trait, to strengthen that optimism. That optimism isn't our natural state. Our natural state is the pessimism. This is what makes it so difficult because it's that pessimism that has kept us alive. It is that pessimism that has us hearing the rustling in the bushes and thinking I don't need to go over there because it could mean I would be getting eaten, right? The optimistic person goes, hey, there could be something in those bushes that I could eat. And that's why all of our exercises inside the implementation sessions of the X Factor Accelerator create space for positive reflection. For you to surround yourself with other people who see you in an optimistic light and to get some positive feedback to counter some of the negative feedback and self-judgment that you're facing. And let's be honest, when you find yourself in a pessimism loop, you tend to only attract other pessimists. Optimists don't like to spend a lot of time with super pessimistic people because it drains their battery. So if you are finding yourself right now in a pessimistic loop and you start to look around and realize, well, I'm also reflecting back what a lot of people in my life are sharing, you might wanna change things up and join a community of optimists who create space for positive self-reflection and allow you to break free from that pessimistic loop. There's a saying that has always been in my mind about that, which is show me who you're hanging out with and I'll be able to tell you who you are. It's a beautiful quote and it literally is the foundation of you becoming more charismatic. Now the third and final pillar in growing your charisma, supercharging your charisma in fact, is confidence. And unfortunately for a lot of us, if we're lacking in the confidence area, we're not gonna be able to show up and turn on that charisma with new people, with strangers, or even with friends, family and coworkers, or even worse on a first date. So we have to build a skill set around confidence so that we can express and showcase that confidence when we're meeting people and in turn supercharge our charisma. A huge pitfall here around confidence is a lot of times we think in order to express or showcase confidence, I have to talk about myself, I have to sell myself, sometimes even have to brag about myself so those around me can feel that I'm confident. Yeah, we call that false confidence and it's the natural default that we all assume about being confident. And this is why we're gonna walk into the room when we're gonna look for opportunities to sell ourselves and think about that. If I'm in a conversation with AJ and we're out and about and I'm thinking in my mind, how can I interject, how awesome I am in this conversation? Well, then I'm not being very present, am I? And confidence is not something that you just have. You earn it through competency. Exactly, you earn it through experiencing that self-doubt and taking action anyways. You learn it through feeling not up to snuff but going after that goal, hitting the gym, going to that social event, putting yourself in the arena as we like to say. And unfortunately for a lot of us when we think about selling ourselves, well, that sounds terrible. I don't wanna be in a situation where I have to sell myself constantly, prove my confidence to other people in order to be valued. That sounds awful. So the key here when we think about how to actually sell ourselves is not talk about the destination, not talk about the achievements, the accomplishments, list your resume and everything that you have been able to gain for yourself in life but instead sell yourself by talking about the journey. What did you do along the way? What were the doubts you had? What dragons did you slay to get there? How did that goal for yourself actually become a reality? And what made that a goal in your life instead of just talking about the destination, talking about how you got there actually makes you not only appear more confident but it makes you more charismatic when meeting other people. And that is also something that I as a public speaker see a lot at events like TEDx and so on where people will say, well, that speaker was really confident. Like all of the speakers were really confident. And that is true. They're definitely, I mean, it definitely takes some confidence to be able to stand in front of a couple of thousand people and give you a talk. But the reason these people are perceived rightfully as confident is that as a good speaker you don't talk about the accomplishments. You don't talk about, I did this, I did this, I did this, I did this. You structure your talk by saying, this was my dream. This is what I struggled with. These were the obstacles. Here's where I thought I would never be able to get there. And here's what I worked on. And here was the support that I got. Here's my journey. And ta-da, here's the destination. Here's the outcome. And then people clap and they hear the outcome but they remember the story. They remember how someone went through struggles and overcame them, how someone had to grow and learned where and how to do it. And then they walk away from the talk and they say, well, that speaker was really confident. And that speaker most of the time spoke about struggles and ideas and dreams and broken hearts. Michael, here's one that you will remember very well. And it's dear to our heart because her research and vulnerability has impacted our show. And we use, and we talk a lot about that research and data. But Brene Brown got her start, she did a TED Talk on her research in vulnerability. And unfortunately for her, she had to be vulnerable in her talk about her research in vulnerability. And when she delivered that TED Talk, when it came out, it was very popular, but she was unbelievably shaken up over being vulnerable on that stage and sharing her work. And she was talking about the journey that she took in order to do all of that research. She was so terrified and so nervous about how it would be received that she tried to get TEDx to take down that talk. And it blew up because so many people were able to relate to her journey about vulnerability and how uncomfortable she was about vulnerability. And that propelled her into stardom. I mean, that's how she got her break, how her research became so popular. And Brene now is part of that Oprah circle. And also watching that talk, you'll see Brene shows enthusiasm about her research. She shows optimism about what's possible. She's definitely present when she's up there on stage and she adds that confidence piece by talking about the journey as well as the destination. And that just makes that lady incredibly charismatic up there on that talk that she hoped only 300 people would ever see. And it's existence. And there's a perfect example of this from a client Matt in the X Factor Accelerator who is a real estate investor, is a part of numerous masterminds with real estate investors who've been in the game for 20, 30, 40 years longer than him who have way more in assets under management, larger developments. And oftentimes in these situations, he feels this lack of confidence. He feels like he can't stack up to those around him. And of course, if he was to just list off his accomplishments and compare those to others, well, he might actually be less confident in that setting. So what we worked on together was, well, what's the story? Because when he was going to mastermind events, people would ask him why real estate or what's your story, literally? And he would often find himself saying, well, you know, I got started a few years ago and it's fun. And what we did in working on his story was we decided to focus on the journey, what inspired him to get started in real estate and what has his journey in real estate created in terms of an opportunity for him. And what he found was he got started in real estate because his dad was a successful businessman. Unfortunately, his dad was so humble he didn't even know how successful his dad was as a businessman until he passed and he took an internship in his dad's company. And then he realized everything that his dad had built. So that inspired him to go into business. And after having a few false starts in business, he learned real estate from a mentor and had some success with his first investment. And what he realized on the real estate investment journey was that it actually allowed him to be creative, to tap into his creativity in building deals, finding tenants and creating win-win opportunities for everyone. And it was that creativity and that opportunity to be more creative that inspired him to carry on in the real estate investment game. Now, in sharing that story at a recent event, he actually found not only did he feel more confident in himself, but he started to get more questions about his journey and actually interests in the deals he was working on. Whereas previously in going to some of these mastermind events and networking with people, he would find himself being quiet, a little bit standoffish, not knowing what to say and certainly not feeling comfortable selling himself as many of us think selling ourselves is listing our accomplishments. So the next time you're in a situation where you might be surrounded by people who you feel are more accomplished, share your journey instead of the destination and you'll find that you not only appear more confident but you actually will feel more confident internally. This brings up a great point from an author that we've had on the show by the name of Laura Huang who wrote the book Edge. And she makes a point that you must be able to tell your story or a story will be attributed to you. And you want to make sure that you're telling the story that you can be confident in, right? One that showcases who you are because you don't want to have a story attributed to you that is less flattering than the one that actually is.


