Welcome to this week's Episode with Minal Santhosh! This was yet another encouraging conversation. See below for some of what we cover!
- Minal shares his professional background and current role at Hewlett Packard
- Emphasizes the importance of family and values.
- Education and extensive experience in the United States.
Family and Values:
- Minal reflects on the influence of his grandparents and parents, emphasizing family values
- Family importance, the significance of hard work, and doing the right thing.
- Minal recalls memories of his grandmother, highlighting her strength in holding the family together.
- Importance of family rituals and traditions.
- Minal reflects on his wife's influence, highlighting their complementary nature. Discusses the blend of discipline and positive thinking in their household.
- Minal's advice for future generations: Prioritize family and health, contribute positively to humanity, and always do the right thing.
- Minal envisions being remembered as a good human being, a leader who built other leaders, and a positive example to his family.
- Encourages continuous learning, embracing mistakes as opportunities for growth, having fun, seeking mentorship, leaving ego aside, and practicing kindness.
Welcome to this week's Episode with Minal Santhosh! This was yet another encouraging conversation. See below for some of what we cover!
- Minal shares his professional background and current role at Hewlett Packard
- Emphasizes the importance of family and values.
- Education and extensive experience in the United States.
Family and Values:
- Minal reflects on the influence of his grandparents and parents, emphasizing family values
- Family importance, the significance of hard work, and doing the right thing.
- Minal recalls memories of his grandmother, highlighting her strength in holding the family together.
- Importance of family rituals and traditions.
- Minal reflects on his wife's influence, highlighting their complementary nature. Discusses the blend of discipline and positive thinking in their household.
- Minal's advice for future generations: Prioritize family and health, contribute positively to humanity, and always do the right thing.
- Minal envisions being remembered as a good human being, a leader who built other leaders, and a positive example to his family.
- Encourages continuous learning, embracing mistakes as opportunities for growth, having fun, seeking mentorship, leaving ego aside, and practicing kindness.
Music by bensound.com
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the wisdom and wealth podcast and yet another edition of the intangible balance sheet. My name is Josh clues, as always, and today it's my unique pleasure to introduce to you all Menal Santosh. He's gonna share a little bit more about his intangible balance sheet in his family story, menal, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:
Thank you. Thank you, josh, really appreciate you finding me through LinkedIn and Inviting me. Really happy to be here.
Speaker 1:
Well, I'm really excited to hear more about your story and thank you as well for your willingness to share the for those listeners that may be newer to this podcast that the goal of it is to share those life experiences that mean more to us than money, hence the intangible balance sheet. I find that we are very irrational when it comes to certain things in life, because they're touchstones that mean the world to us. Whether it's a memory, whether it's an experience. Those types of things live on on our intangible balance sheet and, in a way, we want to pass those on to our kids. And so, menal, would you be able to just give us a brief introduction to yourself real quick, before we we dive into More formal questions?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, absolutely. On the professional front, if I start, I am the senior director at Heavley Packard Enterprise. I run the operations for the office of the CTO, a great great organization to be part of, which is a tip of the transformation for the edge to cloud at HPE. I'm located in Houston. I'm the beautiful family with my son and my wife being in the United States For the last 25 years. I have an undergrad degree in Mechanical engineering with a master's degree in computer science and MBA, so a lot, a lot of lot of time spent in the United States and With a lot of great companies have worked for, where I've learned a lot.
Speaker 1:
Excellent, and thank you for that introduction. And, minna, one of the ways that I've started asking Guests to share a little bit more about their stories not specifically of their story, but how they're maybe grandparents, or even maybe, in some cases, even great grandparents as well as their parents, have influenced their intangible balance sheet. Are there any stories in your family legacy that have become legendary, that you have passed on to your kids and it hopes that they'll pass on?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, look, I mean, you know when I think my memory of my grandparents really is from my mom's mom, right, but and? And I've seen her to be very strong and to be able to hold the family together, so that the value that I know I pass on to my son or anybody is Family value is very important because only when you're comfortable and happy at a family level Can you keep the surrounding happy, can you show up happily wherever you go. The other other thing I've also learned from my parents as well as my grandma, is Hard work. There is no replacement for hard work. No matter how many generations we will see time to time with more innovations, but our principle of hard work is always going to stand up.
Speaker 2:
So Hard work is very important. There's no shortcuts in life. You can be smart, but there's no shortcuts. And then, you know, have the discipline. You know always try to do the right thing. You know I always tell my son is, you know when you're doing the right thing. You know, listen to that and move on with it. It may be slow, sometimes it may not work out as you, as you expect, but you can stand up. Even if you fail, you can stand up and say I did the right thing, my intention was right. Always Focus on that. Those are the three things I would say. You know, family is important, hard work and Always try to do the right thing.
