Hunter McMahon is the Chief Operating Officer of iDiscovery Solutions (iDS), a professional services consulting firm that specializes in digital forensics, e-discovery, cybersecurity, data privacy, and information governance. Hunter is also a Member of the Board of Governors and a Lead Instructor at The Organization of Legal Professionals.
At iDS, Hunter collaborates with a team of experts to provide industry-leading solutions for clients. He is a Certified Information Privacy Technologist and has served as a testifying and consulting expert while working with both Am Law 100 and boutique law firms.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Hunter McMahon shares a cautionary tale from the early days of his career in the cybersecurity industry
- How did Hunter first get into cybersecurity?
- The importance of protecting sensitive information from voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa
- What iDiscover Solutions does to help law firms better protect their businesses
- Hunter shares his secret to success: stubbornness
- The most challenging obstacles Hunter has faced in his career—and how he overcame them
- Hunter’s advice for professionals looking to develop their businesses
In this episode…
In the age of advancing technology, it has never been easier for people outside of your company to get their hands on inside information. Because of this, finding proper safeguards—and continuously checking on your system—is necessary to protect your business’ sensitive information. If you’re wondering how you can ensure data privacy and protection for your business, this episode of The Guts and Glory Show is a must-listen!
Cybersecurity leader Hunter McMahon has handled a variety of different data breach cases during his storied career. According to Hunter, even a simple mistake such as clicking a bad link can put your information at risk. However, you don’t need a full-time security officer to ensure that your data is safe. As he says, there are simple solutions to protect both your company and client information from the outside world.
In this episode of The Guts and Glory Show, Luis Scott sits down with Hunter McMahon, the Chief Operating Officer of iDiscovery Solutions, to talk about cybersecurity in the workplace. Hunter shares cautionary tales from the industry, best practices for everything from voice assistants to password authentication, and some expert strategies for securely developing your business. Stay tuned for more.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
- Hunter McMahon on LinkedIn
- iDiscovery Solutions
- Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman
- Blinkist
- Luis Scott on LinkedIn
- 8 Figure Firm
- Bader Scott Injury Lawyers
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by 8 Figure Firm.
Co-founded by Luis Scott and Seth Bader of Bader Scott Injury Lawyers, 8 Figure Firm helps transform your law firm into a 7-figure or even 8-figure firm.
After their own law firm scaled from $3.5 million in revenues to $30 million per year in revenues in just two years, Luis and Seth started the 8 Figure Firm to share their strategies and help other law firms achieve exponential growth.
Visit www.8figurefirm.com to receive a consult call and start scaling your business today.
Episode Transcript
Luis Scott 0:00
I’m Luis Scott, managing partner of Bader Scott Injury Lawyers, one of the fastest growing law firms in the country. And I’m also the co-founder of 8 Figure Firm Consulting. I’ve successfully built multiple companies by focusing on leadership, operations and culture. Using these principles, my companies have generated close to $100 million in revenue. But before any of this success, I started my legal career as a receptionist, and I worked my way up to becoming managing partner. And each episode of this podcast, I sit down with leaders and entrepreneurs who have had the guts to step out on their own, and the courage to face adversity. They share with us their tips for achievement, the challenges they have faced and the glory of success. I welcome you to The Guts and Glory Show.
Alright, Luis Scott here from The Guts and Glory Show, I’m here with a special guest, Hunter McMahon, and we are going to be talking about all things cybersecurity. But before we get started, I want to do a plug for 8 Figure Firm. 8 Figure Firm Consulting is a business that helps law firm owners turn their law firm into a law business. So it’s working for them instead of them working for the law firm. So if you want to know how you can turn your law firm into a law business, be sure to go to www.8figurefirm.com. Now, I had the distinct pleasure to introduce Hunter McMahon, we just mentioned him, he’s the COO of iDiscovery Solutions, and you want to watch this entire episode, because we’re gonna be talking about cybersecurity. And I told him before we got on the show, we had lunch actually a couple of weeks ago. And I mentioned to him that this is stuff that like people love, this is the you know, this is crime TV. This is you know, the network’s in the last 48 if you like any of those shows, that’s what we’re going to be talking about. And I’m excited to hear it kind of a story. And frankly, we had lunch. And at that lunch, I was literally terrified. I was like, they everyone knows everything about everything in my life. So like, it’s like, there’s no escaping it. But there’s a way to protect it. And so that’s what we’re going to be talking about today, especially if you’re a law firm owner, really just any business owner, we have to be sure that we’re protecting our data. And so I’m very curious to get into that. So Hunter, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.
