[lcwalker]

Self taught?
How pathetic is that? The last thing this industry needs is yet another amateur carpet cleaner posing as a professional. Don't you think that your customers have a right to expect you to know what you're doing when they book you, because they won't be expecting someone to turn up to clean their carpets who hasn't got a clue and is merely using their job as a learning experience. If When you start ruining people's carpets and when they come to you expecting you to rectify or replace them, you'll soon wish you had spent what is a paltry sum of money getting proper training.

Simon

Firstly i haven't started anything ive joined here to do some research, not to be told in as many words im pathetic.Im also self taught in car mechanics and done many cam belt changes without ruining engines.Im gratefull on the advice you have given but i dont really like the way you have put it, it would have been better to encourage me rather than try to make me out as pathetic.

[Steve Barnett (Carpet Care Plus)]

LC

What Simon is saying is that our trade is blighted by a never ending stream of guys that pick up a cheap machine on ebay, get some leaflets printed and then call themselves carpet cleaners. They then ruin customers carpets and give the rest of us professionals a bad name, we then have to re-educate the public all over again about the benefits of hiring a professional rather than hiring a rug doctor and doing it themselves.

If you are still in the research stage then I would urge you to attend even a 1 day course, which would set you back about £100. This will give you a small insight into the industry and the possible pitfalls of attempting certain jobs without the proper knowledge.

Armed with this information you can then make an informed decision as to whether to proceed with the expensive process of buying decent equipment and marketing this side of your business.

In my experience though you won't earn a decent living trying to do this part-time.

Steve

[derek west]

doesn't the fact that your self taught in so many professions and yet not fully successful in any of them, and now your looking round for something else to add on to make up your wages, doesn't that tell you something?

decide what you want to do, wether it be gardening, mechanics, painting, window cleaning, or even carpet cleaning, put all your efforts into it, including the best training possible, (its free if you look carefully for it) not just for the job but for marketting and general running of your business, even web design and stuff comes in handy. once youve done that you shouldn,t need to look for other ways to make money.

there are loads of successful gardeners out there who aren't looking at anything else to add on cos there to busy. bet they studied not just how to cut grass but have a knowledge of plants shrubs and everything else that contributes to being a success. you can't learn on the job what time of year a rhodidandrum needs planting

just the same, you can't learn on the job why a B/W will shrink, and yes, you can wet clean them.

training gives you confidence which the customer notices.
training gives you a better result.
training speeds you up.
training is paramount to every successful busines in my eyes.
training my friend, is a must.

derek

[lcwalker]

LC

What Simon is saying is that our trade is blighted by a never ending stream of guys that pick up a cheap machine on ebay, get some leaflets printed and then call themselves carpet cleaners. They then ruin customers carpets and give the rest of us professionals a bad name, we then have to re-educate the public all over again about the benefits of hiring a professional rather than hiring a rug doctor and doing it themselves.

If you are still in the research stage then I would urge you to attend even a 1 day course, which would set you back about £100. This will give you a small insight into the industry and the possible pitfalls of attempting certain jobs without the proper knowledge.

Armed with this information you can then make an informed decision as to whether to proceed with the expensive process of buying decent equipment and marketing this side of your business.

In my experience though you won't earn a decent living trying to do this part-time.

Steve

Thanks steve nicely put very similar to what simon put but in a much nicer way, thats my whole point of joining this forum for the imformation first, is there any training coarse's in the suffolk area you know of thanks

[Simon Gerrard]

Teaching yourself about car mechanics, or anything else for that matter, including carpet cleaning, is fine, as long as you do it on your own stuff and not other people's But thinking of going out to supposedly professional clean people's carpets and use the whole thing as a learning experience is in my opinion, not only pathetic, but deeply unprofessional. Sorry if you don't like that but there you have it.
Don't you see, if you learn by your mistakes, which is all you can do when you don't know what you're supposed to be doing in the first place, means that all of your mistakes will be made on other peoples expensive furnishings and they will have to suffer the consequences - how morally right is that.

Prochem do excellent carpet cleaning courses, as do many others, do yourself and your potential victims a favour and do one.

