Passion can lead you many places and when you have a position to actually share that passion with the world, how much good can you do? The World Cup is here and a serious topic is also here. We talked to David Reid of Redm on this episode of The Crude Truth. In 1901 at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, the future of Texas changed dramatically as like a fountain of fortune, thousands of barrels of oil burst from the earth towards the sky. Soon Detroit would be cranking out Model T's by the millions and America was on the move thanks to the black gold being produced in Texas. Now, more than a century later, the vehicles are different, but nothing else has truly changed. Sure, there may be many other alternative energy sources like wind and solar and electric, but let's be honest, America depends on oil and entrepreneurs. And if the USA is truly going to be independent, it has to know the crude truth.
Well, thank you as always for tuning in to another episode of The Crude Truth. As we are now in summer 2026, the summer of the World Cup here in North America, Canada, United States, and Mexico. It is just my honor to have somebody on the show today that is well known around the oil and gas industry and is also a well-known philanthropist.
I am doing really well. So glad to be here.
Well, thank you. This has been literally another one of those longtime shows coming. I know I've been talking to you about this now for at least two years. For those out there, David, that don't know you, introduce yourself for us and tell us who David Reid is and maybe a little bit about NOV and what you do.
Sure. Well, I'll start with Nov. So, it's my day job. They pay the bills. So yeah, I am the CTO and CMO for which has been a short 34 years just hanging around. They still couldn't find another job, I guess. Started in the repair shop doing paperwork for the supervisor. So that's kind of cool. Yeah, so I love all that. And then in my journey, I've been in the leadership team of NOV at the top for 14 years or so. And you start to realize when you have position you can use it for purpose. So I really dove in with Red M about eight years ago, started an organization. It's a difficult odd subject that I wasn't hoping to really be in, but my wife had stepped in there already and realized that it affects our kids and that really motivated me. So I really got into how do we do a better job of protecting our kids.
Yeah. You know that that's funny that you mentioned just being uncomfortable. So, a few minutes ago before you walked in, I was talking to the owner of the Real News Studio. And I was like, 'Oh, I've got David Reid coming in. He's a Red M.' And he's part of this anti-human trafficking group. And then the other gentleman that was with him was like, 'Really?' I said, 'Oh, you don't know how bad human trafficking is.' And you just give a cringe.
It's a difficult subject. And I've learned for different reasons. I used to think it's a difficult subject. Maybe people have been involved like maybe they've been around stuff and they're worried about it. But the other side is lots of people have had exposure to sexual trauma. Surprisingly, males, that's been a surprise to me. A lot of people are like, 'Actually, I've had some experiences that were negative.'
Um, that that's been a surprising thing. But it's just a difficult subject in general and everyone thinks it's far from us. So, we're like, okay, it's in other countries. It's maybe it's the border. I'm always shocked when someone after we do an event calls and goes, 'I think I have a case' or it's a family member. Every time, it was maybe two years ago it really started happening regularly at least once a month I'm getting a call from someone going, 'Hey, I have a case' or 'my kid.' You're like, 'Oh my goodness.'
So it happens a lot. If we do a company awareness session, we just did DEI and HPE on Friday; they had about 150 people. But you get 30 people in a room, generally one person is going to have their kid being groomed by a trafficker. And so when we explain what it is, it's a difficult choice to come forward and go, 'It might be my kid.' Everyone says it's not. They're like, 'I don't think it is, but the way you're describing it, that's the behavior.'
And so it's actually become what I love the most about what we do is when it stops. So when someone's kid doesn't get trafficked, that's worth it every time. But just the fact that one in 30 are already being groomed. That's a lot.
Oil just in an average office, you just gather those people.
We were at Dell in Austin and they asked the night before, 'What do you think will happen tomorrow?' I said, 'Well, this is what we'll do. But probably if you got 30 people, one person is going to put their hand up and say, 'I think that's my kid.' They said, 'No, I don't think so.' The next day, three people in a group of 30. So for them, they're like, 'We're Austin. Surely we're okay.' And no. It was a shocker to them. They took us to meet the executives after. They're like, 'We need to do something about this.'
You know, you mentioned that just in our industry in oil and gas, your organization actually follows oil and gas cities and towns. Is that correct? The people who are not in oil and gas cities feel really bad because they don't have oil and gas behind them because they're trying to enter into new businesses.
So our cities, our big cities. Calgary just went on fire. I don't think I've even visited the team up there, but they have five cities already across Canada involved. But they're moving really well. Midland moved really fast. In fact, we kind of had a hard time recently because they moved a bit too fast, started funding a local organization that looks like we shouldn't have. So that's pretty bad. But sometimes fast growth can be a challenge. We've got a Gulf Coast section. We're in Miami. We are in Denver. Of course, Denver's really picked up lately. A lot of movement in Denver. Houston, of course, is just crazy. We've been doing this eight years; we've had over 6,000 volunteers in Houston. So we're about 23 to 26 chapters. Aberdeen,
You know, the best city in the world with the best football team.
