Starting and Building a Business

I found your questions to be intelligent and I admire your patience with the rude reply.

Sounds to me like you are doing things right. Doing your research ahead of time.

My thoughts on the matter is that you need to decide what your business model is. Do you want to be a sole operator and do all of the work yourself, do you want to start slowly and work up to having employees or do you want to start out more in the managerial position and grow your business? If you are in a position to work for a carpet cleaning business for a while and learn the ropes that would be a good idea. That way you can know better what the pitfalls might be. Also you will be able to say that you have experience in cleaning carpets. The easiest way to get a job with a carpet cleaning company is to take an IICRC carpet cleaning technician class and get your certification. When you apply for a job and you can show you have this certification you will be hired in a snap. I have hired hundreds of employees in the past 34 years and anybody with certification went to the top of my list. In this forum there are a lot of words about customer service etc.. which are all absolutely true and extremely important. Also important is learning marketing. Start spending time now learning about internet marketing. With the right internet marketing you can quickly show up on the first pages where people are looking for your services. If you know you are going to start a carpet cleaning business go ahead and get a domain name now and build a website as soon as possible. This is huge for ranking. How you end up marketing your business depends on many things such as big city or small town, your goals, your budget, the niche you choose, the type of method you use etc... However the internet is going to the foundation for what ever you do. Some people may disagree with me. They may say they are doing fine with just word of mouth referrals etc... Many people have built a website and got nothing out f it because they simply had a site sitting back there in page seven of Google where nobody ever saw them. Learn your internet marketing skills and a website will be the best return on investment there is.

Back a few years ago other marketing worked well such as yellow pages , radio , television all which I used quite successfully. But now they don't work so well and can be a waste of your money depending on your market.

Your original question was about portables.

We use van mounts for 90% of our work.

Expensive to buy, high maintenance but they far outshine any other methods in my considerable experience.

If you are mechanically inclined you might look at purchasing a used van mount system.

For portables my criteria has been at least 150 psi, a water heater heating water to at least 150 degrees enough suction to use at least 20 feet of hose.

If you can afford it  you might get a Rotovac power wand to use on traffic areas or extra dirty areas.

These goes through the water much faster but doe a much better job.

You can get this stuff used as long as you are able to do maintenance yourself. Things do break down a lot.

I always purchased the Mytee brand of portable. I think because they met my criteria and they were the best price I could find at the time. I don't know if they are the best or not. 

Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have. I wish I was as smart as you when I first started my business. I just jumped in head first without knowing anything. Lucky for me it was in Alaska in 1978 when the economy was booming. I might not have made it in an economy like we are currently experiencing. 

That's why I am saying learn marketing.

Good luck.

P.S. Take a look at the rude replier's website "rant" page and you will see what he's about.

Akpowerclean

www.akpowerclean.com