November 28, 2024 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, before Bob Funk founded Express Employment Professionals, he wanted to be an actual minister, but his real calling in helping people find work (and hope) has likely had a much bigger impact—with over 800 franchises around the world. The purpose of the business? Connect workers to work.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and we love work. Work is good. Work gives us
meaning and purpose. And where does work come from? Of course,
it comes mostly from private people starting businesses and employing people.
Up first, a man who knows a lot about work.
(00:32):
His name is Bob Funk, and he founded Express Employment Professionals,
a staffing business that he built over four decades. Here
to tell the story is Bob himself. Many call him
the Minister of work.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Take it away, Bob.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
My dad had a dairy. I was born in nineteen
forty and he went broke in the dairy business in
nineteen forty five. But he kept four cows. And my
mother had a nurse breakdown when I was two, so
my sister trained me and kept me. Where we're going
(01:14):
broke on the ranching. It was the financial pressure. She
was at a prayer meeting at the church and she
just passed out, and my grandmother put her in a
satan asylum, and so Dad went to visit her one
Sunday afternoon. She said, I'm not crazy like these folks
are in here, you know, get me out. Of here,
(01:35):
and so Dad got her out and the doctor said,
you know, just this lay quiet for a while and
he'll snap out of it. She basically took care of
me to mom. Mom got well, and she was two
years older than I was. And Mom had her nervous
breakdown when I was two. She was four. But she
(01:56):
got in the first grade when she was five, and
so tame and taught me everything because Mom was laying
in bed, you know, twenty four to seven, and so
she would come and teach me everything that she had
learned in school that day. So by the time I
got to be five years old, they tried to skip
(02:17):
me two grades. They tried to put me in the
third grade in the first grade, and my mother wouldn't
let him. And then they said, well, let me skip
him with just one grade. And Mom said, no, we're
not gonna let you do that either. And the doctor
told Mom, you go get a job, get your mind
off of the finances. And so she had worked in
(02:39):
a grocery store when she was a little younger. So
she went to work in a grocery store for free
of charge for our groceries. And so we had we
had really some nice groceries. Dad then went to work
as a as a maintenance person on the highway department.
He had a sixth grade education, but he loved his cows.
(03:01):
Dad was a true dairy farmer. He just loved those cows.
They ate better than we kids did. In high school,
I had four shirts all the way through high school
and three pair of Levi's. But we had a real
small community. The town was only three hundred and thirty people.
(03:22):
In my grade school class, five of us were cousins
out of the eight of us, and so it was
just a small town and we had to go ten
miles north of ten miles south to high school. I
think I had fifty six in my high school class,
and it was a real wonderful experience. I started playing
(03:47):
tennis when I was young because mother working at the
grocery store. There was a tennis court right beside it,
and to keep my sister and I apart, she decided
I should work at the grocery store and help her,
you know, stack cans and and stuff. So I picked
(04:08):
up a racket and started playing tennis. And I telling
these anybody in town playing me in tennis. And so
when I got to high school, Uh. As a freshman,
I started playing tennis and of course ended up number
one after.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
About a year and a half, and.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Then I went when I went to college. I played
number one the last two years in college and tennis
as well. But that was because of the circumstances when
I was young that my mother let me play tennis
on tennis court beside the grocery store. Being from a
small town, the the pastor we had at that time, UH,
(04:49):
I didn't know Billy Graham from Adam and he he
he he encouraged all of us UH to go to
the Billy Graham Crusade in Seattle.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Some One had told me when I was twenty years
old that life was very short and would pass just
like that.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I wouldn't have believed it. And if I tell you that,
you don't believe it either.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
I cannot get young people to understand how brief life is,
how quickly it passes. It seems like yesterday I was
in school.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And as eleven year old, I knew that I had
plenty of sin in my life, and so had his crusade.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
His style was to invite people to make a commitment
spiritually in their lives and so I thought, if I
don't make a commitment, chances are our bus is going
to turn over and I'm going to die tonight anyway,
So I had better make the commitment tonight. So I
(05:53):
made the commitment, and of course it turned my whole
life into spiritual environment, and that's when I decided I'd
be going in the ministry. There was his third crusade,
by the way, he started in Los Angeles, went to
San Francisco, and then came to Seattle. Well, I started
(06:16):
working for wages when I was fourteen, and we worked
from six in the morning till ten at night, seven
days a week. Work was never difficulty, it was just
I thought it was a lot of fun. I had
a lot of energy at the age of fourteen, so
working on a farm with Bail and Hay and Sheldon manure,
(06:38):
and I think it was a challenge to see if
I could do it better than anyone else. The drive
factor I learned when I was very young, because my
dad worked from eight in the morning to four thirty
milk cows at six in the morning, came home milk
four cows at night. My mom worked at the grocery
store till six thirty seven o'clock every night. So our
(07:00):
whole family was accustomed to a good work ethic and
a hard work ethic, but it never occurred to me
that it was really a bother. It was always a privilege.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
And you're listening to Bob Funk tell his story about work,
and of course he's the founder of Express Employment Professionals.
