A Kid from DC Who Saw Technology Differently

Before there was an agency, there was a high school student who refused to wait for permission to build something.

Larnelle Hardy grew up in Washington, DC, and attended McKinley Technology High School — a school that wired its culture around technical ambition. In 2014, while most students his age were figuring out college applications, Larnelle was selected to intern at Microsoft during the national Hour of Code initiative — a moment that put him on the radar of The Washington Post, which covered his story as part of a feature on young innovators bridging the gap between technology and community.

That experience didn't just validate his curiosity. It fundamentally shaped his belief that technology should be a tool for people who don't come from money, don't have enterprise connections, and aren't handed a seat at the table.

That conviction became the seed of everything that followed.

He Didn't Wait to Graduate Before Founding His First Company

Most people plan their first company. Larnelle built one while still a student.

Drawing on his immersion at McKinley Tech and the access his Microsoft internship had opened, Larnelle founded a gaming company — learning firsthand what it takes to go from an idea to an entity, manage a brand, attract an audience, and keep momentum in a fast-moving market. It wasn't about the gaming industry specifically. It was about proving to himself that he could create something from nothing.

The skills he built during that period — brand positioning, audience development, understanding what makes people trust and follow a product — would later become the exact foundation of Goodmen Promotions' approach to marketing for small businesses.

A Class Project That Refused to Stay in the Classroom

In early 2018, Larnelle and three fellow IT students were assigned a graduation requirement: identify a real problem, build a real solution. While others submitted plans, this group launched one.

The insight was simple but ahead of its time: brick-and-mortar businesses were being left behind online. Search engines were reshaping how customers found local services, and most small business owners had no idea how to compete — or couldn't afford the agencies that did. Goodmen Promotions was the answer.

What started as four students with a shared vision has grown into a team of 10+ professionals serving clients across the DMV, Midwest, Texas, and Las Vegas — and the work still reflects the same founding belief: every business deserves a fighting chance online.

We've Never Forgotten Who We're Building For

Every decision at Goodmen Promotions traces back to the same origin: a belief that small business owners — the people who wake up early, stay late, and pour everything into their work — deserve the same marketing firepower as the brands with million-dollar budgets.

That's why we built Goodmen Promotions around three non-negotiable principles:

This isn't a large agency that will assign you a junior account manager and forget about you. When you work with Goodmen Promotions, you get a team that has been in the trenches since 2018 — and a founder who was thinking about your problem before he finished high school.