Finding Your Family Fortune In Family Business

You have the most unique entrepreneurial story of everybody I know because. And I know a lot of wealthy people. Of all the wealthy people I know, you have the most unique story. Here's why. On our quest to create, accumulate and perpetuate wealth. When you first get started, the create part feels like the most difficult. But after you've created some wealth, then it seems like everybody's coming for it. Everybody's coming for it. And then it feels so hard to accumulate. But once you create and accumulate wealth, you will discover that for real, for real. The hardest part is to perpetuate wealth. And.

So many wealthy families leave their fortune to their children and grandchildren for it, only to dissipate in a matter of years. I have with me today someone who understands legacy from three different perspectives. And we're going to talk about those three different perspectives. And I think regardless of where you are in your life and business, you're going to be able to take something away that will help you create generational legacy wealth. From this video I have with me today in studio, none other than my dearest friend, David Mitchell, pastor from Corsicana, Texas, entrepreneur who owns multiple businesses. David, glad to have you here today, brother.

Great to be here.

Always glad to have you. So. So I was thinking you have the most unique entrepreneurial story of everybody I know because. And I know a lot of wealthy people. Of all the wealthy people I know, you have the most unique one story. Here's why. Because some people are wealthy because they inherit wealth. Some people are wealthy because they go out and build a business that creates wealth. And some people are wealthy business owners because they go and buy a business. You are the only entrepreneur I know personally that fits all three of those categories. You inherited a family business, then you started a business that did even better than your family business, and then you went out and bought a business. And now you're like sending stuff into space. It's just mind blowing. Okay, so.

I want to ask you some questions first about the inheriting a family business. When you inherited the family business, like, who started the business did your mom started, your dad, your grandfather, your great grandfather? Like, tell us, where did the business that you inherited tell us the origin story of that?

Okay, yeah, yeah, that's important because one thing one of our companies does is similar to what you do. We teach people around the country the concept in the Bible of the family business and why that's important and why it's biblical. And so this will relate to this a little bit because I was born into a family that believed in that I just grew up thinking everybody did it that way for a while. And I realized later that's not the American plan. The American plan is to send your kid to college to be taught by somebody that hates them maybe, or doesn't love them, to do something no one in the family's ever done before and then go work for someone that doesn't particularly care for them. And that's the new American plan. The old plan when our country started was more along the lines of family business, where you, you, each generation teaches the skill sets to the next generation. Then they think of some smart things and add it to the, to the brain pool there. And then they teach that to the next and the next. And they're also the bank for the ideas of the next generations. So, so good. So my great grandfather, to answer your question, started our.

Changed our family. And his name, we called him Captain Brown, some people called him Torpedo Brown. You'll know why in a minute. But C.L. brown was his name. He grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and was, had a sixth grade education and his family was in the junk dealing business. So they were quite poor. I mean, they had food to eat and stuff, but I mean, they weren't, you know, they didn't have a whole lot. Well, he heard about an oil boom in Mexia, Texas. And at that time Mexia was larger than Dallas. It was the largest oil boom in the world at that time.

There's what now 7,000, 8,000 people there?

About 7,000 people there. But at that time it was the largest oil boom in the world. And so he made his way to Mexia, probably 18 years old, something like that. And apparently, I don't know exactly this part of the story, I don't know who it was, but he learned a skill set from probably an older gentleman who probably passed away two or three years later and he took over that business. And what they did was they learned how to lower nitroglycerin down in the oil wells and blow it up. And it made the oil come in better. And so no one, they had no competition because it's kind of dangerous.

Who wants to drive around a bunch of nitrogen?

Yeah, I can picture this little pickup with little glass bottles of nitro tinkling together in the back down the mud ruddy roads that they had in those days. And there was no competition. So eventually he owned that little company and that's all he did. And he was the only one doing it. And he did that until he was 60 some.

Wow.

All right. But he made money. He Made a lot of money because it was almost a monopoly. He was the only one doing it for this big company called the pure oil company at that time. And so what happened was when he was around 60, the large company felt like the production had gotten low enough where it's not profitable. They wanted to sell it. And they asked my great grandfather, do you want to buy this company? And he said, let me pray about that. Yes, like that. I blew your speakers out. Sorry.

But he had laid aside money every couple of weeks, every time he did a job, his whole life. So he had about 20, 25% of the money it took to buy that oil field. And he borrowed the rest at a bank in Dallas. It was the first national bank of Dallas at that time. And he bought that field. Well, about that next year, fracking. The idea of fracking became more well known. And he fracked all the wells and they came in like new. And he paid the bank off in a couple of years.

Wow.

Then he started buying leases in east Texas and so forth.

So when you say leases, you're talking about oil leases, not car, not house leases.

No, oil leases and drilling wells. And so he took our family from poverty to wealth in his lifetime, but it took his whole lifetime. But five generations know his name. How many of you think people in your family could name, you know, great, great, great, great grandfather, and they know his name? So we, one of my companies, we try to teach people in this country to be the captain Brown of their family. So.

Good.