When we come back, more of Bob Funk's story here
on our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of
our American Stories, the show where America is the star
and the American people, and we do it all from
(07:34):
the heart of the South Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly
can't do this show without you. Our shows will always
be free to listen to, but they're not free to make.
If you love what you hear, consider making a tax
deductible donation to our American Stories. Go to our American
Stories dot com. Give a little, give a lot. That's
our American Stories dot com. And we continue with our
(08:10):
American Stories and with Bob Funks's story.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Our whole family was accustomed to a good work ethic
and a hard work ethic, but it never it never
occurred to me that it was really a bother. It
was always a privilege to work, and a privilege to
even if it's late at night. I had a cousin,
Adolf worked from six in the morning until he milked
(08:41):
hill midnight every night. So consequently I'd stay up there
and try and talk to him and help him till
about ten o'clock every night. Adolf had not had a
day off in seventeen years until I became seventeen years old,
and he had confidence that I can milk his cows
(09:03):
for him, so he took four days off and I
went and saw some cousins in Nebraska.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
But he was a worker.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
I mean, he can outwork me. Every day he was there,
we'd go shovel gravel. I couldn't keep up with him.
That irritated me a little bit because I was a
young rascal that's seventeen, eighteen years old, I said, been
able to outwork him. I had a hay crew in
(09:35):
the summertime when I was sixteen, and I had three
other kids that I was trying to work. They didn't
like me very well because when you start working at
six in the morning and get done at midnight, the
work I think has been instilled since I was extremely young.
(09:57):
It never hurt anybody. In my mind, work hard, long
hours is a privilege, even in this business. I have
told many of them, as many of the employees, I
may not be as smart as you are, but I
guarantee I cannot work you. And sometimes the extra work
(10:22):
that you put into it gains a lot of extra
experience and extra revenue streams. And of course, playing that
much athletics, being number one is the only place to be.
No one remembers who was number two. And so today
we're number one basically in light industrial office services business nationwide,
(10:46):
and I think we're number six in overall business professional
somewhere in the US at this time. And business is
very competitive businesses like athletics. You know, you have all
these competitors out there. Just like in athletics, you have
all these other players out there. The business is competitive,
(11:07):
and so you have to sharpen your mind. You have
to sharpen your day in order to compete, learn what
to do different in order to succeed. And only in
America can you do what we've done, because other countries
are controlled by so few, But in America you can
(11:29):
start small and if you want to be competitive. You
can compete with the biggies if you want to. Just
depends upon how long you want to work at it.
Now hard you want to work at it. So yeah,
it's a privilege to be number one. Whatever you do.
Of course, you have to work hard to stay there
(11:50):
because there's others that learn your techniques and want to
be number one as well. It's just like athletics, not
much different at all, I think. Uh, for example, the
Future Farmers in America teaches you some some basics that
help you the rest of your life. I wouldn't have
(12:11):
been able to go to college and not been to
scholarships that I earned through the FFA program because we
had no money at all, and then of course I
was able to earn enough money in the summertime. So
that was a privilege. You get that degree, which by
the way, they honored me by giving me an honorary
(12:33):
doctorate degree and I had I had a little bit
of fun with that because you got six seven thousand
people there for graduation. And I basically said, now, remember
in college, uh, the A students were always the ones
that that were bragged on, and you know that were
(12:54):
the preferred student. Let me put that way, And so
when I was in college, I was not a preferred state.