No bias. But yeah, we're in Aberdeen and London. Started up. Yeah. Usually I'll tell you how. This is why it's these cities: we all travel for work. And when we turn up, we just say, 'Hey, you want to go for a dinner?' And we just sit people down and go, 'This is what we're doing. You want to do it?' And then people go, 'Yes or no.' Or we'll go, 'Yeah, that's pretty much how it's happened in every city. We just put it on LinkedIn. Go, 'We're gathering people. You want to learn?' And people come together, they get passionate, and we make it easy for people. So you don't have to do a lot of work. At minimum you need to probably share on social media, but a little bit of education and then just do what you got to do. So a lot of the businesses start to pick it up. They do events, they do different things. The Action Speaks campaign is the big one that companies can do really quickly, easily. It's cheap. But you write notes. You get an education and then you write a note to someone who is being trafficked usually. And you'll put that in a care package. But the next day they're going to be holding that note from you. And when you explain that people get trafficked not by being grabbed, which is what people think, but they're usually trafficked by a process of grooming where they're drawn into it and they believe this is a journey away from their family to a new group of friends that they're going to relate to or a boyfriend, and then they're in sex work all of a sudden. And that's their choice and they did it themselves, so they think that way. So it's a journey out that you have to get people on that understanding, work with families, work with the individuals, but they've been told that no one cares in the family. That's how they separate them. No one in your world cares. No one understands you. We get you. And so from usually mid-teens, they're going to pull them away from the family and get them into sex work. Usually, not sometimes it's crime, sometimes it's other things. But they will get them doing that. And the challenge is can we tell them we care about you? And that actually turns them. One of the ladies in Toronto, we get bags to her and she's been trafficked before. So she gets the notes and cries like she calls us goes, 'I'm crying again looking at your notes because someone cares.' You can't believe how much they've been conditioned every day. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. See all these guys coming in and they're using you. They don't care about you. So they do this whole journey over years. So when you start sending a note from a stranger that's encouraging saying we believe in you, you got a journey out of this, you're going to be all right, just kind words, it's hugely impactful to them.
Yeah. David, there's so much to unpack there. You talked about the process, other companies, and you holding events and the journey of these people. I want to do my best to unpack each one of those. I know it's a lot. So what you can talk about, let's say I know you're working on a DFW chapter right now. Two chapters, one chapter DFW for Fort Worth is better. But anyway, you had that luncheon. And you kind of go into this, you talk about that people have to be trained to even approach somebody, let alone, I'm sorry, let me back up. They have to be trained to even identify. And you tell people don't engage. So let's talk about that process for a minute and what it is.
If it's your kids, obviously engage, but with help. If you do everything you think when you think your kid's in trouble, you're playing into the trafficker's hands because your natural behavior. They've studied it for years and they've set that up. They want you to take that phone away. That's their favorite thing because now they're getting a secret phone to your kid and they now you're not tracking them at all. So there are things you do that are natural. You'll be telling them they're bad people and they've been getting them ready like they're going to tell you we're bad people. We're not. You know, we love you more than them. We care about you. So they do this whole thing. They use phones to sleep-deprive kids. So they'll stay up all night texting and they're in this exciting relationship. But it is using cult techniques to break them down. So you're teaching people to see these things, see these behaviors and start to intervene. But to intervene, we have to bring in experts to train the parents. This is what you're going to say. Things that are unnatural to you. Like you're going to pretend the traffickers are okay, and you're like, 'Oh, I can't, I'm angry.' Well, I know. But if we're going to, they have been brainwashed, so we're going to undo this. So it's crazy. That training, plus anybody who's in this generally, if you're coming across it, there is someone controlling them who's very dangerous and they're nearby no matter if you can see them or not. One of the survivors lived with us for years and we were driving along 1960 and the young lady with me was like, 'See that girl there? She's trafficked.' And I'm like, 'How do you know? She's just walking along the street.' And she goes, 'Well, there'll be a spotter.' And she looks around and looks around. There he is. And there's this scary guy on a corner just watching this. I was like, 'What the heck? We don't even know what we're looking at.'
Whoa. So you mentioned Dell and all this. So you actually go into companies also with Red M to talk about this.
We do. We generally talk about general trafficking and then grooming of kids because it's the most fruitful thing that we do. So we do that. We do care package builds and then we get those out of there. But it's kind of a lunchtime easy to do low cost. But what you end up with is people whose kids are being groomed, they get to know about it and do something about it and then generally people become aware. And we don't go deep. We don't go dark. There's lots of dark stories to tell.
You say you don't go dark. I think just even this is dark enough. It is very and it's sad and it's pathetic and it's evil.
It's evil. Pure evil. I mean, we do tons of events that are not that. They're not education. They're just fun. Because people don't go to anti-trafficking events. Red M is the name that it is because we learned early nobody looks at anti-trafficking material. It says nothing about trafficking. Doesn't look like trafficking. And so you can post a cup on Mondays. People will watch it for a few minutes and then you're going to see it the next week and the next week because you stopped and looked. So just great marketing.
You know, you talked about that's what. Yeah. You just said that it's like human trafficking was a word that, I feel creepy saying like you said it's uncomfortable, but then it's designed that way. Is that correct?
