Pictured from left to right: My great-grandfather, C.L. Brown; my grandfather, E.G. Hall; my father, Fred Mitchell with me on his shoulders; and me giving a talk in Hawaii.

My great grandfather C.L. Brown got into the oil business in Texas many years ago. It took him his whole life working in an oil field to save up enough money to buy that oil field. He had to borrow about 80% of the money from a bank to buy it. The very next year, he had made enough money to pay the bank off in full. It was the largest oil field in the world just a few years before he bought it. Then he bought some oil fields in east Texas and west Texas. Since he had spent his life working in the oil fields, he knew everything from top to bottom about how an oil field works.

He taught all of that to his favorite daughter and her husband, Elvis Hall, or E.G. Hall as he was known. Elvis was actually the first guy in the family to have a college degree. So Elvis was taught all of these skill sets and the company kept growing. 

At that point my grandfather had a problem. He had a lot of money laying around and he didn’t know what to do with it (bad problem huh?). So he decided to learn how to be a stock and bond trader. I remember sitting on his knee when I was little, listening to him talk to brokers. Back then, you had to call your broker on the phone and say, “I need you to buy 500 shares of such and such stock.” The broker would try to tell him, “Mr. Hall, these are three great stocks that just came down the pike, and you need to buy some of these.” And he’d wait a second or two and start cussing at him (real oilmen cuss worse than a sailor, not that I condone that) and he’d say, “I already have my list. I want you to buy this many shares of this, this many shares of that, and this many shares of that.” At eight years old, I learned that you don’t let your broker or your financial advisor tell you what to buy. It’s important that you learn to make your own list.

All of those skill sets were then taught to my dad and my mom. And they taught them to me, and I taught them to my five grown kids, and now we’re teaching them to my 13 grandbabies. 

The Power of Compounding Skill Sets in Family Businesses



Here’s what happens in a multi-generational family business: In every generation–not only are you passing down the skill sets of my great grandfather, the oil man, but you’re also passing down the skill sets of my grandfather, who mastered stocks. 

Now you’ve got my great grandfather, grandfather, my dad–and now I’ve got the benefit of all of those skill sets. And I’ve learned a few more things and taught them to my kids. And not only that–any ideas your child has, the family finances it. You don’t have to go to the bank and pay the bank interest. So now you’ve got generational wealth.

So which system do you like better–the new system or the old system? In the new system, your family has to start over every generation. I’ve never seen real wealth created that way. It doesn’t give you enough momentum. 

Today, my daughter, Katie Huber, is the C.O.O. of TRADEway, and she runs all of it with her husband, Dave Huber. I don’t make any decisions without talking to the two of them. Although lately it’s kind of the other way around! They’re making all of the decisions and sometimes they talk to me. But I kind of like it that way because I have 13 grandbabies. I don’t need to be at the office all the time these days, and I prefer that. 

Pictured above: My son, Ben Mitchell.

Why We Started TRADEway

You might ask, if we already had the successful family oil business–where we’re set for life, and our kids are set for life–why go and start another business by starting TRADEway? After all, for many people, the objective of work is getting to a place where one day you don’t have to do it anymore. Hadn’t we already reached that point?

It was because my wife Charlotte and I got to thinking–what if our children don’t like the oil business? What if we could create a new business that has enough divisions where if our children had an idea that’s their own, we could bring it in and make it a division, finance it and it becomes part of the business? So that’s what we did with TRADEway. We thought if we did that, then maybe one or two out of our five kids would work with us and our grandbabies would be near. What ended up happening was that all five of them wanted to.

Ben Mitchell, my son, wanted to start something with precious metals. He’s a great stock trader, by the way. So we started a precious metals division of TRADEway. He built the whole thing, and he did that when he was 20. Yes, I said 20!

So it worked. And you have to think the Lord kind of put that in our minds. He also put it in the Bible. Because, as my friend Dr. Myron Golden says, “The kingdom of God is a family business.” I’ve used Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as my model. It wasn’t that I was thinking, ‘Well, let’s build this thing where we have generational wealth.’ I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking that I wanted to work with my kids and see my grandbabies. 

Want to hear more of my origin story from businessman, to preacher, to founder and CEO of TRADEway? Listen to this interview I did with my dear friend Dr. Myron Golden, “Leveraging the Legacy of Family Business.”



Are you ready to get started with your stock trading journey? Book a complimentary strategy session today! We’ll talk you through your goals for learning more about stock trading, and the best ways to get started. 

Blessings,

David Mitchell