Collin Rutherford of Founder Brands

Colin Rutherford joins the Business Brain podcast to share his entrepreneurial journey. Starting as a Division I hockey player at Dartmouth, he launched Greenbox Storage, a summer storage service for college students. Despite balancing 30 hours a week of hockey and Ivy League academics, he learned critical time management skills and grew the business to 23 schools. He discusses the challenges of scaling too fast—tripling branches in a year led to losses at multiple locations, teaching him the importance of measured growth and profit focus.

Colin also talks about going viral on X with a post that reached 62 million views, which helped him monetize and gain visibility. He emphasizes consistency, experimentation, and borrowing proven strategies from others as keys to growing on social media. He’s posted over 18,000 times and follows a strategy influenced by Justin Welsh’s content model.

Colin now runs Greenbox Storage and Founder Brands, a digital marketing and personal branding agency helping entrepreneurs grow their online influence. He highlights the importance of building a great remote team and using tools like Google Workspace, Slack, and AI to manage content and operations. He credits his parents for instilling discipline and drive and leaves listeners with advice: start before you’re ready, learn by doing, and surround yourself with smart people to scale successfully.

• 00:00:00 Business Brain – The Entrepreneurs’ Podcast #640 for Wednesday, April 16th, 2025
  • April 16th: Wear Pajamas To Work Day
• 00:01:31 Guest Co-host Collin Rutherford from Business Blitz Podcast
  • Being monetized on X
  • Recruited to play D1 Hockey at Dartmouth
  • Started Greenbox Storage in Dartmouth
• 00:04:42 Time Management running a business while being a D1 athlete
• 00:07:14 Selling a portion of your business to bring on a partner
• 00:08:46 SPONSOR: SelectQuote — Get the right life insurance for YOU, for LESS, at selectquote.com/businessbrain.
• 00:09:51 SPONSOR: Shopify – For anyone to sell anywhere, sign up for a one-dollar-per month trial period at Shopify.com/BusinessBrain and upgrade your selling today!
• 00:11:04 Shannon’s best practices means… copying Collin!
• 00:11:54 Social media: post content that attracts the algorithm, then people will see your valuable content
  • “I’m not that smart, guys.”
  • Justin Welsh’s Content Flywheel on X
  • When is it time to pivot and try something different?
• 00:14:49 It’s important to make mistakes
• 00:15:11 Grew from 6 branches to 18 branches in one year
  • We didn’t have any understanding how to find good schools
• 00:16:41 Unpacking the mindset of success
  • The never-ending pursuit of personal growth
• 00:20:08 Starting FounderBrands
• 00:21:17 Tools to use
  • Google Workspace
  • Slack
• 00:23:15 Have a great team
  • To Scale a business, you have to put the right people in the right places
• 00:24:51 Business Brain 640 Outtro <https://businessbrain.show/>
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