Maintaining quality and company culture as you scale is hard. Now imagine managing that across four separate sister companies. Yet Timberline One, the parent company of Timberline Landscaping, Timberline Trailcraft, Timberline Rock N’ Roll and Timberline Building Systems, achieves just that.
Creating a cohesive company culture across 320 employees is no mean feat. During the NALP Field Trip in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on June 17-18, 2026, Timberline’s leadership team will share with attendees how they build leaders and culture at scale.
Stephanie Early, chief strategy officer for Timberline Landscaping, says the different sister companies work together on a daily basis.
“Projects commonly have crossover, strategic relationships are shared, and products from Timberline Rock N’ Roll are purchased by the other entities for jobs,” Early says. “Our office and yard space is shared to allow for culture building and collaboration.”
Timberline also achieves transparency by sharing their financial performance openly across divisions so leaders can see all the related strategic plans and KPIs. Their C-suite is shared across all companies to help with unity and communication flow. Early says they can address struggles quickly and with precision by having insights into all of the businesses.
“The parent company structure ensures that our support departments (IT, HR, safety, marketing, accounting, shop) are all in tune with each company,” she says.
Early says by sharing their yard and office as well as tools such as Aspire, Microsoft Teams, Mooncamp and their internal site, Timberline U, also helps ensure collaboration occurs naturally. She adds their Timberline U site enables information to be mobile accessible for the team.
Timberline also sends out a quarterly team newsletter. Meanwhile, profit margin and revenue performance are posted in the conference room for anyone to see.
“Our bonus structure is tied to the performance of all the entities, so we win and lose together,” Early says.
Early says as they’ve scaled, it was key to set up the parent company and have a shared vision and set of core values for all the companies. Timberline seeks to identify up-and-coming leaders to promote as these individuals know their clients, culture, and expectations.
“GRIT is a key trait we focus on; we even have monthly training dedicated to it and have coined our bonus program the ‘GRIT Bonus,’” Early says. “We also actively seek those who align with our five core values: Integrity, Knowledge, Employee Focus, Partnership, and Innovation.”
To help with cultural consistency, Timberline formed a Culture Committee six years ago, comprised of volunteers from different divisions and companies, to plan various cultural initiatives.
“They plan and execute events, celebrations, treats, survey teams, and discuss issues,” Early says. “We have several BBQs per year, a spring kickoff, chili cookoff, holiday party, host coffee mornings where we make fancy coffees for the field staff before they roll out for the day, and have multiple ‘gate handouts’ per year where everyone in the company receives treat bags or breakfast,” Early says.
Both the Culture Committee and Timberline’s business unit leaders focus on making sure culture is experienced by field employees and not just discussed at the leadership level.
“Units are tasked with individual culture-building initiatives, because it cannot all happen at the leadership level, and we understand that most of the employee experience of the culture occurs in their day-to-day interactions,” Early says.
Timberline has also had to adapt over time, as they now have one team at a different location. They make a point to repeat events for them, invite them to the main location and host at least one whole company event at this location.
“Being transparent and open about issues will only help your team,” Early says. “Keeping an eye on culture, performance, and metrics should all be made into a cycle to ensure you don’t lose sight of anything.”
Space is limited, so register for the NALP Field Trip today. The discounted hotel rate is available until Tuesday, May 26, 2026, or until the room block sells out, whichever comes first.
