I started talking about digital skills around 2022, and there is one thing most people still have not understood.

There is no best digital skill to learn.

Almost every week somebody asks me, Elvis, which is the best digital skill? And the question itself tells me everything about why that person is stuck, because it is the same thinking that has been failing Kenyans for decades, just moved online.

The question is really a request for a shortcut

Here is what is actually behind that question.

You want to know which skill is the guaranteed one. The one where, if you finish the course, somebody has to give you a job at the end. It is the same logic as choosing a degree or a diploma. Pick the right one, complete it, receive employment.

That was never true for degrees, and it is definitely not true for skills.

You do not learn a skill because somebody told you it is the best skill. You learn a skill to solve a problem. That is it. That is the whole thing.

Solve a problem, get paid. No problem, no payment, regardless of how marketable somebody on YouTube said your skill was.

Why the “top 10 marketable skills” videos mislead you

Look at how those videos are framed. Top 10 marketable skills. Top 20 skills for 2026.

Almost every skill that makes sense today is good. Web design is good. Video editing is good. Social media management is good. Data analysis is good. None of them are bad skills.

I would rather not even use the word marketable, because it points at the wrong thing. I believe in good and marketable people, not good and marketable skills.

The skill does not earn. The person holding it does.

Why somebody untrained out-earns you

Here is the situation that confuses people most.

You spend 2 or 3 years learning web design. Maybe you spent serious money doing it. Then somebody appears from nowhere, with no formal training, and is earning several times what you are.

How?

Because you were studying to receive a certificate, and he was learning to deliver a result. You optimised for finishing the course. He optimised for the client being happy. Those produce completely different people even when the underlying knowledge is similar.

The certificate problem

This happens on Click2Skill regularly and it tells you everything.

Somebody buys a course. The course is designed to take around 11 hours of real work. Within 24 hours he is asking for the certificate.

I issue it, because it is his. He then applies for a job and does not get it. Applies for another, does not get it. Then another, then another.

And the reason is not the certificate. The reason is that he never learned anything. He clicked through a course to reach the document at the end, because he is still carrying the old mentality that education means going somewhere, collecting a paper, and waiting for somebody in the world to notice it and hand him a job.

Who exactly is that person supposed to be?

That is the question worth sitting with.

So stop looking for the best skill

The more videos you consume about the best skill, the best channel, the best path, the longer you will stay exactly where you are.

No skill is bad.

Social media management is a very good skill, but it takes real work to become good at it. Video editing and videography are very good skills, and almost anybody can learn the basics. The question is never whether the skill is good. The question is how many people are willing to take the time to get actually good.

Very few. That is the whole opportunity.

A simple blueprint for acquiring skills

Let me give you how it actually works, step by step.

Step 1: Drop the passion talk

You do not learn a skill because of passion.

Eliminate that word from this conversation. Passion is a lie, or at least it is badly misunderstood. You are not born with passion for graphic design. You develop passion in things, usually after you have become competent at them and started seeing results.

People sit and wait to discover their passion the way you wait for rain. Meanwhile the passionate ones are just people who started something, got decent at it, and enjoyed being good.

Step 2: Identify a problem

This is where it actually begins, and I will tell you how it began for me.

I never wanted to do graphic design.

I had just finished form 4. I was 17, waiting to turn 18 so I could get my ID card. I got a job as a storekeeper at a school in Nanyuki. I was young and I made plenty of mistakes in that period.

One day I was sent to a print shop, and I met a guy called OT.

OT was designing a sticker on CorelDraw. I stood there watching him. He designed the thing, printed it, and collected 1,000 shillings. It had not taken him 30 minutes.

I was shocked.

That was the moment I understood something simple. Go where the money is, and the money is in problem solving. Nowhere else.

That sticker solved somebody’s problem. And OT was going to keep solving that same problem, over and over, for different customers.

So I looked around and noticed that most businesses near me were struggling to get decent graphic design. That was a problem I could solve. I started designing and printing stickers. There was a yogurt brand at the time, since closed, whose stickers I printed.

That is how it started. Not passion. A problem I could see and reach.

Step 3: Learn only enough to solve it

Now take a problem you can see today.

Everybody is creating content. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. And a lot of it looks bad. The videos are flat. Nobody colour grades anything. The cuts are clumsy.

That is a problem. Can you solve it? Yes.

So how do you learn?

Start with YouTube, which is a free university and a very good place to begin. Search what video editing actually involves and how people get started.