Now, the reason, obviously, why they called him torpedo Brown, right? Because he dropped stuff and blew it up. But that's what. Then my grandfather was the first person he married into the family. It was my great grandfather's daughter, that's my grandmother, and e. G. Hall married her. So he married into the family. But he was the first one that had a college education. He was kind of an accountant slash finance guy. And that really helped to have that sophistication. And he's the one that learned how to trade stocks and bonds because he had excess money, yet he couldn't invest it fast enough into oil. So he had extra money. So he learned how to trade stocks.

That's a good problem to have.

Yeah. And I can remember sitting as a little bitty guy, I'm talking about seven years old, sitting on his lap, and he's talking to stockbrokers. Back then, we didn't have laptops, we didn't have Internet. You talk to him on the phone. And I learned a lot from just listening, believe it or not it's funny.

What little kids hear more taught than taught.

Little kids hear stuff. But I remember one time now my grandfather, I don't think I'll see him in heaven. He cussed every other word. He was a rough oil man type guy. I loved him because he's my grandfather. But he's talking to the broker and I could hear the broker say, Mr. Hall, these two great stocks just came down the pike and we recommend you buy a bunch of these. And he said, blankety blank, blank. You don't tell me what I'm going to buy, here's what I'm going to buy and here's how many shares I want. So he picked his own stocks. So that's one of the first things we teach in Tradeway. It's a company we started by the way that teaches people how to trade in the stock market is don't take advice from other people. But I learned a lot of things from him about trading. So then my dad was in the FBI for 17 years. My real father passed away when I was one year old. His name was Paul Parker and he was a geologist. And he and his team out of Kentucky discovered the Permian Basin which is now the largest field in the world. Larger than Saudi Arabia, larger than everything production wise. My real father, on behalf of V.G. hall and my grandfather drilled the second well in that field. I thought it was the first one for years and I finally tracked it down. It was the second well ever drilled in that field was by my family and, and all around us was American Petrofina and all these big companies. And so my real father did that. But then he passed away when I was a year old. So my mom married Fred Mitchell who was the FBI agent. He was a special agent, worked straight for J. Edgar Hoover for 17 years and then he met my mom and about a year after Paul Parker died and they fell in love and got married and he adopted me and raised me. He was really smart, he was like a Mensa type guy. And.

They convinced him to quit the FBI so he wouldn't get killed. My grandfather was thinking and come work for the oil company. So he ran the oil company at that point in each generation like pretty quickly after that my grandfather gave him the entire oil company. He just gave him the whole thing, gave him a deed to it and handed him the keys and said I'm out of here. Well so then I wanted to go, I wanted to be a doctor. So I was pre med at Baylor for two years. I get a phone call about after midnight, which was odd for my dad to be calling me that late. And. Is this David? Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is me. He said, you okay? I said, yeah, I'm okay. He said, okay, well, I need you to change majors. And I wanted to be a doctor my whole life. And I said, okay, why? He said, well, I'm getting tired of doing this, and you need some business courses, so I need you to switch to business. I said, okay, and I hung up, because that's how we did it back then. So I just hung up. I went and dropped all the classes and switched to business.

Wow.

I think I was the first guy to get a bs which actually stands for Bachelor of Science in Business. And they did that so that I could save all those hours I had in physics and chemistry and biology and all this weird stuff I had to take for pre med. So I got to keep all those hours. So, anyway, so then I met my wife in high school, and she was 14 when we started dating. I was only 42, I think. No, actually, I think I was 17. She was 14. And so we grew up together. We dated five years. Eventually she ended up at Baylor by the time I was a senior. And so we got married after we graduated. And then. Well, actually, after I graduated, then I got an MBA after that. So then we moved back to Mexia. And I walk in the office now, when I was in high school, my dad had me running that office. He taught me how to manage the oil company when I was in high school. So when I was in the MBA program, I would take classes in the morning. And I was at Baylor, only 40 minutes from Mexia. So I would drive to work that afternoon and run the oil company. And so when I graduated and we were married and that next fall, we moved to Mejia, I walk in the office and there's a deed and a set of keys.

Choked me up for some reason.

And my dad just gave us that company.

So.

Good.

Yeah.

Still mad at him for knocking me out of med school, though. No, not.

I'm.

So that was actually, you know, the Lord did that, of course.

So that's how we got in the oil business. And I knew how to run it long before I graduated from college.

There are so many lessons, though, in what? Like that story you just told that I don't want people on YouTube to miss one.

Your great grandfather, who grew up poor, took a chance on himself, moved across the country to do something you. He was willing to learn even though he didn't know it. Like so many people Believe that just because they don't know how to do something that that means they shouldn't do it. But Torpedo Brown, Captain Brown, he said, I'm gonna move from Baltimore to Texas. Then he gets this job driving this nitroglycerin to these oil wells and dropping nitroglycerin down.

What if.

And I'm thinking to myself, when you're telling this story, well, what if it hits a rock on the way down and blows up too soon? Like there's so many things that could go wrong.

Yeah, that's true.

And he did that for, from the time he was like in his 20s for 40 years. But when you said he put aside a part of his money. See, the ability to delay gratification is one of the most important critical components to be able to create wealth. Your ability to say no to now so you can say yes to then. And so that was a mind blowing lesson. Then you talked about the fact that, that every generation. So your grandfather started his son in law, eg hall.