Speaker 1:
Now it's funny. I would say that my grandmothers were very influential as well in my own life. They typically did that through. Food is how they held everybody together. If truth be known, that was the card that they could pull at any given moment. That would bring everybody together and get everybody to kind of listen. What was your experience with that? You remember? What are some of those memories of your grandmother that stand out to you?
Speaker 2:
You know I've always looked at her as we interestingly we were in a joint family with different, different. You know, sometimes as we grow and more people come into the family, different mindsets, different point of views come in and for me it's of course the food right. As a family, you're saying, everybody comes together. The rituals, the traditions that we were following, that brings all the family together for some of the functions. You know, when you have the function, there's always food together and then you know there's the family function that comes. Those you could see that she was always bringing us together and stay united and the food was always keeping us there. But I think it's the strength. It's the strength of that standing up as a strong woman who would be there and bringing everyone and holding them together. And you know, yes, differences are there, but still trying to manage the situation around was important. I thought that was always the memory that stays. In joint families it's never easy.
Speaker 1:
sometimes the other concept that I've encountered, often from folks that I've interviewed, is mentors or even influential people in their life growing up. Are there any persons you know? I know that when you name to list someone is to exclude others, but are there any experiences and or mentors that stand out to you as formative as you grew up?
Speaker 2:
You know, I think for me the biggest mentor was always my dad. My dad was, you know, I looked up to him every time. He was very disciplined. He was always focused on doing the right thing for us, and so I.
Speaker 2:
The memories I have is he always taught us hard work is very important. You have to work hard, you have to be disciplined. If you have to be successful, you have to be disciplined and focused and try to look at the positive side. You know, of course my dad had shortcomings too, right, but what he wanted to do just like I now look at as a parent you always want to your kids to go two steps ahead of you, and my dad tried and I always looked up to him learning those things. So he was my biggest mentor. But I would also say, as I was growing up, you know, I think, in a professional environment, I would say I'm so lucky to have worked for so many managers who have shaped and groomed my, you know, groomed me in a way where I have followed some of their staff and created my own style. So those, you know, my managers, are my biggest mentors. I mean, you know, by working with them, who have helped me directly or indirectly, and my dad in my formative years.
Speaker 1:
As you consider Menal, the pivotal events of your life, typically there's a few that we kind of look backward on and say you know, hey, those were the experiences that I fully owned, the things that I, the principles that I now hold dear, those are the experiences that caused me to own them. Are there any experiences like that that stand out to you as you look back in your own life?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think the first one is always comes to my mind and it reminds me and keeps me grounded is when I first got into the professional world. You know you are, especially when I came to the United States. You at that time, you want to always try to perform well and prove yourself. You take on a lot of pressure and there were. There was a project which I was doing which which involved a lot of pressure and I was. I didn't know how to come out of it and at that time I was not open enough to share and discuss.
Speaker 2:
So what I learned a lot at that time is, if you take pressure on yourself, you'll never be able to perform, no matter how talented you are, how disciplined you are. Always try to make sure you never have that pressure. Yes, we are ambitious, we are aggressive, we want to achieve things, but pressure will never lead us anywhere. So that was the biggest transformation because I realized when I took that pressure it was not enjoyable. Yes, you do the job, you're not taking care of your health, you're not keeping a positive environment around you. So that has shaped me a lot in the future work or future things to be much more relaxed, even in a very precious situation.
Speaker 2:
Back your talent, never underestimate yourself. Because you are in a particular position, because you deserve it. So you back your talent and when you do that, you will do well, because it's only going to keep it positive for the full environment. So that was one big thing. A lesson I learned very early in my career and that is, you know, always people make fun of me sometimes is I'm always smiling and all those things. I think it came because you have to be smiling. You have to. You know, when you smile, you make the environment much more relaxed around you as well. So that's what was a big one for me.
Speaker 1:
Another theme that I'm hearing that has come through is family. How have you and your wife replicated some of those rituals and some of those rhythms that you had growing up? What are some of those ways that you carry those things on today?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So I mean, I'm grateful for my wife and actually she doesn't work, but I'll tell you, I always tell her that she's much, much more talented than me because lots of things she has learned from her life. She gives me advice and in fact, at home, if there is a mentor, she is my mentor. She always tells me so when you know I think we are. We are opposites in nature. She's a person who doesn't like stereotype stuff I'm more into. I like more the same thing. You know, when I go, I will go to Starbucks and have the same chai tea latte sometimes, or most of the time, and then I would go to a restaurant and pick the same thing, but she likes it. So that's a good mix that we have.
