[2009 Leadership Profiles] D.R. Sapp

An avid Gator fan and self-proclaimed “good ole boy” leads one of the industry’s most successful family-owned pest control businesses.

D.R. Sapp Jr. is a self-described “good ole boy” and proud of it. “I’m definitely a true Florida native,” he observes. “I was born and raised in Gainesville, in the swamp, home of the National Championship Florida Gators.” Sapp’s voice becomes so animated at this point that you can almost see the 55-year-old president of Florida Pest Control & Chemical Co. performing the “gator chomp” made famous by University of Florida football fans.

“Football was my dream,” Sapp says. “I played all through high school and I wanted to play for my hometown Gators,” but despite being a talented athlete, Sapp wasn’t particularly fond of college, and his opportunity to play Division I football ended when he left school early to enter the working world.

“When I was young, sports was my life,” he recalls. However most weekends were spent working on his family’s farm 30 miles north of town. “I played linebacker and defensive back on the city championship team. I was bigger and stronger than most of my friends from working on the farm and I liked to hit. I loved playing football and being outdoors — and hunting and fishing.”

There was ample time to be outdoors while tending the family farm, but not much leisure time. “On Saturdays, when other kids were going to the beach, my dad put me in the truck and we headed out to the farm,” Sapp recalls. “I worked on the farm on weekends from about the time I was old enough to walk,” he muses. “There were times my friends were going somewhere else and I had to go to the farm, which I wasn’t always very happy about, but once I got there it was okay. I had affection for the place and it allowed me to get to know my dad.”

That doesn’t mean, however, Sapp didn’t try to get out of his family commitments from time to time, as many teenagers do. “One day I tried to get out of going to the farm by asking one of my friends, who wanted to go to the beach, to have his mother drop him off at our house by 7:00 a.m. I told him if he arrived any later I would be gone. When my friend arrived my dad saw him at the front door and said, ‘Tell Mike he’s going to the farm with us.’” Needless to say, “Mike got back in his mother’s car and I headed out to our family farm.”

“If those years taught me anything,” Sapp said, “they taught me that if you have a responsibility to your family or your employees you can’t dodge it. My dad felt it was our responsibility to maintain the farm since it was part of our family. He didn’t really ask if I liked it or not, it was just the way it was. It was a humbling experience, but what I learned from working side-by-side with my dad is the importance of doing something right the first time. No matter what you’re doing, he always said you should give 100 percent. He didn’t put up with any half-ass stuff, whether at work or on the farm. Reliability and dependability were important to him.”

EARLY STRUGGLES. And despite the formidable odds, Dempsey Sapp Sr.’s objective was to be a successful entrepreneur when he opened the doors to Florida Pest Control & Chemical Co. in 1949. “When he first started the business my father didn’t have anything,” Sapp recalls. “He started from ground zero and this year we celebrated our 60th anniversary.”

A few years after founding the pest control business, Sapp Sr. also opened several retail garden centers in the region. “When the Wal-Mart era started, however, we saw the writing on the wall,” Sapp says. “We had a good thing going there, but it was difficult to show a profit, so we eventually got out of the garden center business.”

During high school, Sapp worked part time as a technician for the pest control business, a role he continued after graduation and while attending Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville. Sapp says he was always interested in working for the family pest control business but he first needed the chance to see what other opportunities his future might hold. “Like a lot of young people, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life,” he recalls. “I was a fairly independent person who didn’t always like to follow the rules.”

His time at college would prove to be somewhat short-lived. “I never finished college, which is one of my deepest regrets,” Sapp says. “I never liked school much. It was something I had to do, not something I enjoyed...At the time, I didn’t appreciate the value of expanding your mind and I have always regretted it.”

After college, Sapp spent several years trying to figure out what he did want to do with the rest of his life, ultimately deciding to commit to the family business. “I had a huge opportunity and I didn’t realize it when I was younger, but I finally came around.”

LEARNING THE ROPES. While the prospect of working for his father full time was “intimidating,” Sapp knew it was the right decision. “Dad had his General Manager and Vice President Doyle Webb take me under his wing and teach me all he knew. It probably saved my dad a lot of heartache,” he says with a laugh. “My father and I are a lot alike, but he was a mentor to me and I have the utmost respect for him. We’re both kind of set in our ways, but it worked out.”

Sapp learned the business from the ground up. “I was a grunt for years in the field, crawling under houses and across roofs,” he recalls. “I spent 15 to 20 years working my way up through the organization, as a technician in all departments, managing the termite department, in sales, becoming a sales manager, working as a branch manager and as district supervisor.” During that time, he says, “I never paid a lot of attention to titles,” but he did work hard to acquire as much knowledge as possible so as not to disappoint his father.