Hunter McMahon 2:16
Thanks for having me.
Luis Scott 2:18
So I want to start with the juicy story, give me the juicy story of something crazy that has happened in cybersecurity, that people need to be aware of.
Hunter McMahon 2:30
So it’s usually not the things that you see on the TV per se, right. But it’s it’s the oh my gosh, moment, right. So we do a lot of investigations of employees leaving. So you’ve got a team member that leaves and they take stuff with them. And I’ll remember early on in my career, running an investigation out of Northern California, so got a lot of tech companies up there where their greatest asset is their intellectual property, and you have somebody that put take before leaving on a folder on their desktop, and you’re going okay, and they put all of the product designs everything in that folder, immediately downloaded it to a flash drive, and then they deleted it. They didn’t double delete it. They didn’t try to, you know, delete the recycling meant but so often it’s the common mistakes or the professional services from that we actually helped here in Georgia some time ago. And we walked in and we said, well, where are your servers? And they said, well, under the table limit, Excuse us. And they literally had a rack of servers sitting under the conference room table, where they were having clients and other people walk in, but it was the space that was available. It was there. They were growing so fast that they ran out of space. So they they use the available space, which just happened to be under the conference room table. And unfortunately, they became compromised, and we had to help them through that. But it’s one of those scenarios that usually it’s the simple things that are right in front of you. It’s the email phishing attacks that somebody clicks on that bad link, or something to that effect that, then it spreads. And it’s usually those simple mistakes that get you.
Luis Scott 4:02
Yeah, email phishing. That’s huge. I mean, I don’t know how many times I have an employee, they’ll call me and they’ll say, Hey, I got your message that told me that you needed two gift cards from Walmart. And to upload them to this link. Like that is not me. I’m not asking for two Walmart gift cards.
Hunter McMahon 4:21
So I’ll give you a great story from a law firm client of mine. I got an email from him. And it he was a Google Apps user. So it came from Google and kind of link to a Google Drive and say, Can you check your AR and make sure that we’ve got it all so that we can settle up? Which was music to my ears, right? You want to pay me? Absolutely, but it just seemed off. And so I responded, I said Is this legit email? Should I click and they responded back. Still it didn’t seem right. So I shot him a text and said, Hey, I got your emails. Is it okay? And he said No, do not click FBI is involved. We’ll call later And it was one of those shucks moments, right? I mean, not only was it the first email to me, but it was multiple emails, it was responses, but turned out opposing counsel on a case who had shared the separate statement of facts, because that was a requirement, then was infected, he then got infected by that attachment that then got somebody in the Ukraine into his computer, and only because he used a small regional bank, did they flag the wire transfers, otherwise, money from the trust could have been gone.
Luis Scott 5:29
Wow. Yeah, that’s I mean, it’s, it’s super scary. And I think that we just take it for granted. We think that those things are not going to happen to us, we think that we’re not going to be caught up in a scheme like that. And it’s, it’s amazing how you can easily be, you know, caught in that kind of transactions, you know, so that’s really cool. Now, you mentioned something about employees taking data, I think sometimes we don’t realize that when you train an employee and they leave, they’re already going to take their knowledge. But it’s different for them taking what they learned that they can keep and memorialize in their in their head. And actually taking stuff like taking the stuff that you paid them to work on. I mean, that’s a totally different thing. maybe explain why it’s important to protect the stuff, even though they’re taking the knowledge.
