Hello this is Andreas Nest business coach
today I will be talking to John Cauchi
who runs a company called Identity
Destruction and I just wanted to learn a
bit more about his company and why he
called it that and what is he
actually doing so John thank you very
much for seeing me you're very welcome
so tell us more about your company
well we are a shredding company based
in Chichester
and here at St. James Industrial Estates
we have a shred as you wait service where
by local households or businesses come
in with their paperwork and we shred it as
they wait to give them peace of mind and
to protect them against the risk of
identity theft okay and that's where the
name came from yeah okay and so how did
you start this business how did you get
into it well historically I always
wanted to run my own business and maybe
about 15 years ago I decided to set up a
local cleaning company and part of
the remit for cleaning an office was
emptying the bins and when I was doing
this I found that the bins were full
of paper and so I decided to
take on the challenge of trying to
figure out how we could recycle the
paper for our cleaning clients so cut a
long story short I found out a way that
I could provide a business to recycle
paper and then cardboard and set up a
company a recycling company so sold the
cleaning company and we began to collect
from offices paper and cardboard and
from there over the next couple years we
began to collect plastic bottles and
drinks cans and then we began to provide
a shredding service as well and we
were at the time we were based in
Hampshire and we had about 500 customers
that we collected from on a regular
basis and at the time back in about 2005
we were the leading company for
recycling for small to medium
enterprises so that's where I cut my
teeth on at the recycling stuff so at that
time we we had maybe about 10 staff had
a baling operation so with shredding
paper began to learn about different
waste streams and that was good that we
set that up as a social enterprise and
that was my first proper company
the cleaning company prior to that was
just a one-man band with a
couple of cleaners so it wasn't anything
huge moving on a bit further we again we set up a new company I
sold that company when it was about four
years old
and we set up a company called Home
Shred and that was more designed for
providing a shredding service
for the domestic market at the time I
was actually working as a waste
consultant in the spare
bedroom at home and bought a small
shredding machine from Staples and I
began to shred some confidential
paperwork and the machine began to
overheat and break down and had to
remove staples and paper clips and
myself personally I got frustrated and
thought to himself my old business who
had a huge commercial shredding machine
that could shred my paper better and I
thought to myself perhaps there was a
market for people like myself at home
who had paperwork but didn't want
to spend hours slaving over a very
frustratingly slow machine so I set up Home Shred a friend of
mine very kindly lent me £800 to
build a website the journey really of
learning about domestic shredding we
linked in with a number of partners
across the country so previously I
was just based in Hampshire in West
Sussex in Surrey
but by linking with other shredding
companies we were able to post our
confidential waste sacks across the UK
and then very much localised in the local
village and then the recycling was
County and then the home shred was then
national so each step of the way began to
pick up tips and learn by trial and
error most of the time and then
eventually we decided that we wanted
to as well as doing domestic shredding
to try and tackle that the business side
We've got about fourteen thousand customers
on a UK wide but yeah and we probably
take on maybe 50 to 60 new customers a
week have done over the last
say five years but the issue is it's
only one of jobs so hence why we decided
we wanted to begin to look into
the business side whereby
repeat work we could grow but we
wanted to to try and figure out a
business which was separate than Home Shreds, Home Shred is a great name
because it's called Home Shred UK
it's got a good website presence and
strong domain so anyway so the Identity
Destruction was formed about a year
and a half ago we are reliable we are
professional and we're great value we
are a family run businesses so my wife Claire
is the director I'm operations and my
son-in-law Dan is the branch
manager here and the other thing
as well with regard to the industry I
think a lot of the larger national
shredding companies are very
inaccessible they tie you into three
to five-year contracts
ours is only one year there's
hidden costs and even just having
communicating with them because
they're so huge it's very hard
just to make a phone call so that all
sounds really good
and now tell me about your challenges
what wasn't easy what was difficult I
think running a business on a
daily basis that there are
challenges and I think for me personally
in my own character I'm quite confident
and I don't see things as a
problem but as a challenge and I enjoy
challenges. What gave you the biggest
headache?  I think the biggest headache is trying to
find the most cost effective way to
market I'm trying to find the best way
to spend your money on reaching
potential clients and it's trying to find a
company whereby as a marketing company
that you can trust and it's going to
deliver what you're trying to achieve
we've tried different companies and some
have been good some been horrendous
unfortunately and we have had our fingers
burnt and you learn from those
mistakes but it is crucial in my mind
to do your homework and to look at
reviews before you make a decision and
and also to do a trial initially
the issue is with them with anything
to do with online marketing
you're looking at six to nine months to