I got playing tennis and so forth. But so I
said to them in my speech, you know, I need
to tell you that I was in the one half
of the class that made the upper half possible. And
(13:15):
you can see those professors just just cringing on that
front row.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Because that was the truth.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
My grade point average is two point nine, and my
master's program I had almost a straight even my undergrads
only had two nine grade. But I can just see
those professors say, oh, Bob, don't say that, you know,
because they encourage everybody to get as high grade as possible.
But there's common sense in life, and we see this
(13:48):
in our business that the real intellectual people have a
difficult time in life. The ones who have common sense
work out. I think integrity values are are usually the
most successful. The average millionaire in America at a two
(14:11):
point nine grade point area. It's probably because you know,
we know, we have to drive ourselves harder to overcome
maybe the intellect. I've always said to hire people who
are much smarter than you are, and they'll help you
to be successful. But I have to have a lot
(14:31):
of common sense, particularly in business. You have to see
what other competitors are doing. You have to see what
you're doing on a daily basis. You have to see
what your value system is in your company. That's why
I love the cattle business. I love it because the people,
because of their integrity level. We have sold about two
(14:55):
hundred and sixty million dollars worth of cattle probably, and
out of that two hundred and sixty million, we've had
less than a million dollars about it comes to seeable
and they come to the ranch. They signed their name
and their address and a hintshe That's all it is.
(15:20):
There's no big contracts, but they're just quality people that
have integrity. And a company is only as good as
their people. It's not because they have better ideas. I've
seen many companies fail because they had great ideas, but
(15:42):
they didn't have the right people. I've seen many companies
succeed that didn't have the best ideas, but they had
great people and loyal people through thick and thin. Because
they were stuck with me is really the only reason
that we succeeded. Young people ask what do they need?
(16:04):
They need integrity first, work, ethic, for a second, and
of course a drive a third in order to succeed.
But you got to have integrity. If you lose your integrity,
you had lost most everything.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
And you've been listening to Bob Funk, and he is
the founder of Express Employment Professionals and has employed and
connected workers to work for generations and so many hundreds
and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people. He found
work in my goodness, did he know what work was?
Working for Wages began when he was fourteen and his
(16:42):
cousin Adolph's farm. I worked from six.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
In the morning till ten at night, every day of
the week, he said.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
I wrote about Bob in Newsweek and I wrote this,
God demanded that his people work six days a week, Adolf,
his cousin, it turns out, required seven. It was from
his cousin and his mother and dad too that Funk
developed a strong work ethic that would guide his life.
And by the way, that story of asking for his
(17:11):
first day off in seventeen years, he gave that responsibility
to a seventeen year old because he wanted to visit
cousins in Nebraska, and so without that cousin Adolf, who
knows what would have happened to Bob Funk and without
his mom and dad. And when we come back more
(17:32):
of the life of Bob Funk, a man who many
call the Minister of work. Here on our American stories,
(18:08):
and we continue with our American stories and Bob Funk's story,
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
There's people who try to cheat their way to the top,
and that certainly that is short lived. It'll catch up
with you in run good, casing point, great big company.
We've had some oil companies, you know, that have not
been on the level, and they're just not around anymore.
(18:39):
It'll catch up with you eventually. And when I started
in the personnel business, we had some terrible, unscrupulous competitors
in Seattle, and then the worst one we had was
here when I moved here to Oklahoma City, and it
took us five years to get him out of business,
but we did it. Finally caught up with him. It
just doesn't last in America. I'll tell you another little
(19:05):
story about America. I was one with the Prince in
Austria at a dinner one night, and there were some
people at our table, and we told him the story
about starting out with five thousand dollars and one hundred
fifty thousand borrowed money. He said, you can't do that
in Austria. If you don't belong to the six families
(19:29):
here in Austria, you'll never be successful. And that's what
people don't understand. Sometimes we have so many opportunity, people
don't know who's direction to go. When we had the
offices in Russia, Igor came for training and we took
him to a grocery store. This is right after the
(19:52):
wall fell, and he came back and he said, too
many decisions, Too many decisions. He said, I even have
to make decisions which socks I'm gonna wear in the morning.