Hunter McMahon 6:19
So there’s two fundamental reasons, right. One is it’s your IP, it’s your it’s your information that you invested their time into, because you’ve compensated them. And you want to protect that, whether it’s your templates, whether it’s your client list, your your recipes, your product designs, your any any of your trade secrets, those that type of information you want to obviously protect, but you need to have the right safeguards, you need to have reasonable security that protects all that information. Otherwise, you have a different issue when it comes to litigation. The other side of thing is usually there’s sensitive information, particularly for law firms, you have a lot of information on your clients, whether it’s a business information, so you have their trade secret, you have their IP, because you are litigating their crown jewels. Or if you’re dealing with personal injuries, you’ve got medical records and a whole bunch of PHI and since other sensitive information that you don’t want out there, and so you’re protecting both yourself and your own IP, but also your clients data, because their data is presumably in your files, which they have access to. So you’ve got to make sure you’re connecting or protecting both sides of that equation.
Luis Scott 7:25
Yeah, I mean, the thing is that we’re dealing with people’s names, social security numbers, personal information that they don’t want aired out, I mean, you have to be sure that you go above and beyond, especially in the legal industry, to protect them as well, because we have that fiduciary responsibility. So that’s, that’s very interesting. Now, how did how did you get into this? Because like, you know, this is, this is not a subject, I don’t think they teach this in undergrad, you know, hey, come join a cybersecurity team, like, how do you how did you get into this kind of work.
Hunter McMahon 7:56
So I actually have both a law and a technical background. So I was working for a law firm while in undergrad and thinking I was going to go to law school, and but wanted to make sure that I understood what the practice of law was versus the law and order we see on the TV, because you hear all the stories, it’s different. It’s not that right. And so you know, I wanted to see what it was. And I remember the partner walking in, I was working the night shift of literally making copies at night for the next morning’s exhibits. And the partner walks in and says, I think you’d be good at this. There was this article on this new thing called e-discovery. And so I started dabbling in that and started you know, I developed the firm’s Litigation Support protocols and databases, and I started building databases, and more and more, and I merged the worlds of tech and legal and so got into more e-discovery, and then decided not to practice law. So I wanted to have fun on the consulting side, I enjoyed the fact finding aspect of things and technology far more than motion practice, motion practice to me was I have to, but you know, going through going through mountains of discovery, and then crafting together a timeline that we could then leverage experts to say, Okay, here’s what it was in the construction de factor, here’s what it means from an economist standpoint, and those kinds of things was fine. So I stayed on the consulting side, and then started to emphasize and really specialize in the structured data side of things. So leveraging big databases and, and, you know, your phone has a database on it. So your drives messages that you send all the time, that’s the database, the, you know, the a lot of the apps that you’re using, are founded on a database. So we, you know, all that information resides there. And you can tell some really fun stories when you start getting and layering data together.
Luis Scott 9:36
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, because I think that when I was before we, you know, knew each other, I just assumed if you deleted something, it was gone. And it’s like, you can literally find out anything from anyone, whether they even when they deleted it and so that’s really, really interesting and scary at the same time. Like you have to be very careful what you do. Online, whether in business or in personal, because that’s how you get caught up with your information out on on the internet.
Hunter McMahon 10:07
So we used to get out, we used to give out pens to clients that used to say caution, this pen contains ink Be careful what you write. Yeah, I want like a phone case and a keyboard that has that on there. You know, be careful what you type, because everything. And part of the notion, though, to properly understand is, you can delete it from somewhere, and you could arguably securely delete it. But then did you delete it off the destination? So you send a text message to somebody? Did you delete it from their device? Did they take a screenshot and send that to somebody else, because we thought it was funny, you know, so it’s, it’s this idea that, oh, I can hit Delete here, and it magically deletes everywhere versus you’ve now put out a signal of digital breadcrumbs. And sometimes we can’t get all the way back to the exact thing you said, but we know that you text somebody at this time from this location, and all these other things are going on. And you can kind of triangulate your way back to the truth.
