Crowning Achievement

Florida native Jay Burns found himself working for Black and Decker after he graduated from the University of Florida in 1999. His work for Black and Decker took Burns to Atlanta and Baton Rouge, La. However, his thoughts kept going back to Florida and to his dream of owning a buisness.

After a few years of working in various marketing roles for Black and Decker, Burns gave in to his desire to be his own boss. He moved back to Florida and started his on-site information destruction firm, Crown Shredding, in August of 2003, working out of his old bedroom in his parents’ house.

“The first couple of years, I had one truck, a shoe-string budget and very limited resources,” Burns says. He served as both sales person and driver until he had the means to hire a part-time driver the following year.

Beyond the Bedroom
Within 18 months, Crown Shredding had moved out of Jay’s old bedroom and into a 1,500-square-foot warehouse in Winter Haven, Fla. From there, the company had a growth spurt fueled in part by acquisitions.

Through the 2005 acquisition of Data Shredders in Daytona Beach, Fla., Crown Shredding added a satellite location in that city. Acquisition again factored into Crown Shredding’s growth in 2007, when the company purchased Curly Joes Shredding, Bradenton, Fla., expanding its client roster as well as the number of shredding trucks in its fleet.

Crown Shredding currently destroys 300 tons of documents per month, Burns says.

The company’s Daytona location is home to a hard drive destruction machine from Allegheny Shredders and to Crown Shredding’s hard drive and electronic media destruction services, which the company added in 2009 at the request of its clients. Crown Shredding offers direct transport of hard drives and electronic media from the customer’s site to its Daytona plant using the company’s van.

“Larger electronic devices are currently taken to our partner, Sims Recycling in Tampa, Fla., and we have been very happy with that relationship,” Burns says.

He and his staff continue to listen to their customers for ways to grow Crown Shredding by adding new services.

“I have always believed that if you are not growing, you’re dying,” he says. With the resources and clients the company has added throughout the years, Burns says it made sense to try to grow further by expanding its services.

But Burns had bigger plans for Crown Shredding than its original Winter Haven location would allow. Therefore, in December of 2011, he purchased a 30,000-square-foot building in Winter Haven, moving the company’s operations at the start of 2012. Crown Shredding required the additional space for its newest service offering: records management. This service will join Crown Shredding’s roster of on-site document destruction and off-site hard drive and electronic media destruction services.

“We will have the ability to store more than 240,000 boxes,” Burns says of the new Winter Haven location. “In addition to regular records storage, we will also have additional space available for climate-controlled storage as well as vault storage. Future plans also include scanning.”

Burns says he feels Crown Shredding is well-positioned for expanding into records management. “There is a lot to learn,” he says, “but I feel like we have a head start compared to 2003.”

People Powered
Much of Crown Shredding’s growth can be attributed to listening to the company’s clients, Burns says.

“We simply try to be a partner with each and every one of our customers,” he says. “We take an active role in our clients’ needs and interests. It may be as simple as making a special pickup or visiting with them to check on service, or it may be a little more involved, such as supporting a charity event they are sponsoring.”

He adds, “We also like to educate our clients and keep them aware of the current legislation that may affect their businesses. Crown Shredding produces a monthly newsletter and industry updates for our clients. We also offer training to educate our community.”

Burns says it hasn’t always been easy to find employees who fit in with his company’s culture. “I believe in working hard and treating all of our customers and prospects like a close personal friend,” he says. “The first four or five years, it was very hard to find employees who felt that way. Now that we have a good core group, any future employees who don’t believe in and embrace our corporate philosophy will stick out like a sore thumb.”

He adds that he believes respecting and investing in people also are key to Crown Shredding’s success. “Leadership is learned. I want to provide an atmosphere in our organization where great leadership is practiced authentically and can be emulated,” Burns says.

He and the Crown Shredding staff try to master the four Es, Burns says, which he defines as:

• Envision—Have a clear and compelling vision for what is possible;
• Enable—Deliver the resources and skills needed to achieve results;
• Energize—Provide the energy and emotional momentum required to attain the organization’s goals; and
• Edge—Make the right decisions based on training and previous experience.

“I have been blessed over the last eight years to have some really wonderful employees to help make Crown Shredding into the company it is today,” Burns says. “The better the people you have, the better the organization you have.”

He adds, “I think Crown Shredding has a great fundamental base, and I am very excited about our future and the people we have to keep us headed in the right direction.”

As a result of the recession, he says it is hard to find new and meaningful ways to reward his employees for their efforts, but he continues to try.

“The other challenge would be educating clients and prospective clients on the importance of a shredding program, especially in a down-turned economy,” Burns says. “Their internal budgets don’t always reflect any consideration for this need.”

Beyond Price
Burns says the economy is slowly gaining strength, which is positively affecting the information destruction industry, and his company in particular. “Companies that have been sitting on their old records instead of spending money to destroy them seem to be calling us more often, and our purge business has been up by about 10 percent from 2010 to 2011,” he says.

However, he describes the scheduled service business as “very competitive,” with much of the pressure coming from national companies or “small one-truck operations quoting very low prices.”

Exacerbating this problem is the cost of fuel, Burns says. “Paper prices falling and fuel prices rising could easily be the perfect storm that destroys many small or underfunded companies,” he says. “When paper prices were high, it more than covered the high prices of fuel in the past, but 2012 has seen fuel prices rise and no real strong market for paper compared with 2011.”

Burns continues, “A second problem that arises from this scenario is the pricing structure itself.” When companies drop the price of their services in response to strong pricing for recovered fiber, it affects the information destruction industry as a whole, he says.

“Projecting for lower paper prices and setting realistic pricing structures should be an industry goal,” Burns adds.

Of those organizations shopping for secure destruction services, Burns says half are concerned solely with price, while the other half does value service and security. He says those prospects concerned only about price are the ones he focuses on. “If you can educate the price people and show them that your service has value, you might be able to educate them on the difference between a lower-priced and a value-priced service,” Burns adds.

Environmental Factors
The current regulatory environment is favorable for the information destruction industry, Burns says.

“I think we are fortunate to have all the current legislation come out in favor of destroying personal information,” he says. “HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and the HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act, these are important to insist on responsible use of personal information.

“Federal Rule 26 also is an often overlooked but substantial tool to help persuade clients to destroy material,” he says of the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Duty to Disclose.

Under this rule, if information produced in the discovery phase of a lawsuit is subject to a claim of privilege or of protection as trial-preparation material, “the party making the claim may notify any party that received the information of the claim and the basis for it. After being notified, a party must promptly return, sequester or destroy the specified information and any copies it has; must not use or disclose the information until the claim is resolved; must take reasonable steps to retrieve the information if the party disclosed it before being notified; and may promptly present the information to the court under seal for a determination of the claim. The producing party must preserve the information until the claim is resolved.”

Burns says he thinks enforcement of existing information protection laws may increase in the near future. “In the future, I think we will see more enforcement by state attorneys general offices, through the use of fines, generating more revenue for depressed state governments,” he says.

While regulatory enforcement could help the information destruction and records management industries, Crown Shredding’s growth likely will arise from the staff's committment, Burns says.

“I am most proud of our continued growth, even in an unsettling economy,” he says. “Our continued growth is due to our staff’s commitment to get the job done and do whatever is needed to make it happen.”

Despite escalating fuel prices and tightening margins in light of competition, Burns says he has few worries. “Thankfully, the only things keeping me up at night are all the possibilities and opportunities that are out there waiting for my consideration.”

The author is editor of Storage & Destruction Business magazine and can be contacted at dtoto@gie.net.