[2007 Leadership Profiles] Ron Belknap

Ron Belknap’s office is hardly big enough for the extra chair he’s dragged in for an interview. In the tiny, closet-sized room, Belknap keeps a computer and a desk crowded with photographs and paperwork. He pulls two yellowed and well-worn pieces of paper from a shelf. They’re checks, and they’re the beginning of the Belknap pest control business. 

Ron’s father, Dale Belknap, returned to his hometown of Westerville, Ohio, north of Columbus after World War II, and started working for Capital City Exterminating in 1948. The company had been founded by a German immigrant named Hugo Bargel in 1943. After a few years in the business, Bargel wanted to return to his home country, and asked the senior Belknap if he would purchase the company.

Dale Belknap, at the time 28 years old, told Bargel that he was interested, but he didn’t have that kind of money. So the two men struck a deal: Bargel would accept a down payment of $500, and $250 each month thereafter until the balance of the company’s worth was paid.

AN EARLY START

So, two days before Christmas in 1950, the business came into the Belknap family’s possession, and has stayed there ever since. And like many in the pest control industry, Ron Belknap seems to have been raised not with a playpen and pacifier, but with a compressed air sprayer and a termite rig. He started working with his father and older brother at age 8, earning 15 cents an hour to sweep up cement dust from bore holes and keep an eye on the spray tanks.

“I was born in the industry,” he said, standing in the tidy back shop of Capital City’s offices. “I’ve worked my whole life, and it hasn’t hurt me. It didn’t hurt me a bit. The whole thing was a learning experience.”

As a boy, besides collecting change running hoses for his dad, Ron and his brother Steve delivered the Columbus Dispatch in the evenings. When he was in high school, Ron would get out in the afternoons and head directly to a complex of apartments that the company services to this day. And after graduating at age 17, he started running his own route and selling termite jobs.

When Ron was 25 years old, Dale Belknap sat down with Ron and his brother and split the business: Ron handled termites, and his brother was in charge of general pest control. Now 55 years old, Ron runs the entire family business. He and his brother bought the company from their father in 1985, and then Ron purchased his brother’s share in 1994.

“I think I’m buying this thing twice,” Belknap said, smiling.

RIGHT SIZED

The Belknap’s hometown of Westerville has changed a lot since 1950. It’s no longer a sleepy town in the sticks north of Columbus. And Worthington, where the business is based, has fared much the same. Both towns have been swallowed up under the moniker of the Greater Columbus Metro Area and its ever-growing urban sprawl.

In fact, Capital City Exterminating covers one of the only areas of Ohio actually experiencing any growth. The company’s offices are housed in an office warehouse complex amid the many retail establishments throughout Greater Columbus. A short drive from the office will put visitors smack dab in the middle of one of America’s greatest shopping experiences: the sprawling Polaris Fashion Place mall. All around, huge cranes tower over an ocean of asphalt and new construction — new shops, new homes, new strip malls.

And in the midst of all this building and expansion — even with a veritable money tree in his backyard — Belknap has made the decision to stay small. At its largest, Capital City employed 16 people, plus Ron, his brother and their father. But things got away from the Belknap men and they lost their ability to maintain the company’s quality service. So, through a process of attrition, the company shrunk to six technicians today, plus Ron.

“We had little quality control. We didn’t know what our people were doing, so we went smaller,” Belknap said. “But I’m happy with six employees.”

STILL A FAMILY BUSINESS

And those six technicians make up part of Belknap’s family, quite literally. Jeff Otworth, who works as a pest control technician, and John McCarthy, who works as a termite technician, both are Belknap’s sons-in-law.

“I’ve got six other families to support outside my own with this company,” Belknap said, adding that Capital City’s smaller size helps him keep the company feeling like a family. “Maybe the big boys who have 50 or 60 employees think the same way. Hopefully they do.”

In 1978, a 26-year-old Ron Belknap was considering expanding the family business by hiring his then-girlfriend, Cindy. At the time, she worked for another company, and Ron’s mother, Jean, was the bookkeeper for Capital City, in charge of hiring all the office staff.

Ron and Cindy had taken a vacation to Washington, D.C., for the Fourth of July holiday and wanted to stay an extra day and see the White House. On Monday morning, Ron called his dad and got the go-ahead to take the day off. But Cindy’s boss wasn’t so forgiving. He told her that if she wasn’t punched in by 8:30 that morning, she’d be fired.

Cindy hung up the phone, crying. Ron told her that everything would be OK, that she could get a job at Capital City, working in the office with his mother.
“I was definitely going to hire her, I just hadn’t figured out how I was going to do it yet,” Belknap said with a grin. “It worked out. She’s been here ever since.”