Understood the business stuff, and so he grew the business even more and tapped into this big vein of oil, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, this is an amazing story. And your grandfather sat you on his lap while he's trading stocks. Your dad teaches you how to run the oil company when you're in high school. And so here I think this is important. You can tell me what you think. I think far too many parents emphasize playing with their children and watching their children play. Not saying it's not important, but at the expense of not teaching their children how to work and letting their children work with them so they can see what work life looks like, which is where they're headed.

Yeah.

So there's so many. Like, don't miss those lessons.

Right?

Some of y' all are going to be, well, yeah, he inherited all. No, I guess he is rich. He inherited. Blah, blah, blah. But you inherited more than your parents had. It's not about how much you inherit, it's what you do with it. Don't squander the opportunities you have just because they're not the same opportunities somebody else has. So anyway, so that's some of the stuff I picked up on in that story. And you're. And you respected your father enough that when he called you in the middle of the night and said, I need you to change majors, you didn't argue with him, you just said, okay, so so many lessons there.

Yeah, I was sleepy.

I wanted to go back to bed. I wanted to go back to bed. Okay, I'm changing majors.

I ain't. And see God in everything. God orchestrates everything. Because, as you know, later in my life, while I was running that oil company, God called me to preach. And so if I'd been a doctor, you couldn't do that. But owning that business, I could work and then study theology in the evenings and prepare for that. But, yeah, no, back to what you pointed out about the children, I think, you know, really, I think the biggest problem is not whether they play with them too much and be their friend too much and not the, you know, not the strong dad. And teaching them business, that can be a personality thing. And, you know, there's a balance. There's a place in the balance. Right. We were talking about that yesterday. But the biggest mistake they make is they send them to college. Okay? So they send them to college to be taught by someone that doesn't love them, to do something no one in the family's ever done.

They.

Then they move 1,000 miles away, talking.

About somebody who doesn't even love God.

Yes, that's the worst part, too. And then they move a thousand miles away, and you never see your grandbabies. So that leads us to the next thing is when Charlotte and I were young, I think maybe we had Jenny. You held Jenny when she was four months old, when she was born, basically.

Then we had Katie. So we started thinking, you know what? This oil company, we contract most of the work. We don't need a lot of employees.

Had one key man that works out on the lease and runs all of that, and one key accountant type person in the office. And what are my kids going to do? So Charlotte and I said, well, why don't we start a new company and let's try to start a company where we can hire a bunch of young couples that can make money for their kids. And also we can have it very flexible where if our children don't like dad's oil company or Dad's whatever company, they can say, well, I want to do this. And we just say, well, hey, that's a perfect division for our company. We'll finance it, bring it into the company, and maybe some of them will work with us.

Well, now, totally different way of thinking than most people, Dave.

Well, at that point. So now we have five grown children, and all five of them and all five of their spouses work with me and Charlotte.

That is so.

So most of them live on the ranch, walking distance. And I've got 15 grandbabies, just about two on the way. So I've got 13 already that I see every day and play with them every day. But we're all working. That brings up the other thing. See, now I do play. I played with my kids a lot. My dad never played with me, my mom did.

I played with my kids a lot too.

My mom would let me throw hardball and learn to play baseball with my mom and tennis, but I played a lot with my kids. But the thing is, two things we did while we played.

We.

We talked about God as we did stuff more important than having a family devotion every day. That's formal. Kids don't like formal. So we just dropped. We tried that maybe six months, me and Charlotte, when they were little, and we said, nah, it's not working. So we just said, we're just going to point out everything God's done all around them every time we're with them everywhere. So good, bro. And that's what we did. So we never had any bad preacher kids. You know how that goes.

I do.

But we also taught them how to do business. And so, you know, Charlotte and I started a company called Designer Technologies, which is now DBA Tradeway. And it teaches people how to trade in the stock market around the country. And then we got registered with finra. So now we also invest other people's money. And we just started that fairly recently, maybe three and a half years ago or so and. But we were already up to about $100 million that other people's money that we trade and is growing like crazy thanks to a lot of stuff you've taught us. Myron has helped our family so much. When we started Tradeway, we didn't know how to price the products, the services. We didn't know how to back then. We did seminars. We didn't know how to do it. We went to a four day seminar in Pennsylvania where he used to live. And I remember Katie was fresh out of college and Dave, I'm not. Were. They weren't even married. Yeah, they were married recently. And her husband came from letourneau where I spoke one time and that's how he met me. And he met my daughter who went there. So the three of us went to his seminar. He taught us how to price the stock market. Educational products. I'll never forget. We didn't know. We thought, well, would anybody pay 250 bucks for this? Maybe. And Myron went, we need to talk. Later after class, he said, David, that's a $10,000 product. And I didn't even believe him. And the first time we. Then he taught us how to do the seminar and how to sell at the back table and everything. First time we did it, I had my son in law at the back and I finished my little talk, I tried to do everything he taught me to do, finished my little talk, walked out the side door because I didn't want to watch. And everyone in the room stormed to the back table and paid 10,000 bucks. Not everybody, but I mean a lot of people paid 10,000 bucks. And that's then I was a believer in Myron golden at that point. I mean as far as business goes, always been a believer. I've known him since he was 19. But you taught it, you got Tradeway started. And.