Luis Scott 11:00
Right? Now, let me ask you about Siri, and hey, Google, and all that stuff. Talk to me about how that’s being used to. I mean, I don’t know if you guys, you don’t have to protect people from that kind of use, you know, can people’s data be stolen that way? Because I know a lot of people have fears that they must be listening all the time, because how else do they know to turn on? Like, talk to me about that.
Hunter McMahon 11:26
That’s what I love, right? I sitting in a room full of judges, and you know, who has an echo or something like that there’s nothing wrong with those devices. But it’s the idea of privacy. And so if, if it knows to respond when you say Alexa, or you say Google, and how does it know how to respond? Well, it has to be listening. And now you can go to any one of their devices, and look at their retention policies, and all that kind of stuff and understand each one of those. But for the majority, a lot of people have those out of convenience, they don’t understand the consequence, they don’t understand, you know, they’re not informed consumers per se. But I think, you know, I actually just talked to a friend and colleague of mine, and who’s in the banking industry, and the bank has actually put out a memo that says you cannot be working from home in the same room as one of those devices. Because what they’re worried about is they’re not worried about the, they’re not worried about, you know, it hearing something, and that employee getting exposed, but rather, the fact that it’s sensitive information, and where they used to have the security of their offices to talk about that sensitive information. Now, when you have employees working from home, who else is listening, and they need, they’re needing to meet their obligations to their consumers, that they are protecting their information from leaving their control, that they want to make sure that the, you know, everybody working from home or putting the proper safeguards in place.
Luis Scott 12:52
And that makes sense. You know, even in the legal industry, we have a duty of confidentiality to our clients. Well, if you’re at home, and your and your spouse is there, and your kids are there, and your friends are there, kids are there. And you know, they may be doing a virtual class, while you’re talking about something sensitive, and it could be overheard by someone like it’s amazing. Technology has is really a powerful tool and a good tool. But it’s amazing how much more protection you have to be aware of, in this environment.
Hunter McMahon 13:19
Yeah, and the way I used to tell clients is when I walk through an airport, which I used to do a lot. Here, it was past weekend weekend, I actually made it to Blue Ridge Mountains. But prior to that I hadn’t travelled in a year, I would use project code names. Or I would say the first custodian or the custodian out of Houston or something to that effect, or this device, that device I would never so if somebody across the sea knew what I was talking about. They couldn’t decode it, if you will, right. And so I assumed opposing counsel or opposing parties were always in earshot. You think that same way with electronics? You need to put the same kind of safeguards and make sure that you have the proper protection? Are you sending unencrypted files, you know, via unsecure email? Are you sending it through secure channels? Are you making sure your devices are encrypted? Are you making sure that you’re not sitting there in an unencrypted channel with communication, sharing social security numbers or credit card numbers or some of that stuff? That sure it’s convenient? But yeah, has its consequences, to it? Yeah, absolutely.
Luis Scott 14:21
Now talk to me about cloud based servers, because we have a cloud based server for our CRM or customer relations management software. Some people are anti it like I’ve we’ve gotten into discussions, when I say we, some lawyer mastermind groups have gotten into discussions about whether you should use cloud based servers versus a traditional server that’s secure and so forth. What’s your take on that?
Hunter McMahon 14:45
It depends. Oh, come on. I got it. I got it.
Luis Scott 14:49
All right. Appreciate it.
Hunter McMahon 14:51
I think it really depends on as cliche as it sounds, reviewing the terms and conditions and what are you getting for that service? And so there are some fly by night. just applications out there that could be hosted in somebody’s garage, but call themselves a SaaS provider, right? versus others that have proper encryption at rest. They hide fields that don’t need to be viewed. How are you, How are you handling your hardback your role based access control? So does everybody in your firm have access to everything? Or do they only have access to the information they need? And so that’s less event SaaS versus on prem. But if you’re, if you’re going to go on prem, what are your security protocols? What are your maintenance plants? How are you making sure that you’re on prem is actually as secure, if not more secure than the cloud, because most firms who are dancing that line, don’t have the full time staff to actually make the on prem, you know, more secure, it’s kind of this false sense of security, right? It’s this false notion of well, if I can control it, but then you’re obligated to control it. And so where you have an army of people making sure that you know, a, a big market competitor, or a big market share, SaaS platform is secure, because they’re in your business model, it depends on it. You have one IT person that is sitting there and say, Don’t worry, I patched it last weekend, it’s six months behind on patches, but it’ll be fine. You know, and you’ve just got, you’ve got to balance the business needs and all that. And why are you going to the cloud versus Why are you staying on print?
