Today we’d like to introduce you to Alan Trombetsky.
Hi Alan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve been cleaning carpets for over 20 years. I started out working for other people, learning the trade the hard way — on my knees, in real houses, with real messes.
What I figured out early is that most people don’t actually care about the machine you roll through the door. They care whether you show up when you said you would, whether you treat their home like it matters, and whether the job’s actually done when you leave. That’s it. That’s the whole business.
I’m not going to pretend the road here was a straight line. It wasn’t. I got sober in 2016, and that changed everything about how I run a business. Before that, I was chasing the money. After that, I started chasing the work itself — doing it right, being the guy who answers the phone, being someone people can count on. The money followed. It always does when you stop making it the point.
So I built Carpet Restoration Plus around that. I’m personally on every single job. No subcontractors, no rotating crew of strangers, no upselling somebody into something they don’t need. If you book me, you get me. We’re IICRC certified and we serve about ten towns around Hamilton and Mercer County, and we’ve got 190-plus Google reviews that I’m honestly pretty proud of, because every one of them came from a job I did myself.
Today I’m still out there in people’s homes every week, and I also create content around recovery on the side. Different work, same principle: the more I give, the more comes back. That’s not a slogan for me. It’s just what I’ve watched happen for ten years
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
No, it hasn’t been smooth. I don’t think it’s smooth for anybody who’s actually building something instead of just talking about it.
The first real struggle was me. Before I got sober, I was showing up to the work but I wasn’t showing up to the business. There’s a difference. You can be good at the job and still be the reason the whole thing keeps stalling out. Once I got honest about that, everything else became a solvable problem instead of a mystery.
After that, the challenges were the normal ones nobody warns you about. Cash flow in this trade isn’t a straight line — summer and fall are busy, and then January shows up and you’d better have planned for it. That took me a few years to stop being surprised by.
Being a one-man operation is the other one. I’m the technician, the scheduler, the guy who answers the phone at 8pm, the invoicing department, and the marketing department. When I’m on a job, nobody’s answering the phone, and when I’m answering the phone, I’m not earning. That’s just the math of it, and you either build systems around it or it eats you.
And then there’s the price thing. Everybody in this industry has to compete with the $59-whole-house ads, and I’ve watched customers get hit with a bill three times that once the tech is already in the door. I won’t do it. So I’ve lost jobs to guys who quoted lower and I’ve had to be okay with that.
The thing that carried me through all of it is pretty simple. I stopped trying to be the cheapest and started trying to be the one people call back. Twenty years in, most of my work now comes from people I’ve already cleaned for or someone they told. That’s the payoff for doing it the slow way.
As you know, we’re big fans of Carpet Restoration Plus . For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Carpet Restoration Plus is a carpet cleaning company based in Hamilton, New Jersey, and I’ve been doing this work for over 20 years.
We clean carpet and upholstery, and we also handle air duct return cleaning and dryer vent cleaning. I’m IICRC certified for the carpet and upholstery side and C-DET certified for dryer vents, which matters more than most people realize — dryer vents are a fire hazard, not a cosmetic thing, and a lot of companies bundle them in without knowing what they’re actually looking at.
What sets us apart isn’t a machine or a chemical. It’s that I’m the one doing the work. Every job, every time. No subcontractors, no crew of guys I’ve never met wearing my name on a shirt. When you book Carpet Restoration Plus, you’re getting a guy with two decades in who’s going to treat your living room like he has to come back to it.
The other thing is honest pricing. I quote you before I start, and that number is the number. Nobody in my truck is trained to find a reason to double the bill once they’re inside your house. I’ve built the whole business on not doing that.
We serve about ten towns across Mercer County, and we’ve got over 190 Google reviews — which I’m probably prouder of than anything else, because I did every single one of those jobs myself. That’s not a marketing number. That’s 190 people who let me in their home and would let me back in.
If there’s one thing I want your readers to take away, it’s this: hiring somebody to clean your home is a trust thing before it’s a price thing. Find someone who’s going to still be around next year and who answers his own phone. Mine’s 609-334-4049.
How do you define success?
Success used to mean the number. How much did I make this week, this month, this year. And I chased that for a long time and never once felt like I’d caught it, because the number always moves.
Now I define it a lot smaller and a lot simpler. Success is somebody calling me back three years later because they remembered how I treated them the first time. That’s the whole scoreboard for me.
I measure it a few other ways too. Did I keep my word today. Did I quote a fair price and stick to it. Did I leave that house better than I found it. If the answer’s yes on all three, that was a successful day whether the invoice was big or small.
The other piece is freedom, and I mean that in a real way, not a motivational-poster way. Being able to take the call, do the work, and go home without owing anybody an explanation or an apology. Twenty years ago that wasn’t my life. Being able to say it is now — that’s success I don’t take lightly.
And honestly, the biggest one: the more I give, the more I receive. I’ve watched that be true over and over. Not as a theory. As a pattern. When I stop trying to extract something from every interaction and just do good work for people, the business takes care of itself. Every time I’ve gotten away from that, things have gotten harder. Every time I’ve come back to it, they’ve gotten easier.
So success isn’t a finish line for me. It’s just whether I’m still that guy today.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://carpetrestorationplus.com
- Other: https://www.google.com/maps/search/?api=1&query=Carpet%20Restoration%20Plus%20365%20Newkirk%20Ave%20Hamilton%20NJ&query_place_id=ChIJTfVMwBBYwYkR6UEzrp2rBbo