thrown away furniture or other objects he deemed, still perfectly good. It was a practice the family watched grow from a mild annoyance and minor clutter to something far more worrying that began to take over entire rooms. He would come home with entire boxes of junk. He just kept accumulating things, his daughter Lenata said. One of the spare rooms soon became the designated storage area for his treasures. Neat stacks turned into messy piles and pockets of unrecognizable smells. The children wouldn't go near it. One day, he brought something different home. Lenata braced herself for another garbage gift. But when she felt something heavy and moving on her hand, she opened her eyes to something completely unexpected. Her dad had brought her back a tortoise. She named it Manuela and dubbed it an official part of the family. If only she knew it wouldn't last that long. Tortoises are common pests where Lenata comes from. They are easy to care for and slow enough that there's no worry of them escaping their caretakers. At least that's what the family thought. It was only a few days later they lost track of the tiny pet. It didn't help that their home had been under construction. They looked for it everywhere. Out in the garden, around the property, and down the street. Wherever a tortoise would enjoy hiding, they scoured. They hoped it was at least near water. The scorching heat wouldn't be kind to an infant such as Manuela. They also hoped it hadn't been caught under an unsuspecting foot. However, as days passed, they finally gave up and moved on. Years passed and the experience slowly faded into an amusing childhood memory that barely made it into the forefront of their adult minds. It was only when Leonel grew old and past did the story truly become significant again. One of the jobs the siblings had to deal with was cleaning out the spare room, the junk room. When they opened the rickety door, every sense was bombarded with must, mold, and the smell of rot. They had no choice but to empty it. Pile after pile made it out onto the curb for trash pickup. The son, Leandro, was taking out a couple of heavy boxes when a neighbor noticed the growing mountain and asked if they could take a look. Another hoarder. Go for it. They rummaged around, their reactions varied. They opened one box and looked at the son, confused. They're not throwing out that as well, are you? Leandro peered inside the box, his eyes scanning over the odds and ends from his father's junk collection. He thought the man must be talking about his father's old garbage-picked record player. Maybe it was an antique. Then, he saw it and his eyes widened in disbelief. But what he was seeing couldn't be possible. What? He leaned closer into the box and his jaw came unhinged. There was Manuela, very much alive. It's not possible, he thought, turning white and then called out to the rest of the family. Everyone stood in a circle, eyes wide and at a loss for words. How in the world did it survive? The tortoise was immediately rushed to the vet. It probably needed medical attention. They also needed answers. It had been 30 years. When the vet heard the story, he was also amazed, but not nearly as surprised. He went on to explain the amazing facts about the species. While most tortoises are impressive survivalists, the red-footed family is extra resilient. They like to eat fruit and leaves but can also subsist on expired animals or droppings. If necessary, they can go for two or three years with no food. The father's stash also ended up a key element in Manuela's existence. The vet suspected that the furniture he brought home had termites and other bugs. The tortoise could eat away at them as they repopulate. It could also lick away at any condensation that came from the extra humid room. That didn't mean everything was okay in the health department. The time in storage was still far too long. Anthony Pilny, a veterinary surgeon and specialist in birds and reptiles at the Center for Avian and Exotic Medicine in New York City, also had some answers for the family. He explained that most reptiles have reserved fat pads that they can draw on when food is scarce. But he also pointed out that reintroducing Manuela to the world might prove to be a challenge. They should go very slowly, start by warming her up and rehydrating Manuela before feeding. Give her warm water soaks and offer a small meal after she seems stable, Pilny advised. Then take her to a veterinarian who specializes in reptiles for a checkup and some blood work. But it's not the first time Pilny has seen something like this happen. One day, Pilny's own red-eared slider water turtle vanished from his tank. I looked everywhere, turned my apartment upside down, but to no avail. About three months later I was packing to move, and while cleaning out my bedroom closet, found him in a shoe buried in the back of the closet, he said. He wasn't responsive or moving, but didn't look dead, so I dropped him in the tank. Nothing happened for a few minutes as he sank, but then he suddenly came alive and acted as if nothing had ever happened. They're all thrilled to have Manuela back, Lenina said, but no one can understand how she managed to survive for 30 years in there, it's just unbelievable. Their vet, Jefferson Pires, was equally astounded. A tortoise surviving in an attic without food must be some kind of record. But even though she'd survived her 30-year ordeal, she wasn't quite out of the woods yet. For Manuela to be rehabilitated, the family would need to follow a detailed plan to reintroduce better food and water. And they would have to do it very slowly. After, they could give it a proper home in their garden. In a strange way, their father was the one to thank. How about now? The Almeida family has another 30 years to enjoy with their old friend. Yes, these are not pets to take on lightly. They might be easy, but they are still a long commitment. This is because the pet versions cannot be released into the wild. They will be with you for a long time.