Luis Scott 16:31
You know, it’s interesting, because we had a survey system in my old law firm. And it was kind of like that law firm that you talked about, at the beginning, where they had the server underneath the table, ours was in a closet. And it was like, it was like, it was just in this closet, and it was close to an exit door. So like, it was easy, you know, easy taking, for anybody who is interested in it, right? They can just come on. But the the idea, and granted, this was, you know, 15 years ago, technology’s come a long way. But the idea was like, if you go on the cloud, okay, anybody could steal it. You know, it’s just easy login kind of thing.
Hunter McMahon 17:02
Yes and No, right. A lot of these platforms have have put into place safeguards that, yes. Could somebody inappropriately access something? Maybe? But what are you doing to protect your accounts? And what are the what are the access controls? And that’s where vetting the service provider themselves is the same as vetting your new employee, you want to make sure that they’ve got the proper safeguards in and what are you doing to protect your data in that database? So assuming that both are databases, assuming that both have access controls and all that, well are you using things like two factor authentication, and just those small little things that make it harder and harder and harder? And then are you periodically reviewing your audit logs? Are you saying, oh, who’s logged in From where? So I know all of a sudden Luis is is logging in from Bahamas? Well, I know it’s Luis, because he’s on vacation for three weeks. Because you know, the firm’s working for him, not him working for the firm. Right, right. So you sit there and you say, Okay, that makes sense. But But flags and alarms go off that you have an inappropriate access from a location? You don’t know.
Luis Scott 18:01
Yeah, I mean, that’s a good point, I think we talked before about the two factor authentication. And I’ve just always seen it as kind of like just an inconvenience. So I’m like, I don’t want to do that, you know, I just want to be able to log in. But I do think it’s critical, because there has been some situations where two factor has been the reason I got notified that somebody logged in, tried to log into my account. And so I do think that and agree that that’s super critical for you know, protecting yourselves and your platforms. Now, you guys do more than cybersecurity, and I want to make sure everyone kind of knows the extent of everything that you do. Because there’s somebody right now listening, watching, saying, I need to check my my stuff, because I don’t want it to get stolen. And there’s big business in it being stolen is probably billions of dollars being exchanged, through the theft of cyber to, you know, information. So what what are some other things that you you do your company does to help businesses, law firm owners protect their businesses? Yeah. So
Hunter McMahon 18:57
I mean, at the core of what we do is we’re experts in digital evidence. And so we have a team that testifies on the digital forensics, you know, we go in and examine those devices, we examine the mobile devices, I’ll never forget a conference I was doing with judges. And, you know, you sit there and you look at them all going like this, and I’ve got to go, I got to get rid of this real quick and then hurry, right, because they realise everything that can be found. Then Then we also do traditionally discovery, so all your documents, your process, and your hosting, and all that kind of stuff. And then we specialize. Also unstructured data analytics, so we build technology. But our goal across the board really is helping our clients tell a story through the digital evidence. And so we have their different avenues of discipline that say, well, Where’s it coming from? How do we need to analyse it? How do we need to then refer it back to the attorney so that you can take it and actually tell a story from it because at the end of the day, you know, while trials may not be happening all over the country right now because of COVID. But that you still need to tell a story and you can tell a story through a brief you can tell the story through arbitration or mediation, you’ve still got to be able to tell that story. And the more you can support that with evidence, right facts, the better your story can be, the more persuasive your story can be. So our goal is to provide that evidence in a way that you can then leverage to tell the story your client is trying to tell.
