About David McMahon

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 Westerville, 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 (Dave to most people) is a Butler University MBA and a former Division I football player who captained the Butler Bulldogs for two seasons. He has led teams for more than 20 years, including eleven years managing people, most recently as Vice President of Client Services at NetReputation, an Inc. 5000 company for six consecutive years. During his time there, the business grew from $5 million to $19 million in revenue. David built the operating infrastructure behind that growth, launched five new service lines, and led a 30-person global team across five countries. He did it in a flat organization, by building trust and accountability rather than leaning on authority.

Today David works as a fractional consultant in reputation management, SEO, branding, and AI implementation. He lives in Sarasota, Florida.

Cleveland and Westerville, Ohio: football and rugby

David was born in Cleveland and raised in Westerville, outside Columbus. He is the middle child of three and the only boy between two sisters. He played baseball and football growing up, gave up baseball his junior year to focus on football, and then played rugby for the Westerville Worms in the spring of his senior year. The Worms won the Ohio and Midwest championships and reached the national final.

At Westerville North High School, David played both sides of the ball. As a shy kid from small-town Ohio, he dreamed of playing middle linebacker for Ohio State. Senior year, his coaches asked him to move to the offensive line for the good of the team. He cried with his coach, said yes, and learned an early lesson: sometimes the most meaningful thing you can do is give something up so the people around you can succeed.

David is also a loyal Cleveland sports fan of the Guardians, Browns, and Cavaliers. He loved visiting family in Cleveland as a kid and going to games at the old Municipal Stadium. Rooting for Cleveland shaped his underdog mindset long before Butler, and it still tests his loyalty and his resolve to stick it out when things get tough. He also grew up a rabid Ohio State football fan during the John Cooper era, with one sister who became a Michigan fan out of spite.

More stories like this live in Uncle Rico’s Corner.

Butler football

David played football at Butler University, earning first-team All-Pioneer Football League honors as a defensive lineman in 2004, and was a team captain in his senior year and his fifth year. A defensive end, his playing career ended with a knee injury on October 7, 2006, a week after Butler beat Dayton, ending an 11-game losing streak in the series. When the coaches needed help at defensive end, he switched positions and had the best season of his career there. He played through significant injuries, a winless season, and head coach and defensive coordinator changes nearly every year, and he came back for a fifth year during his MBA to hang on to one more season. In 2007, the National Football Foundation named him to the inaugural NFF Hampshire Honor Society.

The Butler Way, rooted in the legacy of coach Tony Hinkle and built on humility, passion, unity, servanthood, and thankfulness, became the standard he has carried into every role since. He saw it lived out in small ways, like a young assistant basketball coach named Brad Stevens stopping by the training room to ask athletes from other teams about their recoveries and their lives.

Indianapolis and the Butler MBA

David finished his MBA in Leadership at Butler in 2008 and stayed in Indianapolis. He lived in Broad Ripple, met his wife through neighbors in Broad Ripple Village, and spent two years doing advanced obedience training with his young German Shepherd, Emma. You can see Emma and their Valley Bulldog, Elsie, on Instagram. Indianapolis felt a lot like Columbus, with NFL, NBA, and college basketball close by, the Monon Trail, the White River, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which was a second home every May.

Coaching and family

A career move brought David and his wife to Sarasota, where they are raising two kids. Since 2025, David has volunteered as a youth soccer and basketball coach. The same lessons apply to a team of seven-year-olds as to a team of directors: show up, be honest, and make the people around you better.

Leadership and the Campbell Trophy Summit

David is a three-time attendee of the William V. Campbell Trophy Leadership Summit at Stanford University, hosted by the National Football Foundation. He writes about what he learns there, including what his first Summit taught him and three days at Stanford in 2025.

Byrider: where reputation management began

David’s reputation career started at Byrider, the vertically integrated buy-here-pay-here auto group. The CFO hired him to evaluate 13 company-owned stores for compliance with an Ohio Attorney General consent decree. That work led to him becoming the youngest franchise consultant in the company’s 25-year history at the time.

It was an unusual education. David never got stuck in a silo. He worked across vehicle purchasing, reconditioning, service, sales, marketing, underwriting, and collections, learned from the best people in each department, and taught classes on sales, collections, and service. The goal was always the same: help franchisees grow. When Byrider partnered with Podium, he found his calling. The business combined three of the top five most-complained-about industries under one roof, and he traveled the country teaching locations how to run a review-request process, helping hundreds of them climb above a 4.5-star average. See the resume for the full story.

Reputation management, SEO, and AI

David’s reputation management work spans entity SEO, schema, and Google Knowledge Panels, content removal and promotion at volume, local search and review management, and tracking how brands appear in AI answers across Gemini, Google AI Mode, and ChatGPT. He made AI a default operating tool in 2023, always with governance and human judgment at the center. See the resume for details, or get in touch.

If you are looking for the award-winning film producer who works with Ken Burns, you have the wrong David McMahon. This site belongs to the Butler MBA who left the Midwest for Sarasota.