[lcwalker]

Teaching yourself about car mechanics, or anything else for that matter, including carpet cleaning, is fine, as long as you do it on your own stuff and not other people's But thinking of going out to supposedly professional clean people's carpets and use the whole thing as a learning experience is in my opinion, not only pathetic, but deeply unprofessional. Sorry if you don't like that but there you have it.
Don't you see, if you learn by your mistakes, which is all you can do when you don't know what you're supposed to be doing in the first place, means that all of your mistakes will be made on other peoples expensive furnishings and they will have to suffer the consequences - how morally right is that.

Prochem do excellent carpet cleaning courses, as do many others, do yourself and your potential victims a favour and do one.

Thanks for that better put and more helpfull, actually i have work on customers cars with my self taught knowledge, but thats a different matter you have experiance in carpet cleaning so thats who i want to read advice from thats why i joined.If i decide to go further in this field i dont want to be a fligh by night carpet shrinker i do want to do it the right way, perhaps ive been lucky up to now as i have had no costly mistakes, i still belive self taught can be done, but in certain ocupations perhaps not, and from what i have read carpet cleaning maybe one of them so thanks to you all.

[Steve Barnett (Carpet Care Plus)]

LC

Alltec do training courses, they are based in Royston, Cambridgeshire - not a million miles from you, might be worth a call to them.

Steve

[lcwalker]

LC

Alltec do training courses, they are based in Royston, Cambridgeshire - not a million miles from you, might be worth a call to them.

Steve

Thanks i know where royston is thanks for your help

[Peter Sweeney]

LC

Drop me an email, I might be able to help you ou a bit more.

Pete

pete@oakleafcc.co.uk

[Simon Gerrard]

What you've got to realise is that there is hardly a day goes by that we don't have someone tell us some horror story about the last time they had their carpet cleaned, most often that their carpet was wet for days afterwards and when it finally dried look no better than before. That is not only bad for the carpet cleaner who did the job, as he will never see that customer again, but it is also bad for our industry because every time that customer hears of someone else thinking of having their carpet cleaned, she'll recount her last encounter with a supposedly professional carpet cleaner and put the person off. We all get tarred by the same brush and that is why you will get a hostile reception when suggesting that you can teach yourself carpet cleaning, because most of the guy's giving us all a bad name are probably self-taught too.
Carpet cleaning isn't like mowing grass, if you cut it wrong, or damage it, it will grow back and cover your mistake, damage a carpet and the chances are it will be permanent.

Simon

[Doug Holloway]

Hi Guys

Some good advice if a little aggressive !

Most of us older guys, if we are honest are largely self taught as the training was fairly basic when we started.

I was 'lucky' enough to start a a youngster, filling buckets and laying the pile down and learnt from the more expereienced guys but it was still a very steep learning curve once I went out on my own.

It is important to know the basics before you start, there are various courses  and then to attend more advanced training and other industry days.

I am still learning after 25plus years.

Cheers

Doug

[clinton]

Icwalker

Simon is right about the prochem training course and they are also a  well known name in the chemical sales side too

[Simon Gerrard]

In my early years, I do so many training courses that the then Managing Director of Prochem, wondered what the hell I was doing sitting there on the front row every January doing the same three courses I had done the previous January. I explained that you are only ever as good as you know your basics, he agreed.
We all learn from experience to a point, like Doug says, we are still learning today, thirty odd years after having started out. But when starting out we have little experience to go on and so, inevitably, make mistakes which we then learn from, but those mistakes are far fewer and far less serious than if we had never learned the basics at the outset.

Simon

[lcwalker]

In my early years, I do so many training courses that the then Managing Director of Prochem, wondered what the hell I was doing sitting there on the front row every January doing the same three courses I had done the previous January. I explained that you are only ever as good as you know your basics, he agreed.
We all learn from experience to a point, like Doug says, we are still learning today, thirty odd years after having started out. But when starting out we have little experience to go on and so, inevitably, make mistakes which we then learn from, but those mistakes are far fewer and far less serious than if we had never learned the basics at the outset.