We need novel strategies to target the complexity of cancer and, particularly, of metastatic disease. As an example of this complexity, certain tissues are particularly hospitable environments for metastases, whereas others do not contain fertile microenvironments to support cancer cell growth. Continuing evidence that the extracellular matrix, ECM, of tissues is one of a host of factors necessary to support cancer cell growth at both primary and secondary tissue sites is emerging. Research on cancer metastasis has largely been focused on the molecular adaptations of tumor cells in various cytokine and growth factor environments on two-dimensional tissue culture polystyrene plates. Intravital imaging, conversely, has transformed our ability to watch, in real-time, tumor cell invasion, intravasation, extravasation, and growth. Because the interstitial ECM that supports all cells in the tumor microenvironment changes over time scales outside the possible window of typical intravital imaging, bioengineers are continuously developing both simple and sophisticated in vitro controlled environments to study tumor and other cell interactions with this matrix. In this perspective, we focus on This article was authored by Shelly R. Payton, Manu O. Platt, and Edna Kukyerman. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


The 67 Fondle Act spends 50% of his time dedicated to the fire department and 50% of his time, his or her time, to the ambulance service. The three battalion chiefs up until this year, 2010, were split as 70, 30, 70 fire department, 30 ambulance service. As of the first of the year, the three battalion chiefs are 50, 50. The three paramedic lieutenants, 25% fire, 75% ambulance. And this is, I guess, besides the management, this is the other one, and you already said you didn't have a problem with this. But their 26 paramedics are 25% dedicated to the fire department and 75% to the ambulance service. What are they possibly doing different over there, if anything, why our paramedics are just the direct opposite of what theirs are as far as the timeshare? Again, I can't answer to exactly why Fondle Act does what they do, but I know one of the reasons that they record or allocate their manpower the way that they do it is they wanted to get some of those funds out of their general fund so that their ability to raise their tax levy was more beneficial to them. So I can't, and again, I have no problem assigning 100% of our paramedic salary to the ambulance and showing a loss. I have no problem doing that. But you have to subtract it from the fire department budget. The net result is the same. And I think that's always been a question with the citizens here, our constituents, is why not just show the true cost of what it's costing to operate the ambulance service and at the end of the year, if you're putting $500,000 into the general fund, just say that. I mean, I don't know why you have to play the marginal cost thing. I think it would be much more clear in the eyes of the citizens, like apparently they're doing in Fondle Act at the end of the year, hypothetically, if it's costing them $2 million to run their ambulance service, they're telling the citizens that, and oh, by the way, all these people are here anyway, but we're putting $500,000 into our general fund. I think that at least my constituents would be much more on board with this if we did it that way than this marginal cost thing, because a lot of people just simply don't understand it, number one, and just say what it costs to run the ambulance service and at the end of the year, say we put $450,000 or $500,000 into the general fund. Once again, Alderman-Born, there are 50 cities doing it, 50 different ways. I can set those numbers up and allocate 100% of the paramedics salary to the fund and we will lose money. If that's what you want us to do, we can do that. I don't know if that's an accurate way of doing it. In my eyes, you're not losing money, Chief, because you're still putting the $500,000 in the general fund. The people are there anyway. That's always been the contention with the marginal cost. The people are there anyway. The bottom line is the people are there and if you do not have the ambulance service in the city, there's $630,000 that you will not have in your general fund after all expenses are paid minus the labor. Okay, we have a couple of lights on. Hold on, please. Alderman Gysha here next. Thank you. We've been working for the last, I've been on the finance committee for three years. We've been, I think, chairman in the last two years. I think so. We've been working real hard not to mess with our general fund. We had so many things being charged, the general fund moved around the general fund. Instead of having our true general fund cleaned, some of this has to do with expenditure restraint funds. We get from the state and that's why Fondalac actually messes with their kind of stuff. And I understand, I think Jim Alderman-Born is real accurate saying people just don't understand, people just don't understand, but I'll tell you, anybody in business who understands that doing it this way is more clear than doing it the other way. Moving as, and I understand the chief's point, I don't care how you show it, but keep in mind that's the decision of the finance department and not of the chief and I think he would agree with that as well. You start putting money into the general fund. That's how we got all messed up with things like the stormwater fee or things like that where little bits of money have been pulled off here or there, you can't really, you have to go to 25 different sheets of green bar paper to really pull out what your bottom line is. So rather than doing that, putting all the expenses in one spot, putting all the income in one spot and the bottom line is what the bottom line. You can do just what they said, but the difference is, it's exactly the same. The clearest way is the marginal cost way. If you want to play a game and confuse people, you mix it up in the general fund like a deck of cards. And there are people in this room who have business degrees and are much smarter than I am or have masters in business. I would be interested in hearing what they have to say. But just to point on reports, I've had discussions and we've had it in the finance committee with Alderman Hanna from Public Protection and Safety. Right now we have an ambulance quality assurance report that talks about run times and things like that. And then we have the financial report from the finance department. We're looking at combining those two reports for purpose of clarifying for the finance department and for their workload. All of you, you get one report at one time. You can look at run times. You can look at complaints or non-complaints or praises of service and the financial thing. And Alderman Hanna has kind of pledged it. So we're going to try to cross our data back and forth so we end up with one report for some more openness and more streamline. Thank you. I think, going back, Alderman Bowers. Thank you. I believe, just for clarification, I know that some of these reports, there were 1,662 ambulance runs. And I believe, going back to 2008, there were something like 79 fire runs, which actually there was a fire, was it a false alarm? But the allocation of the salaries for all the firemen were like 25% to the paramedics and the ambulance runs and 75% to the fire. And I guess that's where I have trouble digesting these figures that come from the fire department. And I think that's where the question comes in with everything else that we do as a fire department. Do I allocate a percentage of that, all of that to the fire, some of it to the ambulance, some to the fire? That can be debated forever. I don't think there is a definite answer to that question. Can I ask you a question, Chief Herman? Is there a way of tracking the amount of time spent on an ambulance run and the amount of time spent on a fire run, the amount of time spent on an inspection, the amount of time spent on, because you have different people doing it, but there must be an average cost per hour for an ambulance run.  