But he said, too many decisions. In a socialist country,
you only have one color of suit, you'll have one
color of pants. You only have one or two decisions
(20:14):
to make every day, two eighty decisions, he said.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
And we do.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
We get a chance to make many decisions. The story
goes that you have seven opportunities in your lifetime, and
sometimes you take them. Sometimes you do, but the average
is seven opportunities in your lifetime. So I've been fortunate
to walk through the doors and maybe five I'm still
got a few left turn it on to eighty in May.
(20:47):
I started an oil company three weeks ago and I
stayed at the Pulp, but I probably would not have
had the opportunity to administer to so many people. And
I think we're in the seven million range now that
(21:10):
we've helped find jobs. But it's not just those that
we find the jobs for. It's the other other millions
of people that come to see you looking for help,
and you have to help them too. You may not
find the right spot for him right at that time,
but you have to give them hope, encouragement. And when
(21:31):
I first got into the business, I was trying to
help them spiritually as well, and so consequently I couldn't
interview as many people as as some of the others.
After a year, my boss, who was a fine Christian man,
came to me and he said, Bob, I understand you're
trying to help them spiritually, but we do have to
(21:53):
make a profit in this business. I said, oh, Gordy,
I do understand. So I would bring them in after
hours and on Saturdays and counsel them separately if they
were looking for spiritual advice, and it's as spiritual help
that would.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Help them in their lives.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
But we do have to make a profit in this business.
If you're bank right, you're not going to be ministered
to many people. So our mission was to help as
many as possible, and to help them spiritually if they're.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Looking for spiritual help.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Well. My personal belief is that it's much much more
fun to give money than it is to take money.
And if you're going to be in our business, you've
got to be a giver. The rewards of giving are
much more meaningful than making money. Money has never been
(22:55):
my motivator, and I do interview. When I do interview people,
I ask them their motivator is is their work environment,
is is prestige of course of ego or is it money?
And usually people who are motivated by money will rip
(23:16):
your organization apart because of jealousy, trying to climb the
ladder to get over somebody, not caring about the other person.
But life is about other people, not about ourselves, and
that's an old biblical principle that it's much more pleasant
to give than it is to take. Takers usually are
(23:39):
very unhappy people. I've interviewed many millionaires, there are very
few of them that are very happy because they were
self centered, looking out for themselves and so giving. Giving
not only money, but time and effort and community location
(24:01):
is extremely important if you're going to be satisfied and
happy with your life. It's just just a part of
life that is so much fun to watch others with giving.
It's fun to help people find a better job so
they make more money, but to give gives them watch
them grow is so much funey to watch franchise these grow,
(24:27):
and some of them make a lot of money, but
most of the franchise eve we've brought into our system.
We look at their heart first, then their values, then
their drive. Then the end result becomes money. They do
better than the rest. Reagan once said that the best
social program in the United States is a job, and
(24:48):
that's true because it gives them pride, gives them encouragement,
gives them a purpose for life, gives them opportunity, and
gives them a lot of self esteem when they have job,
no matter what the level of the job happens to be.
So I've told our people that were in the staffing ministry,
(25:08):
and we're in the ministry because every person that comes
in looking for a job is insecure. They need encouragement,
they need hope, they need compassion, and that's what the
ministry is all about. I was having my shoes shine
(25:31):
the other day and this gentleman introduced himself and he said,
you don't remember me, but you placed me twenty two
years ago on my first job out of college. And
now I'm in a state farming and he said. I
stayed on that job for five years. And then I
was at a commencement service a few months ago and
(25:53):
this gentleman tapped me on the shoulder and he said,
you found me a job in nineteen seventy. Now I'm retired,
but you said you found me in my job. Of course,
I can't remember many of those people that I've placed,
but the point is that you're in the ministry of
(26:13):
helping people. As zig Ziegler once said, the more people
you help, the more money come running at your door.
In our case, that's the point. We're trying to help
as many people as possible because financial it also helps
to grow a company.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler and a special thanks to
Bob funk I love what he said at that graduation speech.
I was in the one half of the class that
made the other half possible.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
But he understood properly the role of the intellect in
our lives.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
And it plays some role, But my goodness, the things
that matter most integrity, hard work.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
That's Bob's ministry.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
In the end, of course, that encounter with Billy Graham,
and we heard just a snippet. Graham led so many
people to the Lord.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Bob Funk was one of them. It changed his life.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
It's why he had a heart for this work, why
he called his work a ministry. Bob Funk's story the
co founder of Express Employment Professionals.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and we love work. Work is good. Work gives us
meaning and purpose. And where does work come from? Of course,
it comes mostly from private people starting businesses and employing people.
