Ken's Family
I try to be the best husband and father I can possibly be, and my beautiful wife Joanna and daughter Tatiana are the one’s who give me strength, hope and inspiration for do what I do. They are the gift God sent to me; all of my compassion and generosity has come from learning what’s in Joanna’s heart. She’s helped and continues to help me become a better person every single day. If my gift is to be obedient, and do things 100 percent through, then hers is to have pure charity as she does everything with unconditional love. She loves people, and it’s a quality I’m learning from her. I’m an introvert in our covenant of marriage and she’s the extrovert; together we make a great team! Our unspoken rule is to be together always even when I make business trips we travel together.
My life was completely transformed in 1996 with the birth of my daughter Tatiana. Suddenly my priorities and view of life changed – she became everything to me; all my hopes and inspirations. I dedicate everything that I am and everything that I have to her, and give her opportunities my parents weren’t able give me. Me and Joanna have taken Tatiana traveling with us since she was two weeks old. The world is full of interesting places and diverse people, and I believe the best education you can bestow upon a child is to let them see and experience the rest of the world. Among her many talents, today Tatiana is the founder and CEO of her silicon valley Tech start up and is the youngest book writer in Zimbabwe having written “The Lonely Tiger” – a children’s book about doing good and giving back.
Another member of our family is our foster son, Denzel Malikwa whom I’ve been sponsoring since 2008. Again, like my daughter, it’s important to me to give him the opportunities most children aren’t fortunate enough to receive. When he was younger his grandmother supported him by selling vegetables on the street – he never knew his birth father. But today he’s a qualified practising lawyer. I made a deal with him and told him “if you do well at “O” levels (in which I insisted he did the ZimSec curriculum as well as the Cambridge one – which is normally a two year course and which he completed in a year), then I would pay for his last two years of Cambridge “A” levels (this was so he could go to any Western University and private school of his choosing). He sustained close to a 4.0 GPA, and after looking at all the options, he decided to be loyal to his hometown and stayed at Mabvuku High School. He was elected into the Youth Parliament and this year made Head Boy of his School and was honoured with four academic prizes, as well as “best student of the year.” Despite having an option to travel to university overseas he chose to stay in Zimbabwe and went to MSU to study law for 5 years, during which time he was the first student chosen to go to Rhodes on attachment in a student exchange program. As you can see I am very proud of Denzel and call him Son and he calls me Dad.
"Leaving a heritage and legacy" - Wealth Creation Economics 101- the family unit and generational momentum
My wife calls me a phoenix because I always come out of the ashes alive and have the fortitude to never give up.
Despite having significant means my father sent me at 17 years old with $100 in my pocket and on a one way ticket to the UK for schooling with no further support; I was on my own and had to take care of myself in all ways.
The great dynasties built over history were only made possible by the previous generation doing more for their posterity than the previous. I knew this truth as early at 15 and promised myself to break the chain and generational curse from the sins of the fathers. I would be different and not repeat the mistakes of the past and I would provide an education and a hand up in life for my children to have a head start. I would make sure that when I left this life I would have done more for my children than my parents did for me and leave them a legacy of blessing for multiple generations – this is the story of most Africans. We have a saying that no amount of success in the world makes up for failure in the family.
There is a teaching from Clayton Christensen, the founder and guru of innovation, who said ‘the greatest gift we can give to our children is in what we DON’T do for them!’ Therefore the task was more than to make sure I left for my children more than my parents left me and not just the assets and material wealth which I had already achieved by the time of the accident in 2007 but more importantly it was to also leave a lasting legacy with the values and belief that we have a Father in Heaven who loves us more abundantly than we can imagine and wants us as his children to have everything he has.
I have always been a believer that its all about working hard with sheer determination to succeed and perseverance in the face of adversity and as we read in Psalm 128:2 ‘When you eat the labor of your hands, You shall be happy, and it shall be well with you.’
The family is a divine part of God’s plan and is the most important fundamental building block of strong societies. It is the primary social organization and lays the foundation for relational healthy children and adults, self-government, self-provision and assimilation into the wider elements of culture. The primary and fundamental belief that family is the core unit of society makes it a transcendent value. Further the family is one of self-Government which is the foundation of all successful organizations. Repetition is key to this process “and can be perfected through Generational Momentum.”
A good manager is actually a steward and the key to their success is to prove trustworthy to grow the assets the owner has entrusted them with.
If you really want generational momentum to really pick up speed then you need not to think of just multiplying the one talent we have into five or 10 but we need to aim for a min of a 100 times increase in one generation. This is called the multiplier effect or in economics and mathematics the exponential growth curve because if you take 100×100×100 over 3 generations then you do not get 300X but rather 1 million times more ie. $1000 in the first generation gives $1 billion in the 3rd!! They are some companies that have achieved this in less than one generation
It is the work of family units to build wealth across the generations. There is surely no substitute no better way than generational momentum to generate the greatest economic prosperity for the greatest number of people.
All these attributes of wealth are to be studied carefully and transmitted from parents to children and generation to generation.
Generational momentum is part of the major solution to wealth creation. We desperately need functioning fathers and mothers, bound in functioning families where their children are the first and greatest responsibility of their parents. We need national policies that see generational momentum as one of, if not the first order of our economic priorities. Out from such nations would come leaders and people who in several generations would be changing the entire planet. If we love our children we should give them the advantage of living their lives on our shoulders or beyond, so to speak. A nation that loves its families loves its future.
