Once in a while I listen to this online platforms that drive influential, powerful and thought leadership conversations, you should try it sometime its enlightening. In one of those occasions I was on the treadmill at the gym, with over 40 minutes to walk on a 15% incline, it felt more like an in-door hike. Apparently, running a variety of inclines engages different muscles particularly calves, quadriceps, and glutes and also boosts muscular strength. If you also work out a lot you know the pressure of staying focused and not giving up while on a treadmill, you look at the same wall and move around the same area for minutes, which is not an easy thing to do. So to keep my mind from wandering through the cracks I listened keenly to a video on YouTube by Jim Kwik from Mindvalley Talks. In between his chat, he said something in the lines of, knowledge is not only power it also means profit. Immediately my mind ticked and it got me thinking. When we were children, our parents and guardians would insist that we must go to school and build an education, so that one day we can become prominent doctors, teachers and engineers. They jostled through life every day, to make this dream come true for us. I must say that they were right, and that even though there is a diversification of careers to choose from today, the only way to get to the top is through the knowledge we acquire and our ability to apply it. That is the power and profit of gaining knowledge. Our parents and guardians would polish their expertise and work in one company for their entire life and maybe retire with an attractive pension package. Also, their loyalty to their places of work was as it came. They would retire from a place of work and get promotions based on their hard-work and determination. This is power of knowledge but not so much its profit. Times have changed however and knowledge not only offers power but also profits and millenials/ the Y generation have discovered this early enough. Millennials cannot keep a job for more than 5 years without the thought of shifting to another company or organization for a better offer crossing their mind. Don’t get me wrong however, I am not insinuating that this is the best corporate world practice. It is only an evident observation of how young people are making profits through the knowledge they sweat so hard to achieve. Young people are continuously challenged to increase their competitiveness by way of learning a new skill and increasing their level of education. Knowledge therefore becomes profit, not just financially but in all other areas of life, including physical, spiritual and emotional. Young professionals are overcoming the attitude of over-reliance in other entrepreneurs to start businesses in their areas of study so that they can get a job. Instead young people are being bold enough to lead renowned companies as they enjoy the profit of applying their knowledge. Look at examples of entrepreneurships such as: Pikiwash, House of Tayo, Inzuki designs, Spoken word Rwanda, HeHe labs, Esicia, Habona Ltd, Outdoor movie, Out and About Rwanda, FocusIcon and the many more ideas that I have come across but may not be able to name in this article due to limited space. One reason young professionals are also becoming more entrepreneurial is the unbearable compensation ratio between CEOs and their subordinate staff within the private sector. It therefore befits the use of knowledge to create profit. This therefore poses a challenge to more and more young people. If you are reading this, make it a resolution to expand your knowledge: read widely, network, and enroll for that class or short course so that your brain power becomes an equivalent of your profits. Twitter: @christineamira