Then we didn't know how to do marketing. So he let me follow him around and he was speaking to 30, 60, 100, 200 people around the country. He said, you can come and you can have an hour, I think it was an hour and 15 minutes out of a three day event or something. And he said, have a $250 product and give them two free tickets to your seminar, which you don't have, but if you have 10 of them buy it, then you'll come to the city and do it. So that's what we did. And that got us started. Listen, that company had lost a million and a half dollars when we went to that event. Prior to going to his event. Yeah, prior to going to his event, we were not making money.

And the next year, after we went to that event, the next year was our first profitable year. And I think we made $66,000 profit. Not sales, but profit. Then from there it just exploded. And the next year I think was 2 million. And then the next year was 6, next year was 8 million and then the next year was 9 million. And then, you know, that was about 10 years ago. So this last year I think we did 18 million with Tradeway. And it's just still growing like crazy. But so now how many employees do.

You have, by the way?

Well, right now sitting at 40, not counting my family, so.

So you employ 40 business because you decided to start something. See, that's not from the business that he inherited. That's from the business that he created.

Yeah, yeah, the, the, the business we inherited doesn't do near as much revenue as Tradeway. It helped us start Tradeway.

Right, exactly, exactly.

Because like I said, we lost a million and a half bucks the first five years with Tradeway. And how was I going to pay? All I had was Dave and Katie. So we cut our overhead to nothing. And put our. Put our Tradeway office in their garage and I had a little oil money to pay them a salary and then we went to Myron's thing and then boom, just blew up. So you got. Here's the main thing, don't quit.

There you go.

If you don't quit and you have an entrepreneurial spirit and you got the Lord with you, you will succeed. But everybody quits right before they succeed. You just can't do that.

You can't do it. And so now you've got this company that not only does it sustain your family and create. Have you created like legacy wealth for your family? All of your children work in the business. Any of your grandchildren work in the business yet?

Yes. Tyler works full time for Trade Way. He's not going to college. He went to. He graduated this past year. He went to A and M because his buddies are all going to A and M. He's working for Tradeway in his room while they're in college. But he's there to hang out with him. But he's not going to do the college thing. He doesn't want to do it. He reads. He's like Ben and Matt and some of my kids, they used to read the books. But he's full time with Tradeway and he's excellent. He's also a musician.

Think about how powerful it would be for you to have a business that you can teach your children the business skills and give them the opportunity to start a division and grow that division like Ben did with Amp.

Right.

To grow a division in the company that you started. And then they're responsible for helping your family company make more money and they make more money directly as a result of that. This is a different level of thinking than go off to school and get a degree so you can get a job working for somebody. It's a different way of thinking.

Yeah. You can't create wealth trading. I'm going to quote Myron. You can't make. You can't create wealth trading your infinitely valuable time for someone else's little bit of money.

100%.

It's actually my saying now. I've said it more than you probably know, but I heard you say it once.

You know what J.R. reitinger used to say, Originality is concealing your source.

That is so good. Well, Ben actually didn't start amped. He started Depression. Metals.

Precious metals.

He's into precious metals. He didn't want to do the stock. He's a good stock trader, but he's wanted to do that, but I mean that, that, that worked great. And guess this past year, 2024, kind of towards the end of the year, I made Katie, which is my second born daughter, Katie Huber, the CEO of Tradeway. So, so now, you know, I'm like full, almost full time grandpa and golfer.

That's a pretty cool gig.

I want to write some books.

Some.

I got time finally. I've had books in my mind for 15 years, but too busy because I have three companies in Pastor, church and all this stuff. A wife, five kids, 13 grandbabies. But anyway, so now, now I can add some books in there. But, but the great thing is she runs it so much better than I did. Now you've experienced that. You haven't. You tell them. Tell us about your daughter.

My daughter's CEO of our company. Way better than I ever could ever hope to.

Isn't that great?

It is all right. It's great to have children who worked with you long enough to develop skills and then went off and learned their own stuff. Like some of the stuff my son knows how to do and some of stuff my daughter. I don't even know how they learned it because they didn't learn from me because I don't even know how to do it. Yeah.

That's what's amazing. You're always amazed at what your kids can do.

Yeah.

Especially if you have them where you can see them.

Exactly.

And have life with them. That's the beauty of the family business.

Yes. It keeps families together.

Yes. And that's biblical. Think about that. The kids, the babies need the grandparents influence and they don't get that with the American plan.

The parents, babysitters that they can trust. Like grandparents.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah. So it's a beautiful thing. And by the way, like, don't. But I don't have that. No, that's not the point. If you didn't have that, be that.

Captain Brown didn't have it.

Exactly. As Dr. Sonia says, one of my friends and clients, she says, if you didn't come from a wealthy family, make sure a wealthy family comes from you.

Oh, I love it.

Isn't that great?

Be the Captain Brown.

Be the Captain Brown, indeed. And so, but then you've got, you've got this successful oil company and you've got this successful training company where you teach people how to trade the market and then you manage money, you have money under management and then you bought a rocket company.

Who does that?

You know what?

I think I'm gonna go. I think, I think they got some rocket Companies on sale this afternoon. I think I'll go buy.

