3 Mistakes Made When Deciding to Purchase a Home/Small Office Paper Shredding Machine.

Time and time again I get customers down at the shredding facility who complain about how they burned out one, two, or even three shredders trying to get all their shredding complete. Even if you could get away with buying a shredder for $40 each, that still potentially comes out to $120 in burned out shredders.

Here’s what I’ve determined are the three common mistakes people make when buying an office shredder.

Mistake #1: Miscalculate the size of their job

Just about every last paper shredder you can buy at the store is not designed to handle more than about 100 or so sheets of paper PER DAY – and that’s only if you get into the $150 to $300 price range.

These Paper Shredders are designed only for extremely low volumes of paper shredding.

Basically, we are talking about shredding the stuff that comes in the daily mail.  Anything more than that and you might as well pack a lunch because you’re going to have a pretty long and frustrating time investment ahead of you.

Mistake #2: Assume “Theoretical Throughput” equals to “Working Throughput”

I find it extremely comical when I see a paper shredder that advertises 8 sheets of paper per pass and sells for only $69.95. I’m sure some technician working for the manufacturer was able to get 8 sheets of paper to pass through the shredder and successfully shred in one pass.

However, you must be aware that this shredder was not designed to continually shred 8 sheets at a time at a continuous rate for a very long time. In order to get that kind of throughput, you’re going to have to pay a lot more for a shredder.

I have a “small” industrial shredder at our facility that can take somewhere between 70 to 80 sheets per pass and can keep up that pace for 8 hours a day. But this machine runs upwards of $40,000 new. In theory, I could buy 10 of these 8 sheets at a time shredders and get the same throughput for just about $700.

But, as you can see… there’s a massive disconnect from theory and working throughput when it comes to these store bought machines. Buying 10 of these office shredders just wouldn’t cut it for my business (pardon the pun).

50% Throughput Rule: In my best estimation, your best bet for determining working throughput is about 50% of what is stated by the manufacturer.

Mistake #3: Don’t understand “Duty Cycle”

Every paper shredder you can buy from the store has a “Duty Cycle.” Otherwise known as an On/Off run time. This is the amount of time that that shredder can run continuously before it must be shut off.

From a sample of 12 paper shredders, I found an average on time of 9.34 minutes with a following off time of 60.84 minutes.

That means, on average, you can get about 10 minutes of continuous shredding before you have to stop and let the machine cool down for about an hour.

Remember that shredder for $69.95. You can only continuously run it for 2 minutes before you have to turn it off for 30 minutes.

As you can see, if you have a large amount that needs shredding, you’re going to have to spend most of your time letting the machine cool down as opposed to actual shredding and that will lead to a very long project indeed.

Here’s my research:

I recently pulled the specification on 12 common Home/Small Office Shredders and performed some analysis on what it would take to shred 5000 sheets of paper (1 case of copy paper) when using the correct Duty Cycle, the listed number of sheets per pass, and 10 passes per minute.

These shredders ranged in price from $69.95 to $299.99.

I also ran the same simulation using 50% of the manufacturers listed throughput per pass and 5 passes per minute (I reduced the number of passes per minute in order to take into account staple removal and other prep work) – which is what I think is closer to reality.

Here’s what I found:

VERY BEST: The very best shredding machine would shred 5,000 sheets of paper in 1.38 hours. It would’ve taken the same shredder 5.52 hours to shred those same 5,000 sheets if I applied the 50% Throughput Rule and five passes per minute. The listed price for this shredder was $249.99.

THE WORST: The shredding machine that performed the worst under this simulation shredded 5,000 sheets in 66.17 hours – and that’s before I apply the 50% throughput rule. When I apply the 50% throughput rule and limit the number of passes per minute to only five, it took a staggering 266.17 hours to shred the 5,000 sheets. And this wasn’t the cheapest shredder I looked at! The price for this shredder was $89.99.

Now here’s the real kicker…

If you were to pay someone $8.00 an hour to shred 5,000 sheets of paper, that 266.17 hours translates into $2,135.67 when you include the cost of the shredder along with sales tax.