see if it works and that's always a
challenge you see in Coaching we call that
the water pump effect do you remember the
old water pumps that we're in the ground
and you had to pump a while the same
with your marketing you keep pumping
nothing happens for a while but then
when the water comes up and actually
comes out you have a nice flow of
leads perhaps coming in but you can
never stop the pump because the water
will go all the way back and the effort
that's needed to keep the you know the
flow keep coming back is is very high
How do you motivate your staff? I
think from my own personal
experience working for other people in my 20s
saying thank you is one of the
biggest things that used to
motivate me personally you know you can reward people by you know
give them a bonus you know a bit of
overtime but at the end of the day if you
value people it changes them and if also
I think if you if you look at a person's
potential and you encourage them you
train them you can watch them grow a
foot higher and classic example we
took on our son-in-law Dan about a
year ago and his background
wasn't anything to do with working in an
office hadn't really done emailing
before had never spoken to anyone on the
telephone and it was
really tough we trained him over the
first few days of how to conduct himself
on the telephone and it took
him a good few weeks to bed in but
continual encouragement and training
and development and also I think
sharing the dream you know what we are trying
to achieve with all of our employees
including our driver called Russ is
on the road every day Monday to Friday
working 12-hour days on his own it's
a case of them saying thank you
encouraging him and when we meet
together again just bringing him
into the vision of the company
because I think sometimes employees
just feel that they're just an employee
I think that then we are
quite a tight team here and I think it's
essential that everyone to understand
what we are about that as a
company our vision our ethos our ethics as
well
a bit like what happened when JFK was
walking around the NASA Factory
in the early 60s when they launched the
Apollo programme and he spoke to one of
the janitors that was sweeping the floor
and he says so what are you doing
here and he says well I'm helping
sending a man to the moon and he
was a janitor yes it's true is
that what you do you think that kind
of philosophy where everybody is
incorporated and is part of the
big mission absolutely I think there's nothing worse
than feeling worthless and from a
finance prospective did you have to take out big
loan to get this company going or are
you self-funding how did you do all this
well originally on that the Home
Shred side my my parents lent us some
money to to begin the process
which we paid them back
with regard to this business here
we decided to with Identity Destruction
we decided to do it ourselves with
very minimum input so we over
the years we've figured
out the basics
that you have to have a fantastic website 
you had to have a presence online with
Google and so we've invested into a good
website and a good good guy who we've
been with for about eight years now a guy called 
Russ Anderson he's a programmer so
he does our our CRM the
customer database behind the scenes
which manages the entire company from
sending out certificates to to customers
to managing the route planning
so it is a very clever back-end so we've
invested into that system and
because we've got a good system and a
good website that enables us to be
effective in our day-to-day operations
of the company but yeah so with
regard to fortunately because we used
Home Shred as a cash cow it's very
very minimal funding that's gone into it
and that's now beginning to
to self-fund and to make
money and it's growing now which
is really income so you're
you're growing organically and it's going well
okay is there any big things that are
coming up that you want to share with
the audience and any news about Identity Destruction anything that you think
is worth mentioning I think the main
thing is that it's the GDPR really
we are very keen
to as well as you know keeping people
safe with regard to the secure shredding
and destruction of hard drives and
paperwork we want to try and educate
people in an office-based environment to
not only just to shred paper but to
try and change the ethos of
the work environment to make everyone
security conscious you know that any
paperwork has to be binned to put into a
console and then securely locked down
prior to collection
so that's the main thing we're trying to
educate people a lot of people call up
and say hi we've got say 10
archive boxes of paperwork here we said
that's fine we can come and collect that
from you and shred it for you then we
say what about your ongoing requirements
oh that's fine we don't need anything
for another year we said what about your
day-to-day paperwork and where is it
going now oh that goes into my the waste
paper basket under my under my desk
we say we can't do that
no with effect from 25th of May all paperwork needs to be accounted for
paperwork detailing an individual's name
email address be it a member of staff or
the client or sort of supplier has
got to be shredded so that's what we're
trying to do so the main thing for us
to say make sure you are GDPR compliant
the compliancy for GDPR is
extremely comprehensive and we to as a
business are still going through that
process but we know that with regard to
paper and hard drives we've got that
sign up for our clients, great okay
well John it's been a pleasure thank you
very much for talking to me thank you very
much so guys there are some good
lessons in there for you so first of all
there's GDPR coming on the 25th of May
so make sure your business is ready for
that but also can your business take
advantage of that
like John Cauchi has done and that's it
for this week I will speak to again in
the next week bye bye