What are we doing here? Yeah, well, it's a great story because prior to that, there was a very smart young man named John Quinn who was living in the Dallas area. His financial advisor had lost, I think it was 40% of his entire money back in, what, 2000? 2008. 2008, I think, is when it was. Seems like I've known him longer than that, though. But that was probably it. It wasn't 2000. I think it was 2008. So he heard me on the radio. Back then, we did radio. Now we've learned from Myron how to do online stuff. It's a new way to do it. Online stuff. YouTube. Because radio doesn't work as well, but back then it worked great. It helped build our company. And he heard me, and I said something like this. We always ran them at traffic time in Dallas. Who's got you watching those tail lights this morning? How'd you like to fire him? We'll show you how. At Tradeway, you know, he heard that, and so he came to a seminar, and we did infinite retakes. If they bought the package he taught us to do, which was the best for them to have. We never sell anybody anything that's not best for them, but.

He bought that, so they get infinite retakes. So he looked like my college roommate. So I noticed that finally. And I took him to dinner that night just because of that. Got to know him well. Then he got where he was helping me teach classes, some of the advanced classes. He'd do retakes, and he'd say, you forgot to. When you taught my class, you said this. Would you mention that a little bit? And, you know, I'd do it. And so I finally asked him, why don't you think about being a speaker for our company? So he came to work for Tradeway for many years, one of our greatest teachers and speakers. And I was at dinner with him one night, and he said, you know, I was a submariner when I was a kid. I was in the Navy, and we were in the war games. And I told my captain, I've got enough stuff on this submarine. I can put it together. You can launch it out the torpedo tube. It'll make the other ships think we're five miles over there. I said, what? He said, yeah, I built this little thing. And so he did it, and we won the war games. And end of story, he thought. And I said, well, wait a minute, John. Why don't you get someone to build a prototype of that and sell it to the Navy. And my story is. He says, I didn't think, never thought about that. His story's a little different, just like me and your stories are a little different. My story's preach better, though. But he said something like, well, yeah, maybe that'd be a good idea. You know, something like that. So probably a month later, two months later, I get a call from you. He said, I met two rocket scientists in Dallas. And I said, wait, wait, wait, wait. Stop right there. There are no rocket scientists in Dallas. He said, there's two. And I met them and they said, they will build my prototype for free if we. If, you know, if I'd let them manufacture it if the Navy buys it. I said, man, that's awesome. He said, man, you need to come meet these guys. It's incredible. They built rockets for 10 years before, you know, I met them and they got stuff all, well, I loved rockets. I've always loved space. And so I drove up there probably within a week. I took a couple of son in laws with me and drove up there. And I walk in and they had rocket engines as doorstops. And John said, david, come on upstairs. I go up there and here's these rocket guys. And you can just see brains in them when you look in their eyes. You know.

Phil and Russ are incredible guys. And they told. I said, tell me your story. They told me the story. They had done this for 10 years for a wealthy individual who was doing it as a rich man's hobby. But these guys, Myron had. All right, a lot of you have heard of Blue Origin, right? I mean, they were the first company really, to launch a rocket and then have it come back under its own power where they could reuse it. These guys had done it five years prior to that, but they didn't get the news on it. But we have the video. In fact, I'm going to show you some video after a while of that flight. They did that five years before anyone did it, okay? So then they built a lunar lander for NASA, which NASA used to practice landing on the moon with, but they landed it on the Earth and our guys built that. And they built scores of reusable rockets that could be launched and come right back to the launch pad and all this stuff. And then the rich guy's wife decided she was tired of him doing that because he spent a million a year and she made him quit. Well, they didn't want to go to work for anybody, so they tried to keep it Going, but they weren't business people. So I said, man, after meeting them, I said, john, we need to offer a deal. We'll manage the company, we'll raise the money for them to keep them going, and we want to own the majority of the company. And he said, I was thinking the same thing. So that's how we got in. That was 2015. So John and I bought the majority of.

We called it EXOS Aerospace. And the same crew still works with us after, you know, about 10 years. And.

Within a year, we launched our own rocket that we built in house, every part of it, and then launched it four times. And there are only three other companies that have ever done that, and That's Blue Origin, US and SpaceX, which SpaceX had not done it at that time. So it's been amazing. In fact, AC almost got to go to our second launch with me. Or was it the third one? I don't remember. I think it was the second launch.

AC is my son, by the way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he had come to Dallas. He was staying with me in Charlotte. And we went up and they canceled our plane because you had to fly to El Paso. They don't have many flights. They canceled it and we missed the launch. So that's the only launch I missed, too. But I was so sad he didn't get to see that. Maybe in the future you'll see another one, but it's pretty fun. I hope to.

Get some launch video for you guys to see here in a little bit.

That's awesome. That's awesome. So for people who are interested in learning how to create, accumulate and perpetuate wealth, what lessons did you learn from your parents and did you teach to your children that people who are learning how to create wealth for the first time, they're gonna be the Captain Brown of their family? What advice do you have for them to help their children learn how to become the person who can perpetuate the family's wealth instead of decimating the family's wealth.

The thing that does it is when you get them working with you at a young age, junior high, basically, even younger. I mean, you teach them to work even younger and make fun out of it, right? Because you can make money and buy things that you like. And also, it's more fun than playing games and stuff sometimes. My dad taught me, always work first and then play. Get the work done first and then play. So we perpetuated that to a couple of generations now. So you want to get them working with you, and while they're Working with you, you teach them the two main principles of business. And this is taught in every college business school. People don't it for one thing. It's difficult to do, but it's called duplicate and delegate. Okay? So you have to duplicate yourself in your kids if they're working with you, which hopefully they will be someday, and your employees. And then you hand it over to them, you delegate it, and you don't tell them how to do it. I've watched you and your daughter. You don't tell her how to do stuff, and I don't tell Katie how to do anything.

