Programs

 

• Life and Leadership Program

  • The Life and Leadership Program is a 1-year program, starting in September of each year.  Classes are held on the first two Saturdays of each month September – May, from 9am -11:30am.
    
    This program is geared toward young adults and consists of a select group of 10 individuals handpicked by the SOS board. The curriculum explores topics such as learning to negotiate; advancing or re-directing one’s career; defining love, success, happiness and leverage; assessing difficult situations with logic and technique, and developing a stronger understanding of both self and your surroundings. Mr. Biki Mohindra teaches the The Life and Leadership Program. Mr. Mohindra is a retired executive, who is credited with helping to lead one of largest and most reputed global rice producers─ Riviana, during the 1980s and 1990s.  In addition to his business acumen, Mr. Mohindra is well known for his intellect and strategic thinking. Following retirement, Biki spends his energy in helping others find success.

To apply for this program, please write to  

• Speaker Series

  • The SOS Member Speaker Series provides an avenue for accomplished members in the Houston community to share their secrets of success with SOS class students and the general SOS community. This monthly series provides a medium for continuous learning for the wide SOS community, who want to learn from other’s experiences. Speakers from varied backgrounds and areas of accomplishment are invited to speak at highly interactive lunch sessions. Successful entrepreneurs like Marc Ostrofsky, retail executive such as Robert Sakowitz and Houston City Council member Felix Fraga, corporate executives such as  Shawn Wharton (CIO, BP NAGP), and educators such as Dr. Johnella Bradford (Dean of Houston Community College Southeast).  SOS speakers also serve as mentors to SOS students, based on the match of the speaker’s experience and an individual’s needs.

   

• SOS Connect

• Share Our Secrets (SOS) is dedicated to providing life tools to unleash the highest purpose within an individual.  SOS Connect brings some of Houston best-known leaders to mentor already successful people to reach higher, dream bigger, and achieve bigger successes.
  Professor Johnston often said that “If you didn’t know history, you didn’t know anything. You were a leaf that didn’t know it was part of a tree.” ~Michael Crichton, Timeline. At SOS, we recognize that history is a very important discipline to understand. The idea is to learn from the historical events rather than just know some of the facts and dates.  Mr. Mohindra does a good job of creating a chronology of events across the globe and then ties each era to the present situation.  As an example, one of the discussions is “Marx vs. Weber”. Karl Marx saw class as related to the means of production. …  Max Weber saw society as having several layers, and that factors other than the material were important. These are key differences in philosophy and had a sociological impact that is still relevant. SOS Connect was a way to get this message across to not just students, but also the community at large.  The SOS Connect sessions are open to the public and are held at venues around the city.

  For a complete list of topics covered through SOS connect or to host a session, please write to   

• Circle of Life

• o This is an important model we discuss in SOS. We explore how many people are in your circle of influence and will stand by you under two most difficult situations in your life, i.e. the day you lose your job, or the day you lose your spouse or a parent. These are periods of extreme loneliness and only your best friends matter at such times. Although there is some science in building your circle of influence (COI). This COI also occurs when there is shared energy amongst a few people. As an example, a SOS class a few years back experienced this “energy” as they worked through the class curriculum. They formed an informal group to meet outside of class hours and then it became apparent that this was going to be their COI. They created an environment that was “safe” for everyone to discuss anything that they were facing and still continue to meet and enrich each other’s life. This example is a rare case, but the idea can be applied to creating a COI of one or two people. The key is to recognize what is COI and then consciously build one. SOS gives you a framework to do just that.

•  Executive Coaching & Career Planning

  • SOS offers a special program for C-Suite, senior executives, high-potential managers/leaders, first-time owners or managers, or anyone with a fierce desire to learn and grow. As business environments become more complex, individuals increasingly turn to coaches for help in understanding how to act. This SOS program facilitates advancing individual careers, escalating in an existing career path, widening skills sets, solving challenges at work, and maximizing the scope of a current position at work. The program is put in place to help successful individuals find life purpose, work/life balance, and become a better leader. Mr. Biki Mohindra primarily offers the coaching in conjunction with Quinn Reed Associates.

• Relationship Management

• Managing our relationships at work and creating balance with our relationships at home is an ever-increasing challenge in this “always connected” world. How do we change the adversarial/competitive relationships at work and invert them into empathy/supportive relationships? The answer lies in the theory of counter intuitiveness that is the cornerstone of the SOS curriculum. Through examples and life experiences of the trainers, SOS helps students navigate these choppy waters and come out ahead. The same principles apply to our personal challenges. In fact, in SOS “Success” is defined as the state where one is able to overcome adversities the world throws at us.

• Wealth Building and Transfer

  • In his classic book, Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith argues, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.” In the Wealth Building chapter of SOS, the program dives into how each individual should pursue his or her gains.

    The program maximizes each individual’s’ long-term wealth-generating capacity by teaching key financial skills, investment strategies, estate and tax planning, saving opportunities, and financial innovations. The program stresses that building wealth can actually be enjoyable, even fun. As people and capital become increasingly mobile, the number of international inheritance tax disputes is on the rise. When any tax issue crosses borders, it inevitably becomes more complex. SOS Wealth Transfer program shares knowledge on managing inheritance, estate tax planning solutions, and wealth transfer planning by removing known challenges and managing known disputes.