Palm Harbor Carpet Cleaners Palm Harbor, FL

Carpet cleaner says happy customers are key

Kevin McCreary says he's lived the American dream, building up a carpet cleaning company from nothing but the right attitude. "I was down to my last $100 in 1990, and I started pounding the streets looking for business," he says. "I started from nothing and built it up into a million-dollar company."

Castle Keepers currently employs four full-time staff and several part-timers as needed. "I pride myself on being a small company," McCreary, the owner, says. "We've intentionally stayed that way because businesses can sometimes grow out of control. With us, you can talk directly to the owner, 24 hours a day."

McCreary is a certified master cleaner and restorer with the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification, and all his employees are certified technicians. "They've been trained to identify carpet fibers and the best methods to care for that fiber with the least amount of risk," he says.

Angie's List member Jeff Kee of St. Petersburg hired them to deep-clean his new condo's carpet of its heavy traffic stains. "They went over the troublesome areas several times to get he stains out," he says. "They were very honest and didn't try to add any other costs; they stuck with the original quoted price."

The company expanded beyond carpet cleaning into water damage restoration, which currently makes up a large portion of its business. McCreary is particularly proud of the methods and technology he's developed to deal with certain problems.

"I created a kit that can force air into a wall cavity by only drilling a hole the size of the end of a pencil," he says. "You just caulk over it and you're done, without any structural damage or tearing out baseboards. We can dry a building, and you'd never know we were there."

He credits much of his company's success to the small-business philosophy and their experience.

"We've seen just about every situation that can come up," he says. "We know how the carpet and fibers will respond to particular types of cleaning. We let the carpet talk to us.