Luis Scott 20:17
Absolutely. And then the thing is that if you are unsure whether your your systems are secure, you guys also provide an like an audit, and you could do a full audit on all of their platforms or systems and make sure that they are, you know, I don’t know if the term is up to code or like, you know, in compliance, so that they, you know, they’re as secure as possible, right? Yeah. So
Hunter McMahon 20:38
we, as part of kind of one of the things we started noticing as both our clients but then also the clients or clients and all that, that there’s a gap between companies that can afford, you know, a full time CSO or somebody that does that, and they just they manage the security, and those that need a fraction or a virtual CSO and so we also provide that security assessment that says, hey, we’ll come in, whether it’s once a week, once a month, once a quarter, and help you be better. The big thing here is, it’s always about being better putting more roadblocks or more hurdles to make it harder to compromise your data. Because perfection really isn’t attainable, there’s always going to be something so the question is, is how hard Are you making it to where you know, somebody that wants that is going to get bored before they get it? You know, they’re gonna leave and you or you have the proper backups to be able to recover from it if you get ransomware, or something to that effect?
Luis Scott 21:32
Yeah, I mean, there’s so someone always out there trying to develop a new way to attack somebody, right? I mean, it’s,
Hunter McMahon 21:38
you got to think of it so so you got the attack mode, but you also have the, you’re constantly introducing new technologies into your environment, right. So you you switch a CRM, well, all the holes plugged on your first CRM, you got different ones and the second one, or you add an add on to your CRM that makes document generation easier, you know, document. So So you got to get that. So it’s always evolving to where it’s, it’s truly a moving target. And what you want to do is make sure that your risk profiles are aligned with your business interests, because you can’t sit there and have a billion dollar solution for a half a million dollar firm, that’s an upside down business model. But you have to have the proper safeguards for the type of firm the type of information that you’re handling all of that, to where it aligns with your business as opposed to contradicts it.
Luis Scott 22:29
Absolutely, absolutely. So let’s get on to something a little bit more personal outside of the business, and that is, what is your, I guess, secret sauce to success? For those of you who are listening and not watching Hunter is a young young guy, so and he’s a COO of a National Cybersecurity company. So that, you know, that begs the question, What is the secret to success?
Hunter McMahon 22:58
Grit, determination, stubbornness. You know, I joke, and my wife will fully support this statement, I am stubborn as a mule. You know, because once I set my sights on sights on something, it’s it’s how do we get there. And so constantly re evaluating what are you doing? And why? So are you going to get up that morning and work out? Are you going to have you know, that extra cup of coffee in the afternoon that way you don’t get to bed on time, which will impact your morning? Or, you know, am I going to take this meeting or that meeting. what is constantly putting us towards our goal? You know, I joke and say it was an interesting year to become COO in 2020. You know, we had a global pandemic, and social unrest, we have no economic crisis and all that, that. We also we opened up our London office, and we chose to go through with that. So we actually, we established our international footprint on April 1 2020. And just sell it we’re about to celebrate one year of that office being open. And so you said, well, what’s the mission? Right? What’s the vision, so we are an EOS shop, that we operate off the EOS framework and the book Traction, and we really focus on making sure that the decisions we’re making are going towards our vision. And you know, we we set the incremental rocks, we set the year goals, and then we we also set our three and five year and so what’s moving us towards that and when you know, there are long days, but I have fun. I mean, it’s one of those things, as cliche as it sounds, and my wife was just telling me this past weekend in Blue Ridge is that you’ve been having fun, despite the long hours, the late nights and all that kind of stuff. It truly is fun doing what we do, because I enjoy it. I enjoy the team and so it’s but but it’s not easy. You know, it’s simple, not easy. So it’s a matter of sitting there saying okay, I’m doing this. This is why and prioritising and executing and sticking to your guns and staying stubborn towards your goals. Not not relenting just because it got hard.
Luis Scott 24:53
Yeah, I agree with that. You know, I think that that’s the common theme. Really, with most successful people is They’re they’re able to overcome the emotional desire to quit. Because all of us have been faced with that desire, where we just, oh, man, is this even worth it? And I think that being able to overcome that is so critical, you know, and getting to the next level in your career in anything that you do. Now, in this process, you probably had to overcome something. And, you know, this is a question that I asked to all my guests on the on The Guts and Glory Show, and that is, what is the hardest thing you’ve had to overcome? What’s the lesson you learned from it? Like? Because that’s part of the journey to becoming successful. So what would you say is that thing that could somebody is going to hear and go, Ah, I can identify with that, for sure.