Once you've trained them and put you into them, you have to trust them. And then you delegate because you can't grow if you don't. So then you can, then I. Or you can go to the next big thing, figure out how to do it, teach them that, and then maybe they teach their kids how to do that. And also people that work with you.

Did you know that principle that you just talked about is in Genesis, chapter.

One, God does not surprise me.

When he created the heavens and the earth and he created the water.

And.

God said, let the earth bring forth the shrubbery and the grass and the vegetation.

Yeah.

And he said, let the earth bring forth the land animals and let the water bring forth the fish and the fowl. So God delegated. Even though God created everything, he delegated the land to bring forth the vegetation and the land animals and the water to bring forth the fish and the fowls. Even God uses delegation.

God started the first family business. You think about it. Jesus. You remember in the Gospels, he said, there's places where he said, I don't do anything or say anything that I have not seen the Father do. And then when he left this earth, he looked at us and said, as I was sent, so send I you. So he brought us into the family business. So everything is God's business. And we're his kids and we're working with him. There's the pattern. So if it's a biblical pattern, use it in your life, in the physical.

World, it'll start working because you start.

It's the principle. So it works.

Exactly.

But so that duplicate and delegate is huge.

I think you have to keep the young people, if you're talking about your family, you got to keep them interested. So allowing them to bring in divisions of things they want to do. Now some of them want to do what you're doing. Like Katie wanted to do, run. She didn't want to trade. She wanted to Run the company. Dave, her husband, is a great trader and one of our best. Probably our best teacher in the whole company. And trader. And then Ben, Matt are great stock traders, but you got to keep it interesting. And some of the greatest things I learned from you, brother Myron, is don't go into business doing something you want to do. Do something the market needs, meet people's needs, and do that, and that's what makes money. I would say the rocket company is the closest thing I've done just because I wanted to do it. But there is. There is a need out there. And the need is they're gonna. They're gonna close the space station down pretty soon, and when they do, they're gonna need other companies to come in and put things in orbit, small orbit, for maybe two weeks and come back, like scientific experiments, medical experiments and things. So there's a need.

But, you know, I just. When you said. When you said that thing about doing something that you. Instead of doing something that you want to do, do something the marketplace needs, it reminds me of another business I forgot to even ask you about that you inherited, but you sold.

Oh, that's right. We forgot about that.

We forgot about that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The organ company.

Right after I got out of the MBA program, my dad taught himself how to play an organ, a pipe organ. And my mother was a good pianist and was, you know, taught in college how to play. And she was almost a music major, I think she was a music major. My dad taught himself how to play an organ with the pedals and everything, and he loved it as a hobby. So he started a company in Portland, Oregon, called Van Zorin Pipe Organ Company. And I helped him get it going and run it for a few years. And the problem was he had some guys that were in that business, and he put the money in and they all worked together. And then the marketing guy quit and went back to Roger's Organ Company, which he had come from. And so. Oh, and that reminded me the other point I wanted to make. Marketing is more important than you think it is. So what happened when we lost the marketing guy? By that time, we were manufacturing the best organ in the country, and we put in some huge installations. All of y' all are too young to remember the Crystal Cathedral. Probably even you.

No, Crystal Cathedral.

It was huge.

Robert Shul.

It was the first megachurch in the country, really. We built his organ. Not that I liked his theology, but, I mean, we liked the money he gave us. We built his organ. Second Baptist Church in Dallas was Another big installation. So we did that for a while, and then we got where we couldn't fill the funnel enough, so we sold it to cbs, the television network, because they own Baldwin pianos and some other companies.

So cool.

So it didn't work out great, but that's where I learned, and I learned from the old.

You shut it down? You sold it?

No, we sold it. But the thing. The reason it didn't work is because, number one, it was a hobby of my dad is why he did it. Number two, he didn't know how to do the marketing and agree to die. And we lost the marketing guy. And that was a special kind of marketing. So that. And I'm so glad you brought it up, because you asked me what would I tell people to do to be successful. That was the other thing I wanted to add, was early on, with whatever money you have to start it with, put a good percentage into marketing. Don't just put it all into this thing you're trying to build or this service you're putting together. Because if you do all that, even if you make it perfect, you got to have the marketing. And everyone misses that pretty much.

That's the first move. Lead generation. You got to be able to generate some leads. Some people are interested. So I know that you have something, a gift for the folks who are watching. And what we'll do is we'll put a link in the description for that gift.

Yes.

Do you want to tell them what it is?

Yeah. Well, a challenge, a stock market challenge for people that want to learn how to trade in the stock market. So.

In the comment section down there, we'll have a little link for you where if you go there, you'll get a free ticket to our next challenge, which we're having one this week. It's going on, right? Started yesterday. So it's going on this week, but approximately a month from now, it'll be the next one, and you get a free ticket to that. And also, I would like people to consider purchasing some stock in exos, because we're doing an offering. You can buy, you know, as little as 500 bucks worth of stock and tell your grandkids you own part of a rocket company. So for people that do that, we're going to give away some dog tags with their name on it that have been to space.

