Executive Insider: Rob Fulp

Rob Fulp tried retirement. It wasn’t for him.

In January 2021, Fulp retired after a career that culminated with 10 years as president and CEO of Springfield First Community Bank, now merged with Guaranty Bank.

If he happened to think about taking up landscape painting or learning to fly fish, those ideas were short lived. Instead, he took on the role of chair of the CoxHealth Board of Directors, overseeing a search – for half a year, nearly a full-time job in itself – that resulted in the hiring of hospital President and CEO Max Buetow. He also accepted the title of executive in residence in the College of Business at Missouri State University and took on the role of financial adviser for O’Reilly Hospitality Management LLC – three undertakings that were anything but restful.

Then in April, Fulp retired from his so-called retirement to be named regional managing director at Great Southern Bank.

“I had a little bit of a semi-retirement,” he says. “My friends called it a spring break.”

The CoxHealth CEO search is a point of pride for Fulp, who says the search committee did a wonderful job by working as a team.

That team approach is something he applies to his work at Great Southern Bank, as well.

“One of the best parts about Great Southern is that they have such a strong team member philosophy already in place,” he says. “It’s been such a wonderful experience for me to walk in and work side by side with such high-level professionals.”

That team approach leads to better results for the bank, according to Fulp.

“They know what they’re doing. They care about Great Southern Bank. And when that happens, you do offer the very best in customer service,” he says.

That collaboration is kept on track every Monday morning with a team meeting.

“Since I came on, we’ve had a theme: We’re going to have fun, we’re going to work hard and we’re going to win,” he says.

While Fulp has had a 40-year career in local banking, he says he has found his niche at Springfield-based Great Southern Bank, with 14 branches in the city and nearly 15% of the local deposit market share, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. data.

“We’ve got every resource, to be honest with you, that I never have had,” he says. “I’m very honored and very proud to be a team member here.”

Living to work
Fulp says his return from retirement comes down to one main factor: his love of work.

“I love coming to work,” he says. “Sunday evenings were always a challenge for me, and my wife knew it. She’d say, ‘I know you want to get to work.’ I’d say, ‘I do.’ My career in banking really is my life.”

Fulp says his wife, Cindy, has always been his best partner and deserves credit for any success he has had.

Cindy Fulp was a registered nurse at CoxHealth for 19 years before giving up her career when her parents got ill and needed care. Fulp says he is convinced that the mother of their three children can do anything.

“I mean, she can fix a lawn mower while I’m on the phone trying to find a repairman,” he says.

Fulp is undeniably handy when it comes to banking, however. He got his start in the profession while still in college at the Aurora Bank. Before leading SFC Bank, he was president of BancorpSouth, formerly The Signature Bank, and led its expansion into the St. Louis market.

Academic life
At MSU, his alma mater, Fulp was given the title of executive in residence in the College of Business by MSU President Clif Smart, and he continues some of that work today.

“That was a new avenue for me to pursue and one that I enjoyed immensely,” he says.

Fulp lectured to five classes a week for students in the MBA program and seniors in accounting, marketing and management classes. He notes he still visits with MBA students.

“They didn’t understand life after college and what it was like being a bank CEO or running a board meeting,” he says. “They’d ask what it was like during the interview process – ‘What should I do? What should I not do?’ You don’t learn those things inside the walls sometimes.”

Smart says MSU has been lucky to have Fulp’s expertise.

“I wanted someone with extensive banking experience to help people interested in that career, and Rob has been in the industry at the highest level his whole career,” Smart says. “I was not disappointed.”

He noted, too, that Fulp loves the university.

“Besides guest lecturing in classes, he spent meaningful time one on one or in small groups providing life and career advice, which was tremendous for the students,” Smart says.

Private industry
In addition to his hospital work and university teaching, Fulp also worked for O’Reilly Hospitality Management during his blink-and-you-miss-it retirement.

Fulp served as the financial adviser for the company during the period when it brought BigShots Golf to the city. That entertainment complex opened in mid-2021.

“It was great for me to continue to be busy and just really try to be a team player,” he says.

Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Hospitality Management, says Fulp is a loyal and supportive friend who is always there when needed, and he was also a perfect fit for the company.

“He is a relationship guy who values the friends he has made and works with, and clients that he serves, above all else, so teamwork is very natural for him,” O’Reilly says. “He shines the spotlight on others by making sure the people he works with get recognition, while humbly never desiring it for himself. In my opinion, that’s the recipe for a great leader and produces the foundations of teamwork.”

For his part, Fulp credits the O’Reilly family with teaching him about a team philosophy.

“They were on my bank boards, and they taught me the importance of team members,” he says. “That’s just what we were. We worked as a team, we called ourselves team members and we took a lot of pride in being team members.”

Conventional wisdom says a team approach means checking one’s ego at the door, but for Fulp, the ego should never even make it that far.

“If you do your job, you choose those without the ego,” he says.

For Fulp, putting aside ego also means serving others. Some of his civic efforts include serving as trustee of the MSU Foundation and executive advisory board chair of the MSU College of Business, as well as board service on behalf of Every Child Promise, the Breast Cancer Foundation of the Ozarks, the Springfield-Branson National Airport and the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce.

Springfield’s biggest bank
With its headquarters on North Glenstone Avenue, Great Southern Bank offers a range of banking services to commercial and consumer customers through 91 retail banking centers in six states, with additional commercial loan production offices as far away as Atlanta. The publicly traded company is listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and reports total assets of $5.7 billion on its website. Fulp directs commercial lending for the southwest Missouri and Arkansas markets.

When announcing Fulp’s hire, CEO Joe Turner said the Great Southern team had long respected his work in the Springfield market.

“It’s nice to call Rob a teammate, instead of a friendly competitor,” he said at the time. “Great Southern and our customers will greatly benefit from Rob’s leadership and expertise.”

Fulp says Great Southern’s strength is in relationship banking.

“That’s what we do here at a very high level,” he says. “As a local bank, the decision-making’s here. We can be hands-on here and help our clients through some issues, both good and bad.”

Fulp says it’s important for customers at all levels to have a banking relationship that is both caring and trustworthy.

“We’re here to help them by being their banker and their friend,” he says. “If you don’t have that, you know, you’re just going through the motions.”