Speaker 2:
So what we have done is in our house, we have tried to take the best of both, Like when we are growing up our kid. One of the things that is also needed is you need to have the same thing sometimes, because you need discipline. That's how discipline is built. You do the same thing again and again, right? So that comes probably from my side, where I'm more into that type of thing, Whereas what comes from my wife's side is some of the strong things about always thinking positive, always believing in yourself that you will reach imagination.
Speaker 2:
She always thinks about. Imagination is very important because that's when the universe works for you, right? So those are the things we try to practice in our household and teach our son to, and one of the biggest things she has always taught is think big. You know, I am more of a person who thinks but wants to work and be secure, but she's more of a person thinks big and big things will happen, right, If you think small, small things happen. So those are the things we are trying to bring from our culture, our own childhood or growing, our experience, and try to impart as much as possible to our son.
Speaker 1:
It goes without saying that one of the many gifts of marriage is the completeness that happens that you mentioned of how you're. It's like looking out a different window that wasn't accessible to you until you were married, and then you see from a totally different perspective. It's so neat to hear your experience with that. So, minnell, I want to have you zoom forward four generations. What would be some of the things, lord willing, that you would want your great-grandchildren's generation or their community to take from your experience? What are some of the things that you think would be most instructive for them, and why?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So I think I go back to family and health that you have to pay attention to family and health. There's family values has to be upheld. You have to be friends, whoever, but health is very important because only when you have good health you will be able to enjoy better. So those two are very big. Then the other thing is always focus on something that will help move the human race forward, even it's smallest of smallest things. Right, you don't have to be an inventor, but just teaching your own kid to be an asset to a family, asset to the society, you're contributing to the human generation moving forward.
Speaker 2:
A simple thing of whatever you do, doesn't have to be big, doesn't have to be too small. Whatever you do, try to think about how do I move the human race forward? What am I doing to just move the human race forward? Do that right. That's what I would say to four generations ahead, right. And then the third thing always is do the right thing, because believe if your value system is right, always do the right thing. Don't try to do anything that will hurt people.
Speaker 1:
The last part of our conversation, manol focuses on the idea of what some people call your ethical will, but it's really your eulogy. I'm taking the idea from David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, that he said that there's that magical point in our lives where we realize that we've been living our life in order to accumulate a resume, when, in reality and then we realize that we should be accumulating a eulogy rather than a resume. Have you written your eulogy and, if so, even if you haven't, what are some of the themes that you want to be a part of your eulogy?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I have not, but I always sometimes, when I think about how do you want people to remember you? I think there is multiple things. Be a good human being first, right, that's very important. People remember me as a good human being who was happy and wanted to keep people happy In whatever way right by smiling or helping others. I also want to be remembered as a person who has built leaders in my own organization. I always believe in something that everyone is a leader and I want to do whatever I can so that people remember me as, hey, it was great working for you. Right, you have helped me. I've learned from you. Be a good example. Be a good example to your own, my own son, right. My own family that people look up to me and say, hey, he was a great human being, great father, great husband and a great manager or leader, right? So those are the big things I want people to remember about me.
Speaker 1:
Manol, this has been an encouraging conversation and inspiring as well. Thank you so much for sharing with us. Are there any other thoughts that you have that we haven't covered or haven't gotten to that you'd like to share?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, you know, in general I always think about the young generation. You know, even at work, I think, you know, I look back at myself and I was just beginning my career. You know, my dad taught me a lot of value system, but he also he was not in the corporate world. I entered the corporate world and I'm learning right. But my, you know, I always feel about these kids who come out of college. How do we help them? I think I would always like to advise them, right.
Speaker 2:
All you know, the first and foremost is always learn, be open to learning. Keep your eyes and ears open, right, Just keep learning. Don't be afraid, Don't be scared of making mistakes. We will all do mistakes, even the best of best people do mistakes. But have the courage to get up and not repeat the mistake. Learn from that, right. And then, you know, try to have fun. You know, that's the biggest thing sometimes we forget is try to have fun. So, just my message to the young generation is keep learning, Try to have fun and, you know, try to learn wherever you can. Right. Those are the things I would say Take, help, Leave the ego out of the door, right, you know it's important, and be kind.
Speaker 1:
Minol, thank you so much for sharing your time with us and sharing your wisdom and experience. We wish you and your family nothing but truth, beauty and goodness on the road ahead. This has been such a treat.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, thank you, josh. Really appreciate you inviting me and sharing, you know opportunities like this is great because you know digital media is huge nowadays and sharing this with people is so important. So thank you so much.