The truck goes there for, you know, half an hour or so just to see that the coast is clear and everything else. And then the ambulance stays and takes care of the person and gets them to the hospital. You know, isn't there some way, just as you mentioned, snow plowing, we know how much it costs an hour to plow the streets. I think we could get that number. And it could be averaged out based on, you know, whether a guy is doing the plows for 20 years for us or a man is doing the plows doing it for six months. I think we could get an average for what does it cost per hour, per fire employee to do ambulance run. I don't know. I mean, it just seems like that would be something that could be worked out. And then someone could say, you know, we did 1,600 runs and, okay, you multiply that by the number of hours we were out there doing ambulance work. And that was how much it cost us in terms of salaries. Salaries is the big thing. I mean, the bandages are the other equipment and things like that. Those are things that are, you know, minor compared to. I mean, had you ever sat down and said, this is what would cost us to run an ambulance across town for an hour? We have never done that. It would be very difficult to get an exact number. We can track our on-scene times through our dispatching for both fire and for ambulance, but there would be no way for us to get an accurate time for you as to how long did it take to clean the equipment up, get it back on service? How long did it take to train for those calls? Those are all subjective numbers. Okay, we have some more lights. I think Alderman Hanna, you might be next. I think Alderman Hanna says an MBA from Fordham. Oh, yeah. And I have an MBA from Manhattan College a little further up the hill, same neighborhood, though. Is that Manhattan and the Dominican Republic? No, it's in the Bronx. It's in the Bronx. So is Fordham. A couple things. And I understand the position that Fondlec has taken. It serves their financial interest to do it that way. Now, when, and may I ask Alderman Borner a question, when Fondlec drops their ambulance, will they be firing all those people that are allocated to the ambulance? You'd have to ask them, Alderman Hanna, what they would do. I think that's a, that's a core question, because fire service. Apparently it must be making money because I haven't heard they're going to drop the ambulance. No, but if they did. But you're asking me a hypothetical. I don't think it's going to happen. Yeah, but if they, if they did, if they allocated those costs and they close it down, I'm assuming they fire them. Now, the question really comes back to, as a city, as a common council, do we believe in having a full-time paid fire department? And if we do, do we, not just ambulance, do we continue to look for the nature of a full-time fire department? Unfortunately, it means it's like, it's like under health insurance. You're not using it all the time. But when you need it, it's real important. But if we can maximize their down hours with some other productive activities, I think those are things we need to continue to explore. If there's a way, if you've got a nucleus of employees that are on call for emergency, and there's ways that we can augment and generate different revenues, not just ambulance, I think we need to keep looking outside of the box for ideas, I think that's the way it allows you to support a full-time fire department and lower your core costs, which I think is what you were getting to all the person, is can we identify those core costs and what activities can we do to drop that? It's never going to be a pure profit center. We can move money all around. But we need to continue to look at activities. And once you discover an activity, we need to do a better job of collecting revenues from those activities. And I want the Fordham graduates are much more succinct. Alderman-Born, I think I can explain to you what Fondalac is doing by looking at the per capita spending that the state puts out for all fire departments and other city departments. And this is, these are some older statistics. I think they're 2006 or 2007. The median per capita spending on a fire department is about a dollar or $141 per capita. Sheboygan is at $133, we're below the medium. Fondalac is the bottom one. They're down at $95 because they are taking a lot of those fire department expenses and shifting them over to the ambulance. If we would take the $1.3 million that I'm speaking of if we cost it out all 18 paramedics and assigned it to the ambulance, that would drop us right down to second from the bottom next to Fondalac in our per capita spending for fire departments. Okay, we're learning a lot this evening. Alderman Bo. Thank you, Madam Chair. I too have an MBA from, but I'll be it from a state school. University of Maryland. Further on down the coast than you good people. And what they taught us in our finance classes was that you would use a marginal cost basis when you are applying it to an incremental scope of work and you would use a total cost basis when you were doing one of two things. When you want to compare the efficiency of your operations to the competition. If you can get great numbers for your competition, total cost makes sense. Or if you're trying to improve your own efficiencies and you want to look at your total set. Those are the two times. So by having this marginal cost conversation, it's exactly the right conversation to have. There's no doubt in anybody's mind. And for those, and as Alderman Boerren points out, it is a hard thing to understand. And without a certain education in that specific thing, it may seem like black magic. But just because people don't understand it doesn't mean it's not the right way to analyze it. And two, we need to do a better job or at least a continuing job of explaining why it is the right thing to do. So that's our obligation. So if you're with me on that, the reason it made marginal sense for us to get in this business, and I need you guys to keep me honest on these numbers. The reason we had either a $1.0 or a $1.8 million cost advantage on our friends at Orange Cross was because they had $1.0 or $1.8 million worth of overhead that we don't suffer from. They had buildings that we already had. You know, we weren't in the ambulance business and we already had buildings that we had space in. We only had higher four people. They had 30, 40, 50, whatever they had. So they had a million eight or a million dollars worth of overhead that we didn't suffer from. And because of that cost advantage on a marginal cost basis, it made sense for us to get in the business. And that was the reason, in addition to some of the emergency numbers or call time numbers that Alderman Hannah referenced, that's what convinced me was because of the $1.8 million cost advantage we had on a marginal cost basis. So that's just a little review. But I'm going to say something now that is going to be music to the ears of a couple of my constituents that are seated in the room. We can get out of the ambulance business tomorrow and here's all it takes. And Chief, you and I can wrestle over whether it's 400,000 or 600,000, but we'll say it's 600,000 because it doesn't matter much. If you assume that there are 50,000 people in Sheboygan and there are three people per family, it's about 16 or 17,000 households in Sheboygan. Take that $600,000 in profit, divide it by 17,000 households. It's 38 bucks. If every household in Sheboygan is willing to give up 38 bucks a year, we can get out of the ambulance business. Now if you're paying $4,000 a year in property taxes just to the city, not to the county and our friends at LTC, but just in the city, if you're paying $4,000, that's a 1% tax increase. So to my friends out there who think that we should get out of the ambulance business, I'm all for it if we can knock on enough doors and get enough citizens to say, raise my taxes by 1% next year, I'll vote to get out of the ambulance business tomorrow. I think it's a beautiful idea and I don't think we've ever really talked about that. So that's my quick analysis, my quick state school analysis. And with that, I would make a motion to file the document, Madam Chair. Okay, this one, second. I want to mention something. In terms of our agenda, as an MBA, I've noticed we may have a big mistake in our agenda. Our numbers are wrong. And I'm sitting here looking and looking and looking. So when we take your motion, it's just going to be a change of the numbers, these numbers in terms of document numbers. Okay. Under number four, it should have been document number 2054. So in the minutes, we're going to say we're filing document 2054. Okay, and I'm going to point of order here soon. And I just also want to change then on number six, it should be 2030. Because 2030 is what a chief Herman's been talking about, ambulance labor costs, that type of thing. Okay. Thank you. So there were, we had a multiple document and that's where the 2054, 2030, 30 got mixed up. So the first number four should be 2054. And we can re-redo this if you want to motion again on 2054. But you're moving to file 2030, which was contained in 1840 originally too. 1840, he had some references as well. Okay. We're talking about two documents here. And 1840, Madam Chair? Yes. And 1840, yeah, that's correct. 