Lawn Care Blueprint w/Chris Thacker: Real Time Crew Visibility to Fix Miscommunication and Improve Dispatch

Ezra McCarthy

Hello and welcome back to Lawn Care Blueprint. Today we’ve got a great episode with you. We have Chris Thacker, founder of Crewvision. This is a platform that’s built to give you real time visibility and accountability with the field teams. And Chris, after seeing how miscommunication and a lack of oversight cost lawn landscape companies time and profit, he set out to create a solution for that and he’s done just that. And so we’re going to be discussing how this might be a help for your business and his story. So Chris, glad to have you here.

Christopher Thacker

Yeah, great to be here Ezra.

Ezra McCarthy

Now walk us back. I love hearing the origin stories of people’s businesses. So where did Crewvision come about and why you?

Christopher Thacker

I probably got to go a little further back than that. So I started a landscape maintenance snow removal company. I think I’m entering my 20th year right now. So I started when I was 12. I just like going door to door, signing up customers, shoveling walkways. And that slowly transformed over time into a fairly sizable company. In the winter time we have about 150 people working in the field. And in the summer it’s a bit less just in Canada in general.

Business is a lot bigger than the landscape side of things and we’re operating a very dense urban environment. So unlike a lot of people that are operating in the suburbs we operate right downtown Toronto which is for your listeners just as crazy almost as New York City. It’s very dense, hardly any landscape, and basically every square foot map matters. And one of our biggest issues was always trying to explain to our teams what areas they have to service.

So you show up to a property and it’s not always evident what the areas are and what needs to be done. To be completely honest with you I wouldn’t build Crewvision if I didn’t have to, but we literally had to because there was no way to communicate effectively and be like hey you have to do this area, this area, but not this area. And so that’s kind of the origin story of it.

Ezra McCarthy

I really want to dive into more of your story. I didn’t realize you were right downtown Toronto there. And for those listening in the US this is similar to Dallas, Chicago which there’s no snow in Dallas. Not really, but you get the point. 

Tell us about that because okay snow management, where you put the snow has to be just nuts. How do you process that? Are you bringing in trucks every storm to haul snow or how do you manage that?

Christopher Thacker

That’s gotta be very precise.

Yeah, it’s gotta be so precise. Well that’s the tricky thing. In a city like Toronto the snow dumping locations are so far. So no we’re not always unless we get a lot of snow. Say we get like a two or three foot blizzard that rolls through then yeah we’re hauling a lot of snow out. A lot of times we’re just piling it in very exact spots. And if our crews place the snow in the wrong spot we’re hearing about it. Because customers only have seven or eight parking spots and they’re like here’s your designated spot. And so our whole fleet and our whole operation is built around putting snow in the exact spot.

So we don’t really run plow trucks for example. We run front end loaders because they allow us to put the snow exactly where it needs to be piled. And same thing less so it’s less of a concern with walkways and stuff because you’re still kind of windrowing it towards the curb. But yeah it’s just so dense and it’s hard to tell where one property starts and the next one begins. It’s not like the suburbs where you have a nice location and you have fence lines and everything. There’s a lot going on and you got back entrances. Basically every single site has all these peculiarities.

Ezra McCarthy

Yeah that’s really interesting. Now I’m curious about, in the big city as well. A lot of the people that I work with are more in the midsize towns and we’re going to get to Crewvision here, but I’m just interested in your business side as well. 

As you were growing hiring in a large city I know Toronto it’s expensive everywhere but the cost of living in Toronto is just all nuts. You would know. 

But for those listening just tell them what’s a normal apartment there cost for just an average person. Something livable that doesn’t have roaches.

Christopher Thacker

You’re looking minimum 20 , maybe like 20 free 2400 bucks a month. So and that’s I guess if you’re not house hacking it together and cramming four or five guys into a tiny place. But yeah it’s not a cheap place to live at all. Because we have stupid laws here. They haven’t been building as much as they need to. I think I like a lot of places around the world. But yeah it’s a high cost of living place.

And it’s just like a lot of people crammed in a small area. But that’s the beauty of it too. So it’s kind of like taking one with the other. So I also know people that are in the more sparse out parts like Nebraska and all these other states. It’s a lot harder to find people because there’s not the people there. So it’s a double edged sword.

