November 28, 2025
November 28, 2025
November 28, 2025
The Service Provider Problem: Why Trainers, Therapists, and Stylists Deserve Better Software
There's a category of professional that the software industry has consistently overlooked. Not ignored entirely — just served badly.
There's a category of professional that the software industry has consistently overlooked. Not ignored entirely — just served badly.
I'm talking about solo service providers. Personal trainers. Massage therapists. Hair stylists. Estheticians. Private yoga instructors. The people who build their entire business on relationships, repeat sessions, and word of mouth. These professionals are everywhere. They generate billions in revenue collectively. And most of them are running their business on a combination of text messages, a notes app, and memory. That's not a technology problem. It's a respect problem. And it's exactly what we're building to fix.
The Spreadsheet and the Prayer
Talk to any solo service provider about how they manage their client list and you'll hear some version of the same story.
They started out keeping everything in their head. When that stopped working, they moved to a spreadsheet or the notes app on their phone. Some graduated to a Google Sheet. A few tried a CRM, got overwhelmed by features designed for sales teams, and went back to the notes app.
The result is client information scattered across three or four places. Session history that exists only in a calendar — if they remembered to add it. Revenue tracking that happens once a year, usually in a panic at tax time. And follow-up with past clients? That's aspirational at best.
It's not that these professionals are disorganized. It's that every tool available to them was built for someone else.
The Enterprise CRM Doesn't Scale Down
The software industry has spent decades building CRMs. Salesforce alone is worth over $200 billion. HubSpot, Zoho, Pipedrive — there's no shortage of options if you're running a sales team.
But here's the thing: those tools were designed for organizations with dedicated sales operations, pipeline stages, lead scoring, and team hierarchies. When a personal trainer tries to use one to track their 30 regular clients, it's like using a forklift to move a couch. Technically possible. Practically absurd.
The features that make enterprise CRMs powerful — deal stages, lead assignment, automated email sequences, multi-user permissions — are exactly what makes them useless for someone who just needs to know when they last saw a client and what they worked on.
On the other end, the booking platforms that do serve this market — Vagaro, Mindbody, Acuity — are built around scheduling. They're great at getting appointments on a calendar. But they treat clients as transactions, not relationships. You can see that someone booked a 60-minute session on Tuesday. You can't easily see that they mentioned a shoulder injury three sessions ago, that they've been coming weekly for six months, or that they haven't booked in 55 days and might be slipping away.
What Service Providers Actually Need
After spending time talking to trainers, therapists, and stylists about how they work — not how some product manager imagines they work — a clear picture emerged. Their needs are remarkably consistent and remarkably simple.
They need to see all their clients in one place. Not sorted by deal stage or lead score. Just a list of people they work with, searchable and organized.
They need notes that stick to the client, not the session. When a client walks in, the provider needs to pull up their history in seconds. What they worked on. What they mentioned. What to avoid. This is the difference between good service and great service, and right now most providers are relying on memory to deliver it.
They need to know who's falling off. The single most valuable insight for a session-based business is knowing which clients haven't booked recently. A trainer with 30 clients can't mentally track when each one last came in. But a simple alert — "this person hasn't had a session in 45 days" — can be the difference between keeping a client and losing one.
They need revenue visibility. Not a full accounting suite. Just the basics: how much did I make this month, what's my average session value, who are my highest-value clients? Most solo providers genuinely don't know these numbers until they do their taxes.
They need it on their phone. These professionals don't sit at desks. They're in studios, in gyms, in clients' homes. Whatever tool they use has to work one-handed between sessions. If it requires a laptop, it's dead on arrival.
The Real Cost of Bad Tools
This isn't just an inconvenience. It has real financial consequences.
When a trainer can't easily see that a regular client hasn't booked in six weeks, that's lost revenue. Not hypothetical future revenue — real money from someone who was already paying and just needed a nudge to re-engage.
When a therapist can't pull up a client's session history and has to ask them to repeat their preferences and issues, that's a diminished experience. Over time, it's the thing that makes a client switch to someone who seems to "remember" them better.