With all the emphasis Belknap puts on the traditions and history of his family, he realizes that the pest management industry is changing. “My dad could almost run this business out of his shirt pocket,” he said. Now, customers think more about the impact of the pesticides Belknap and his technicians apply; they come to the door armed with tons of information gleaned from the Internet.

“I think now they are concerned with pesticides and child safety,” he said. “You’ve got to change to survive.”

INDUSTRY INVOLVEMENT

Ron’s father founded the Pest Control Association of Columbus, and all three Belknaps have served as past presidents of the Ohio Pest Control Association. Ron spent two years as an NPMA board member, and 12 total years as co-chair of the Ohio association’s education and legislative committees.

“The more involved you are, you’re working for the good of the industry, and you’re learning a vast amount of information for your own company,” Belknap said.

Belknap and the committee spent more than a year developing termite technician training criteria, traveling across Ohio taking photos of different types of home construction. “That was a pretty big endeavor,” Belknap said.

The committee also worked to develop rules that required termite inspectors to be licensed, and his training program is still in use today. His co-chair on the education committee was Lonnie Alonso, president of Columbus Pest Control and a former Crown Leadership Award winner who nominated Belknap for the award. “Ron and I have been friends for a long time. We both grew up in the business. Ron’s always been a great friend and knowledgeable guy,” Alonso said of nominating Belknap for the leadership award. “I’ve always thought that he was deserving of being in that group.

“There are a lot of things to Ron,” Alonso said. “He’ll do anything for you if he believes in what you’re doing, which is what he’s done with the association and his service with the military.”

A MILITARY MAN, A FAMILY MAN

In 1970, as families across the country waited each night to watch the draft lottery on television, Belknap saw his brother draw a 12. A year later, his own number was 11. Taking pre-emptive action, Steve joined the Navy, and Ron joined the Air National Guard. Ron left for training in the winter when business was slow, working as a security police guard.

Belknap spent 24 years with the guard, retiring in 1995 as a Chief Master Sergeant. For four months in late 1990 and early 1991, he worked with 200 other security police at an Air Force base in Bahrain during operations for Desert Storm and Desert Shield.

And the family ties are strong in the service, too. Belknap’s daughter Pam serves in the same guard unit he had been in, as did her husband, John. Another of his sons-in-law, Mike, also is currently serving in that unit.

THE NEXT GENERATION

Belknap now lives in Centerburg, Ohio, in a new house that sits on 20 acres of land — big enough, he said, to have his children build houses on somewhere down the line.

“I’d say probably the most important thing (is family), bar none,” Cindy said of Ron’s motivation. “He wants to keep it a family business. We have been pretty lucky to have great kids and they’ve picked good mates. It’s been very much a win-win situation.”

And turning over the business to the third generation of ownership is pretty important, and something Belknap hopes to do to keep the generations of service continuing. “We’ve got customers we’ve had for 52 years. We did work for them in my dad’s era, we did work for their parents, and in turn I’m starting to do work for their children. It’s a growing process.”  

The Belknap File:

Company: Capital City Exterminating

Headquarters: Worthington, Ohio

Position: Owner and president

Career highlights: Spent eight years each as co-chair of the Ohio Pest Control Association’s education and legislative committees. In those positions, he helped create the first statewide training program for termite technicians. He also worked to develop rules that required all termite inspectors to be licensed, and his technician training program is still in use today. He spent two years as an NPMA board member.

Personal: Wife Cindy; daughter Michelle Haley and son-in-law Mike (who worked for the company while he was in college); daughter Lisa Otworth and son-in-law Jeff (who is a pest control technician); daughter Pam McCarthy and son-in-law John (who is a termite technician); niece Allison Bennett (who works as a part-time secretary); and granddaughter Brittany Carpenter (who works in the office).

For the Love of Country

One day, shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, Ron Belknap was driving down the highway and saw two boys on an overpass, waving American flags to the cars passing under them.

So Belknap decided to do them one better: He bought nearly 80 American flags and installed them on the fence of the Main Street bridge in Westerville, Ohio, across Interstate 71, as a memorial to the victims of the attacks. “I just went out there and did it. I figured if they didn’t like it, they’ll take them down,” he said.

Well, people liked it. Although motivated by patriotism rather than business, Belknap said the 78 flags he and his family members put up on that bridge were well-received by the public and local elected officials, resulting in extensive media coverage and creating a sense of community among local residents.

Surprisingly, his selfless act of patriotism also resulted in new business, bringing in 50 new jobs in 2001, and those were just the people who told him why they chose him.

Belknap’s love of country and patriotic fervor continues to this day. Capital City Exterminating replaces the flags every June, on Flag Day, and Belknap said the whole project costs him about $1,600 a year to maintain.