Welcome to the Flex Forward podcast, where grit meets growth with your host, Nick Espanette, bringing you stories of resilience, reinvention, and the real climb to success.
All right, everyone. Welcome to the Flex Forward podcast. Today, we're joined by David Reid. David is a CEO and president of Red M. He's also the CTO and CMO of NOV or NOV. David, welcome to the Flex Forward podcast. So glad to have you and can't wait to learn more about what it is you do. Can you let our listeners know a little more about Redm and NOV?
Sure. Yeah. Redm is a nonprofit that I've ran for about eight years. It's all volunteer. We have no costs fundamentally and we basically are building awareness in the community about human trafficking and we do it in a way. One of the challenges in that space is that the people who don't want to know about it, which is almost everybody, people just don't think it relates to them or don't think it relates to their families. So generally we're all professionals strategically looking at ways to get in front of people in a way that they can understand and consume and learn. And then NOV is an 8 billion corporation that we are in maybe 63 countries I think. Manufacture all over the world in all forms of energy. Not all the ones that make money. So we're all over that. We're in food production. We're in all sorts of things. We do all sorts of things. So, very much a manufacturer. I deal with probably about 18 different presidents of different businesses inside of the corporation that's split into two parts.
Nice. Good stuff. Well, and on the human trafficking, I have a daughter that's very passionate about that. She's still in her undergraduate, but her goal is to go to law school and then help women that have been trafficked or unrepresented women that don't get much representation. So, she did a thesis in high school on the recidivism within prostitution and how that trafficking and so it's just set her heart in that way. So, we have those conversations in our home quite a bit about what's going on in this world and it's tragic for...
Yeah, it is. And honestly, most people don't understand it. You get the conspiracy theorists and then you get the people who work in the space and those people understand it, but we learned really early that when there's content educating people, those are the two groups that get it. I mean, they get information and otherwise the rest of the world doesn't touch it, doesn't understand it, doesn't think it's around the corner on the other side of town or something like that. I mean, we do when we do corporate engagements, it's usually like a lunch thing where we do education. Usually one in 30 has their kid is being groomed or is already trafficked and that's much higher than most people think. So yeah, our experience has been it's a lot closer than anybody knows.
No for sure. And it's just tragic that it goes in there and it comes from part of I remember it's been three years since she presented was you it can be from a wealthy neighborhood or family all the way down to the lowest income families but it can you just or something. Age, any demographic, you're going to find it. We've seen 60-year-old traffics and it goes down to children and babies. It's just a wild thing. But that's so unfortunate you have to do that, but it's great you guys are there trying to help and educate and we're involved. I'm in Fort Worth and so we help just through my daughter, I've gotten involved with some different groups here.
So, we have a Fort Worth team, we have a Dallas team. We're in about 27 cities in three countries. So, there we're trying to generate more action. Fort Worth and Dallas have been slow, honestly. Usually it's about leadership, you know, if you get someone to lead who's strong and can draw people together. And so, we have a lot of good people. We're going to be doing a World Cup event coming up. I don't think we have a date or we probably in March. June July are the days, but we've been doing it in cities. So, we have practical methods for people to protect more and educate more. And so we're gathering hotels and airlines and honestly anyone industry and we're doing a large event here in Houston with the city and generally FIFA's doing what they do. I mean they've got plans and they're educating, they're doing all sorts of things, but we need more than that and that's where we've jumped in.
Well, and you know, a lot of people, this is something more people don't think about. I remember when the Super Bowl was in Dallas or Arlington 20 years, a long time ago, just hearing that through our church, the number of prostitutes that are just brought in to the area. I mean, any sports event, but now you're talking World Cup where people are coming from countries where that kind of prostitution is legal, which most people think, well, that people think that must be okay. Well, it's not because it draws the criminal element and those people get taken advantage of every time. Sure.
So, but they'll come here thinking that's normal and in Texas it's a felony. So, multiple years of jail for buying sex. Most people don't even know that. But we've done a lot in the legal sphere. We don't work in the legal sphere. We don't work in the political or religious because we got to reach everybody. And so, we just gather people who are professionals, very busy people. And we've built mechanisms where people can get involved and communicate and learn and while getting other values like connecting together, doing work together. So yeah, it's a really effective tool. We have had about 5,000 volunteers in Houston so far.