Hunter McMahon 25:44
I’d probably say that the constant struggle is the detachment from the emotional aspect of business to the person and the business decision that needs to be made. So oftentimes, especially in the professional services world, we invest so much in our people. And sometimes I can find myself hanging on to a somebody or a situation or something to that effect far longer than we should have from a business decision. Right, right. We saw the sign six months ago, but we’re just getting around to the decision because it was like one more try one more try oh no, I think they’ll get it those kinds of situations where, you know, you got it, you’ve got to rely on on the business side of things. And whether it’s data, whether it’s finances, or the numbers or whatever. And sometimes you’ve got to be ready to make the hard decisions and understand is It’s not the cliche saying is this is business, not not personal, right. But you do have to have that separation, you have to be, you have to understand that you’re going to come up against some of those hard decisions. And it’s going to be unfortunate, right? It’s not going to be comfortable. But being ready to be uncomfortable. And being okay with being uncomfortable in some situations. And sometimes that’s telling a client, the actual results versus the results they want. You know, they want to tell this story, I have that happen out of San Francisco and a whole bunch of mobile analysis of cell site information, I want to tell this story, the data doesn’t provide it right and being able to stand that ground and say, Okay, I know I’m risking a potential, you know, issue on on payment, or what have you from a client satisfaction or a next project, but willing to stand the ground because it’s the right thing to do.
Luis Scott 27:24
Yeah, I think staying true and authentic to yourself is is really important. And believe it or not, that’s hard to do, especially when you’re faced with other people, because people are complicated. And you know, you mentioned something about how it’s business and not personal. I love quoting Michael Scott from The Office on this particular issue where he says, you know, it’s always personal, because business is about people. And people’s, you know, is personal, it’s always personal. So it’s like, it’s really hard to overcome that. I think staying true to yourself and authentic to you to yourself is really more challenging than people realize that it is. So that’s, I could definitely see that now. Have you had a mentor or a book that has really impacted your life? And what did you learn from that? mentor that book?
Hunter McMahon 28:13
Oh, there’s a there’s a lot of books out there. You know, I have enjoyed I do a lot of podcasts, I do a lot of Blinkist. So those short summary versions, yeah. That lets me kind of digest. And what it does is it turns me on topics really quick because I can kind of see whether a topic and how it relates. And moving on. But I’ve had a couple mentors over the years, that have really helped me understand the different dynamics of, of becoming, being the consultant in the room and being a leader. And so I actually was recently given this example of a client that challenged me to travel for a week without like, without my laptop, I can’t remember.
Luis Scott 28:58
No, no, no.
Hunter McMahon 29:00
So I’m a do-er, I was I was the one that would jump in and fix it, I was the fixer, you know, it was the call at midnight and figure it out. And and that’s just that was my response. And the client understood it and recognized that that was changing. And I was building a team. And the team needed to be that that team as opposed to me. And so what he challenged me with was literally get on a plane without my laptop for a week. And it forced me to work through the team rather than myself. It was an awesome learning curve. Because I had to be able to walk somebody through even database queries and be able to sit there and visualise something, I had my little iPhone screen that I could look on, but that was about it. And then be able to sit there and say, Okay, here’s what you’re doing, and here’s why. And it really helped me evolve. I’ll never forget that lesson because it really helped me evolve from, you know, being able to do it and being able to lead others to be able to do it.
Luis Scott 29:57
Yeah, I mean, you just basically gave me an instant panic attack just thinking about.
