What entrepreneurial superpower is often stronger than creativity and generally overlooked? Ever since starting her first business as an undergraduate in college, Lacy has been fine-tuning her ability to execute ideas (whether they're originally hers or other people's thoughts). She shares her entrepreneurial insights on a leader's responsibility to bring out the best from individual team members, and Lacy explains what it has been like becoming a published author with Leadership Fusion.
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Connect with Lacy:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lacyjstarling/
Email: [email protected]
Bio: LACY J. STARLING
Entrepreneur, Consultant, Educator
The daughter of a truck driver and a part-time librarian, Lacy Starling grew up on a farm in Northeast Ohio. In addition to working the swing shift driving a truck, her dad also worked in the construction industry. Both of her parents also worked on the family farm. It was that work ethic that drove Lacy to want more than small-town life, and for her, a career as a newspaper reporter was the way to accomplish that. The world had different plans, however. As she was getting ready to graduate from college, the entire scope of print journalism was turned upside-down by the advent of the Internet and the subsequent slashing of editorial staff nationwide. Even with the distinction of Summa Cum Laude, and being named one of Scripps Top Ten journalism students in the country, she knew it would be a long road to find permanent, gainful employment at a newspaper.
Luckily, in her senior year at Kent State University, Lacy started a media marketing and web design company with two other students and discovered a talent for business management as well as a love of sales. She was so invigorated by entrepreneurship that she decided to go back to school and pursue her MBA to gain more credibility in the business world. While attending graduate school, Lacy had several marketing and management positions in Canton, Ohio; in both for-profit and nonprofit organizations. In 2007, she moved to Cincinnati and began her sales career in earnest, working in Development for the United Way of Greater Cincinnati.
Fundraising (while rewarding) wasn’t exactly what she had in mind when she set out to conquer the business world. In 2009, Lacy was able to combine her knowledge of freight, gleaned from years of watching her dad earn a living driving tanker trucks, with her beliefs about how company culture should be formed and nurtured, by founding Legion Logistics in the basement of her house. She fearlessly led the company to incredible success, including several appearances on the Inc. 500/5000 list and two appearances on the list of Top 10 Fastest-Growing Women-Led Companies in the world. Individually, she was honored as a 2015 “Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year” and included in the 2015 “Class of the Business Courier’s Forty Under 40.”
After years of helping entrepreneurs and business owners sort out their business plans and establish strategies for growth, she decided to formalize her work and build out a consulting practice. In 2019, Lacy opened her Sales and Strategy consulting firm, Starling Consulting. Her goal is to help other businesses find the same success she did, navigating the choppy waters of funding, growth, scale, and longevity.
After turning 40 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lacy decided that she needed a new direction in her life. She sold her stake in Legion in September 2021 and left her position as President. One month later, she became the founding President and CEO of LINK Media, a news organization covering the Northern
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