Today we’d like to introduce you to Larry Lundy.
Hi Larry, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I was born in Cleveland, Ohio but raised in Dallas (Hamilton Park). I attended Greenhill school and graduated from Austin College. I was selling Real Estate after college when one my friends from Greenhill asked me if I can do a basketball camp for his brother who played with the Dallas Mavericks. I did everything from the planning, marketing, budgeting, PR, sponsorship, registration, hiring coaches, and customer service dealing with camper Moms. At the end of that camp, I made more money that week than I was making in my Real Estate job, and that’s how I learned there was an opportunity in the business of sports.
The owner of Advantage Marketing Group heard about the camp and hired me to help start his sports marketing firm. We worked with leading Dallas companies, major events like the State Games of Texas & The NBC Bayou Classic, and represented top Dallas Athletes like Rolando Blackman, Tony Dorsett, Nancy Lieberman, Emmitt Smith, and Everson Walls. Thanks to Emmitt Smith and the Dallas Cowboys going to the Super Bowl I negotiated Emmitt’s Disney Deal after he was the Super Bowl MVP and met the folks at Disney. They recruited me to be their first Director of Sports Marketing for Disney’s Wide World of Sports (Now ESPN Wide World of Sports. Later Host Communications (now IMG) recruited me to be a Senior Vice President back here in Dallas. I was only there a few months before September 11 happened, I started my firm the following May, and here we are 20 years later, still working with major corporations, properties & events, and Talent and Influencers.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road is never smooth or straight, but I have been blessed to still be on the journey. There are always struggles, but it’s not what happens to you but how you react to those challenges.
I mentioned the challenge of coming back to Dallas from Disney to work for Host Communications. My mother had cancer, and I had a chance to spend some time with her and take her to some of her Dr. appointments before she passed. After September 11, I was asked to lay off 20% of my staff which happened to include the only members of our team that were bi-lingual. That was an issue because corporate clients had engaged us to do multicultural marketing. In summary, I ended up not laying them off, but thru the process, I started a company with no business plan or clients. To me, there were some values you live and work by, and sometimes that can cause some challenges. However, I still believe it was the right thing to do.
Learning to survive and thrive during the pandemic has been a real blessing as the sports, entertainment, and experiential business sectors were shut down. However, I am thankful for our clients who trusted us to work alongside them to overcome the obstacles created by the pandemic and partner with them to develop solutions for future growth.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Lundy Marketing Group (LMG) is a strategic marketing & management firm. We are not the biggest and don’t have multiple offices around the globe, so we have to be more creative, smarter, and better. We can be more hands-on, customer and solutions-focused. Being able to be nimbler, quicker with fair value has its advantages as we don’t have the overhead of a major holding company. LMG is more relationship-based vs transactional. We have personal relationships with our clients, and we are with them thru the ups and downs, not just doing the good times to help them win!
LMG serves and consults with major companies in growing their business and building their brands. We also help properties and events manage their assets & partnerships and help talent build their brands and grow their business opportunities,
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you.
I don’t know that Luck has played any role in my life or business.
What I am sure about is that anything I have achieved is due to the grace of God. I have been blessed to still be here serving others after 20 years. I can only thank God for making a way out of no way. I give all the credit to God, and everyone I have worked with that has helped along the way.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.lundymarketinggroup.com/
- Instagram: @larrylundy
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/larry.lundy.370
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/llundylmg
- Twitter: @lundylmg