Ezra McCarthy

Part of the reason why I asked that is team members. You mentioned in the winter you’re getting up to 150. How are you attracting high quality team members when they’ve got crazy expenses and there’s gotta be a ceiling at some point to what you can charge. So I’d love to if you could walk us through that kind of thing. Because this is something I hear all the time, a frustration that I think everyone and probably you have too.

Christopher Thacker

You can sell the work but you don’t have the people to do it. So I’ve definitely lived through that and I definitely have those scars. I think the big thing that changed for us was probably five years ago. So five years ago right in the middle of COVID I made the decision to hire a full time HR manager. And a big part of their job is just recruiting and making sure that our seats stay filled. And you’re always in recruiting mode. You’re always looking to replace people as bad as that sounds. You always have somebody at the bottom of your team so you’re always trying to upgrade.

In terms of how we hire people and kind of keep them around in the winter time. A lot of our operators get paid whether or not it snows. The Canadian snow removal market’s a lot different than the US snow removal market. In the US a lot of companies are charging per time or per event. Versus up here in Canada we charge a flat seasonal fee. In fact we’re 100 percent seasonal. And so as a company we’re making money whether or not it snows. This is actually a very bad year for us. It’s snowing a lot.

But our staff get paid no matter what. So most of our operators are getting some type of standby payment and they’re being compensated to be available. And then we’re trying to hire people that are equipment operators. Some of our staff for example work in construction or land development. And in the summertime they’ve got work but then in the winter they’re not. And we’ve also come up with creative ways to work around.

In Canada they have something called EI which is kind of similar to unemployment in the US. But there are certain programs that allow us to actually pay them while they’re on EI. And so we’re able to make sure that they’re getting paychecks. But it’s really a lot of different solutions and you really just have to be creative and open minded and try to figure out how to, as I say at the end of the day, how you can put the most money in the least amount of pockets possible? You want to give your best team members as much money as possible. And you also don’t want to keep people that aren’t performing. You don’t want someone that’s underperforming dragging down someone that’s performing.

Ezra McCarthy

So what made you as you had this landscape business. I know you talked about frustration in your own business but you’re having to pull away time and energy. And I know people have in their minds okay tech company you’re making a lot of money. From the people I’ve talked to it takes a while to get to profitability. So why did you choose to pull away some of your resources to start Crewvision rather than just maybe expanding on your already growing business.

Christopher Thacker

I think it’s a couple of fold to be totally honest with you. I think when you’re doing something for 20 years there’s a certain element of boredom. You want to go and try other things. And that’s certainly kind of the call to adventure. You want to go and see what’s going on. What’s on the other sides of the industry.

But mostly I’ve had this vision for a long time about this kind of Pac Man IKEA approach where you can basically have all these service areas on a map. And especially whether you’re doing landscape maintenance or snow removal you can go out and attack them almost like they’re all one.

So in downtown Toronto we’re servicing about 850 properties. A lot of them are right next to each other. It’s kind of like in some areas we’re doing this building, this building, this building, this building. It’s almost like what buildings aren’t you doing. And a lot of the traditional software treats it like a ticket and it’s not super visual for the crews. The crews just get sent to one two free addresses but they’re not necessarily sent to the areas within there.

And so I’ve kind of had this idea of a production system where you could just send guys out and you can be like hey you guys are attacking these areas. Just go and kind of lose this whole bounds of having ticket based dispatch which is what all the major dispatch systems are right now. Whether that’s Service Autopilot, LMN, Aspire, whatever you want to call it. It all goes down to a ticket where you’re sending a crew to an address.

And what we’re evolving it to right now is yes we’re sending them to an address but we’re sending them to the areas within that address. And we can be a lot more precise and be like hey you’re doing this area, this area, this area. And it shows up on their phone as a site map not as a ticket. So we’re able to remove a lot of the instructions.

In the past you would have to add 10 or 15 site notes and be like hey do this area, do this area, do this area. We explain it visually. We show you’re cutting this line, cutting this line, cutting this line.

And so it’s a way to make it a lot clearer and eliminate issues. Especially when you have crews where you have the same guy or same crew going to a site every single week and then all of a sudden that guy’s sick or he quits or whatever happens. That’s when the problems happen.

If you can send the same crew to the same site every week you got no problems. But as soon as you start having a more dynamic workforce, people coming and going, how can you make sure that your consistency and your quality stays there.

And so that’s what we’re doing. We’re able to turn it into this visual production system where no matter who goes there they can get the job done and they know all that tribal knowledge.

