Page 8 - BusinessWest December 22, 2021

keting himself and his products and services. “I always tell people ... it’s not the truck,”
he said. “It’s everything behind it; that’s why it works.”
“I would go home and watch the TV show with the ticker. I understood nothing, but I knew enough to know that all these successful people were doing the same thing — and watching that ticker — so there had to be something to that.”
For this issue, BusinessWest talked at length with Connolly about his latest venture, a lifetime (almost) of entrepreneurship, and how, in his words, he’s marketing “in slow motion.”
Seeing His Name in Lights
Connolly’s relatively new mailing address is a small suite in the Venture X complex — a co- working space — in Holyoke. Along one wall of that space is a collection of more than 100 pho- tos of his Stand Out Trucks in action.
The wall is almost entirely full, and these framed images speak to just how far this venture has come in almost two years. And as he talked,
Connolly kept gesturing ... to the Biden assign- ment. To his message
to an employee enjoy- ing a birthday — “his phone was ringing all day because people were seeing the truck.” To at least a half-dozen politi- cal candidates and their messages. To several cor- porate clients with vari- ous messages. To high- school graduates ... the list goes on.
The road to filling that wall has been a long one, with a number of twists and turns.
As noted earlier, Con- nolly is a serial entrepre- neur. He’s been in busi- ness and marketing, and also studying business and marketing, to some extent since he was 9.
Connolly grew up in
the Bahamas and spent
a lot of his time with his
stepfather, who owned a pest-control business. He remembers a lot about those days, but espe- cially what he saw on the coffee tables and TVs of clients, especially the wealthy ones. The coffee tables boasted business magazines, and the TVs had shows with the stock-market crawler at the bottom.
“I would go home and watch the TV show
One wall of Myke Connolly’s space at Venture X is covered by photos of his Stand Out Trucks in action.
with the ticker,” he recalled. “I understood noth- ing, but I knew enough to know that all these successful people were doing the same thing — and watching that ticker — so there had to be something to that.”
While watching, he did a lot of reading and learned about successful entrepreneurs like Yan- kee Candle founder Mike Kittredge, Vermont Teddy Bear founder John Sortino, and many oth-
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8 DECEMBER 22, 2021
FEATURE
BusinessWest