Use AI tools. Open Claude or Gemini and ask it to explain how to become a video editor, what the workflow is, what you need to learn first. It will give you a straight answer in 2 minutes.

Then go to a proper course on a platform like Udemy and learn the tools. CapCut to start. Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, DaVinci Resolve when you want to go professional.

For social media management specifically, there are free structured courses from Google, plus plenty on Udemy. Learn what the job actually involves, content calendars, scheduling, reporting, and not just the software.

Here is the important part. Learn only what is necessary.

Stop taking 50 hour courses that spend the first 12 hours on fundamentals, history and advantages. You do not need the philosophy of websites. You need to know how to build one.

Get to the point, learn the thing, go and do it. Everything else is an added advantage you can pick up later, when you have a reason to.

Step 4: You do not need expensive equipment

When you decide to add videography to the editing, do not go and buy a camera.

Use your phone. An iPhone or a Samsung shoots well enough to start. Shoot for people, edit for them, deliver.

The equipment is never what is stopping you. Buying a camera before you have a client is how people spend 80,000 shillings to avoid starting.

How one skill turns into a business

This is the part people miss, so follow the sequence.

You started as a video editor. Then you added videography, because you could see the same client needed both.

Now you notice something else. These businesses do not know what to post. A coffee shop in Kilimani has the same problem as a coffee shop in Abuja or Johannesburg. They have a phone and no idea what to do with it.

So you learn content calendars and content creation on behalf of others, and now you are a social media manager. Same client, bigger invoice.

Then one day a client says, do you know somebody who can build me a website?

If you are clever you hear a problem, not a question. What is the actual problem? They have things to sell online and no way to sell them.

So do you say I do not know?

Go and learn it. It does not take as long as you think if you learn only what is necessary.

Then the client asks whether you know anybody who can run Meta ads. Same thing again. So you tell him, on top of what you already charge for social media, videography and editing, add 5,000 shillings. Then you spend the weekend properly working out Meta ads, and by Monday you have a solution for him.

A business owner selling headphones does not have time to sit down and configure an ad campaign. You do. That gap is your income.

One honest note on this. Be straight with the client about where you are. If it is your first campaign, say so, start with a small budget, and do not charge premium rates for work you are still learning. Learning on a client’s account is normal and every freelancer has done it, but doing it without telling them is how you lose the relationship and your reputation with it.

Do not start with the technical things

Somebody on YouTube told you machine learning is the best skill to learn right now. Somebody else said cyber security.

Please do not wake up tomorrow and start there.

Those are real fields with real money in them, and they are also several years deep before anybody pays you anything. If you have no income today, that path will starve you before it pays you.

Start with things that produce money quickly.

Learn Canva. Learn CapCut. Those 2 alone put you in a position to earn from small businesses within weeks, and small businesses are everywhere.

From there move into social media management. From there into digital marketing. Each step funded by the one before it.

You can absolutely get to the technical work later, with income behind you instead of debt.

Drop the obsession with specialising

I specialise in this. My specialty is that.

Please stop, especially if you are young.

If you tell me you want to start a YouTube channel, I can help you. You want help running Meta ads, I can help you. You want a website that actually sells, I can help you. Vibe coding, I can help you.

There is no need for me to announce a specialty.

Think about how you already live. You know how to change a baby’s diaper. You know how to clean your house. You know how to cook. You know how to handle a dozen different things without ever declaring one of them your specialty.

Then it reaches your career and suddenly you must pick one narrow lane and stay in it, because school told you to.

Specialise and adapt. If you can see that solving a particular problem will make you money, why would you turn it down because it sits outside your declared lane?

People do not even know my specialty. I speak about everything, because life is broad. One day it is content, the next it is relationships. Am I confused? No. I am solving different problems for the same people.

Skills solve problems. Papers do not.

This is where I want to end.

We love certificates too much.

I have a whole bunch of them. I cannot remember the last time I pulled one out and handed it to a business owner.

Nobody cares about your papers. People care that you can solve their problem.

When I am hiring a web designer, do I ask for his certificates? No. I ask him to prove he can do the job. Show me a website you built. If you built it for your mother and she never paid you, I do not care, show me the website. If it is good, that is the qualification.

Which brings me to the only part that really matters.

Be good at what you do. Not average.

Nobody hires average. Average is the most crowded position in every market, and it is the only one where you compete purely on price. Be excellent, and the certificate question never comes up, because the work has already answered it.

Post the certificate on LinkedIn if you like. Then go and get good.

Start your digital skills journey on Click2Skill

— Elvis W.