Ezra McCarthy

I’m curious when you first started did you have that same vision then or did you have to kind of pivot as you begin to see what didn’t work for you.

Christopher Thacker

No I’ve kind of always had this vision to be honest with you. We’ve obviously made some pivots and it’s really fascinating when you’re building a product how you think it’s going to work and how it should work. And then someone else looks at it and they totally do it a different way using your product which is pretty cool.

But I can still think back to like seven or eight years ago I was sitting in a loader. I was doing all these sites that are next to each other and I’m starting, stopping, starting, stopping. And I’m like what address am I on? I’m like this just needs to be a visual thing where I can see where I am on the map. I can see all the areas I’m clearing.

As an operator I don’t care what properties what. I just care about what areas I have to be clearing. So I was like I need to have this system where I can just go click done, done, done, done and kind of light them up and finish it and dispatch that way. So that’s always kind of been this north star for me and it’s been something exciting to get to.

Ezra McCarthy

It’s pretty interesting. I’m curious when you started, did you bring on other team members? Because it sounds like if you’re starting a lawn and landscape company the technical side probably wasn’t your forte. So what did that look like as you began it?

Christopher Thacker

I’m a big relationships guy. Way back in the day maybe like 12 years ago have you ever heard of BNI. It’s like a business networking group where basically you pass referrals.

Yeah I did that. It was my first business group that I ever joined. I didn’t really get a ton of referrals out of it but I ended up finding a lot of people that I still work with like vendor partners if you will my accountant or my graphic designer. But there was somebody in the group that did custom web development. And they did a couple of websites for my landscape company.

Ezra McCarthy

Yep I’ve heard of that.

Christopher Thacker

And over the years we remained in touch and I talked to him about this project and he was really excited about it. So we decided to partner up. So there’s my co-founder Russell who helps me. He’s a little bit more tech oriented and can help me explain to engineers what the guy built.

And he also was the first guy to drive the UX side. We now have a UX person as well but it’s definitely a different role. Once you go from trying to explain what you want to build to engineers and then seeing when it comes back.

If anybody has any experience with this, engineers will be like it works. And then I’ll be like no it doesn’t. It doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to work yet.

So it’s been super helpful having him and that’s where I found him. I started it officially about three and a half years ago. So it’s not like something that just started last year. It takes a lot of time to develop something, iron out a lot of bugs, iron out issues, and make something that’s seamless to work with.

Ezra McCarthy

When did you start Crewvision?

Christopher Thacker

About three and a half years ago.

Ezra McCarthy

I’m curious how long it takes to get your first customer once you have finally ironed out the product.

Christopher Thacker

Well we only actually started selling it last year. I was using it internally for two and a half years because I’ve been a software user for a long time. I didn’t want to push out something that was basically a beta product. So we probably waited too long to start putting it out there.

It took a bit of time to be totally honest with you. It’s not something that sells instantly. There’s lots of people that are trying to push software. It probably took us six or seven months before we really got someone that was on board and paying us and it’s growing.

Ezra McCarthy

Because I think like you said people have this perception that software is just a cash machine. I talked to another Weston Zirin from SyncedUp which is a CRM and job costing software. It’s just interesting to hear the stories. I love people starting businesses and hearing the back stories.

Christopher Thacker

I wish. It’s kind of like a reverse cash machine. You just put a lot of money into it.

Ezra McCarthy

Yeah I can see that. So you mentioned that. Are there any other aspects that are helpful for a business out there that’s growing? What are some of the other features if there are any?

Christopher Thacker

Yeah so right now with what we’re offering which is mapping and dispatch we’re really trying to be that end to end solution for a company for operations. We’re not trying to fill every part of your software stack which is where I personally feel a lot of the solutions on the market have kind of got it wrong.

A lot of them are basically a CRM where they did the CRM first and then they figure out how to schedule and dispatch jobs. Crewvision is the opposite way around. We’re building this to be an operations app.

We want to help you get your jobs done faster, better, and more efficiently. Yes there are some sales tools in there but we’re more built so that you’re going to be able to link into your existing CRMs if you’re using something like Zoho or Salesforce or whatever you’re using.

CRMs have been done 100 times already. Use what’s already been built for that. Crewvision is your operational tool. This is how you actually get the work completed out in the field and how you get stuff done by your crews in an intuitive way.