Up first, a man who knows a lot about work.
(00:32):
His name is Bob Funk, and he founded Express Employment Professionals,
a staffing business that he built over four decades. Here
to tell the story is Bob himself. Many call him
the Minister of work.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Take it away, Bob.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
My dad had a dairy. I was born in nineteen
forty and he went broke in the dairy business in
nineteen forty five. But he kept four cows. And my
mother had a nurse breakdown when I was two, so
my sister trained me and kept me. Where we're going
(01:14):
broke on the ranching. It was the financial pressure. She
was at a prayer meeting at the church and she
just passed out, and my grandmother put her in a
satan asylum, and so Dad went to visit her one
Sunday afternoon. She said, I'm not crazy like these folks
are in here, you know, get me out. Of here,
(01:35):
and so Dad got her out and the doctor said,
you know, just this lay quiet for a while and
he'll snap out of it. She basically took care of
me to mom. Mom got well, and she was two
years older than I was. And Mom had her nervous
breakdown when I was two. She was four. But she
(01:56):
got in the first grade when she was five, and
so tame and taught me everything because Mom was laying
in bed, you know, twenty four to seven, and so
she would come and teach me everything that she had
learned in school that day. So by the time I
got to be five years old, they tried to skip
(02:17):
me two grades. They tried to put me in the
third grade in the first grade, and my mother wouldn't
let him. And then they said, well, let me skip
him with just one grade. And Mom said, no, we're
not gonna let you do that either. And the doctor
told Mom, you go get a job, get your mind
off of the finances. And so she had worked in
(02:39):
a grocery store when she was a little younger. So
she went to work in a grocery store for free
of charge for our groceries. And so we had we
had really some nice groceries. Dad then went to work
as a as a maintenance person on the highway department.
He had a sixth grade education, but he loved his cows.
(03:01):
Dad was a true dairy farmer. He just loved those cows.
They ate better than we kids did. In high school,
I had four shirts all the way through high school
and three pair of Levi's. But we had a real
small community. The town was only three hundred and thirty people.
(03:22):
In my grade school class, five of us were cousins
out of the eight of us, and so it was
just a small town and we had to go ten
miles north of ten miles south to high school. I
think I had fifty six in my high school class,
and it was a real wonderful experience. I started playing
(03:47):
tennis when I was young because mother working at the
grocery store. There was a tennis court right beside it,
and to keep my sister and I apart, she decided
I should work at the grocery store and help her,
you know, stack cans and and stuff. So I picked
(04:08):
up a racket and started playing tennis. And I telling
these anybody in town playing me in tennis. And so
when I got to high school, Uh. As a freshman,
I started playing tennis and of course ended up number
one after.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
About a year and a half, and.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Then I went when I went to college. I played
number one the last two years in college and tennis
as well. But that was because of the circumstances when
I was young that my mother let me play tennis
on tennis court beside the grocery store. Being from a
small town, the the pastor we had at that time, UH,
(04:49):
I didn't know Billy Graham from Adam and he he
he he encouraged all of us UH to go to
the Billy Graham Crusade in Seattle.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Some One had told me when I was twenty years
old that life was very short and would pass just
like that.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I wouldn't have believed it. And if I tell you that,
you don't believe it either.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
I cannot get young people to understand how brief life is,
how quickly it passes. It seems like yesterday I was
in school.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And as eleven year old, I knew that I had
plenty of sin in my life, and so had his crusade.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
His style was to invite people to make a commitment
spiritually in their lives and so I thought, if I
don't make a commitment, chances are our bus is going
to turn over and I'm going to die tonight anyway,
So I had better make the commitment tonight. So I
(05:53):
made the commitment, and of course it turned my whole
life into spiritual environment, and that's when I decided I'd
be going in the ministry. There was his third crusade,
by the way, he started in Los Angeles, went to
San Francisco, and then came to Seattle. Well, I started
(06:16):
working for wages when I was fourteen, and we worked
from six in the morning till ten at night, seven
days a week. Work was never difficulty, it was just
I thought it was a lot of fun. I had
a lot of energy at the age of fourteen, so
working on a farm with Bail and Hay and Sheldon manure,
(06:38):
and I think it was a challenge to see if
I could do it better than anyone else. The drive
factor I learned when I was very young, because my
dad worked from eight in the morning to four thirty
milk cows at six in the morning, came home milk
four cows at night. My mom worked at the grocery
store till six thirty seven o'clock every night. So our
(07:00):
whole family was accustomed to a good work ethic and
a hard work ethic, but it never occurred to me
that it was really a bother. It was always a privilege.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
And you're listening to Bob Funk tell his story about work,
and of course he's the founder of Express Employment Professionals.