The transition to management proceeded smoothly except when those who mentored him on the way up began reporting to Sapp. “It was strange to be managing some of the same people who were your peers for all those years, but I got over it. One of my motivators was the fear of not wanting to disappoint them,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘If I can’t manage this group of people I have no right to manage this company.’”

Now 87, D.R.’s father — a member of the Leadership Class of 1987 — still comes into the office now and then. “Even in his 80s, he still has a solid mind and the ability to get straight to the point,” Sapp observes. “Sometimes our management team will be debating an issue and my dad will sit back and listen for awhile, then he’ll finally share his thoughts and we’ll look at one another as if to say, ‘My God, why didn’t we think of that?’”

A FAMILY MAN. When he’s not working, Sapp enjoys hunting and fishing, as well as spending time with his family: wife Diane; sons Dempsey III, 24, and Austin, 21; and stepchildren Max, 20, and Sophia, 14.

Of his adult sons, Sapp says, “I think they would describe me as a good role model, someone who believes in hard work and an honest day’s pay. They understand that I feel it’s important to give 100 percent all the time at whatever you do.”

Meanwhile, Sapp’s colleagues say it is his unflinching commitment to the company’s core values that have served the company well over the years. “When we bring employees in for training he always takes the time to address the crowd and let them know how important honesty and character are to this business,” notes General Manager and Vice President Dale Godshall. “This company has a grand history and I think D.R. has done a wonderful job molding, shaping and caring for that tradition of honesty and integrity.”

WHAT’S AHEAD? With 20 offices and 500-plus employees, what does the future hold for Florida Pest Control & Chemical Company? “We want to continue to grow while maintaining the quality of our service,” Sapp says. “I’m not interested in growing at an alarming pace. I would prefer steady growth.” Sapp said while he’s always interested in good acquisitions, he hasn’t worried much about being the biggest business out there. “But it’s extremely important to me that we’re the best.”

And how does one do that? For starters said Sapp, a company is only as good as its people, so managers should surround themselves with the best employees they can find. That’s something Sapp has always worked to do. “Over the years we’ve been very blessed to have some very talented, great people,” Sapp says. “Without them we wouldn’t be anywhere.”

*****

Up Close: D.R. Sapp Jr.
Title: President
Company/Affiliation: Florida Pest Control & Chemical Co.
Location: Gainesville, Fla.
Personal: Wife Diane; sons Dempsey III, 24, and Austin, 21; stepchildren Max, 20, and Sophia, 14; enjoys hunting and fishing; avid University of Florida Gators football fan; contributes time, talent and resources to his church.
Career Highlights:

• Has worked as technician, termite department manager, salesperson, sales manager, branch manager, district supervisor, vice president and president
• Former president of the Florida Pest Management Association
• Has chaired FPMA Governmental Affairs Committee for 10-plus years

*****

D.R. Sapp’s Proudest Accomplishment
Throughout his career in pest management, are lot of high points that stand out, but D.R. Sapp’s proudest moment is when he, along with the Florida Pest Management Association (FPMA), lobbied against a “Call Before You Dig” initiative several years ago. The proposed legislation was designed to protect consumers and utility companies from economic loss when contractors would accidently cut electric, gas or utility lines while on a job site.

“They were talking about imposing the legislation on the pest control industry, which would have caused all kinds of notification and servicing issues for PMPs,” Sapp said. “If every time someone did a termite job they would have to contact the ‘Call Before You Dig’ people, it would have cost the industry a fortune in time and money, not to mention create a scheduling nightmare.”

As head of FPMA’s Legislative Committee at the time, Sapp was a key spokesperson for the association. “When I went to the ‘Call Before You Dig’ board meeting, their lobbyist met me outside and said, ‘You don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of changing the statute.’” Upon entering the packed boardroom, Sapp admits to being apprehensive. “There were a lot of heavy hitters in the room, people from the phone companies, gas companies and other utility firms,” he recalls. When it came his time to speak Sapp wasn’t making much progress swaying the opinion of those in attendance until he saw a water bottle sitting on the table. “I said, ‘If you all don’t mind can I borrow someone’s water bottle?’ I explained that the depth of a termite bait installation is about the size of a water bottle. We’re not talking about an auger on the back of a PTO unit,” he observed. “We only go down less than a foot. Then I said, ‘I’ve been in pest control industry for over 30 years and when we hit a plumbing or utility line — which we don’t do very often as an industry — we fix it and we’ll continue to do that in the future. I eventually won them over and we secured our exemption.”

Sapp said he’ll “always cherish” what he and the FPMA accomplished that day. “When I entered that room, the odds seemed to be against us, but I wasn’t going to back down and we ended up prevailing. It was one of the most gratifying experiences in my career.”