We’re not asking ticket crews to fill out forms and all this crazy stuff that a lot of systems require. We want to just give them the absolute amount of information that they need and then figure out how to transpose that information back into where it needs to go.

Ezra McCarthy

I laugh and tell some of these CRMs you need like a bachelor’s degree just to figure them out. They’re so robust it makes them unusable. Or they don’t even have an app and I’m like this doesn’t make sense.

Christopher Thacker

Not at all. At the end of the day we’ve built this to the situation that I run into all the time.

Sometimes when it’s snowing we need to hire people and sometimes you’re putting people out that maybe you’ve done like 10 or 15 minutes of training. You’re like here’s how to use the app. Here’s how you go and shovel. Crewvision allows us to spin up extra crews for example in the winter time.

If we need to get extra crews rolling we can literally be like hey here’s the app. Here’s how you start and finish a job. You do all the green areas. You can use Google Maps, you can use Crewvision, and you can get work done.

But most of these applications when I was using my old software we would have to teach them to go into the account, go into the media gallery, go find the site map, and then do the green areas on the site map except if this happens you have to do the yellow areas too. And so there’s just no clarity.

Ezra McCarthy

That’s really good. Looking ahead into the next maybe five years of technology, what do you see coming down the pike in our industry?

Christopher Thacker

I think there’s a lot of exciting things that are coming. The good thing and the bad thing is that we’ve always been kind of a slow industry.

I think we’re finally just getting rid of guys using paper route sheets. We’ve almost skipped a whole era of software and technology. Obviously there are leading companies and people doing exciting things but I think the average company in our space is still somewhat behind.

But when you’re looking ahead there are so many interesting technologies that can be integrated. Depending on how your data is structured and what solutions you’re using there are really cool ways to approach and solve problems that we weren’t able to solve before.

I know AI gets hyped up a lot but think of things where AI can help you price a site. You can take all your production data and mapping data and when a customer asks you for an estimate it looks at your existing database of information and says hey you should charge this much.

Something that’s always been difficult for us is dispatch. Still in my company there are only five or six people who can actually run a dispatch board especially during a snowstorm because there’s just so much going on. How can AI help you dispatch? I think there are a lot of interesting tools coming in the works and you’ll see things like that happening.

Ezra McCarthy

So to close out two questions I always love to ask people. Is there any good book that you’ve read recently that you recommend and then a podcast that you recommend to the listener.

Christopher Thacker

I think the favorite book that I’ve not necessarily read recently but that I’ve probably read four or five times now is The Happiness Advantage. I’m trying to remember what the author’s view is.

Ezra McCarthy

What the. Yeah I’ve never heard of that one.

Christopher Thacker

That’s why I say I can’t remember off the top of my head who wrote it. But he was basically I think a Harvard professor or something. He did a whole study on happiness and what truly makes people happy.

It was just a really good book with lots of actionable things you can implement. I actually did like one year of university and that was actually where I learned about that book and that course. It was the most useful thing that I took away from it.

Ezra McCarthy

And closing the podcast recommendation.

Christopher Thacker

To be totally honest with you I don’t really listen to podcasts too frequently. I usually listen to them if there’s someone on LinkedIn I know who has been on one and I want to listen to them.

It’s not really a podcast but one of my mentors Jonathan Pototschnik. Anything he’s on is something that I’m looking to listen to. He also has a YouTube channel these days called Five for Fifty.

Ezra McCarthy

Five for Fifty.

Christopher Thacker

I think he was kind of off it for a while. I haven’t watched the follow up video but those are the types of guys I like to follow. People who have actually gone out there and built something. They’re not full of fluff. They’re talking from a place of experience.

Ezra McCarthy

Yeah I’m a big Jonathan fan. We’ve had him on. We’re trying to get him on here soon again. Big fan.

Closing out if someone’s interested in checking out Crewvision where might be a good place for them to find you or Crewvision.

Christopher Thacker

They can message me on LinkedIn or just go to our website. You can sign up for a demo.

Right now we’re still kind of in our phase of pushing out and it’s not beta but we’re only starting to charge people now. So we have a trial period that’s running until the end of the month and then we can get you set up.

We’ve got myself, Russell, and someone else on our team to make sure that anybody who signs up is successful and uses maps.

Ezra McCarthy

Well this has been a great conversation. Chris I sure appreciate your time. Thank you everyone for tuning in and we’ll catch you on the next one.