2030 and 1840. So moved, ma'am. So, okay. And there was a second on, I believe, to file. Okay. Under discussion. Okay. Under discussion, we have, I'm going to close the lights out on this just to be sure everybody's off. And then, oops. Okay. So discussion. Okay. Did you put your light on again? So it's not blinking. Yeah. I'm going to turn it off. All right. So, on discussion, Alderman Rinflage. Thank you. Madam Chair, it drives me nuts economics. And I'm also working on my Master's degree. I don't have it yet. It's not important for Manhattan. It's a state school, but a little bit further west. So, not only talking about marginal costs, marginal benefits as well as the total cost. And the dollar per household, if you will. As it actually comes down to total costs. So we're going to analyze this versus not having the annual insurance up there. But my degree is not in economics. It's in public administration. Public administration is also a policy. And I'll go back to what Alderman, I mentioned before too, is we can give it of the annual insurance. But from the reports that I have seen previously, we watched our response times to our tax pay resistance increase to where they were previously. Because, well, Orange Cross had three stations. They also covered a good chunk of the town. Those rigs were not always inch to one. Our rigs are here. Response times are better. Complaints are hardly any complaints at all. We have, I think, a better pay and better trained staff that we provide. And so, for that dollar per household, you know, we don't think it's worth any lives of our local tax payers, but not for households as well. So it goes beyond the economics as well. Today, we're discussing that now, far from our total costs and total benefits. But to me, it also goes beyond that. It goes to protecting our citizenry. I think that dollar that we're talking about right now is fantastic steel for the top-notch service. Okay. Okay. Alderman Bowers. Take a miniature. First of all. This is on the resolution, right? Pardon? This is on the resolution that we just said to file. Motion to file. I said that resolution, but motion to file. Well, if we're filing, it means we don't vote. What would we be voting on anyway? To file. To file. We're voting to file. What's the other option? Not to file and stay here forever. I go along with that filing deal. Okay. So my question was for Alderman Giesh. The marginal cost approach. What other approaches are there for us mere mortals that don't have answers? Oh, no, you're not. Sorry. I don't have an MBA. So based on what they described, you have marginal cost basis or total cost basis. Total cost. One of the other. And at the end of the day, both numbers come out to be exactly the same. It's different routes to get to the same answer. Without an MBA. I'm sorry, I asked. Okay. Alderman Bourne on the issue to file. Thank you. I've got a question for Finance Chairman Giesh. I was going to, this document, I believe, was on hold at Finance. We referred to the Committee of the Whole in 1840, but it was on hold. I think we decided to hold it. My question is, if we file this, I was going to make a motion to refer this back to Finance. And the reason for that was, is that we have not made a determination on how we were going to allocate costs yet for maintenance of effort. And if Terry would have been here tonight, I could have asked him the question. Maybe Terry feels that for maintenance of efforts reasons, maintenance of efforts is how, for the people that are watching, is a new budget requirement that we have to supposedly spend the same amount of money in 2010 on fire that we did in 2009. And then there's a form that came out from the Department of Revenue. And there's a separate column on there, I believe, for the fire department for fire and ambulance. And how we're going to report that. Now my question to Terry would be, and we haven't discussed this yet in Finance, and that's why I think this might be a good idea to send this back to Finance rather than the filing, is to get Terry's opinion for maintenance of effort purposes, whether it would be a good idea to put more on the ambulance side than on the fire side. For example, as Chief Herman said, perhaps showing more paramedics in the ambulance service versus the fire department for maintenance of effort reasons. So, I guess my question is Alderman Gysha, if we file this, and then we have to deal with maintenance of effort in the finance committee, can we revive this again, or would it just be better to refer it back to finance rather than filing? Okay, Alderman Gysha. Thanks. I don't see any issue, Jim, on filing this. Director Hanson will come to us regarding the maintenance of effort when he's prepared to do that report and give us a report on that. This really doesn't have anything to do, particularly with the maintenance of effort. I'll guarantee you when he is ready to do such that we will have it on the agenda if he feels maintenance of effort for the allocations. If you feel it's necessary that he reports to us, I don't particularly think it's necessary he reports to us how he dealt with a form for the state, but if you feel it is, we'll make sure it's in his director's report. I do think it is important that he advises us how he's going to do the distribution. Can I ask why? Well, I think it's important for us to know how the final distribution is. Why? He's the finance director. He's a CPA. He's responsible for all the reports. If it's a state mandate and he has to produce a form, I think the finance committee should be advised of what his decision is, and if we have any questions on what he decides to do, we have an opportunity to ask him. He's the finance director. He's not God. We have it right to ask him some questions. I understand that we produce a myriad of reports. I would guess dozens of reports. Nancy, can you help me? Dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of reports every year from the finance department, and we trust them, and they are then audited to do that. I think it's a fair question, a discussion point, and if you're curious about it, to give Terry a call, or I'd be happy to put it on the finance committee agenda. But I just want to avoid us micromanaging our finance department with five aldermen who do part-time work in a finance committee. I have a ton of faith in them, along with the other 100 reports they do a year. But I'll be happy to put it on the agenda. Thank you. Commander Butler, did you want to say something? I just have one quick comment on that. Jim, I think that line that you're talking about, I've seen the form from the state for the allocation for maintenance of effort. We actually would be able to put everything under fire department. The ambulance being a separate department, I believe, is actually for cities that have a third service ambulance, where they have just like an EMS department. It's a whole separate thing. It's not under the fire department. It's like DPW would be. Some places actually have just