Meet Michael Mullally

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michael Mullally a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Michael, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
Definitely from sports growing up. I grew up in a swimming and running household. Obviously those two sports aren’t the most glamorous or fun sports like football, soccer, or baseball. I did play football for years but what I was good at and all my friends I grew up around was swimming. I swam for 11 years with around 7 of them being year round. If you haven’t ever been involved in swimming competitively the training is pretty grueling. It is for the most part just swimming laps and conditioning. Obviously like any other sport you spend time on perfecting technique but most of it is sets of laps day in and day out. That is tough because obviously just swimming laps is not fun. At least it never was to me haha. With swimming to be the best you can’t really fake it either. Yes a lazy swimmer can be decent but you will never be the best if you aren’t willing to train hard. That is where my work ethic came from. My coaches engrained in me that hard work was the only way to be the best. Trying your hardest in that pool while others were slacking was how you became the best. It is just as much of a mental sport as it is physical. You have to be able to keep pushing when all of your muscles and that voice in your head is telling you to stop. To this day I think about that while out working.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am the Co-owner/operator of a couple of businesses(Melt Box Ice Cream, MD’s Lawn & Landscape, and IT’s Lit KC Holiday Lighting). Most of my responsibilities and passion fall into Melt Box Ice Cream. We are a ice cream truck company here in Kansas City with a small store front located in the Iron District in North Kansas City. This company is so much fun. What started out as just a fun side job for me while a finance student at UMKC turned into my career. I worked on the original truck in college under the original owners, Justin Tanner & Chris Carrier, and then actually bought the company from them in early 2021. The truck was so much fun to work on and we saw the potential it had to grow that when Justin and Chris started talking about potentially selling we jumped all over it. From there Dylan, my friend and business partner, and I have expanded the company into two trucks and a storefront. If you have never seen the trucks they are old Fedex trucks that we have converted into bright mint and purple ice cream food trucks. Definitely hard to miss rolling down the road when we are heading to various events around town. I tell people all the time I am living the childhood dream of being an ice cream man driving around in a bright colored truck scooping ice cream. It is so much fun opening that window or pulling into an event and seeing everyones face light up when they see the truck. It

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Working hard and having patience are definitely the most important. To this day I have to remind myself of the patience part while I work extremely long hours and get paid less than most of my friends I graduated with. Starting and operating a successful business does not happen overnight. It is still happening for us and we have 9 employees and 3 “locations”. It takes a lot of time and lots of long days that others do not see. I know that is a fairly cliche answer but it really is the truth. For the third skill which honestly shouldn’t be a skill but seems to be less common today is just treating people right. Be a good person and do the right thing. When you are the person in charge you get to make that decision and it can be easy to be selfish or greedy but I promise if you do the right thing the favor will be returned when you need it.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?
Being involved in my life growing up and supporting me in everything I did. My Dad owned a business just like I do now and was very busy but he still made time. My Mom was a stay at home mom and was devoted to raising us three kids. I always knew at any sporting event I could look to the stands and one if not both one of them would be there cheering me on. That does a lot for a kid. My mom kept us occupied whether we were outside playing, or driving to a construction site to watch the equipment she always had something for us to do. Just being involved like that was huge and I know a lot of kids don’t get that attention growing up that they gave us.

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