Hunter McMahon 30:02
It’s true. You know, and I’ve done it. And I’ve gone through the disconnects, you know, over the years, a couple of times, my wife and I went down to Mexico once she took the laptop, the iPad, the phone, put it in a safe, changed the code and said, you get this back in five days, you know, withdraws for about 24 hours, and you realize the world’s not coming to an end, and it’ll be okay. But yeah, that’s part of the, the the art of building a team that you can rely upon. So I went up to Blue Ridge this past weekend, I think I answered two emails on Friday. And not a single phone call came in Friday, Saturday or Sunday, because the team was on everything. I came back Monday, stuff had been handled, guess what? It was all okay. In fact, it was, it was rolling smoothly. And so it’s proof that you know, that that’s a better place to be, rather than always being the one person that they call, they know that they can call the team and the team will get it taken care of.
Luis Scott 30:55
Yeah. And you know, the thing is that even if the world came to an end, you don’t have your computer or phone to be notified about it. So you can keep on living life just fine. Just that you don’t have to deal with the stress of the world ending it. It reminds me of when when the quarantine happened last year, there was a story about a group of people who were out camping and they were like on a one month camp, no phone, no nothing. And they they left like a day before the world shut down. And when they came back, the whole world was shut down. And they were like, had no idea that people were like dying left and right since like, they probably enjoyed their trip really nicely without having that information. So
Hunter McMahon 31:31
So I was in London when it all started to happen. And we were over there getting all the final documents and all that signed and and I get this panic phone call and email from our US side. And it was like you’ve got a you know, we’ve got to stress test this and we might have to shut down What is going on? Well, I was 72 hours in London, I was just I was under a rock I was focused on those things over there. And all of a sudden came up for air and it was like, wow, shucks things have developed really quick and in a hurry. And it was it was a quick shift. I mean, if you remember back in March of 2020, it was it went from this is a call to Oh shucks moment.
Luis Scott 32:09
Yeah, yeah, that was insane. So now what word of advice would you have to someone who is trying to, you know, climb the corporate ladder, or they want to grow their business, or they want to develop a, you know, a bigger practice, a bigger business, they’re just not getting to where they want to be in life? What would be your word of advice for them?
Hunter McMahon 32:36
figure out your true why. And then get gritty. So oftentimes, people can be chasing a result, rather than a destination. And so why do you want to climb the corporate ladder? What are you really trying to achieve? What is what is your fundamental and underlying why, not the end result? And then get gritty on the absolute relentless pursuit of that, why, as opposed to the result? Focus on the why, and let the result come? Because you can’t control what others do. You can’t control everything else that’s going on around you, right? You know, you can’t control a global pandemic or an economic recession or an economic boom, you can sit there and focus on absolute relentless pursuit of your why. And then because you’re getting gritty, and because you’re you’re not sad, you’re not saying, Well, I’m going to stay out later, I’m going to do this just because you’re focused on your why you’re pursuing that mission. And when you’ve got all your energy going towards that you’ll be successful. But you’ve got to allow some other factors to you know, come into play, they may or may not be in your control.
Luis Scott 33:44
Yeah, I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you being on the show. I think that people are going to find this very valuable. And if if they want to find you, where can they find you to get more information about your services, how they can hire you, maybe they’ve had a cybersecurity issue, maybe they have a need to audit their their intellectual property. Where’s it they can find you, Hunter?
Hunter McMahon 34:07
Absolutely. www.idsinc.com. So idsinc.com.
Luis Scott 34:13
All right, awesome. So we’ve been talking to Hunter McMahon, and he’s with iDiscovery Solutions. And if you want to reach him, you can reach out the website, we’ll be sure to plug the website down in the link below. So you can check it out. You just click on it, go to his page, and you want to make sure you’re protected. And now you’ve heard his story of success. So anyone can be successful. You just have to have courage, guts, and the grit to succeed. So if you want more information on other episodes, be sure to go to my channel and subscribe. Hunter thanks again for having for being on the show.
Hunter McMahon 34:44
Thanks for having me.
Outro 34:47
You’ve been listening to The Guts and Glory Show with Luis Scott. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to share. For more information on this episode, please see the show notes at www.GutsandGlory show.com and join us next time as we talk to another leader in business that had the guts to overcome all odds for the glory of success.