Wow.

That'll be cool. Just to give a little giveaway. It'll be fun. And I do want you to see some. A little bit of launch video here in a minute. So cool.

Well, David, what a great interview. So many life lessons, so many business lessons, so many generational wealth legacy lessons to help people either get started creating wealth, continue accumulating wealth and then make sure they perpetuate not decimate the wealth. I appreciate you being here today brother.

You bet. It's awesome being appreciate you bro.

I'm Matt Mitchell, David's youngest son of five children. We and all of our spouses work in our various family businesses alongside my mom and dad. Myron's children work alongside him as well and they believe strongly in the family business. You can learn to pass down skills and financing to your children and create legacy wealth for generations the Bible way. My parents have started two new companies in just my lifetime in both individually are worth more than the oil company my dad inherited. Wants you to see some fantastic launch videos from Sarge 1 and also tests of the new Block 3 hypersonic rocket built by Exos Aerospace for the US Air Force which should be launched in 2025. But first I want to ask you a couple questions. Do you think rockets in space are cool? One of the goals of Exos is to get more and more young people in America to get interested in space again. Here's my second question for you. What if Elon Musk had made SpaceX stock available to you in 2002? Right now EXOS Aerospace is at the door to becoming a serious contender in the private commercial space race. Today, my dad and brother Myron are making common stock available to those interested in seeing the offer, check out the link in the description below and you will receive two things. First, access to the offering memorandum. That's the offer. Secondly, we want to offer you a free gift from Tradeway, another company my dad started. My family's been stock trading for five generations now. This is a free ticket to the February 2025 Unlock the Stock Market Challenge, a five day event designed to teach you the core skills you need to know to become an effective stock trader. You will be taught by my dad's son in law Dave Huber and other coaches who people pay tens of thousands of dollars just to be coached by. They're going to teach you how to master the stock market and it will be absolutely free to you just by clicking the link below. Once you receive the information about this free gift, you will be contacted with information about the stock offer. Tradeway and Exos are affiliate companies. You do not need to be an accredited investor and you do not need to purchase large amounts of stock, but you will have the bragging rights with your kids and grandkids someday. For those who purchase these shares, Exos will provide dog tags which have been flown into space and back with your name on them. So click the link in the comment section below, go to the webpage and add your name and email, and you and your spouse will be able to attend our stock trading challenge as a complimentary gift from David Mitchell and Myron Golden. Now please crank up your volume, gather your family, because you're about to take a walk through the history of our family business.

EXOS Aerospace Space flight was a dream for everyone in my generation. I can remember going across the street, sitting on the floor of my first grade teacher's house with my first grade class, watching Alan Shepard and John Glenn lift off into space for the first time. We watched the world change on a black and white TV set and I was hooked. When I met the science guys in our company and heard their amazing story, I immediately saw an opportunity for myself. But I also saw an opportunity for the whole world. Ten years and $14 million had taken place and they had spectacular results, among many other things. What caught my eye was that they had designed, built, flown and retrieved reusable rockets. And as you know, that's the holy grail in the space industry today. Why is it so important? Because it makes it more affordable and it gets you there sooner. People are having a hard time with cost effectiveness and getting the board to sign off on their projects and it's taking too long to get into space. Well, with Exos, we have a solution for that. Making it cheaper, faster and safer to fly to zero GS. That's how EXOs is making space available.

We've got about 55 pounds of payload in there.

Got huge G loads on it. When it takes off, I think it's close to 40 G's.

We've been able to take this company to a place where it's a for profit commercial business. For the first time.

We're going to make history. Today.

It's traveling at Mach 3 or thereabouts.

And it starts to fly its way back. It's actually really cool to watch.

Our rocket engineers and their team are focused, experienced, and still having fun after working together for 15 years. They've designed and built hundreds of rocket engines and flown and recovered scores of rockets. Today, Russell Blink, Phil Eaton, Joseph Lagrave and Steve Norsworthy launched their first rocket for their own company.

Sam.

Okay, so now with the rocket in view, we're heading right over here, 300 meters off of the launch point.

We had all our recovery systems operational.

Sam.

10.

Entering transonic.

Short flight. The vehicle is under trove again, proving reusability on this vehicle. And the chute just deployed. The canopy is in auto flight mode. It is tracking its GPS signal to start working its way back towards the launch site.

What we're doing on this test flight is testing our radar technology.

My name is Jeremiah Pate. I'm the CEO of Lunison. This is actually the first time that a VLF very low frequency transmitter has ever been tried before. So this will give us a lot of very useful data on this potentially extremely valuable new technology that we have under development.

We're here representing the Florida Space Institute and Dr. Julie Bersay. Our payload on this rocket is called Space 2, which is the Suborbital Particle Aggregation and Collision experiment. The purpose of it is to study early planetary formation. During the stage where particles are of such little mass that gravity doesn't play an influence on their aggregation, we manually track these particles and we watch their velocities before and after collision and see the circumstances under which they aggregate together. And that's sort of the scope of the experiment.

Launch control, activate guidance.

Launch Control, guidance is now active. Launch control, advance to engine ignition 1. Launch control, vehicles at engine ignition 1.

Launch control, activate control. Standby Launch control. Control is now in standby.