The “Very Best” shredder would cost you $66.78 if you paid someone $8.00 an hour along with the cost of the shredder.

In the absolute most perfect world, where the shredder performs at the manufacturers listed specifications and you can pull off ten passes per minute, the cost of 5,000 sheets is still $33.69.

All in all, buying a paper shredding machine for your home or office can be a very logical and cost effective choice if you understand some of the very basic constraints involved in using these machines. However, if your requirements exceed simply shredding just a few sheets of paper a day, you may want to consider your options.

Until next time…

Keep Totally Secure,

Mike
Head Shredding Guy
Total Secure Shredding, Inc.

If There’s no PAIN…

There’s no GAIN.

What’s Your P.I.T.A. Factor?

Hey Folks…

Mike here.

I often run into people who ask the following…

“I didn’t even know there were such things as shredding companies… Do you have a lot of competition?”

The direct answer is YES… There are quite a few paper shredding companies you can choose from. (Anyone that does a Google search for paper shredding can easily witness this fact!)

However, what’s even more important (at least to me), is the first part of that question: “I didn’t even know that there were such things as shredding companies…”

For the most part, the reason someone would say this, is that they’ve never had any reason to consider the need for a professional paper shredding company.

1. They don’t realize that I.D. Fraud can happen to them and consequently they don’t shred anything;
2. Or, they don’t have that much to shred and their $50.00 home paper shredder works perfectly for the couple of sheets they do have to shred every week.

I won’t go into group 1. (If they’re not worried about I.D. Fraud and are not shredding… There’s a good chance they won’t be on this website anyway!)

So if you’re in the second group, the question is: When should you consider a professional shredding company?

This differs from person to person, but basically, but it comes down to your individual P.I.T.A. Factor (Pain In The Ass Factor).

If you’re like me, I don’t sort out my mail every day and let it stack up. After a few months, I usually have a pretty good pile sitting on the kitchen counter and the subsequent shredding job exceeds my own personal P.I.T.A. Factor. Fortunately for me, I get to bring the pile to work.

My Dad on the other hand, doesn’t understand why anyone would need to bring their things to a paper shredding company. (Thanks Dad!) He carefully goes through his mail every day; sorts out the stuff that can just be thrown away, and then proceeds to shred the important stuff. This process nowhere touches his P.I.T.A. Factor… actually… he kind of seems to like doing it!

So in the end, when you’re looking at your stack of stuff that needs to be shredded, and you say to yourself, “This is going to be a real PAIN!”, then at that point you know you’ve hit your P.I.T.A. Factor.

It might be just a handful of paper or it could be a mountain of boxes that have been sitting around in storage since the 20^th Century!

Only you can decide whether the PAIN of your individual shredding project exceeds the cost of having someone else do it.

If you’re starting to hit your Paper Shredding P.I.T.A Factor, set your mind at ease, there’s a quick, convenient, easy, and affordable option available to you.

Until next time…

Keep Totally Secure,

Mike

This closely guarded Industry Secret could leave you wide open to Identity Theft.

Discover what the competition won’t tell you…

Hey Folks,

Mike here…

I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks now…

It’s something that came up over lunch with a person in my mastermind group.

She was getting to know more about my business and asked me what certifications and licenses I needed in order to get started in the Shredding Industry.

I paused for a moment and responded, “Well… Actually… There’s no certificate or government license that’s required to start a shredding company… Outside of a regular business that is.”

My friend looked at me confused for a second and then replied, “So someone could be handling all these sensitive documents and there’s absolutely no guarantee that they are making sure everything is getting shredded properly?”

I responded, “Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the case.”

And that’s why it’s critical that consumers perform their due diligence when selecting a shredding company.

However, one of  the biggest problems is that many customers ignore whether or not a paper shredding service is qualified to securely destroy their documents but rather choose a paper shredding service only on the basis of price.