an EMS department. They're not firefighters. They're just ambulance personnel. I think that's actually why that separate line is there. Because otherwise there's nothing really special about it being separated out. Because most places do include in the fire department that have it. But for services and cities that have a third service, what they call it, then they have a completely separate budget from the fire department. And that's where that would be allocated. Okay. Alderperson Montipiola. Thank you, Madam Chair. If we file this here, it's simply a recommendation to counsel. So it'll come in on a consent agenda. So counsel can file it. It isn't that we're actually recommending to file it. This is a study group. This is not a, you know, whatever we do, we're just recommending back to counsel. We still have another look at it. And it's just for us to get more information. Okay. So there is an action on the floor to file this. And we are over time at this time. Yes. Mr. Richard Shusa, Shusa. Thank you very much. I'm not advocating this whatsoever this evening, but I would like to know the feeling of the new chief and the council about expanding the transports and going out of the city for more service. It's not on the agenda. And he did speak to it. And when he introduced himself this evening. So I don't think it's on the agenda with our documents that we have in front of us. I think that can be a question for later on. We are, let's take an action. Let's close this action right now. How many in favor of filing the document? Hi. Any opposed? Okay. The document is filed. And just as a point in terms of the ambulance fire department, we would like to have a meeting, another committee of the whole meeting in which the fire department would like to demonstrate fighting a fire. And they had asked to do it tonight, but I thought this agenda tonight would be too full to do that. So I am looking at February 3rd, Wednesday, February 3rd. And it will come up. And I was talking about 5.30 here in this room. I'm hoping that that doesn't conflict with any other committees. We've had trouble finding a time for people to be free. 5.30 Wednesday, February 3rd. At this point, I'm going to tentatively say that. The chief hears me with that. He needs to bring in some off-duty firemen to do the project or the demonstration. So he needs to know ahead of time as well. It's been moved and seconded to adjourned. Thank you very much.


So, the next session will be by Mr. Binayak Lohani and on the topic will be scalar transport form, but he is there but we will be playing a video that he has recorded because he was not sure about his presence during this time of the workshop. So, Abhushan, could you please play it and I hope Binayak is there. So, if you have any questions he can answer. Hello everyone. First of all, I'd like to thank the FOSSI team for organizing this workshop on open form and inviting me to conduct this session on scalar transport form. I'm Binayak Lohani. I'm currently pursuing aerospace engineering at Pulso campus in Nepal. I'm also a technical contributor at FOSSI. Talking about my past experience with FOSSI, it's been really wonderful. I did my previous internship at FOSSI where I used the open form to conduct CFT analysis. So, my work also got accepted and I presented my work at fluid mechanics and fluid power conference. So, I'm very grateful to the FOSSI team. Since then I have been using open form to conduct several CFT analysis and two of my case studies have been published in the CFT FOSSI website as well. So, you can check out my work there too. So, let's quickly move towards today's session on scalar transport form. So, this is the outline of today's talk. First of all, we'll see how a scalar transport form transport equation looks like. Then we'll see a scalar transport form solver in open form. Then we'll talk about the limitations of this solver and see how we can modify this solver to incorporate the limitations that we have here. And also see one example for this. So, this is the scalar transport equation. It's also known as the convective diffusive equation. Here, key is the scalar term. The first term is the unsteady term. The second term is the convective term. Ui is the velocity field. The third term is the diffusive term. Df is the diffusivity constant. So, the diffusivity constant, d is the molecular diffusivity. And the ratio of newt and sct is the turbulent diffusivity. So, newt is the turbulent viscosity and sct is the skimit number. So, the skimit number is a constant. We have to pick a particular value to solve for this case. The last term is the source term. And combining all these four terms gives the scalar transport equation. So, the scalar transport form is a basic solver that dissolves the convection diffusion scalar transport equation using a user-specified stationary velocity field. So, user-specified stationary velocity field is needed because in the previous equation we saw the velocity field. We do not solve for the velocity field here, but it needs to be specified and it's stationary throughout the simulation. We'll further talk about this point later also. So, remember this point. The second point is it's transient and incompressible solver. The scalar term is passive. So, the passive scalar means that it does not influence the fluid properties, for example, the viscosity or the density of the fluid. Next, we talk about, we'll see how the scalar transport form is coded in the open form. This is a simple C++ syntax. So, the below one is the actual equation and it's coded in this fashion. So, the unsteady term is DDTK and the convective term is the divergence of phi k, where phi is the flux. So, the third term is the Laplacian DDTK. So, this negative sign is because this term comes to the left-hand side. And the last term is the epimodos.source k. This is the source term. So, we'll see how the case is set up in open form for this solver. We only have one case, pitch-tally case in the tutorials and the folder is present in this directory inside the form tutorials, basic scalar transport form, pitch-tally. So, as we have already known that open form files folder contains three soft folders, zero constant and system. Inside the zero folder, we have to define the initial and boundary conditions. So, here in this case, we have t and u. So, here t is used instead of k. In the previous equation, we have seen k as the scalar, but here t is used as the scalar. It's just an indication, particularly here t is the temperature. So, temperature is also a passive scalar term and u is the velocity field. So, we define the initial and boundary conditions in this case. Inside the constant folder, we have the transport properties file. So, in the transport properties file, we have to define the constant parameters. So, in this case, the only constant parameter is the diffusivity constant. So, since temperature is used here, the diffusivity constant can be referred to as the thermal diffusivity term. So, we define that here. And inside the system folder, we have three files, control date, FB schemes and FB solution. So, all these files are used to define the time control and the discretization schemes, algorithms that I used to solve for the scalar transport equations are defined in these files. We'll see this one by one later. So, this is how the case looks like. It's a 2D case. And this sort of geometry is also known as the backward-facing step. So, this is the inlet, this part only. And this is the step. Okay, these all are the walls. Let me start the walls. And this is the outlet. So, what happens is the flow from the inlet will recirculate in this behind this step and flows towards the outlet. So, that's why it's called the backward-facing step also. It's a 2D case. So, we have to pre-define the velocity field here. Now, it remains constant throughout the simulation. It does not change. The only thing that changes is the scalar term T. That is evolved from inlet to outlet. But velocity field remains constant. It's already defined in the zero-folder. Okay, we'll see this. Next, the passive scalar T field. In the initial time step at zero second, T. It's defined