Customer: Willow River Company    
Location: Hudson, WI
Service Focus: Landscape design/build, tree installation, irrigation, mowing, turf care, snow removal, tree care
Annual Revenue: ~$16 million    
Team Size: 130 employees

When you have 130 employees spread across 25 to 30 daily crews, you can’t be everywhere as the owner/operator. And if you don’t have a system, you end up with something Jim Shimon knows all too well: a line of workers outside your office door, every one of them asking for a raise and no framework for what to say.

“We would just give it. Okay, you want a dollar? Sure. It was so up in the air. No thought process.”

Jim is the co-owner of Willow River Company, a full-service landscape operation based in Minnesota that has grown from three brothers and a truck to more than 25 crews rolling daily. Managing a workforce that size, developing them, retaining them, and building culture across every division, required something more systematic than gut instinct. So Jim built it himself.

Jim and his team created what they call the SDAP, the Self Development Assessment Program. Every division at Willow River has a skills ladder with six tiers. Each tier covers specific competencies for that role, from the basics like daily routines and customer interaction expectations, to advanced skills like building retaining walls and operating equipment safely. Every completed tier comes with a pay increase, anywhere from 25 cents to a dollar an hour. Complete the full program and an employee could earn up to $11 more per hour.

SDAP posters hang in every production room at Willow River. Any employee can walk up, see exactly what they need to learn, and know precisely what it’s worth.

“When an employee comes in wanting a pay raise, it’s like: what have you done? We don’t force it on anybody. It’s them driving the ship.”

The framework was solid. What it needed was a delivery system that could scale with the company, keep content organized across dozens of roles, and put training directly in the hands of employees without adding another app or workflow to their day.

When LMN purchased Greenius in 2024, Jim saw what it could do for the SDAP. Greenius became the place where training videos live, tests get assigned, and progress gets tracked, all accessible directly from the LMN Crew App that employees already use to clock in and view their hours.

“It’s our organization for all of those things,” Jim says. “We upload videos, we upload tests. And it shows which employee cares, who’s setting themselves apart from the next guy.” Managers get visibility into who’s watching videos, completing tests, and working through the tiers. When Jim’s team wants to recognize performance or have a development conversation, the data is already there.

For employees, the integration matters just as much. Training lives in the same app they already use every day, no separate login, no extra step. If someone wants to know what’s required to move to the next tier or watch a video on their lunch break, it’s right there. The visibility goes both ways: employees can see exactly where they stand and what they’re working toward.

Greenius also carries safety and equipment training to the whole crew. Their asset manager uses it to push out maintenance videos, pre-trip inspection expectations, and equipment protocols. “It drives a safer culture,” Jim says. “Anytime we can have a video everybody watches, it’s making sure everyone’s on the same page.”rstand your numbers,” Jim says. “LMN made it so we could still be owner-operators and get our numbers so much faster.”

The SDAP and Greenius together do something harder to measure but more important: they shift how employees think about their work. At Willow River, the word “career” is intentional. Jim uses it explicitly and means it.

That culture isn’t accidental. It’s the result of a deliberate investment, in structure, in tools, and in the belief that when you give people a clear path and the means to walk it, they show up differently. That investment is what makes retention possible and growth sustainable.

The landscaping industry has spent decades fighting a perception problem, the idea that landscaping is a fallback job rather than a profession. Jim pushes back on that every chance he gets. “People hear ‘landscaper’ and their parents are like, ‘Oh, you sure you want to do that?'” he says. “But there is enough money in this industry to make a living. We want people to be proud of what they do.”

“There’s a stepping stone for every path they want to go on. There’s a ton of opportunity. They just need to be willing to do the work.”

For a company that has grown from three brothers and a truck to 130 employees across more than two dozen crews, that culture, and the platform that helps deliver it, is part of how they plan to keep growing. They wouldn’t be where they are without this investment in Greenius, in their people, and in the belief that culture and growth aren’t separate things. They’re the same thing.