Luki Danukarjanto is the CEO of FOCUS.inspired, a unique business that focuses on helping individuals to find their professional passion. A number of our readers are likely graduating and headed into the workforce during a very tricky time. It can be hard to not get discouraged about your professional future during COVID, but if you know what you are passionate about it, it can help you to stay on track.

Luki refers to himself as a career catalyst and “DJ” for professional development. Luki was a management consultant for 12 years before transitioning into career counselling in 2015. Since then, he has published a book, the SWIKE web series, and spoken at many schools about his passion for career development. 

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What do you think is the greatest challenge for young adults as they develop their careers?

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So my perspective is that there’s a lot of these kind of generalisations when people talk about young adults. Students and young adults go through school, they’re supposed to graduate they’re supposed to get a job they’re supposed to get married and have kids and moved to a house in the suburbs and and all that sort of stuff and then retire and have a good life. But that kind of supposed to and and that typical life trajectory is often not not true anymore. A lot of people who when they’re going through life, they actually have multiple career paths.

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You developed the acronym SWIKE to inspire a lot of your work. What does that mean and where did that idea come from?

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So I guess the start of writing the book was I had a colleague , who I used to work with who actually wrote a book. I’m like, oh, wow, that’s that’s amazing. I would have conversations over coffees with a lot of folks and it ended up being that a lot of the conversations were the same, right? So I figured, well, instead of me having to say all that stuff over and over again, why not just write a book. It was like 500 pages. And, I don’t know what this is. It’s like a reference manual. So, a friend in publishing helped me get in touch with with an editor. The whole concept of SWIKE came about where originally it was that the stuff you didn’t know you needed to know. So then SWIKE developed into the stuff I wish I knew earlier. It references my interest in mentorship.

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How you advise students to be able to shift from the learning to pass the test mentality to one of mastery?

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Yeah, I would say for them, it’s getting over that fear of failure, right? There’s a lot of judgement involved. And it goes back to kind of that conveyor belt of life. That you should be doing this. Oftentimes, others are not as critical as people think. Most people are afraid of people judging them and things like that. And I just had a conversation with someone with the perspective that fear is made up. It’s something that doesn’t really exist. One of the things is a lot of people misunderstand fear versus danger, right? Danger is real. But in terms of fear, like getting up in front of someone and doing a speech or presentation, well, that’s not going to kill you. Then once you’re past that, then you can just start learning and try to follow your your passions.

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Luki’s Book Recommendations

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Stuff I Wish I Knew Earlier: How to Unlock Your Career Potential by Luki Danukarjanto

Mindset by Carol Dweck

How to Be Everything by Emilie Wapnick

The Straight-A Conspiracy by Hunter Maats and Katie O’Brien

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Thank you, Luki, for sharing the excellent advice with us and our readers! 

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Missed the podcast? Listen here:

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