Page 35 - BusinessWest February 17, 2025

Mychal Connolly
CEO, Stand Out Truck
A Passionate Marketer and Mentor, He’s Helping to Raise Up Other Entrepreneurs
MBy Joseph Bednar [email protected]
ychal Connolly believes in entre- preneurship, but he also believes in learning and mentorship and absorb- ing the examples of success stories before him.
That’s why he’s fond of talking about the influences in his own life, like Yankee Candle founder Mike Kittredge, Vermont Teddy Bear founder John Sortino, Jelly Belly founder David Klein, and many others.
“I say this all the time: if you ever had the chance to speak to Mike Kittredge, you would know really quickly that it wasn’t about the candles when he sold for $500 million,” Connolly said. “You’ll know Mike Kittredge could have sold used chewing
gum, and it would have been a $500 million used chewing-gum company. I loved that guy, man. And John Sortino’s the same way.”
But while he’s learned lessons about ideas, marketing, selling, and growing a business from those famous names, he’s also drawn inspiration from his adoptive father, Harry Connolly, who owned a pest-control business in their native Bahamas.
“I remember one night, the hotel that he was spraying forgot he was coming,” he said, and they left guard dogs roaming free — and Harry was badly hurt. “It was like a horror scene — there was blood everywhere. And you know, this man, the next night, was out spraying the homes he had lined up for that day. That made a serious impact on me.”
Connolly has gathered all these lessons — on hard work, dedication, innovation, and more — and applied them during an entrepreneurial career that actually began at age 9, when he would take some of the candy his grandmother brought back from trips to Florida and sell it to classmates in school.
But his first real business, launched in 2008, was Stinky Cakes, which offered practical gifts to new parents, most notably cakes shaped from diapers. As a result of his early success in business and marketing, he was asked to do some teaching, guest lecturing, and mentoring of young entrepreneurs
by groups like Valley Venture Mentors and EforAll Holyoke.
Photo by Bob Zemba, Simple Truth Imaging
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“Mike Kittredge could have sold used chewing gum, and it would have been a $500 million used chewing-gum company. I loved that guy, man.”