When we come back, more of Bob Funk's story here
on our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of
our American Stories, the show where America is the star
and the American people, and we do it all from
(07:34):
the heart of the South Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly
can't do this show without you. Our shows will always
be free to listen to, but they're not free to make.
If you love what you hear, consider making a tax
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Stories dot com. Give a little, give a lot. That's
our American Stories dot com. And we continue with our
(08:10):
American Stories and with Bob Funks's story.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Our whole family was accustomed to a good work ethic
and a hard work ethic, but it never it never
occurred to me that it was really a bother. It
was always a privilege to work, and a privilege to
even if it's late at night. I had a cousin,
Adolf worked from six in the morning until he milked
(08:41):
hill midnight every night. So consequently I'd stay up there
and try and talk to him and help him till
about ten o'clock every night. Adolf had not had a
day off in seventeen years until I became seventeen years old,
and he had confidence that I can milk his cows
(09:03):
for him, so he took four days off and I
went and saw some cousins in Nebraska.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
But he was a worker.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
I mean, he can outwork me. Every day he was there,
we'd go shovel gravel. I couldn't keep up with him.
That irritated me a little bit because I was a
young rascal that's seventeen, eighteen years old, I said, been
able to outwork him. I had a hay crew in
(09:35):
the summertime when I was sixteen, and I had three
other kids that I was trying to work. They didn't
like me very well because when you start working at
six in the morning and get done at midnight, the
work I think has been instilled since I was extremely young.
(09:57):
It never hurt anybody. In my mind, work hard, long
hours is a privilege, even in this business. I have
told many of them, as many of the employees, I
may not be as smart as you are, but I
guarantee I cannot work you. And sometimes the extra work
(10:22):
that you put into it gains a lot of extra
experience and extra revenue streams. And of course, playing that
much athletics, being number one is the only place to be.
No one remembers who was number two. And so today
we're number one basically in light industrial office services business nationwide,
(10:46):
and I think we're number six in overall business professional
somewhere in the US at this time. And business is
very competitive businesses like athletics. You know, you have all
these competitors out there. Just like in athletics, you have
all these other players out there. The business is competitive,
(11:07):
and so you have to sharpen your mind. You have
to sharpen your day in order to compete, learn what
to do different in order to succeed. And only in
America can you do what we've done, because other countries
are controlled by so few, But in America you can
(11:29):
start small and if you want to be competitive. You
can compete with the biggies if you want to. Just
depends upon how long you want to work at it.
Now hard you want to work at it. So yeah,
it's a privilege to be number one. Whatever you do.
Of course, you have to work hard to stay there
(11:50):
because there's others that learn your techniques and want to
be number one as well. It's just like athletics, not
much different at all, I think. Uh, for example, the
Future Farmers in America teaches you some some basics that
help you the rest of your life. I wouldn't have
(12:11):
been able to go to college and not been to
scholarships that I earned through the FFA program because we
had no money at all, and then of course I
was able to earn enough money in the summertime. So
that was a privilege. You get that degree, which by
the way, they honored me by giving me an honorary
(12:33):
doctorate degree and I had I had a little bit
of fun with that because you got six seven thousand
people there for graduation. And I basically said, now, remember
in college, uh, the A students were always the ones
that that were bragged on, and you know that were
(12:54):
the preferred student. Let me put that way, And so
when I was in college, I was not a preferred state.
