David McMahon

About Me

There is a version of leadership that announces itself loudly, that stakes its credibility on titles and metrics and the size of the stage. And then there is the version David McMahon learned on a football field in suburban Columbus, Ohio, in a weight room at Butler University, and in the countless early mornings before anyone was keeping score. That version is quieter, more durable, and harder to fake. It starts with a commitment to the people around you. Everything else follows.

David is a former Division I college football player, a Butler University MBA, and a Sarasota-based executive with 15 years of experience building teams that perform at a high level because they genuinely care about one another. He is currently Vice President of Client Services at NetReputation, one of the nation's largest online reputation management firms and an Inc. 5000 honoree for six consecutive years. Under his leadership, the company grew from $5 million to $19 million in revenue, not by luck or market timing, but by solving hard problems with a team that trusted one another and a leader who made sure they had what they needed to succeed.

His approach to leadership was forged through years of what athletes simply call the grind: position changes accepted for the good of the team, coordinator and coaching staff changes absorbed without complaint, seasons that tested grit more than talent, and offseason after offseason of shared sacrifice with teammates who became brothers. He learned early that camaraderie built through shared difficulty is not a soft concept. It is the most durable competitive advantage a team can have. He has spent his entire career trying to recreate that in the organizations he leads.

At Butler, that philosophy had a name. The Butler Way, rooted in the legacy of coach Tony Hinkle and built on five principles, humility, passion, unity, servanthood, and thankfulness, was the standard every athlete on campus was held to. It was not aspirational language. It was how people actually showed up. David absorbed it and carried it into every role that followed: franchise operations consultant, development executive, reputation analyst, director, vice president. The principles did not change. The context did.

His command of online reputation management is comprehensive and integrated. He does not specialize in one channel. He understands how SEO, content strategy, content removal, autocomplete repair, Wikipedia management, review platforms, public relations, and crisis response connect into a single system, and he deploys them that way. In mid-2023, he adopted AI tools to modernize suppression delivery, client onboarding, and reporting, turning operational friction into a genuine competitive advantage. His team retention sits at 80 to 89 percent in an industry where turnover is constant. His NPS scores hold in the high 80s across individual, SMB, and enterprise clients. Those numbers are the product of a culture, not a policy.

Through the William V. Campbell Trophy Leadership Summit at Stanford University, where David has been an invited attendee three consecutive years, he has deepened his understanding of what it means to lead with generosity and discipline at the highest levels. Bill Campbell, the coach behind some of Silicon Valley's greatest leaders, believed that the team always comes first, that leadership is about building something that outlasts you, and that the most important thing any leader can do is help the people around them become better versions of themselves. Those ideas did not feel foreign to David when he first encountered them. They felt like a confirmation of what he had already been living.

He coaches his son's recreational soccer team. He serves the Sarasota business community. He is building something worth being proud of, on and off the field, exactly the way he was taught.