What Effort Means After 23 Years: The Story of Kim Pratt and Colorado Choice Carpet Cleaning

Today, in our Best Stories in Town series, we’re sharing the story of Colorado Choice Carpet Cleaning, an IICRC-certified local business based in Castle Rock that has been serving families across the Denver Metro area for more than 23 years, including homeowners looking for carpet cleaning in Highlands Ranch.

This story is about Kim Pratt, the standards she has carried through more than two decades of work, and the relationships she has built one customer and one home at a time.

We hope you enjoy it.

When Kim Pratt speaks about Colorado Choice Carpet Cleaning, the business she has been building for more than twenty-three years, she does not begin with the company’s trucks, certifications, or the hundreds of reviews customers have left over the years, because for her the meaning of the business seems to exist somewhere deeper, in the effort that has to be repeated every day and in the feeling that, when the work is finished, she has done everything she reasonably could for the person who trusted her with their home.

“It means effort. Every single day,” Kim says, and the longer she talks about her work, the clearer it becomes that effort is not simply a willingness to work hard when a job becomes difficult, but the standard against which she measures the result, the way she communicates with customers, and the reputation that has grown slowly through repeat appointments and recommendations between neighbors.

Colorado Choice began as an extension of a small house-cleaning business, at a time when customers repeatedly asked whether Kim knew someone who could clean their carpets properly, and after seeing enough disappointing work, she began to think that perhaps they could do it better themselves.

“We kept seeing bad carpet cleaning work and honestly thought, we can do better than that.”

At first, carpet cleaning was added to the services they were already providing, but it soon became clear that portable machines were not producing the depth of cleaning Kim wanted to put her name behind, and rather than continue delivering results she considered inadequate, the business invested in its first truck-mounted system.

That investment became a turning point, not only because better equipment made a deeper clean possible, but because the decision reflected the standard Kim would continue to carry into the years that followed: if the work was not good enough, the answer was not to lower expectations, but to become better equipped, better informed, and more capable of producing a result she could stand behind.

One of the moments that helped Kim understand what Colorado Choice could become came when customers began calling after a large national chain had already cleaned their carpets.

The customer had paid for the service, but the carpet still did not look clean, the problem areas remained, and someone else was being asked to try again.

Kim and her team would arrive, assess what had already been done, and often manage to produce the result the customer had expected the first time.

Over time, the company became known locally as the carpet cleaner people called when someone else had failed, or, as Kim puts it, “the carpet cleaner of last resort.”

Those jobs gave her confidence because they showed, again and again, that the team could solve problems other cleaners had left behind.

“We looked at each other and said, we know what we’re doing. We’re really good at this,” she remembers.

What still motivates her after more than two decades is the moment when a customer sees that something they were preparing to replace can still be saved, or when the final result goes further than they thought possible.

“When someone says, ‘I was sure we were going to have to replace this carpet,’ and we save it, that never gets old.”

Sometimes a good cleaning means more than improving the appearance of a room. It can save a homeowner the expense, disruption, and frustration of replacing something they believed was already lost.

Kim has been connected to Castle Rock for more than thirty years, having lived in several homes there, spent time in nearby Conifer, and watched the area grow while still preserving the small-town quality that made it feel different from the larger cities around it.

“This is home,” she says.

That connection matters because Colorado Choice is not a company serving a distant market from the outside. It operates in the same community where Kim has lived, where neighbors recommend businesses to one another, and where a company’s reputation travels quickly.

“We’re not a company that came in from outside. We are part of this community.”

When a customer recommends Colorado Choice to a friend, relative, or neighbor, Kim understands that the recommendation carries more weight than an online lead, because the person making it is placing part of their own reputation behind the company.

People do not recommend a local service provider lightly, especially when that provider will be entering someone else’s home, which is why Kim sees referrals as one of the strongest expressions of confidence the business can receive.

“You can’t build twenty-three years on one-time customers,” she says. “The business works when people come back again and again, and when they refer their friends and neighbors.”

For Kim, the company’s reviews are not simply numbers displayed online. They represent customers who felt comfortable enough with the experience to tell someone else that Colorado Choice was worth calling.

When someone invites a service provider into their home, the appointment often begins long before any cleaning equipment is turned on, because the customer may already feel anxious about the condition of the carpet, frustrated after trying to solve the problem themselves, or embarrassed by what has happened inside their home.

“The first thing I want them to feel is comfortable,” Kim says. “When someone invites you into their home, they’re trusting you. That’s not something we take lightly.”

One experience has stayed with her for around fifteen years.

A customer had broken her leg and could no longer get her dog outside quickly enough, which resulted in accidents throughout the bedroom. By the time Kim arrived, the customer was mortified.

Kim’s first response was not to judge the condition of the room or make the situation feel worse, but to tell her that it was a no-guilt zone.