I got playing tennis and so forth. But so I
said to them in my speech, you know, I need
to tell you that I was in the one half
of the class that made the upper half possible. And
(13:15):
you can see those professors just just cringing on that
front row.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Because that was the truth.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
My grade point average is two point nine, and my
master's program I had almost a straight even my undergrads
only had two nine grade. But I can just see
those professors say, oh, Bob, don't say that, you know,
because they encourage everybody to get as high grade as possible.
But there's common sense in life, and we see this
(13:48):
in our business that the real intellectual people have a
difficult time in life. The ones who have common sense
work out. I think integrity values are are usually the
most successful. The average millionaire in America at a two
(14:11):
point nine grade point area. It's probably because you know,
we know, we have to drive ourselves harder to overcome
maybe the intellect. I've always said to hire people who
are much smarter than you are, and they'll help you
to be successful. But I have to have a lot
(14:31):
of common sense, particularly in business. You have to see
what other competitors are doing. You have to see what
you're doing on a daily basis. You have to see
what your value system is in your company. That's why
I love the cattle business. I love it because the people,
because of their integrity level. We have sold about two
(14:55):
hundred and sixty million dollars worth of cattle probably, and
out of that two hundred and sixty million, we've had
less than a million dollars about it comes to seeable
and they come to the ranch. They signed their name
and their address and a hintshe That's all it is.
(15:20):
There's no big contracts, but they're just quality people that
have integrity. And a company is only as good as
their people. It's not because they have better ideas. I've
seen many companies fail because they had great ideas, but
(15:42):
they didn't have the right people. I've seen many companies
succeed that didn't have the best ideas, but they had
great people and loyal people through thick and thin. Because
they were stuck with me is really the only reason
that we succeeded. Young people ask what do they need?
(16:04):
They need integrity first, work, ethic, for a second, and
of course a drive a third in order to succeed.
But you got to have integrity. If you lose your integrity,
you had lost most everything.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
And you've been listening to Bob Funk, and he is
the founder of Express Employment Professionals and has employed and
connected workers to work for generations and so many hundreds
and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people. He found
work in my goodness, did he know what work was?
Working for Wages began when he was fourteen and his
(16:42):
cousin Adolph's farm. I worked from six.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
In the morning till ten at night, every day of
the week, he said.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
I wrote about Bob in Newsweek and I wrote this,
God demanded that his people work six days a week, Adolf,
his cousin, it turns out, required seven. It was from
his cousin and his mother and dad too that Funk
developed a strong work ethic that would guide his life.
And by the way, that story of asking for his
(17:11):
first day off in seventeen years, he gave that responsibility
to a seventeen year old because he wanted to visit
cousins in Nebraska, and so without that cousin Adolf, who
knows what would have happened to Bob Funk and without
his mom and dad. And when we come back more
(17:32):
of the life of Bob Funk, a man who many
call the Minister of work. Here on our American stories,
(18:08):
and we continue with our American stories and Bob Funk's story,
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
There's people who try to cheat their way to the top,
and that certainly that is short lived. It'll catch up
with you in run good, casing point, great big company.
We've had some oil companies, you know, that have not
been on the level, and they're just not around anymore.
(18:39):
It'll catch up with you eventually. And when I started
in the personnel business, we had some terrible, unscrupulous competitors
in Seattle, and then the worst one we had was
here when I moved here to Oklahoma City, and it
took us five years to get him out of business,
but we did it. Finally caught up with him. It
just doesn't last in America. I'll tell you another little
(19:05):
story about America. I was one with the Prince in
Austria at a dinner one night, and there were some
people at our table, and we told him the story
about starting out with five thousand dollars and one hundred
fifty thousand borrowed money. He said, you can't do that
in Austria. If you don't belong to the six families
(19:29):
here in Austria, you'll never be successful. And that's what
people don't understand. Sometimes we have so many opportunity, people
don't know who's direction to go. When we had the
offices in Russia, Igor came for training and we took
him to a grocery store. This is right after the
(19:52):
wall fell, and he came back and he said, too
many decisions, Too many decisions. He said, I even have
to make decisions which socks I'm gonna wear in the morning.
But he said, too many decisions. In a socialist country,
you only have one color of suit, you'll have one
color of pants. You only have one or two decisions
(20:14):
to make every day, two eighty decisions, he said.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
And we do.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
We get a chance to make many decisions. The story
goes that you have seven opportunities in your lifetime, and
sometimes you take them. Sometimes you do, but the average
is seven opportunities in your lifetime. So I've been fortunate
to walk through the doors and maybe five I'm still
got a few left turn it on to eighty in May.
