My retirement memo – Apr 2026
One of the exercises that I encourage those looking to answer the question of “what do you want” is to write your retirement memo. Take a look here for details. The gist of it is to imagine that you are retiring and a memo needs to be sent out to the company/association that you’re working for: what would you want that and I want to say?
It really has nothing to do with retirement. That’s just the endpoint. It’s really an exercise in imagination on what is “success” and what is “happiness” for you? Those are the most common elements for a purposeful and fulfilling career. You might need a few variants. Let your creativity flow!
Another perspective you can take is writing your “Anti-Regrets” memo. If you were
While you might think that this exercise it more beneficial for those later in their careers, I find that the folks early in their careers that take the time to do so and then update regularly, will be more likely to achieve what they wrote down!
Feel free to reach out if I can be of help!
Luki’s previous retirement memos (if you’re interested to take a look at the evolution)
Here’s my Apr 2026 update (yes, I missed 2025 and if you read this, you’ll probably know why).
You’ll notice that I love collaborating, and let me know if you want to join me for this vision of the future with folks empowered with purposeful careers!
Luki’s Retirement Memo (written Apr 2026)
Luki Danukarjanto is most known for having made Toronto the Mentorship Capital of the World and for Elevating Education through Soft-Skills Learning.
He was able to achieve his goal to positively impact a billion people! (He also used to cheekily say “and ask each one for a dollar afterwards” and that has worked well for him as well).
He is still actively involved in FOCUS inspired, the human flourishing community that he founded in 2015 which has grown from a solopreneur operation to a multi-trillion dollar organization with offices in over 100 countries around the world. He has transformed society with his visionary views on education and mentorship, and more importantly making them a reality. His vision was simple “to make soft skills hard”. Not hard as in difficult, but hard as in tangible. He’s had many successes (and a few challenges to overcome) along the way.
Of course, he didn’t do it alone and many collaborators along the way.
Elevating Education
Luki has brought the education of what was once called “soft-skills” to the main stream. What was once considered “soft” and difficult to assess let-alone teach, has become the foundation of most school curriculums and learning academies around the world. Human Skills are now taught to almost every child world wide, who later become supportive parents to teach their future children.
He categorized Human Skills into:
- Soft Skills: Mindset, Communication, Productivity, Thinking, Social, Leadership and Creativity
- Life Skills: Physical Health, Mental Health, Social Health, Financial Health, and Spiritual Health
- Job Search Skills: Applications, Interviews, Networking, Experience
- Hard Skills: What most people think of when they think of school and learning.
His thinking was that you can’t improve these skills. For example, if someone were to say “Get better at communication”, what does that even mean? But if someone said “Speak louder, stand straighter, use your hands more, slow down when you talk”, those behaviours can be improved.
His FOCUS inspired Learning Method focused on the KAI method: Knowledge, Action, Improvement. The traditional school system needed 4-years to train someone at a post-secondary level because it focused on Knowledge. Advances in AI and Societal changes have allowed for Action and Improvement to allow learning to happen much quicker and has revolutionized education.
Plus, the reduced learning time, allows youth to explore their areas of interest with the growth of the gig-economy and fractional-employment. Through the process, young professionals are able to find more fulfilling careers and unlock their career potential (one of Luki’s long-time goals). While the re-imagined education process hasn’t reached full coverage of the entire globe, the remaining educational institutions are integrating the components and are on the transformational roadmap.
The process was started with humble beginnings with the job search of all places. The job search is often seen as a strenuous and frustrating exercise, and through the educational process, Luki, with the help of the FOCUS inspired team and collaborators, was able to make the job search process as painless as possible. While FOCUS inspired was started in 2015, it had moderate growth at the start. The COVID pandemic and a few missed, delayed and unfruitful opportunities in 2019-23 caused some challenges and stumbles in its growth. Some personal and medical setbacks in 2025 almost put the dream to an end. In 2026, the endeavour hit it’s “hockey stick” moment and become the “overnight success that took 10 years to build”.
