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Covenant Sweeping Provides Faith-Based Integrity to All its Business Operationsby Ranger Kidwell-Ross Out of high school, Darren Lagana went to work for NASA. After a year with the space agency, though, at the age of 21 he decided he wanted to work for himself in the building and construction trade. He started out doing a wide variety of business-related services. It wasn't long before he found himself working on building high-end, custom homes. An inability to find quality landscapers led to Lagana's first foray into another field. In 1997, he branched out to open a landscaping and design company. "We ended up with a number of managers of commercial shopping centers that wanted their centers to look nicer," relates Lagana. Initially this meant upgrading the outsides of the buildings, re-stuccoing them and that sort of thing. After that, re-landscaping became the next logical step to involve the firm. Now, just under 10 years later, the sweeping portion of Covenant's workload accounts for roughly 70% of the company's income. We have also become NAPSA-Certified, which has helped us in a variety of ways." Although Lagana clearly emphasizes 'doing it all,' he says he also doesn't hesitate to help his clients when they need assistance with projects his company doesn't handle. As he explains fully in the audio interview, this is a way to "build up his favor bank" with his customers, something he knows they will remember when they're approached by his competitors. Lagana also recognizes that providing whatever service his customers need has resulted in his firm increasing the amount of work done for clients. For example, he cites a property manager where Covenant first provided non-sweeping services. After showing a positive track record, the client added sweeping. Now, Covenant has moved to 'micro-managing' several centers for the client, providing all needed services whenever projects crop up. Although Lagana discusses the down-to-earth tips and techniques that contribute to his success, he credits his overall success to his faith in God. Due to a technical difficulty, we apologize that the introduction of the audio was cut off. Note: The audio interview will play without downloading any files onto your computer. If you hear the interview at 'chipmunk speed,' you will need to download the latest version of Adobe's free Flash player. Note: To play the interview, click this link or on the small triangle inside the circle you see to the left. If you have any trouble accessing this audio, please let us know. More information about Darren Lagana, and his sweeping and building companies, may be found at: www.covenantsweeping.com. Lagana may be reached via email sent to support@covenantsweeping.com. If you have questions or comments about this interview, please, let us know and we can add it in as an addendum to this article. |
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