Feature
Story
Seeing The Forest for the Trees
By Jay Winchester
For John Faulkner and the
Cornerstone Group, growth comes from seeing the big
picture.
An old English proverb claims that the eyes are the
window of the soul. If this is true, then John
Faulkner’s soul is a virtual wellspring of intensity and
clarity. Meet him for the first time, and one of the
first things you notice about this rugged ex-Marine is
the intensity and clarity of his bright blue eyes. They
leave little doubt that Faulkner’s vision is clear. This
works out well for his company, Cornerstone Tree Farm
because at Cornerstone, vision is everything.
 “At Cornerstone, our vision guides us in everything we
do,” Faulkner says. “We know exactly who we are, what we
do well and where we want to go. Anything that doesn’t
fit our vision is cut away.”
Where does such compelling vision find its origins?
Faulkner offers an answer that’s not typical of a CEO
running a company that produced revenues in the
neighborhood of $20 million last year and employs 175
people. At Cornerstone, their vision is a matter of
faith. “I follow a vision that God gave me years ago,”
he says earnestly. “That vision was to build a company
that was not just successful but also significant. The
vision led me to believe that a great company could add
value to everything it touched.”
Over time, as the business grew, John noticed that not
only did he benefit from a fervent commitment to the
company’s vision, but so did its employees, clients and
vendors. “I was fortunate to receive a vision that was
broad enough to allow our employees to see themselves as
an integral part of making our vision a shared reality,”
Faulkner says. “When you ask employees to wake up every
day and help you achieve a vision that only benefits
you, their passion dissipates quickly. We have created a
culture that holds our vision as the most important
element of our business, believing that if our employees
share the vision, they will work together with the
passion it takes to turn a profit. The vision is the
main thing, and if you keep the main thing the main
thing, the money will take care of itself.”
To illustrate the importance of the shared vision and
the opportunities it offers to everyone connected to the
company, Faulkner set aside the traditional vision
statement used by almost every company in business
today. Instead, he crafted a letter that reads as if a
Cornerstone employee wrote it. In the letter, mention is
made of the ways in which the company’s culture
benefitted the employee’s life on both a professional
and personal level. While the letter itself is fiction-
at least at this point- the idea is that, if
Cornerstone’s leaders focus on the shared vision,
employees will one day begin writing those types of
letters. That’s when Faulkner and his leadership team
will know for sure that the vision is firmly entrenched
in, and supported by, every person in the company.
 If vision is the company’s obsession, then growth is its
hallmark. Started in 1985, the company has grown from
its humble beginnings to a company with twelve divisions
and a primary focus on providing products and services
in the landscape and construction industries. These
include, but are not limited to, environmental services,
architectural design, a tree farm and nursery,
construction of entryways and amenity centers, and
irrigation systems installation and maintenance. The
company’s target clients are primarily residential and
commercial builders, but not residential homeowners.
Ideal clients include builders, property managers, land
developers and the like. In fact, Cornerstone works with
eight of the area’s top ten builders, and 18 of the top
25. Its current market extends south to Sarasota /
Bradenton, east to Orlando and north to the state line.
Part of the vision for the company’s growth involves
plans for extending its market boundaries and industry
influence.
Along with the focus on growth comes a can-do attitude
embodied by a favorite company catchphrase: We are the
answer. Faulkner wants every potential customer to
understand that Cornerstone has the answer to their
needs- whatever those needs may be- and that the company
can deliver that answer with value. “When our phone
rings, it means that whoever is on the other end is
looking for a solution to a problem,” he says. “Whatever
that problem might be, we make sure we seize the
opportunity to provide the answer.”
All in all, Cornerstone’s success marks a pretty
impressive accomplishment when one considers that
Faulkner, a 48-year-old, mid-term baby boomer still
stretching his limits and extending his boundaries, is
that rarest of breeds: the self-made man. His formal
education doesn’t extend past high school, but, as he
himself says, “Thankfully, I never let my lack of formal
schooling get in the way of my education.”
If the sound of that statement tickles your ears with
the feathery touch of homespun wisdom and smacks of
cowboy philosophy, it’s because Faulkner, a native of
Colorado, has an affinity for the Old West that is truly
heartfelt. He and his wife Julie raise Western
performance horses, and the offices of Cornerstone are
awash in the trappings of life on the wide-open prairie.
It’s a charming change of pace from most corporate
environments- at least until you notice the plethora of
laptop computers, high-end printers, VoIP phone systems
and other paraphernalia associated with a modern,
successful, multi-niched business.
 As for the company’s humble beginnings, those stretch
back to the time when John and Julie moved east to
Florida. They both started working in John’s father’s
furniture store. The couple lived in a rented home in
New Port Richey. One day, the landlord, who lived out of
town, asked John to do him a favor. “He asked me to
solicit bids for removing a dead eucalyptus tree from
the yard,” Faulkner recalls. “After getting a couple of
bids for around $700, I decided to buy a chain saw and
remove the tree myself. A week later, I had the chainsaw
and I also had an ad running in the paper that read,
‘Expert tree removal.’”
That set his feet on the road to success. Still, few
business leaders become successful all by themselves.
They draw wisdom, encouragement and inspiration from
others around them. John Faulkner pulls these things
from three sources. The first is through his involvement
with the Tampa Bay chapter of The C12 Group, a national
consultancy for Christian business owners that merges
solid business principles with sound biblical precepts,
while placing special emphasis on peer-to-peer
accountability and counsel. In fact, Faulkner was named
as one of the chapter’s Members of the Year for 2007. It
had a profound affect on him. “As I drove home from the
awards banquet, I realized that having that honor
bestowed on me brought with it a strong desire to be
more worthy of it than I felt I had been,” he says. “So
I have made the conscious decision to add to the value
of my C12 experience by stepping up both my commitment
to, and my participation with, my fellow members.”
Stepping up means making himself available to talk with
any member about his or her business, and the results it
produces.
A second source of inspiration for John is one of his
employees, a gentleman named Bob Johnson, who has been
with Cornerstone for nearly 20 years. “In all the time
we’ve worked together, Bob has taken only one sick day,”
Faulkner says. “I have learned more about work ethic and
integrity from that man than I could ever have learned
in a university.”
 Faulkner counts his father as the third source of
inspiration and encouragement. “My dad taught me by
example to wake up every morning and work on something
big,” John says emphatically. “I don’t ever remember my
dad not working on something big! Today, while the
market has softened, at least nine of our divisions are
working on something big.” He applies that notion of
thinking big to his continual process of crafting and
refining the Cornerstone vision. “If our people don’t
roll their eyes when I share a new idea, I usually go
back and make the idea bigger,” he says.
However, the one thing that John Faulkner understands
better than anything else is that he is solely
accountable for translating the company’s vision into
successful results that benefit many. “I believe that
God has given me an incredible opportunity in allowing
me to run Cornerstone,” he says. “I know that if it
fails, it will be because of me, not Him!”
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