Luki embraced finding others on a similar journey and developed many collaboration opportunities along the way. Luki would never wanted the spotlight, and preferred to be the supporting partner in the endeavor and allow others to take the credit. That resulted in even more collaborations and opportunities for Luki to have initiatives “powered by FOCUS inspired”.
Human Skills Toolkit
In 2024 many of the workshops that Luki delivered in the past were curated into the “Human Skills Toolkit”. The goal was to make these skills tangible. Soft skills were previously considered challenging to train because they were challenging to assess. Soft Skills where challenging to assess because they were context specific and there wasn’t an agreed upon standard for them. The Human Skills Toolkit became that standard.
Here is a timeline of some of the courses created. All E-Learning courses were made available to FOCUS inspired Academy members.
- 2018 Art and Science of Networking: On Udemy as an education experiment (see 2024 reboot)
- 2018 Job search Demystified: Also on Udemy (see 2024 reboot)
- 2024 Art and Science of Networking AASON (Reboot check the archive section for the previous version – don’t laugh too much – it shows how much progress Luki was able to make!) https://focusinspired.com/aason Also on Udemy
- 2024 Effective Job Search EJS (Reboot of Job search Demystified – check the archive section for the previous version) https://focusinspired.com/ejs
- 2024 Transition to Thinkific then migrated to Mighty Networks and now part of https://focusinspired.com/fialibrary
- Master My Mindset
- Confident Communication Toolkit
- Cultivate my Social Health
- Productive Time Management
- Financial Wealth Essentials
- Discover Your Purpose
- Student Career Confidence
- 2026 onward the remaining skills in the Human Skills toolkit were developed after
Career Confidence Gym
The learning methodology started scaling with partnerships with another education and training organizations. Luki was able to consistently elevate the programming and increase the effectiveness of the soft-skills, and job-search-skills with each successive partners. He introduced the FOCUS inspired Academy (FiA) as a learning community for those on the path to career success that was nicknamed the “gym for career confidence”. Luki understood that, just like health, you can’t go to the gym for 60 mins and be healthy, just like for your career, you can’t do a 60 minute workshop on finding your purpose or landing a job and suddenly have a healthy career. Those who joined the “Career Confidence Gym” became athletes to train their job search, career and life success. The community, accountability and the comradery of folks working towards the same goals helped accelerate their progress. By the middle of 2026 the community balloon to more than Luki could handle on his own.
Thankfully (or perhaps by design), the positive energy of the community attracted many partners and more coaches and guides joined to support the flourishing community. The FiA became an umbrella to help partners launch their own human flourishing communities to build an interconnected network of folks looking to elevate their success.
Some notable partnerships include collaborations with aspiring coaches:
- Job Search Accelerator:
- Mini-Master classes: available to the public to give them a taste of the knowledge that they’ll put into action in the gym.
- University, college, upskilling and grad programs: Elevating the soft-skills of technical folks to be more effective in their careers with various
- Side hustle incubator: help others explore non-traditional paths to turn side-hustles into start-ups and into employment replacing income streams
The FiA foundational learnings are based on soft-skills and ultimately started the Human Flourishing revolution. Athletes in the Career Confidence Gym drew the attention of Companies, who started incorporating training and methodologies so that FiA grads became the most sought after in their respective industries. FOCUS inspired moved to other learning areas, and as they say, the rest is history.
Technology
The FiA is “powered by humans and enhanced with technology”. The FiA processes and resources have been made widely available through the Career Buddy platform. FiA has grown to become the largest educational community with the motto “Education, Not School” which is amazing considering where were no physical locations. Since then the FiA can regularly be found in all major locations that blends all elements of wellness where Learners in the community can gather as a “third place” (the place to be between work and home).
Human Flourishing Wellness Centers
The FiA ultimately became Wellness Centers where folks could connect and gather for human flourishing. Part gym, part school, part community center, these centers were where folks interested in personal and professional development could gather to meet in person, and there were of course online options as well.