Simon

So when you started out did you start straight away on your own or with someone else, and how long did it take you to know the basics,How many day coarse? and is the basic coarse enough to start on your own?.

[Ryan Smyth]

What is the definition of a "professional carpet cleaner" 1 days training and off you go?
Why are the majority of carpet cleaning courses 1 day? Are there any other "professions" you can learn in 1 day? All this talk of carpet cleaning being a profession and carpet cleaning "technicians" its not a trade where there is a 3 or 5 year apprenticeship nor is it a profession like accountancy, law or engineering its carpet cleaning 1 day and away you go....

Ryan

[Simon Gerrard]

Any good carpet cleaning course will teach you the basics; carpet construction, fibre identification, the proper use of chemicals and where and how to use them and the basics of how to clean carpets properly,  etc etc.
Knowing the basics is one thing, applying them is quite another and that is where experience starts to play into the equation.
I did pretty much as you are, by doing research and finding out what my competitors were doing and how I could better them. I bought all of the right equipment and long before I trusted myself to go out and clean other people's carpet, I cleaned my own, relatives and friends for free. It's a big day when you go out and clean your first carpet on your own. If you get it right, you can stay in business until the next day, but ruin a carpet on day one and have an irate customer demanding a new carpet and there may be no day two. I don't know what day number I'm on to day, but I've never ruined a carpet, yes, I've made mistakes, but thankfully those mistakes have been few and far between and I'm still here over thirty years later and I put that down to training.

Simon

[lcwalker]

What is the definition of a "professional carpet cleaner" 1 days training and off you go?
Why are the majority of carpet cleaning courses 1 day? Are there any other "professions" you can learn in 1 day? All this talk of carpet cleaning being a profession and carpet cleaning "technicians" its not a trade where there is a 3 or 5 year apprenticeship nor is it a profession like accountancy, law or engineering its carpet cleaning 1 day and away you go....

Ryan

Hi exactly what i was thinking.

[Simon Gerrard]

Admittedly, carpet cleaning is not rocket science; it is the application of some fairly basic principles, however, those principles are not learned in a day, a week or a month. If you do a one, or two day training course you will come away with the basic knowledge of how to clean a carpet and that knowledge will help you avoid many of the pitfalls that others fall into. There are at least seven different ways of wet cleaning a carpet that I know of, and you have to know all seven and know which is best and safest for a broad range of carpets and there respective soil conditions. It's not just a matter of doing a course and off you go. You have to take way what you have learned and then learn how and when to apply it.

Customers quite rightly expect that when they book a carpet cleaner, he will be someone with the expertise to be able to identify the carpet and understand how best to clean it and not for him to clean it like the last one he did which may be an entirely different kettle of fish. It may look like you could teach monkeys to professionally clean carpets, but only monkeys believe that.

[daysdeepclean]

A 1 day course isn't enough unless you've had comprehensive work experience with a professional C/C. A one day course will give you a better understanding of the principals in Carpet Cleaning, but it won't make you a professional. But if you just go in thinking that it's all just childs play, then it will cost you a whole lot more than your £100 course.

We (Newbies and Prospective Carpet Cleaners) should count ourselves lucky that the "Old and Bold" successful carpet cleaners like Simon and so many on here offer us any advice at all. 20 Years ago it would never have happened. Whether you like what is said or not, take the advice and use it to make the right decisions in building or starting a lucrative business in Carpet Cleaning. Or perhaps in this threads case, impoving your gardening services and leave the Carpet Cleaning to those of us who take it seriously!

[HQCS (John Kastrian)]

Well I reckon there must be a lot of monkeys on here then  
Icwalker,don't be put off by any negative comments you read here.
Whether peeps like to admit it or not carpet cleaning must be one of the easiest trades to set up.
You don't need any formal qualifications,all you need is a van and a half decent machine,a bit of training to set you on the right path and away you go,I bet this is how the vast majority of ccs started out.
Carpet cleaning is a bit like driving,you don't start learning anything until after you have passed your test.
You will never be able to sit down and say that's it "I now know everything there is to know",although you will always meet some people that believe they do  
Good luck with whatever road you decide to venture down.
John