“We’ve seen everything. We’re just here to take care of it.”

After the cleaning was finished, the woman hugged Kim and told her that she felt clean again.

She still calls Colorado Choice every year.

“It’s not carpet. It’s people feeling good in their own home again,” Kim says.

That story has remained with her because it shows how personal this kind of work can become. The service may be carpet cleaning, but the customer may be looking for relief from a problem that has affected how they feel in their own home.

After more than twenty-three years in the industry, Kim knows that not every stain can be removed and not every carpet can be returned to its original condition, regardless of how experienced the cleaner is or how advanced the equipment may be.

What a company can always control, however, is the honesty it gives the customer and the effort it brings to the job.

“People don’t expect miracles. They expect honesty and effort.”

Doing the job properly means having a plan for the particular carpet, stain, and condition in front of her, rather than treating every appointment as though it were exactly the same, and it also means communicating openly about what can realistically be achieved.

Kim says the company often holds itself to a higher standard than the customer expects, which is reflected in a phrase the team uses internally:

“If we can’t get it out, it can’t be gotten out.”

The phrase is not intended as a promise that every stain will disappear, but as an assurance that the team will use its knowledge and experience before concluding that nothing more can be done.

That same mindset shapes the way Kim approaches professional certification. She has relied on IICRC standards for decades and still refers to them as a practical guide rather than treating certification as something earned once and then forgotten.

“The day you think you know everything is the day you start cutting corners.”

For Kim, experience does not remove the need to continue learning, because materials change, methods improve, and every home presents its own conditions.

Kim has spent enough time in the industry to see companies advertise extremely low prices, only to add unexpected charges once they arrive at the customer’s home.

She believes that approach may succeed in generating a single appointment, but it cannot create the confidence required to build a lasting local business.

“The bait-and-switch model might get you a job, but it destroys your reputation.”

Colorado Choice gives customers a price by phone before the appointment, and Kim says that in approximately ninety-seven percent of cases, the price quoted is the amount the customer ultimately pays.

Kim does not claim that Colorado Choice is the cheapest company in the market, nor does she believe the highest price automatically represents the best service.

“We’re not the highest priced and we’re not the lowest. But we genuinely believe we offer the best value of any carpet cleaner in the market.”

She wishes more homeowners would look beyond the advertised price and consider the experience of the company, its certifications, reputation, what is actually included in the service, and whether the final bill is likely to match what was promised.

“I don’t think many carpet cleaning jobs should cost seven or eight hundred dollars,” she says. “But I also don’t think a seventy-nine-dollar special is going to get your carpets actually clean.”

For Kim, the most honest answer lies somewhere between those extremes, in a service that is priced fairly and delivers a result the customer feels is worth paying for.

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

When Kim first entered the business, customers usually found local service providers through the Yellow Pages and personal recommendations, while today the same search may begin with Google, an AI Overview, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, a local directory, or a map result.

She sees the change as significant enough that local business owners cannot afford to dismiss it as a passing trend.

“If you’re a local business and you’re not paying attention to how AI is changing the way customers find services, you need to wake up right now.”

The way people search is changing, but Kim believes the businesses that consistently do good work will still have something meaningful for those systems to recognize.

The platforms may change, but customers are still looking for someone who communicates clearly, respects their home, provides honest pricing, and does the work properly.

Kim wants Colorado Choice to continue improving across carpet cleaning, upholstery, tile, hardwood, and the other services the company provides, while also expanding the number of trucks in operation.

Her goal is to double the fleet approximately every eighteen months, but she does not see growth as something that can be separated from the quality of the customer experience.

“There’s no reason we can’t be the best provider of these services in our market. Not close to the best, the best.”

For Kim, that ambition does not mean becoming the largest company at any cost. It means becoming more capable while preserving the honesty, effort, and local relationships that allowed the business to grow in the first place.

When customers think about Colorado Choice after the team leaves their home, she hopes they remember that they received real value, that the service was professional, that the experience was positive, and that the people doing the work genuinely cared.

“If someone can say those four things about us after we leave their home, we did our job.”

Asked what advice she would give another owner-operator trying to build a long-term local business, Kim returns to the lesson she wishes she had understood more clearly twenty years ago: place the highest possible level of customer service at the center of the company from the beginning.

Sometimes that means spending more time on a job than expected or accepting that one appointment may not be particularly profitable, because taking care of the customer can create value that appears later through repeat business, referrals, and reviews.

“You cannot fake caring over the long haul.”

Kim’s story is a reminder that the strongest local businesses are not built only by solving immediate problems, but by becoming companies their communities are willing to call again.

In small local communities, trust and reputation are among the most valuable things a business can earn.

We’re glad that across America, there are local businesses that genuinely focus on solving people’s problems by building long-term relationships with the communities they serve.

If you would like us to tell the story of you and your business, contact us at [email protected].