Level Up: From Shredding Vendor to Privacy Partner
From Vendor to Partner
Shredding and secure destruction have always been about more than destroying paper and certificates of destruction. At their core, these services protect people, customers, employees, patients, and clients by preventing sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands. Over the last decade, that core truth has moved from the back room to the boardroom. Boards, owners, and operational leaders increasingly view “privacy” not as a legal footnote but as a strategic requirement that shapes how they sell, serve, and grow. In that landscape, shredding and records management firms have an opportunity to level up: to evolve from commodity vendors focused on end-of-life destruction into trusted privacy partners who guide clients across the full data lifecycle. This shift isn’t about abandoning what you do well; it’s about reframing it, integrating it with upstream and downstream practices, and using your destruction expertise as proof of protection that anchors a broader value proposition.
As a part of exploring this evolving environment, we had the pleasure of talking with Chris Chapman, owner of ShredInstead, a current partner, which has expanded its operations across Maryland, Delaware, Washington, DC, Virginia, and Southern Pennsylvania. We asked Chris a series of questions related to this very topic, offering a real-world perspective on how shredding providers are adapting to growing privacy expectations.
How do you describe the shift from “shredding vendor” to “privacy partner”?
CC: “For years, shredding was viewed as the final step – the last stop in a document’s life. We were the team that showed up, emptied consoles, shredded securely, and issued a certificate. Valuable? Absolutely. But over time it became obvious that our customers needed more than end-of-life support. They needed help understanding what happens before the material ever reaches a console – how it’s created, stored, accessed, and shared. That’s where privacy risk actually lives.
Partnering with uRISQ® allowed us to expand from being a shredding vendor to being a true privacy partner. We’re still delivering secure destruction at a high standard, but now we’re helping customers build the everyday habits and documentation that make privacy work. Instead of just removing material, we help them reduce exposure, strengthen compliance, and prove their privacy program is operating.
The shift isn’t about changing who we are – it’s about using our destruction expertise as the anchor for a broader, more modern service offering that gives small and mid-sized businesses real protection, not just a checkbox.”
Why Buyers Are Pushing for More
Many providers already feel the push. Buyers are more informed, procurement teams are more rigorous, and the questions have changed. It’s no longer sufficient to say, “We shred securely on a set schedule.” Now clients ask how your services contribute to their overall privacy program, how you help them document compliance, how you assist in vendor oversight, and how you reduce risk between the moment data is created and the moment it is destroyed. The providers who win these conversations don’t simply sell containers, consoles, and pickups. They sell reduced exposure, faster response, clearer documentation, and measurable governance. They sell confidence.
Defining the Privacy Partner
To make this leap, it helps to redefine what “privacy partner” means. A privacy partner is a service provider who aligns destruction with the client’s broader obligations and operations. Destruction still happens on time and according to best practices, but it’s integrated with broader policies, training, vendor management, and incident response readiness. A privacy partner understands that data risk lives in workflows – how information is collected, stored, accessed, shared, and finally destroyed – and they position their offerings to minimize that risk at every step. In other words, you’re not just the last step in the chain; you’re an architect of the chain itself.
Expanding Scope Without Losing Identity
This isn’t a change of identity so much as a change of scope. Your teams already understand physical security, custody controls, documentation, and regulatory nuance. Those strengths translate naturally into a broader privacy conversation. For example, the same rigor you bring to locked consoles and documented pickups applies to how clients manage digital access permissions or handle vendor assessments. The same clarity you bring to certificates of destruction mirrors the clarity clients need for breach reporting documentation. The destruction event becomes a milestone in an ongoing process rather than a stand-alone service. When you present it that way, clients recognize your role as a guide, not merely a supplier.
What misconception about “privacy” do SMBs have that you correct right away?
CC: “The biggest misconception is that privacy is purely an IT or legal issue. Most SMBs think privacy starts with software and ends with a policy in a drawer. In reality, privacy is operational – it lives in the daily workflows of every employee.
We often tell customers: “If your people touch data, you have a privacy program – whether you’ve formalized it or not.” That usually changes the conversation fast.
Another misconception is that implementing privacy is “too big” or “too expensive” for smaller businesses. In truth, what most SMBs need is structure, documentation, and basic readiness – not a huge compliance overhaul. That’s why uRISQ® resonated so strongly with us. It gives SMBs simple tools to train employees, manage vendors, report breaches properly, and demonstrate compliance without adding new headcount.
Once customers understand that privacy isn’t a scary legal requirement – it’s a series of manageable steps they can automate and track – the lightbulb turns on.”
See the Whole: A Lifecycle Lens
A practical way to begin is to adopt a lifecycle lens. Every client has data flowing through stages: collection, use, sharing, storage, and destruction. Each stage introduces different risks and responsibilities. By mapping your services to these stages, you create immediate relevance for more stakeholders in the client organization. Beyond the office manager ordering a purge, you now engage compliance leaders, operations managers, IT, legal, and finance. You can help them answer questions such as: Are our policies aligned with actual practices? Do our vendors meet our standards? Are we prepared to respond if a data subject requests access or deletion? Do our employees understand social engineering red flags? And, crucially, can we prove it?
Evidence as an Outcome, Not an Afterthought
That “prove it” step is where many organizations struggle. They may have policies in a folder and training links in an inbox, but they lack a simple way to demonstrate that the work is done, maintained, and auditable. This is an opening for the privacy partner. Your destruction certificates are already a recognized artifact; they show completion, timing, and method. When you expand your portfolio to include light-weight policy templates, recurring training, vendor assessment workflows, and breach support coordination, you give clients a unified, practical toolkit to generate evidence across the lifecycle. The goal is not to drown them in documentation; it’s to make documentation an automatic by-product of good process.