This has resulted in a multitude of new shredding companies that have popped up to undercut the competition only to make a quick buck. The reason they can undercut many of their competitors is that they are often times taking shortcuts on insurance, employee background checks, uniforms, or some other industry specific requirement.

Some of these shortcuts may seem superficial, but from my standpoint, if an organization, built around securing your documents, doesn’t look professional, how can you, I, or anyone else be sure sufficient security  precautions are  being taken when it comes to handling your documents.

The Bottom Line Is:

There is absolutely no governmental oversight of the document destruction industry.

And when it comes to the old saying, “Buyer Beware”, be especially aware when it comes to choosing a document destruction vendor.

So what is the average consumer to do?

That’s why I put together a “Paper Shredding Buyers Guide” that anyone can freely download

In this guide I open the door a little bit further into what the paper shredding industry is all about and to clear away some of the mystery that is hanging around out there. I even go as far as putting in some real money saving insider tips that only those deep inside the industry even know about. It walks you through exactly what to be looking for and what exactly to ask when you’re out there evaluating a potential shredding vendor.

As far as I can tell, this is a first of its kind.

Once you read through this guide, my hope is that you’ll be able to make a quality decision about choosing a paper shredding service.

So please, I posted the link below. Take a look into what this shredding thing is all about (I even put in two work sheets that you can fill out to help you with the decision process).

Click this link to check out the FREE guide: Paper Shredding Buyers Guide

Once you’ve taken a look and if you still have a few questions, you can always give us a call so we can get any other little items you have answered as well.

After all, that’s what we’re about, helping you with your information destruction needs… We are a service company.

So until next time.

Keep totally secure,

Mike

P.S. Once you’ve taken a look at the “Paper Shredding Buyers’ Guide” I put together, feel free to leave me a note in the comments section of this blog entry… I sure would like to hear what you think.

Hey Folks,

Back at the beginning of May 2008 when we were opening our facility in San Diego, there was a lot of work that needed to get done in the office spaces.

My desk and computer were out in the warehouse. My dad had just flown in all the way from Tennessee and he just finished scraping up all the old carpet glue that was left on the floor after ripping up TWO layers of filthy blue carpet. The walls were all patched and sanded and somewhere in the middle of putting up a fresh coat of paint I received the following phone call:

“Hi, yes, I have 5,000 boxes that I need to get shredded.”

There is nothing that will get me down off a ladder in mid paint stroke quicker than a phone call asking about 5,000 boxes needing to get shredded!

But I’ll never forget this caller’s next question:

“But my employer requires that the shredding company I select must be NAID (National Association for Information Destruction) Certified: Are you NAID Certified?”

As my mind raced to come up with a satisfactory answer, my stomach sank as my only response was a half-hearted “no”.

The caller quickly and politely said “Thank You” and hung up.

Disappointment is hardly the word for what I felt.

No matter how big the shredding company, 5,000 boxes is a big job – Nobody will ever be able to tell me otherwise.

And for a small shredding company only a year and a half old – That’s an incredibly huge awesome job!

But as huge of a job that would have been, it was an even more massive disappointment.

It was at that point I decided that NAID Certification Wasn’t an Option; It Was a Requirement.

Since that day, for two long years, I’ve been torturing myself trying to get everything perfect for a NAID Certification Audit.

For the longest time I was misreading the Plant Based requirements and thought my facility was incapable of becoming NAID Certified.

Once I finally got passed that Mental Misfire (for some reason that took almost a year), I had to commit to putting in a Closed Circuit Camera system that would not only monitor the facility, but would also record at least 90 days of footage!

Quick Lesson Learned: Don’t ever assume you can’t do something! Press forward. Keep taking action. And keep asking questions (ask people who know) until you know for sure it can’t be done. And then push some more!

The delay in putting in the camera system was a little more grounded in reality since it was a fairly costly investment.

Another Quick Lesson: Smartly investing in your business/life is rarely a bad investment. Do your homework, research, ask questions, then go for it!

The camera system finally went in last October.