Nice. Well, I will pass the information along to the groups we're to it's the net and I heard them speak in Fort Worth. Yeah. So we're looking at the net being so we when we generate money we give it to survivor groups. The net's top of our list right now still for... it's I've been to a few other events just connecting through... we may have been to the same event. You never know. Yeah we may have sat there. Well thank you for sharing all that. What how about on NOV? Tell us a little bit how you got to the position where you're at in that part of your life and where you started, how you got from A to point maybe Z where you're at now.
Only 34 years ago I joined this company for a month. That was my... They had Apple Mac computers and in 1992 that was pretty cool. So that's really I just wanted to play with a computer but they gave me a job in a repair workshop helping the supervisor. So pretty low down in the org but in my journey I got exposed to equipment and design and I really loved it and I became an inventor of machines. Over time they got me moved me to California from Scotland. And then I became the giant robots that we use offshore were kind of my product and spent a lot of time inventing and designing and I became a global drilling rig designer. So got to work in countries all over the world and spent most of my life doing that. And over time as we bought companies I mean that strategy we bought lots of companies to I was originally an architect. I was designing houses but once I got on to rigs and worked with engineers who were less they didn't think so much about the environment it gave me a huge opportunity to think about the inter relatedness of everything so it bolt us into an acquiring company we were on a good year we're buying about a company a month so highly inclusive. And so then I did product line management across all of that business unit for many years and then moved into a sales international sales strategy role which was mostly setting up buildings and groups around the world talking with countries and large companies and then I had marketing at that time and we put the sales organization down into the business units. So then I was the CMO and then they offered me technology which I love and I'd already been the main driver of automation in the industry and so that combination has worked well for me technology and marketing and that's where I am now 34 years that was that easy.
That's crazy. That's you've worn a lot of different hats and you said the Mac computer in '92 I think that's when I had my first computer and it was a box. It was a Mac... It was a box Macintosh two or something. I had an SE which was pretty fancy but yeah tiny screen you know even the laptop mine was for writing papers that was about it it was a word processor.
Saved my life I mean dyslexic person in my last year of college my roommate had the old green screen type computer and then my fiance who became my wife helped me with my English so which was my biggest weakness but so when I did my final thesis. They're just like, 'You have studied the wrong thing.' Like, 'Your brain is really interesting.' They thought I'd actually plagiarized. They were trying to but they couldn't find where from. They're like, 'If this is genuinely your ideas, you've gone the whole wrong way, you know.'
Well, you know, out in the energy world, there's a lot of different people doing it, a lot of competition. What's something you feel that set you apart to have your successes that maybe different with you than others?
I don't map like anyone in our company. I am different. I'm very unique. In fact, when we started working for the CEO, we did external interviews. So, we have people doing full psych assessments and conversations about who you are, where you fit. And they were just like, 'You do not fit in this crowd.' I'm like, 'Yeah, I know.' And they at the time were saying you should be in Silicon Valley. I said well in the 80s I lived in Silicon Valley and I don't want that. Like I did not enjoy that world. They were not great humans. And so surprisingly oil and gas are great humans, you know, just loved it. And I'm not like them. I'm very creative, very kind of driven, long-term focused and able to deliver now. So that's really been what got me through is being able to show results immediately. Creating markets from nothing. That was something having the guts to stick out ideas over years and having people doubt until it's successful then they all say that it was their idea which is great.
Well, and that's awesome. I think it's having the fortitude when you're not having immediate success to know what have trust that you're the process and you're going to get there and it's going to be successful. That's great.
Great. The original company was a Californian company that I worked for, Varco, and they were when I joined, this is what made me stick. The way they developed people was more advanced than even now. I would have said their whole philosophy on human beings and how to help create environments for growth. I mean, I just loved it as soon as I saw it.
That's awesome. Well, it's awesome. You obviously love it. 34 years of... I know that and current, you know, people don't stay with businesses that long. You're probably in a very single-digit percentage of individuals that stick with a business three decades or more.
Yeah, we have a lot of them. We don't see a lot of exit. That doesn't happen in our company.
It says a lot about your company and just the way they treat people and the relationship. A small company culture, you know, it's something people don't think of, but I mean I teach it and I've taught a lot of the leadership classes, but really the word corporate is not a human behavior. You don't get corporate children. And so it's teaching people that they're humans and they're going to make mistakes. Corporate is pretending we don't make mistakes.
