Hi Steve,
I’ve been pretty beat up lately by life and especially so when I see others like you that evidently became wealthy from this business. So, Steve, can you give me a time-line on your success? I’m getting a bit worried about WHEN I can feel like a “success”. Just how did you get started in the first place? Did you start with a portable or did you jump right in with a truck mount ? Did you get experience as a tech or start out self taught on your own? Part time or full time ? Did you use “word of mouth” or spend big bucks on advertising?
And one more question that is very important to me right now: Would you recommend this occupation?
Feeling Downtrodden Here in Tennessee
Hey, Feeling,
Careful now, you’re going to get me all nostalgic and that is a dangerous thing. Let me see what I can remember. (I’ve sniffed a lot of solvents over the years and popped a few “adult beverages”, neither one of which are good for memory cells!)
1970- I started a part-time janitorial service when I was 17.
1972- My partner to be convinced me that this new fangled “steam cleaning” was the way to go. So I bought a extremely under-powered Castex 700 and started seriously under charging while over-wetting carpets.
1975- Newly married, Sioux and I moved to a small mountain town in Colorado called “Durango” with the explicit goal of cleaning carpets part time and skiing full time which by the way still sounds like a great idea! (Our rent was 75.00 per month.) I was still suckered into thinking people would not pay for quality carpet cleaning. (Maybe because I could not provide it.)
1978- I took on a partner who was my best friend. He “bought into the business” with 400.00 cash and a old army surplus van. Incredibly, we remained best friends and are still so today. (Even more surprisingly, his wife and my wife are good friends too.) Also I believe in 1978 he and I attended our first wonderful ASCR convention. (Back then known by the unfortunate acronym AIDS.)
1979- Very stupidly, we said, “How hard can it be to make up one of those ‘truck mounts’? After all, they are just a motor, a pump and a vacuum.” After six months, many thousands of dollars, several design revisions and a trip to the emergency room for my partner when our home-made vacuum tank blew up, we had a truck mount that ran … sort of.
1981- Bought our first of many professionally engineered and built truck mounts. We also ventured timidly into fire and water damage restoration.
1984- Bought my partner out. (He had to return to Texas to care for his aging parents.) I continued painfully and slowly growing, with two truck mounts and three or four techs in my kitchen each day. (Sioux was not happy.)
1986- Bought a 6,000′ office/warehouse (at 13% interest) and moved the company into it. I struggled incredibly to change from a “hip pocket type” of operation into a real business. Then completely by accident I read the “E-Myth” while on a white water raft trip on the Dolores River. Then I re-read it again and again. I also encountered a book called “Service America” focused on the crazy notion of consistently pleasing customers so incredibly they would actually go out of their way to recommend you.
1986-1991 I applied the principles in both of these books and many others and became, if not a management expert, at least something more than “just a rug-sucker”. Our company grew rapidly to sixteen employees, nine vehicles (including a 26′ moving truck) and four truck mounts doing $750,000.00 yearly with a very nice profit margin and LOTS of “owner benefits”. (Remember that 750K a year back in 1991 translates into well over $1,000,000.00 today which for a total market base of 30,000 people is not bad!)
Early 1991- I woke up one day and decided I didn’t want to live, breathe, sleep, eat and obsess over running an intense 24-7 emergency services business anymore. Put the business up for sale confidentially.
November 22, 1991- I sold the business for 97% cash up front and a “substantial profit” over what I had paid my partner seven years earlier. (And he is still one of my best friends!)
November 23, 1991 onward- FREEDOM!
October 1, 1994- I moved to live in the Dominican Republic with my family. Life has been good. It’s great to be free from the demands and daily problems of employees. Finally I’m living the old maxim, “find a job that you love and you will never work another day in your life!” This saying applies to me both in my volunteer work I do AND the privilege I have with Jon-Don of helping others through this site and our SFS seminar.
Carpet cleaning was very good to me. Would I do it again? Absolutely! But hopefully smarter and learning sooner from the mistakes and triumphs of others. (You know, Feeling, I totally admit that much of our SFS seminar consists of the bone-headed mistakes I made and the desperate solutions I came up with to get myself out of them!)
Nostalgically submitted,
Steve Toburen
PS Education is still the best investment you will ever make, Feeling. This is not necessarily a “get-rich-quick” business. But on the other hand I did not have the SFS seminar or this web site either! IF you take advantage of these resources you should leave me in your dust! Happy to help!