as one at the inlet only. Okay, this is initial condition. So, it's one in the inlet only. And at all other places, it's zero. Okay, you can see here from the color bar also. And this is the last time step. The right-hand side is the last time step. So, we can see here at last time step how the scalar term T evolves or gets transported towards the outlet. Okay, in this fashion, it's transported. Later on, we'll see the animation. Now, we will do one hands-on session to run these cases. It's a simple case now. So, I request all of you to please open your terminal. It can be... You might be using Open2 or WSL. It doesn't matter. For now, I'm using WSL. Okay, so we have to copy the folders, this folder. As I have already shown where the folder is present. So, we have to copy this folder in the present directory. To do this, please follow my command. It's pretty simple case. So, please type CP minus R after here. Then, please type this. The code is case sensitive. So, please take care of the upper and lower case, alphabets. So, form tutorials slash basic. Then after that, scalar transport T capital transport and form F capital. Then, it's deli. So, after writing this command, then we have press and press press. Then press full stop. So, full stop meaning that we have copied the folder from this location to the present location. Present location is indicated by this dot. Okay. So, after typing this command, please type this command. All of you. And then we can type enter. So, after this, we can list the present directory. And you can see this deli is present here. Okay. So, all of you, please write this command and press enter. So, now we can move into this deli case. This deli case. So, now, if we list it, we can see the zero constant and system folder present here. The all run file, all run file is used when we have to run all the commands all at once. So, we'll see this later. First of all, let's see the zero for folder. So, inside the zero folder, we see the T and U files. So, one by one, let's see how the boundary conditions are defined here. So, I use our notepad as a text editor. You might use any text editor of your choice. So, to use the notepad, please type notepad.exe then type T to see the files of T. So, the boundary conditions for the scalar term T is given here in the boundary field. As I already showed you that in the T is defined as one at the inlet and at all other places, outlet, upper wall and lower wall, it's zero gradient. So, if considering T as temperature, the zero gradient means that it's the idea of a condition. Okay, and for the front and back, it's empty because it's a 2D case. So, now let's see the velocity field. Okay, now velocity field. As I already told you that velocity, we don't solve for velocity, but we have to pre-define the initial conditions for all the cells in the domain. Okay, so these internal field are all the internal cells. Now, so we have to define it as a vector in x, y and z directions since velocity is a vector. And we have a long list here for individual cells of the this daily case. And at last we have the boundary conditions as well. So, at the boundary conditions inlet is 10 meters per second in the x direction, outlet is zero gradient and at wall it is no slip condition. Okay, so here we have to define that in boundaries also and also at the internal cells. Okay, so after this let's move on to the constant folder. So, to move backwards of this case since we are in the zero folder now, we have to move one step backwards. So, we have to click CD double dot press enter and then we'll move backwards. And list we have let's move into the constant folder CD constant. So, inside the constant folder we list it as transport properties is only present here. To see the transport properties file, we'll use notepad. notepad.exe then transport properties. So, if we see the contents here, we only have dt this is the diffusivity term. So, since t is the temperature here it's thermal diffusivity and the value is 0.01. Okay, so this square in the square bracket we have the dimensions so and this is the thermal diffusivity value. So, after this, let's say the system folder system folder we can see type this command then we move to the system folder directory. Now, we can see that control dict fb schemes and fb solution. Inside the control dict file let's move to the control dict control dict now we can see the time control is present here. In the application, we have the name of the solver we are using that is scalar transport form and rest are the time control. For example, the start time is 0 second and stop time this end time is 0.1 second so this is the end time and delta t is this. So, rest are the functions for example write for math. We can write it as ASCII or binary and rest are the functions that are required to run the case. After this, let's see fb schemes file. So, inside the fb schemes, we have defined the digitization schemes for various terms. For example the unsteady term for the unsteady term ttt schemes is used as boiler. So, as we know, boiler is a first order accurate term. So, we can increase the order of accuracy to maybe second one maybe backward or crank Nicholson. So, we have we can use that also. So, we have to take care of the stability also if we want to increase the order of accuracy. So, and gradient schemes is Gauss linear, divergence schemes is for phi t is Gauss linear or point grad t. So, we can increase input also but we have to take care take this value carefully. It also depends on case by case basis. Now, next we see the fb solution file. Inside the fb solution file, we have to define the solvers that I used so, iteratively solve the t or the passive scalar term. So, the solver name is pbisc step, preconditioner is used and the tolerance is given and the relative tolerance is also 0. So, these are the input that are necessary to run the cases and simple algorithm is used to solve the transport equation. So, these are all the files present here. In the system folder, we should have extra file also to run the mess. So, we don't have it here but if we look at the all run file if we look at the all run file you can see here these are the commands that will be run if we run directly with the all run file we need to find the block mess file also. The block mess ticked file is present in some other directory of home tutorials resources block mess pbisc daily. So, in this case, we can run this whole command all at once so that block mess ticked file will be copied will be run in this current directory ok. So, if I run this file run this command then block mess ticked file will be run since it's present in some other location ok it's not present here it doesn't matter much we can copy here also so, if we press now enter we will run the block mess file ok now mess is already generated for here. Now, next command we only have two commands the next command is the name of the solver. So, the name of the solver is scalar transport form so, if we click this press enter we will run this case. So, here we can see we are only solving for t we are not solving for u we are not solving for p velocity or pressure. So, we are only solving for t velocity remains constant. So, the n time step is 0.1 second so, it's completed now so, n time we are only solving for t. To see the results as we have already seen some of the results in the slides also. We can see the results in the platform. I will show you the animation now it's done ok. In the platform I think we don't need to run this. I will just show you quickly. So, this is the pitts daily case and if you want to see the first of all the velocity u field. So, ok velocity u field it remains constant throughout this is time 0 second. But if I run this animate button it doesn't change ok. It remains constant throughout as we are not solving for velocity I already told you that but if let's move to the 0 second also now now if we see for this t file it's 1 at the inlet and 0 at all the places in 0 time ok 0 second. Now if I click on play you can see the animation ok how it is transported so you can see how this t is transported in the domain so it's ready now but we need to scale it