11/07/2011

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Marcus Leach, Fresh Business Thinking:
Hello and welcome to our viewers. Today we are joined by Jason Mohr, founder and Managing Director of Anyjunk.co.uk. He is here to share his success story with us. First of all welcome Jason. You trained as a solicitor and worked in Corporate Finance, what was it that inspired you to leave the corporate world and found your own company?

Jason Mohr, Founder of anyjunk.co.uk:
I never really enjoyed working for other people. I think that was the key driver. I wanted to go out there and build something myself and prove that I could do it on my own.

Marcus Leach:
What was the inspiration to go down the waste recycling route?

Jason Mohr:
The junk route! When I left Rothschild I had a list of four different sectors that I was interested in and I just looked at each of them and waste was one of them. It was a sector that had achieved a lot of change both regulatory and operational. While researching that area I came across a North American company which was essentially a branded junk removal business. It was a relatively large one with 200 million U.S sales with a franchise structure and I thought I can do that! It's pretty accessible and there was definitely a space over here for that service.

Marcus Leach:
Once you had identified the market over here for that service, how did you go about developing the idea into a reality? What was the process?

Jason Mohr:
There was quite a lot of analysis and being from a Corporate Finance background I was very anal about what was out there and how to do it, so I researched the North American model in a lot of depth, even contacting the people who produce the trucks for them. Then I rang around locally finding out the alternatives available using the yellow pages. It was all Yellow Pages in those days, I'm not that old and neither is the company but the web was pretty basic in terms of service searching. I rang around and saw what was offered. I checked out skip prices and spoke to associated businesses. So I spoke to a lot of people in self storage, in traditional removals and in waste. I was finding out whether there was a demand for our service and in principle it seemed to be the case that there was. So we got our first truck out on the road and went out and tested it.

Marcus Leach:
One of the biggest problems that we see with people trying to set up their own businesses is raising the capital. They have got the idea but not the capital behind it. How did you address that?

Jason Mohr:
Well, two ways. One is that I had some capital that is obviously pretty helpful. That is obviously a benefit of being a banker for a few years. The other is that I chose a business that didn't require very much. Essentially one truck doesn't cost very much and the overheads are very limited we had one cheap space in South London and it was me on the first truck with a guy straight out of uni getting paid £9 per hour. He'll probably say £6 per hour!

Marcus Leach:
As the business started to grow and take off were there any challenges along the way that you face and if so how did you overcome those?

Jason Mohr:
There were a lot of challenges. One of the big stresses of setting your own business particularly if you have come from an environment where you used to get paid a reasonable amount of money and you have a certain lifestyle is the thought is this thing going to deliver. You wake up in the middle of the night thinking, I've got one van and no bookings in the diary, this is looking pretty tragic. That's a big pressure on you particularly having peers who are doing 'proper jobs' and they are almost waiting for you to bugger up. There are plenty of others but that was the biggest.

Marcus Leach:
From your experience working in the corporate world do you feel any of the skills you acquired there were transferable or was it a case of you learning as you went along with your own business.

Jason Mohr:
No, definitely. It really really helped that I was the age I was, I was 34 when I started it. I had been in a professional environment and spoken to some pretty serious people so I was used to presenting myself professionally. I was very analytical and rigorous about how I approached things so there weren't too many gaps when I launched the business and when I was doing it I maintained that whole culture of trying to deliver a phenomenal service which sounds like (one of those things) you hear all the time 'I recommend great service....' But in a merchant bank when you are delivering a product to a customer, corporate finance is a product or a service then everything you do, down to the typos on page 50 of a document have to be right. If you apply that rigor to a business then the chances of it buggering up are less so that helps. It also helped that I had a bit of credibility, it opened up doors with large corporates that I wouldn't have got otherwise. Early on we got friendships with self storage companies and removal companies through the head office. Where as if I had done it straight out of uni and rung them up they would have said good luck goodbye.

Marcus Leach:
What is your focus in trying to set yourself out from your competitors? What is it that you feel that makes you the better option?

Jason Mohr:
There are two bits in terms of what we offer. One is that we put ourselves out as being the best service solution and the most responsible so we are green, we recycle etc. and we completely deliver on our service promises. But in a larger context we are the largest operator in the UK, we have national coverage. There are definitely some gaps but we have a national footprint. There is no supplier out there offering a national solution so if you are a large corporate wanting to deal with one single supplier clearing all your junky ad hoc waste then Anyjunk is the one for you. Otherwise you are faced with a myriad of different local skip companies or subcontracted man and van organisations and you can't guarantee good service and it's hard to interact with them and get feedback so it's scale on one and service and responsible disposal on the other.

Marcus Leach:
As a successful entrepreneur, you've obviously started your own business and it has become very successful. What is the motivation that continues to drive you forwards now?

Jason Mohr:
Well it's funny you should say successful, we are profitable and we are growing, that's good. Clearly we are doing well in the junk removal space. But it's a very very big market and we have a tiny bit of it. It's very fragmented, imagine all the skips out there. Every year there are roughly 40 million skips hired in the UK and we do about 35 or 40 000 collections so it's a massive market. Any junk will be a good business in my mind if we reach the 50 million plus bracket rather than where we are at the minute which is around 5 million. So that is the goal, I want to have something which is a household name and we are not there yet despite being in The Apprentice.

Marcus Leach:
From your own experiences what do you feel you have learned that would be valuable to other entrepreneurs looking to go down the same route as you.

Jason Mohr:
It's hard to chose one thing that I have learnt. I think it's more that if I started out again and anyone else that is considering starting out. I think the most important thing you can do is sit down and really decide what you want out of the project, personally and as a company. Because a lot of people go in to it not really knowing what they want to achieve, is it that they want to become a millionaire, a ten-millionaire or someone that just wants a nice little income and has a really good balanced life. Most people are a bit confused about that, they just like the idea of being free. They have an idea but don't really have a clear vision. So I would say have a clear vision before you start.

Marcus Leach:
Okay lovely. Well thank you for joining us Jason and we wish you continued success.

Jason Mohr:
Thank you.


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