(20:47):
I started an oil company three weeks ago and I
stayed at the Pulp, but I probably would not have
had the opportunity to administer to so many people. And
I think we're in the seven million range now that
(21:10):
we've helped find jobs. But it's not just those that
we find the jobs for. It's the other other millions
of people that come to see you looking for help,
and you have to help them too. You may not
find the right spot for him right at that time,
but you have to give them hope, encouragement. And when
(21:31):
I first got into the business, I was trying to
help them spiritually as well, and so consequently I couldn't
interview as many people as as some of the others.
After a year, my boss, who was a fine Christian man,
came to me and he said, Bob, I understand you're
trying to help them spiritually, but we do have to
(21:53):
make a profit in this business. I said, oh, Gordy,
I do understand. So I would bring them in after
hours and on Saturdays and counsel them separately if they
were looking for spiritual advice, and it's as spiritual help
that would.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Help them in their lives.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
But we do have to make a profit in this business.
If you're bank right, you're not going to be ministered
to many people. So our mission was to help as
many as possible, and to help them spiritually if they're.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Looking for spiritual help.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Well. My personal belief is that it's much much more
fun to give money than it is to take money.
And if you're going to be in our business, you've
got to be a giver. The rewards of giving are
much more meaningful than making money. Money has never been
(22:55):
my motivator, and I do interview. When I do interview people,
I ask them their motivator is is their work environment,
is is prestige of course of ego or is it money?
And usually people who are motivated by money will rip
(23:16):
your organization apart because of jealousy, trying to climb the
ladder to get over somebody, not caring about the other person.
But life is about other people, not about ourselves, and
that's an old biblical principle that it's much more pleasant
to give than it is to take. Takers usually are
(23:39):
very unhappy people. I've interviewed many millionaires, there are very
few of them that are very happy because they were
self centered, looking out for themselves and so giving. Giving
not only money, but time and effort and community location
(24:01):
is extremely important if you're going to be satisfied and
happy with your life. It's just just a part of
life that is so much fun to watch others with giving.
It's fun to help people find a better job so
they make more money, but to give gives them watch
them grow is so much funey to watch franchise these grow,
(24:27):
and some of them make a lot of money, but
most of the franchise eve we've brought into our system.
We look at their heart first, then their values, then
their drive. Then the end result becomes money. They do
better than the rest. Reagan once said that the best
social program in the United States is a job, and
(24:48):
that's true because it gives them pride, gives them encouragement,
gives them a purpose for life, gives them opportunity, and
gives them a lot of self esteem when they have job,
no matter what the level of the job happens to be.
So I've told our people that were in the staffing ministry,
(25:08):
and we're in the ministry because every person that comes
in looking for a job is insecure. They need encouragement,
they need hope, they need compassion, and that's what the
ministry is all about. I was having my shoes shine
(25:31):
the other day and this gentleman introduced himself and he said,
you don't remember me, but you placed me twenty two
years ago on my first job out of college. And
now I'm in a state farming and he said. I
stayed on that job for five years. And then I
was at a commencement service a few months ago and
(25:53):
this gentleman tapped me on the shoulder and he said,
you found me a job in nineteen seventy. Now I'm retired,
but you said you found me in my job. Of course,
I can't remember many of those people that I've placed,
but the point is that you're in the ministry of
(26:13):
helping people. As zig Ziegler once said, the more people
you help, the more money come running at your door.
In our case, that's the point. We're trying to help
as many people as possible because financial it also helps
to grow a company.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler and a special thanks to
Bob funk I love what he said at that graduation speech.
I was in the one half of the class that
made the other half possible.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
But he understood properly the role of the intellect in
our lives.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
And it plays some role, But my goodness, the things
that matter most integrity, hard work.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
That's Bob's ministry.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
In the end, of course, that encounter with Billy Graham,
and we heard just a snippet. Graham led so many
people to the Lord.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Bob Funk was one of them. It changed his life.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
It's why he had a heart for this work, why
he called his work a ministry. Bob Funk's story the
co founder of Express Employment Professionals.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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