Launch control, verify throttle 100%. Control racing position.

Verify now.

Theta up.

Launch control position Resync NASA Theta Upper Algon.

Second countdown.

15 second countdown commencing at.

15.

10.

Five, four, three, two, one.

Anything that can throw a vehicle 100 km up in the air is inherently not safe. It's got enough energy to ruin your weekend.

I'm ruan. I'm a PhD candidate in neuroscience and general sciences at Mayo. I'm working on exploring the regenerative capacity of adipose tissue and potentially engineering it. Seeing the effects of suborbital flight on our patented nanoparticle uptake.

So this is our experiment that will be flying on the rocket flight tomorrow. So there's no way from space to scalably scan our planet's mineral and water assets that are so valuable to society.

Today we're employees of the Forest Space Institute. Our payload is called Space2. It's a physics experiment studying early planetary formation and it's also a test bed for cubesat hardware.

There has to be a space based solution for us to scan the planets resources. One way to do this is using a low frequency radar. Really when you go to a lower frequency you're able to actually have radio waves that penetrate through the Earth's surface.

This is a theoretically a one hour engineering process in which we can engineer cells to express your gene of interest for personalized medicine.

And when we get up to microgravity, all these particles inside different kinds of glass beams, some acrylics and then also lunar regolith, those start interacting and colliding, they lose energy over time. And the characterizing that energy loss is how we study early planetary formation.

So using the low frequency radio waves from this type of system we can see up to 2km underground and actually get an idea of what sorts of resources lie at that same depth.

There's this gap of knowledge called the meter sized barrier where they don't know how these particles particles get to the meter size. And so by studying, that's what you guys are doing.

Exactly.

Launch control, ignition sequence is armed. Launch control is now standing by. Begin 15 second countdown. XSO 15 second countdown. 15.

10.

Five, four, three, two, one. Ignition.

Vehicle speed 260 miles per hour. Altitude 2500ft.

IIP has grown a bit. 1200 miles an hour. 33,000ft.

IIP diverged enough. We should have an abort shutdown.

Safety, safety, heads up on the range.

We'Re coming in without a drogue.

Safety, safety, safety. We have a vehicle incoming, high speed. It's going to land remote from the launch pad.

We have an impact.

Safety, Safety, Safety Level 2. Emergency Response Team, can you approach the launch pads? There was enough fuel on board. There may be a fire fluid.

So it looks like we have.

Come.

Back in with the vehicle not tethered by the drogue.

This is rocket science.

We'll fix it.

And we will be going again.

Sam.

I'm John Quinn, CEO and co founder of EXOS Aerospace and I'm here today to talk to you about reusable space vehicles. Because EXOS Aerospace is making space available. We are competing in the hypersonics market again in that first group with Generation Orbit, Lockheed Martin and EXOS Aerospace. Our vehicle costs are about one quarter of what our competitors are. And we've got something they don't have. We can maintain a constant Mach level with our vehicle designs. We know this because we were contracted by the US Air Force to develop the plan for that launcher. We want a CBIR Phase one and we're looking to go to a SBIR Phase two with support from many different agencies within the US Air Force and the Missile Defense Agency.

Today we have Purdue University doing a test for a lunar lander leg.

Biggest challenge is, you know, getting a rocket lit and providing that heat source and turning it around in just a few minutes while they reset their experiments and lighting the rocket engine again and then turning it lighting again and again. So we'll actually do four rocket engine firings in one day.

We're testing the heat transfer in the legs of a simulated lunar lander that would the heat that would come off the exhaust of a rocket.

Everybody wants to be in aerospace.

We have 1200 undergrads at Purdue in aerospace engineering. 600 grad students more and more want.

To come in.

To actually create a design and then order the materials and then get the materials and drill the holes and put it together. Has been just really, really exciting for me to see my design come to fruit.

Here we are coming out providing services for universities, for NASA. And it allows us to also get multiple repetitions on this hardware. We test it like no one else does. Right now we spend millions of dollars on lunar landers. We use exotic materials so we know they won't break. We know that they can handle everything. But what if they didn't have to be million dollar landers? They could be $100,000 landers because we could use less exotic materials. That's what they're trying to prove today. And they're using our rocket plume as the heat source to say, hey, maybe we can use aluminum. They've invited University of Central Florida out to do one of their experiments and it allows us to also get multiple repetitions on this hardware. We test it like no one else does. Right now we spend millions of dollars on lunar landers. We use exotic materials so we know they won't break. We know that they can handle everything. But what if they didn't have to be million dollar landers? They could be hundred thousand dollar landers because we could use less exotic materials. That's what they're trying to prove today. And they're using our rocket plume as the heat source to say, hey, maybe we can use aluminum. They've invited University of Central Florida out to do one of their experiments. And this one's really neat. They've got eight lasers mounted on the side of our rocket looking down to actually measure particle sizes as the simulated regolith is flying away from the rocket and the exhaust.

Another cool thing about Scorpius. Scorpius has become pretty famous lately because recently the United States put a lunar lander on the moon for the first time in 50 years. Scorpius built the fuel tanks and the oxygen tanks for the Odysseus lunar lander, which intuitive machines built, which recently landed on the moon. And it's pretty cool that exoskeleton owning 18% of Scorpius contributed to this great event.