Then came the painful 90 day wait so that we had 90 days of video footage on file. You think watching water boil can take forever, try waiting 90 days of video footage.

I literally haven’t been so impatient and excited for time to pass by since I was just a kid waiting for Christmas morning to come.

That brings me to Last Wednesday when our successful NAID Certification Audit took place and then finally to today where I can, with great relief and excitement, say that Total Secure Shredding is

AAA NAID Certified for both Plant Based and Mobile Based Document Destruction.

Now this is where the rubber hits the road for Total Secure Shredding.

If there was ever any question or equivocation about our security and professionalism – it is now gone – PERIOD.

We now meet any other shredding company at every turn and still pull away at every straight away.

We are now:

• NAID AAA Certified for Mobile Document Destruction
• NAID AAA Certified for Plant Based Document Destruction
• Disabled Veteran Business Enterprise Certified by the State of California

Just those three items alone put Total Secure Shredding in a league of its own.

And, we offer walk in shredding six days a week where you can walk in during regular business hours and watch one box of documents get shredded while you wait and only be charged for one box.

Affordability, Security, Convenience, Service & Professionalism – Not only for Large Businesses & Government Agencies, but also for Small Businesses, Non-Profits and Residents.

Total Secure Shredding is now positioned at the pinnacle of the shredding industry.

The best part, I’ve got more to come…

So thank you to all our loyal customers who showed faith and gave us an incredible opportunity. Without your support non of this would have been possible.

I truly look forward to continuing to service your document destruction needs.

To everyone else who may be looking for a document destruction company…

Why look further?

Until next time…

Keep Totally Secure,

Mike

Hey Folks,

I was so excited to get a blog up and running, and incorporated into the design of this new web site (yes – another website edition – this makes 3 versions in 3 years) that I forgot to tell you all about why.

At the start of the New Year we will also be entering our 4^th year of business as a Paper Shredding & Document Destruction Company.

As such, I felt that it was time to break free of the Shredding Industry “Web Site Mold.” Since I have a few years under my belt I might as well free myself to trying something new. I already have made a name for myself as a professional shredding company…

I see no need to look like everyone else anymore!

Wanting to do something different, I decided that I would no longer leave it up to potential customers to try to weave together what exactly we’re about by clicking through the massive number of links I had posted all over the previous website. (I’m sure if you look, you’ll be able to find the old site – I haven’t taken it down – I’ve basically just added to it.)

So I’ve put together long copy letters for each of our services (Mobile, Pickup, Drop-Off, & Reoccurring) trying to give each potential customer a complete picture of what the service offers – including prices.

… And at this point, I no longer care if every last competitor of mine knows what I’m charging. I’ve set my prices (For Now) and I’ll continue to make changes as necessary. I’m sure they all have an idea of what I’m charging anyway.

Also, this new format might result in fewer phone calls. But I figure doing it this way I’m already giving my potential customers great service right off the bat. (Which is what I’m all about anyway?)

And since we don’t “Brow Beat” callers just looking for a quote with pushy sales methods – I might as well give them what they are looking for when they are looking for it – You’re busy just like me… Why not make the most of everybody’s time?

Along with that, I’ve decided to incorporate a blog as the Total Secure Shredding “Home Page.”

I don’t know if this is a great idea or not… but I can’t find anything on-line (Neither Good nor Bad) about a business that has incorporated a blog as a home page.  (I may be starting a new trend for all industry – Not Just the Paper Shredding Industry!)

… Either that or it will turn out to be a monumentally stupid idea – in which case I will make it go away and try something else.

My ultimate goal is to create enough of a blog following as to have actual conversations with my potential and actual customers. This will result in:

• Letting everyone know that there is an actual real live person who has put all this together – ME!
• Give me more insight into the needs of you – my customers.
• With more insight, I can build a better business to service your needs…

A real “Win-Win” situation!

That being said, I hope to hear back from all of you letting me know what you think or asking any questions you might have.

Until Next Time…

Keep Totally Secure,

Mike