What’s the core outcome your customers want from a privacy partner?
CC: “At the end of the day, SMBs want one thing: confidence. Confidence that they’re protecting their customers, avoiding fines, passing audits, and maintaining trust without making privacy a full-time job.
When we talk to business owners, they’re not asking for jargon – they’re asking for outcomes:
- “Help me reduce my risk.”
- “Help me document what we’re already doing.”
- “Help me respond quickly if something happens.”
- “Help my staff understand the basics so we don’t make avoidable mistakes.”
By combining our secure destruction services with uRISQ’s privacy tools, we give them a simple, sustainable program that produces evidence, not just effort. Destruction becomes part of a lifecycle – one that includes training, policies, vendor oversight, and incident readiness. And the outcome customers care about is that they can prove they’re doing things right.
We move them from reactive to proactive. From checking boxes to building resilience. From hoping they’re compliant to knowing they are.”
Positioning the Value: From Tasks to Outcomes
From a commercial standpoint, positioning matters. Buyers respond best when they see how your broader privacy support reduces complexity and expense elsewhere. A business owner who once purchased shredding to “check a box” will engage more seriously when you show how integrated privacy practices reduce non-billable time spent chasing documents, prevent costly errors, and speed up sales cycles by easing security questionnaires. Your messaging can shift subtly from “we pick up and shred” to “we help you run leaner and safer by turning destruction into the anchor of a simple, sustainable privacy program.” You are still selling tangible services; you’re just articulating the outcome more clearly.
Will This Distract from Core Operations?
One concern providers sometimes voice is, “Will this distract us from our core destruction operations?” In practice, it tends to reinforce them. When privacy and destruction are aligned, clients become more disciplined about segregation of materials, retention periods, and scheduling, which streamlines routing and increases predictability for your teams. Documentation improves, which reduces invoicing disputes and clarifies scope. And because your relationship expands to include compliance and operations stakeholders, you’re less exposed to churn when a single point of contact changes roles. In competitive markets, that resilience is an advantage.
Differentiation in a Price-Driven Market
Commodity markets gravitate toward price. Privacy partnerships gravitate toward proof. When you demonstrate that your services tie directly to a client’s ability to pass audits, close deals with privacy-conscious customers, and recover quickly from incidents, price comparisons lose force. You shift the conversation from “Who is five dollars cheaper per console?” to “Who can help us stay compliant and confident without adding staff?” That’s a more defensible position and one that better reflects the real value you provide.
Enable Your Own Team First
To support this strategy, invest in enablement for your own team. Your drivers, warehouse staff, and customer service reps are often the first to spot process breakdowns at a client site – open containers, untrained staff, misplaced boxes. Equip them with a simple framework for flagging issues and a friendly script for raising them with the client: “We noticed X; here’s why it matters; here’s how we can help you tighten it up.” Encourage your sales team to ask open-ended questions about flows, not just volumes: “How do new customer records enter your system?” “Who signs off on destruction schedules?” “Which vendors touch your data?” Those questions invite conversations that lead naturally from destruction to privacy, from service to partnership.
Start Small: Practical First Steps
For firms just beginning this journey, the first step can be refreshingly small. Start by reframing your discovery conversations and proposals in lifecycle terms. Add a paragraph that situates destruction within the broader privacy picture and outlines how your team can help with policy, training, vendor oversight, and incident readiness. Pilot a lightweight training series with a few customers and collect feedback. Offer to review retention schedules during contract renewal discussions. Build a simple client privacy checklist you can complete during site visits – nothing fancy, just consistent. Each of these steps tells the market, and your own organization, that you are serious about privacy as an integrated practice.
Mature the Model: Formalize the Identity
As you gain traction, formalize your privacy partner identity. Adjust your marketing materials to speak to outcomes and lifecycle alignment, not just hardware, routes, and bins. Collect a couple of short customer stories that illustrate the difference this approach makes: a client who reduced retention risk and cleaned up their storeroom, a client who passed a supply-chain privacy review thanks to better documentation, a client who handled an incident calmly with your guidance. These stories are powerful because they’re practical.
Keep the Thread: Privacy Is Integral to Shredding
Above all, keep the thread intact: privacy is integral to shredding, and shredding is integral to privacy. The two reinforce each other. Secure destruction without privacy practices upstream is a locked door on a house with open windows. Privacy practices without disciplined destruction leave sensitive material lingering past its useful life, waiting to create trouble. When you deliver both, and when you anchor privacy in the operational reality of destruction, you provide clients with something rare and valuable – a program that actually works in the day-to-day, not just on paper.
Build Resilience as the Market Evolves
The market will continue to shift. Regulations evolve, buyer expectations rise, and digital complexity creeps into every function. But providers who embrace the privacy partner mindset build resilience into their businesses. They become indispensable to customers not only because they handle a crucial task reliably, but because they help those customers make sense of risk and turn it into manageable work. That’s the essence of partnership. It’s consultative without the jargon, operational without the busywork, and grounded in the simple promise that has always defined the best destruction firms: we will protect you.
Level Up with Proof and Partnership
Leveling up doesn’t require reinventing your company. It requires articulating what your best customers already sense – that your services do more than remove material. They reduce exposure, create clarity, and build trust. When you align those outcomes with clear packages, practical tools, and consistent measurement, you don’t just defend margins; you expand your role. You move from vendor to partner. And in a world where privacy is a business imperative, that’s not only a stronger position – it’s the right one.