These innovations allowed Luki to reach one of his goals to become one of the “new billionaires” (which was to have “positively impacted a billion” people).
He often ended with the joke of “and ask each one for a dollar afterwards”, which has allowed FOCUS inspired to grow to the multi-billion/trillion dollar company it is today. All with the goal to care and serve with kindness.
Toronto – The Mentorship Capital of the World
Along with the educational culture shift to adopt a more integrated apprenticeship/mentorship model of learning. As part of the FOCUS inspired Academy, community members were encouraged to find 5-10 mentors (or as many as they could handle). Perhaps the more important part was to also find 5-10 mentees, who they could share their learning and SIWIKE (Stuff I Wish I Knew Earlier). When everyone cares for everyone else, then the world starts flourishing more.
Though many still regard Toronto as the birthplace of Mentorship as a global cultural phenomenon, and Toronto will always be the Mentorship Capital of the world to many, mentorship is now well regarded as being woven into the fabric of society.
Noteworthy accomplishments
Luki has written and co-authored a number of best selling books, started (and still occasionally guest hosts) a popular YouTube channel and podcast.
The SIWIKE: Stuff I Wish I Knew Earlier series of books started with the student edition (officially titled the “soon-to-be-grad” edition). The series gained popularity similar to the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” and “For Dummies” series. He has written editions for Young Professionals, Entrepreneurs, Immigrants, Men’s Mental Wellness, Parents and many more, having collaborated with many well known figures in each of their respective niches. The book series is not your typical success story and took years to make it a success. The first book was published in 2017 and it wasn’t until a decade later that all of the book series started showing significant sales. The exponential growth of the FOCUS inspired and SIWIKE brand starting in 2026 was definitely part of the cause of the exploding sales. Since then, the books are often seen as gifts for folks in various milestones in the job, career and life journey.
The SIWIKE YouTube channel (over a million subscribers) and the SIWIKE podcast (over a billion downloads) shares “what you didn’t know about jobs, careers and life”. Luki started with some solo episodes to share his SIWIKE. Then continued with interviewing folks with non-traditional paths and became a tool for career exploration for youth the understand future career paths that might be different from traditional ones. He has since passed the hosting torch to various other known broadcaster and influencer figures though have maintained their original intent of sharing mentorship advise and wisdom from all walks of life. Luki occasionally will guest host episodes to share updates and opportunities.
Origin and Evolution
Luki was born in Indonesia and moved to Toronto, Canada when he was young. He grew up in the city and graduated from UT Scarborough with a degree in Computer Science. He worked for Deloitte as a supply chain technology consultant where he had great experiences that ultimately lead him to start FOCUS inspired in 2015. Luki’s continual emphasis on building meaningful connects and relationships allowed him to foster many collaborations with various educational institutes. His MO (modus operandi – way of working) would be to find passionate individuals and enable them to be the best version of themselves in their own area of passion (so if you’re passionate about an area and just need an opportunity to show it, then reach out to Luki http://linkedin.com/in/lukdanu). He started with a collaboration in tech, as well as in event management and marketing. Then of course in education and many different areas. FOCUS inspired has become the launching pad of many of the worlds most successful companies and organizations with many founders and leaders starting at FOCUS inspired (or perhaps more accurately with FOCUS inspired as client #1 or an early client).
Luki resides with his wife and two children in Markham, just north of Toronto. They are often travelling to support other collaborators with their mentorship and education endeavours. He continues to write books (more accurately enable others to write books with him) on various topics typically related to jobs, careers and life. He works with a lot of content creators to share his thoughts, experience and SIWIKE: Stuff I Wish I Knew Earlier – an ever growing repository of human knowledge, experience and lessons.
Although he is retiring from FOCUS inspired, you’ll surely see him out and about and looks forward to spending more time with his kids and grandkids.
While at the same time continuing to mentor as much of the world as he can!
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