Checkmate Carpet Cleaning Blog

It all began for me in the 80’s.  Life was great until my mom and dad started Checkmate Janitorial, “the company that defeats all others“. That is when my life became a living nightmare. When I was fifteen, my parents woke me up at 5:00am each morning, before school, so I could clean toilets and mop floors. Not only that but I also I had to work after school and often times in the middle of the night. So much for having a life! Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse my mom came home with a big blue box. She informed me that this wonderful machine was for carpet cleaning. After paying $500 for this hunk of junk she was very motivated to schedule me for even more work. I wanted to change places with anyone in the world at that moment. My nightmare lasted five years. When we left southern California to move to Oregon, we left Checkmate Janitorial behind forever… or so I thought.

Thirteen years later, I came home from work as a Stock Broker Recruiter (I loved that title; it sounds so cool and important). As I came through the door, my wife couldn’t wait to tell me all about our new neighbor who has a carpet cleaning business and makes a lot of money. She was talking to him about starting a business in the service industry and they thought a blind cleaning business might be just the ticket. Thank God – I thought she was going to try to talk to me about carpet cleaning. “Let’s meet John at the cleaning supply company tomorrow and we can get some more information,” she said, and I reluctantly agreed.  At the meeting John talked about blind cleaning and I listened, but then the conversation took a 360 turn towards a truck mounted carpet cleaning system. By the end of the conversation he somehow managed to make carpet cleaning look like it could possibly be a good business for us.

Next thing I knew I had a truck mounted carpet cleaning van in my driveway and NO customers. Two weeks later l lost my job. I took it as a sign that God must want me to start moving forward on building a carpet cleaning business. Against my will, my wife dragged me to a free seminar we got with our truck mount. I soon took every IICRC course that was available. I became a carpet cleaning information addict.

Eight years later we have three thousand residential customers, four Prochem truck mounted vans, one estimating vehicle, a corporate office, three Checkmate locations (Vancouver, Washington & Beaverton and Clackamas, Oregon) and we have a sister company CarpetCleaningTradeSecrets.  We are recommended by over 40 carpet stores, real estate agents, interior designers, builders, Street of Dreams & Parade of Homes. I have been invited to be on over twelve TV shows at no charge, four radio shows.