My retirement memo – Jan 2023
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?
The last one I wrote was in Sep 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. You can read it here
I thought it needed an update and here’s the version for Jan 2023.
Let me know if you want to join me for my vision of the future
Luki’s Retirement Memo (written Jan 2023)
Luki Danukarjanto is most know for having made Toronto the Mentorship Capital of the World and for Elevating Education.
He retired from the help of FOCUS inspired, the educational 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.
Elevating education
Luki has brought the education of what was once called “soft-skills” to 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. He was able to bring multiple concepts from the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Howard Garner) to Rapid Skill Acquisition (Josh Kaufman) to Growth Mindset (Carol Dweck) plus his own observations on mindset and motivation, first to make learning a meta-skill (a skill to help acquire skills) along with various mind-management skills. Then to break down almost any any skill imaginable (soft or hard) into its most efficient and effective learning components.
What used to take universities and colleges 4-years to train someone, now takes a fraction of the time, with integrated working experience in an apprentice/mentorship model. 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 system (such as with the professional designations of medicine, law and accounting), many have plans to convert to get younger talent into the industry with additional desire and engagement.
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 wasn’t until mid-2023 that it really started gaining popularity. Part of it was due to consistent content creation on YouTube and other social media outlets. The primary reason was due to the exceptional successes people had when working with Luki and the FOCUS inspired team.
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. Learners as he called them, joined at first with help to land a job. The accountability and the comradery of folks working towards the same goals helped accelerate their progress. Junior devs looking to land their first role were the first to flock to the FiA. Then students in their final year who were proactive enough to look for additional support to land a job after their graduation. Then many more joined including “under employed grads” who didn’t quite land the jobs they wanted after school. As well as newcomers. By the end of 2023 the community balloon to more than Luki could handle on his own.
Thankfully, 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 coaching platforms and communities building an interconnected network of folks looking to elevate their success.
FiA foundations are based on soft-skills. While it started with job-search skills in terms of networking, interviews and resumes, the heart of all of those are communication and ultimately confidence. Those that went through the FiA were significantly more confident in their communication and as a result landed jobs sooner. They also did better in their jobs as Learners would stay in the Academy, often for their entire career to accelerate promotions, gain leadership skills, and ultimately find a path towards their career purpose.
Some notable partnerships include collaborations with aspiring coaches:
- Elevating the soft-skills of DEV and technical folks to be more effective in their careers
- Looking to help others explore non-traditional paths to turn side-hustles into start-ups and into employment replacing income streams
- Supporting children of immigrants and international students challenge the expectations of their culture to find careers of purpose
Employers started recognizing the quality of FOCUS inspired traineees and started requesting and even demanding new hires to go through FOCUS inspired education. The growth was steady and a focus on quality and caring for the community allowed them to scale. FOCUS inspired moved to other learning areas, and as they say, the rest is history.
The FiA is “powered by humans and enhanced with technology”. The FiA processes and resources have been made widely available through the Career Buddy app which can readily seen as a top download on the Apple/Google stores. FiA has grown to become the largest educational community with the motto “Education, Not School” which is amazing considering where were no physical locations until about 2030. 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).
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, Luki also advanced the concept of Dan Sullivan’s “Who not How”. The concept was introduced to Luki by Dr. Benjamin Hardy after reading Benjamin’s co-authored book with Dan Sullivan, “10x is easier than 2x”. The mentorship phenomena gathered steam and momentum starting in Toronto. The understanding became that the large majority of high-performing people, celebrities, athletes, etc. have coaches and mentors, so shouldn’t everyone have one to lead their best possible life? At its announcement, nearly every resident of the city of Toronto and the surrounding GTA (Greater Toronto Area) was reported to have a mentor from the variety of public and privately available mentoring programs and services. The world took notice and other cities boast larger numbers, largely due to larger absolute numbers (i.e. the entire population of the country of Canada where Toronto is part of, is not much bigger than some cities). 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 2024 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!
Also published on Medium.
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