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Businesses focused on customer-centric growth are 60% more profitable.

There is a quiet tragedy that plays out across the world every day.

People spend years, sometimes decades, building expertise, mastering tools, and solving complex problems. And yet, never get compensated for any of it beyond a monthly salary. Their knowledge is valuable, but its value is mostly captured by the organisations that employ them.

Trading time for money, working harder and harder for dwindling benefits and in silent agony watching less experienced people build bigger businesses.

I have a friend who is a perfect example of this. He is one of the best Production Engineers I know. Highly competent and trustworthy. But when you compare his compensation to the level of his knowledge, experience and contribution, there is an enormous gap that is hard to ignore.

Still, he insists entrepreneurship is not for him.

That’s another tragedy! The idea that because you’re not a natural entrepreneur, you can’t build income streams from what you already know.

We often label ourselves with restrictive tags, inadvertently constraining our potential through narrow perspectives and personal biases.

In the end:
- Great writers take their words to the cemetery.
- Brilliant engineers remain cogwheels in company systems.
- Sharp political minds sit on the sidelines.
- Skilled professionals with real insight go unheard.
- Thoughtful people stay silent while influencers position themselves as experts.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Suppose you have a skill, insight, or capability that is far above average. How do you monetise it so that it scales beyond a salary?

Justin Welsh once wrote, “The average person dies rich in skills but poor in wealth.”

It’s true.

If you’re earning a salary, it simply means someone else figured out how to monetise your skills at a higher level than you have. Your employer takes what you know, packages it, sells it, and captures 2-10000× the value they pay you.

How about we reverse-engineer the process?

Your skill is not the thing you think it is.

Most people describe their value in terms of job titles:
- I’m an engineer.
- I’m in finance.
- I’m an HR manager.
- I’m a designer.

These are job categories, not value propositions.

To monetise what you know, you must break your expertise into tangible, transferable components.

What actionable things can you do?

- Technical steps
- Frameworks
- Processes
- Tools
- Systems you can build or fix

What insights have you collected over the years?

- What works
- What fails
- How to avoid mistakes
- Patterns you see that others don’t

Which contexts do you understand intimately?

- Industry dynamics
- Customer behaviour
- Operational realities
- Compliance issues
- Market forces

Your monetisable value sits at the intersection of these three. Write down everything you know that people repeatedly seek your help for.

Skills only become income when someone needs what you know.

Start by defining:

- Who has the problem you can solve?
- What is that problem costing them?
- Why are they failing to solve it themselves?
- What outcome do they want instead?

You might find that some businesses, freelancers, students or professionals need what you know.

Monetisation is about solving a defined problem for a defined group. You do not need to be a natural entrepreneur to do this.

There are only eight ways knowledge earns money. Everything fits into these categories:

You do the work.

You provide thinking, not labour.

You package your knowledge into assets.

Teach the knowledge once; deliver it many times.

Turn attention into income.

People pay for access, guidance, and a network.

Turn your processes into tools.

Let organisations use your IP at a fee.

A sustainable knowledge business runs on a simple pipeline.

People need to know you exist. Visibility is currency. You can try the following:

People need to believe you can help them. You build trust by showing:

I have seen people go viral but fail to monetise that virality. Your audience needs a next step. This can be:

You don’t need millions of followers. You need the right people who resonate with what you know.

The fastest way to build a scalable income from your skill is to validate with something small and see what resonates.

The market will tell you what to build next if you listen.

Once something works, make it repeatable. Your ability to repeat, delegate and automate will determine the extent to which you can and will scale.

- Turn your process into a framework.
- Framework template.
- Turn your template into a toolkit.
- Turn your toolkit into a product.
- Turn your product into a course.
- Turn your course into a membership.

Your job is to convert your brain into assets. If you can document it, you can sell it.

A personal monopoly is a space where you become the go-to person for a specific problem.

This is how you build it:

No one can compete with you because no one has lived your exact life.

This is your long-term competitive advantage.

You don’t need to quit your job.
You don’t need a big audience.
You don’t need to be a natural entrepreneur.

You only need to recognise that the skills you already have, skills you built over years, are monetisable far beyond what your employer pays you.

The world needs what you know.
People are searching for the shortcuts you’ve learned the hard way.
Someone is willing to pay for what comes naturally to you.

What do you have that the world needs?

Imagine Cup is where student founders turn bold ideas into solutions trusted by organisations worldwide. At every step, you’ll have access to Microsoft’s AI technologies, tailored guidance, and connections that help you refine your product and grow as a founder. Focus on a challenge aligned with one of the five Imagine Cup categories or tackle a different one altogether.

After you register, what's next?

Read more and apply here!

Confidence is not a prerequisite for action; it's a by product of it. When approaching unfamiliar territory, expecting to feel completely confident is unrealistic.

Nervousness in the face of the unknown is a natural human response, and there's no value in pretending otherwise, least of all to yourself. The most effective path forward is to take action despite the discomfort.

Wix Studio: Offers powerful tools for building comprehensive websites without in-depth coding.

In 2024, Kigali (Rwanda) and Lagos (Nigeria) were among the African cities with the highest construction costs for industrial buildings. An average heavy-duty factory in Gaborone (Botswana) costs around US$1,456 per square meter to build. That year, Dar es Salaam and Nairobi were some of the African cities with relatively lower construction costs for residential buildings.

First African to hit $30 billion.

His Dangote Group produces 55 million tons of cement yearly across 11 African countries.

He started in 1978 with a small trading firm. Imported sugar, salt, and food products for the Nigerian market. In the 1990s Dangote Group moved into manufacturing (textiles, flour, sugar refining, cement) and diversified into various industries, becoming West Africa's largest conglomerate.

Today?

→ Dangote Cement: $3.7 billion annual revenue
→ Dangote Sugar: Largest refinery in Nigeria
→ Dangote Oil: 370,000 barrels per day

To put Dangote’s wealth into perspective, he is worth more than Jay-Z, Oprah, and Tyler Perry combined.

And, most importantly, he's building in Africa.

The tortoise adorned itself with a hard shell, but its neck is bare so that relatives might touch it.

(No matter how successful and self-sufficient, one still needs love and kindness from others.)

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