📈 My 3 Startup Failures (And One Success)

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When I was in college, I started a four different businesses.

Most of them failed, but one succeeded and has earned $1.7m revenue since inception.

Here are my three failed businesses, why they failed, and why my current company is successful.

1. Airtight Rentals

About the company

College students have friends come visit all the time.

But where do those friends sleep when you live in a dorm?

Airtight Rentals offered air mattress rentals for a small price.

Why I closed the business

While I proved that there was demand, the business could not make a lot of money.

I’d make twenty bucks here, forty bucks there, and that was it.

Time to move on.

2. Rutherford Capital and Consulting

About the company

RCC would offer college students capital and consulting services to launch or grow their startup.

Why I closed the business

While I was able to build an impressive team of college students, I realized we did not have enough expertise to consult our clients.

Our target market also did not have much money to spend on a service like this.

We failed to land a single client. On to the next.

3. Nova Sleep Co.

About the company

College dorm beds are cramped and uncomfortable.

Nova Sleep Co. offered full-size memory foam mattress rentals to college students.

We would transform the existing bed frame into a wider bed frame and install our mattresses.

Why I closed the business

It was extremely difficult to gain approval from school administrators to operate on their campuses.

This one didn’t work either.

Finally a business that works Greenbox Storage

About the company

Greenbox Storage offers a pickup and delivery summer storage service for college students.

We pick up our clients’ items in the spring, store them over the summer, then drop them off when they get back to school the next fall.

Why Greenbox Storage has been successful

1. There is demand for this service

At the correct schools (smaller, wealthier schools), students fly in from all over the world.

They don’t want to transport their things home every summer. Why not hire a storage company to make it easy!

2. We don’t need permission to operate

Unlike Nova Sleep Co, Greenbox operates completely outside of college property.

No approval needed.

3. We have a hyper-specific target market

A lot of companies fail because they try to market to everyone.

This is our target market:

• College students

• At wealthy schools

• From affluent families

• Living in campus dorms

Incredibly specific.

4. It is very profitable

As opposed to Airtight Rentals where we'd make dozens of dollars per client, we make several hundred dollars per client with Greenbox.

This makes it worth our time.

5. It’s scalable

There are many colleges to continue our expansion.

Major growth opportunities.

Here’s the moral of the story

I had no idea what I was doing when I started these businesses.

It was all trial and error, throw sh*t at the wall and see what sticks.

Lack of guidance was a huge barrier for me.

It cost me thousands of dollars and years of time.

Lack of guidance is a MAJOR barrier for new entrepreneurs.

Let’s say you have a great idea for a company.

So you try to launch, and become overwhelmed.

You don’t know what to do so you research “how to start a business.”

You read some articles, but they don't help.

Like thousands of others, you end up getting nowhere, then quit.

I’ve seen TONS of people go down this exact path.

I knew there had to be a better way, so I decided to do something about it.

I created the Startup Toolkit.

It's a step-by-step playbook for exactly what to do when launching a company.

No more guesswork.

No more spinning your wheels.

More action. More success.

The Startup Toolkit is NOT theoretical fluff about how to have success.

It is “Do exactly this, then do this, then do this.”

That’s the resource I would want, so that’s what I built.

I certainly wouldn’t have had three failed businesses if I had the Startup Toolkit!

Greenbox Storage Revenues:

2020: $41,000

2021: $56,000

2022: $270,000

2023: $518,000

2024: $800,000+ (projected)

Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. The Startup Toolkit: This comprehensive course provides you step-by-step directions for how to launch and grow your startup. Through trial and error, I’ve developed these methods to grow my startup to $1M+ revenue.

2. 1-on-1 Startup Consulting: Serious about launching / growing your startup? Get the personalized help you need.

3. Promote your business to 1,400+ subscribers by sponsoring my newsletter.

Cheers,

Collin Rutherford

PS. Sex, drugs, and oats.