Bob Funk celebrates 50 years in employment staffing

Bob Funk, 75, who founded Express Employment Professionals' in 1983 with partner Bill Stoller, credits the Oklahoma City-based company's aggressive sales strategy with helping it to become one of the nation's largest staffing companies.

Oklahoma City businessman Bob Funk, owner of Express Personnel Services is seen in a 1983 photo. [OKLAHOMAN ARCHIVES PHOTO]

At the Express Employment Professionals' Oklahoma City headquarters near Northwest Expressway, workers have bobblehead figurines on their desks made in company founder Bob Funk's likeness and stamped with the motto "sell, sell sell."

Funk, who founded Express in 1983 with partner Bill Stoller, credits the company's aggressive sales strategy with helping the private company become one of the nation's largest staffing companies.
Funk, who is celebrating 50 years in the staffing industry, shows no signs of slowing down at age 75.
Funk grew up on a dairy farm in Duvall, Wash., and milk remains his drink of choice. Guests received milk cartons emblazoned with Funk's face and filled with milk duds at his 75th birthday party this year at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

Nearly every square inch of wall space in the reception area of his office at Express headquarters is adorned with Western memorabilia. A row of massive chairs covered in Brahma bull hide line one wall.

“It took me forever to remember that,” said Dana Miller, Funk's executive assistant, who gets a lot of questions about the chairs.

There are also bronzes of bald eagles at every turn, some life-size, captured in flight or diving to catch a fish out of a cast-metal stream. Funk said the eagles appeal to his sense of patriotism, and he also admires their size and character.

“They are always high flying, they are always No. 1 in the bird chain,” Funk said.

Outside of the staffing industry, Funk's real love is ranching. He flies out about once a month to his 160,000-acre Express UU Bar Ranch near Cimarron, N.M., but typically just for one day.

“We tease Bob that ranching is his true love,” said Jennifer Anderson, vice president of marketing and communications for Express.

The working cattle ranch is the largest source of seed stock females in the beef industry, according to its website. Funk paid $85.5 million for the ranch in 2006.

In 2009, he purchased the historic St. James Hotel & Restaurant in Cimarron. Built in 1872, the hotel was the scene of many Wild West-era gunfights and is said to be haunted. Jesse James and Wyatt Earp once stayed at the hotel. Funk's ranch also took over as operator of the nearby municipal airport in Raton, N.M., in 2014 when it looked like the city might close it.

When he started working on a dairy farm at age 14, Funk never thought about working in the staffing industry.

He graduated from Seattle Pacific University with a bachelor's degree in business administration and theology, but said he had no talent for preaching. After college, he worked as a credit reporter for the business reporting firm Dun & Bradstreet, but he was “too nice” for the business.

“I didn't like asking people for their credit reports,” Funk recalls.

Eventually, Funk found work at a small, regional staffing company in Seattle.

But he took the job too seriously, and spent a little too much of his time trying to help job seekers.
“'Bob, we do have to make a profit in this business,'” Funk recalls his boss saying. “I would bring people in on the weekends and Sundays and offer them spiritual counseling, encouragement.”
Funk still has big growth goals for Express moving forward. He wants to see the company grow to 900 franchise locations worldwide, up from about 750 locations in 2014.

Express achieved $2.85 billion in sales last year, but Funk would like to see sales grow to $4 billion.
The company has tracked record growth since the Great Recession. Sales are up 11 percent this year in the United States, according to the company.

Express claims to be the third-largest employer in Oklahoma, where it helps about 5,000 companies with their staffing needs, employing about 30,000 people in 2014.

“People don't think about us in that way because they work at other companies, but they are on our payroll,” Anderson said.

Funk also measures success in how many people the company puts to work.
“You are only as successful as the last person you helped,” he said.