to see completely if we scale it this is the final time step at 0.1 second now we can see at how this scalar field is transported in time in this domain. So, this is a simple example you can run this on your own and see how the result changes. Now we'll see the limitations of this over in the slides see top of the limitations the an option to solve for the flow coupled with the scalar transport is not available. So we cannot solve for the flow that is the velocity and pressure you only solve for the scalar transport that is t in the previous example ok so that's one limitation now the diffusion coffee center is assumed to be a constant scalar so it's a constant scalar here we cannot change this so there are two limitations the first one is Navier-Stokes equations cannot be solved along with scalar transport equation and second is diffusion coefficient is constant so to overcome the limitations of scalar transport form the transport equation can be coded inside other solvers like simple form that is steady state and pico or pso or pimple form that is transient solutions ok so we can code the scalar transport equation into some other solvers so why do we need to do this because we might need to simultaneously solve for pressure and velocity using Navier-Stokes equation and also want to solve for the scalar transport equation also so for example in the pollutant dispersion so in an urban flow setup we can consider concentration of pollutants concentration of pollutants as a passive scalar quantity and simultaneously we want to solve for pressure and velocity field also so in such cases we might need scalar transport form combined with other solvers like simple form, pimple form, pso form etc ok we'll see this is a basic introduction in such cases we'll see examples of this in the later session where Mr. Krishna Kantas will help with the ICO form solver coded with a scalar transport form ok and the next session ok so this is how the code looks like for a scalar transport equation almost with a simple form so while the simple form solver is running we incorporate this scalar transport equation in this fashion so it's a simple case simple way to illustrate such cases and we define this molecular we define this diffusivity constant in this way a decay is the molecular diffusivity plus newt and skimmed number ok this is the ratio we can use this code so talking about the example this is a street canyon setup so for context a street canyon setup is a place where there is a narrow road narrow road on either side of tall buildings on either side there are tall buildings and there is a narrow road between it so in this case what happens is in a mean wind direction is perpendicular to the street or road or cross section of this case so in mean wind is perpendicular then what happens is recirculation region will be happening here forming the primary vortex so when the pollutants from the vehicles escape from these vehicles and it gets trapped inside this region only ok revolves around this region only in the primary vortex region but cannot escape outside of this region so this creates a problem of pollution pollution will be increased so much that it's one of the major problem of the urban city so for such cases we can optimize the shape of the buildings do that sort of analysis using CFT using such solvers ok using merged solvers of simple scalar transport equation and the pollutants can be considered as the passive scalar term so with a similar intention this is one example where scalar transport equation is used in simple form so this is the domain where pink blocks are the buildings ok are the buildings and between these buildings is the alternate line sources so we consider these line sources as the passive scalar term then we need to see the pressure and velocity equation and solve for it the velocity will be from x along the x direction so that it is perpendicular to the street so here is the result ok this is the cross-sectional view this first one is the velocity contour plot we can see the velocity along the x direction it looks like this and the next one is interesting one this C is the pollutant concentration ok so this from the line sources we can see how this passive scalar term pollutant concentration evolves and we can see that it is unable to escape out of this urban cannon setup so we can optimize the shape of the buildings or the roof so that the pollutants can escape out and does not have the problem of pollution so that's the one main objective for this case so for the codes and the similar case study that is used here you can go on to this link below where we have the codes that most solver but the case study is different here the case study is that we have this red building where the pollutant sources are this red blocks red four blocks so when the flow is along the x direction here along with the flow this pollutant sources also disperses ok to see how is it is dispersed along with the flow we are using this setup so this is the setup from ZVAL A15 building Longo et al 2019 from the wind tunnel experiment so you can go on this link the name of the case study is a walkthrough of solver development in openfoom so this is developed by me you can go through this and if you have any doubts any questions you can contact me on this email contact CFD at fosy.in indicating my name so I'll be happy to help if you have any doubts about it so that's it for today's session for me thank you for being wonderful audience thank you I would like to know if you have any questions about this session I think most of you are wondering how the velocity field will come out of so how we'll get the velocity data to run the scalar transport form solver most of all you will need to solve using another solver for example simple form or potential form without any scalar term in it it's a simple steady state first you run that with the same geometry then extract the data from your last time steps and put that in your initial conditions in the next simulation that you want to run so that's how you will get that and for the next case that we discussed now for the merge solver you don't need to do that we simultaneously run both the equations so that's one advantage of the later version of merge code that we used so any other questions you can ask now or you can also contact by email so Abhin here was asking why internal field for TE0 so in the previous I had told that internal field for temperature must be greater than 0 in that case like in previous case we were actually solving the energy equation that involved temperature but here we are not solving energy equation temperature is just a scalar properties or a scalar parameter that is being transported with the velocity so in this case we need not need to be worried about that Rosnes was asking what if we have analytical solutions for velocity so in that case I think you might have analytical solutions at the inlet so you need to use the coded boundary condition for that and use merge solver to solve this problem another question from Chinthak in the chat box so if there are more than one scalar transport yeah you can use you can solve using scalar transport form or the merge solver if you have more than one so you need to define more than one as separate you need to define the passive scalar separately with separate name for that case one more question in the chat box so in the how does viscosity properties move into it for the merge solver we can use viscosity also in the transport properties file so in that case we can incorporate the viscosity property also while we are solving the flow it's not only for diffusion there is convection also in the flow in that case inside constant folder in transport properties so first case was only for transport form so there was no viscosity included as we are not solving for Navier-Stokes equation or momentum equation but in the next case we are solving for velocity, pressure and transport equation all at once so we need to define viscosity inside that folder constant transport properties any other questions or I think we can move I don't think they have any more questions let's take a break for lunch now