When a stylist has no idea what their actual revenue per client looks like, they can't make good decisions about pricing, scheduling, or which services to invest in growing.
Add it up across a career and you're looking at tens of thousands of dollars in preventable churn and missed opportunities. All because the software industry decided that a solo massage therapist isn't worth building for.
Building for the Overlooked
This is why we built Seshi.
Not as another booking tool. Not as a scaled-down enterprise CRM. But as something purpose-built for the way solo service providers actually work: fast, mobile, relationship-first.
The premise is simple. Your clients, your notes, your sessions, your revenue — all in one place on your phone. See who's active, who's falling off, and what your business actually looks like this month. No pipeline stages. No lead scoring. No features you'll never touch.
We're building it because we believe the people who keep millions of small businesses running deserve tools that respect how they work. Not tools designed for Fortune 500 sales teams and watered down. Not booking widgets dressed up as CRMs. Something built from scratch, for them.
The enterprise world has had custom-built technology for decades. It's time the rest of us caught up.
Seshi is currently in development at Novus Broker Technology. Sign up for early access or follow our progress as we build in public.
I'm talking about solo service providers. Personal trainers. Massage therapists. Hair stylists. Estheticians. Private yoga instructors. The people who build their entire business on relationships, repeat sessions, and word of mouth. These professionals are everywhere. They generate billions in revenue collectively. And most of them are running their business on a combination of text messages, a notes app, and memory. That's not a technology problem. It's a respect problem. And it's exactly what we're building to fix.
The Spreadsheet and the Prayer
Talk to any solo service provider about how they manage their client list and you'll hear some version of the same story.
They started out keeping everything in their head. When that stopped working, they moved to a spreadsheet or the notes app on their phone. Some graduated to a Google Sheet. A few tried a CRM, got overwhelmed by features designed for sales teams, and went back to the notes app.
The result is client information scattered across three or four places. Session history that exists only in a calendar — if they remembered to add it. Revenue tracking that happens once a year, usually in a panic at tax time. And follow-up with past clients? That's aspirational at best.
It's not that these professionals are disorganized. It's that every tool available to them was built for someone else.
The Enterprise CRM Doesn't Scale Down
The software industry has spent decades building CRMs. Salesforce alone is worth over $200 billion. HubSpot, Zoho, Pipedrive — there's no shortage of options if you're running a sales team.
But here's the thing: those tools were designed for organizations with dedicated sales operations, pipeline stages, lead scoring, and team hierarchies. When a personal trainer tries to use one to track their 30 regular clients, it's like using a forklift to move a couch. Technically possible. Practically absurd.
The features that make enterprise CRMs powerful — deal stages, lead assignment, automated email sequences, multi-user permissions — are exactly what makes them useless for someone who just needs to know when they last saw a client and what they worked on.
On the other end, the booking platforms that do serve this market — Vagaro, Mindbody, Acuity — are built around scheduling. They're great at getting appointments on a calendar. But they treat clients as transactions, not relationships. You can see that someone booked a 60-minute session on Tuesday. You can't easily see that they mentioned a shoulder injury three sessions ago, that they've been coming weekly for six months, or that they haven't booked in 55 days and might be slipping away.
What Service Providers Actually Need
After spending time talking to trainers, therapists, and stylists about how they work — not how some product manager imagines they work — a clear picture emerged. Their needs are remarkably consistent and remarkably simple.
They need to see all their clients in one place. Not sorted by deal stage or lead score. Just a list of people they work with, searchable and organized.
They need notes that stick to the client, not the session. When a client walks in, the provider needs to pull up their history in seconds. What they worked on. What they mentioned. What to avoid. This is the difference between good service and great service, and right now most providers are relying on memory to deliver it.
They need to know who's falling off. The single most valuable insight for a session-based business is knowing which clients haven't booked recently. A trainer with 30 clients can't mentally track when each one last came in. But a simple alert — "this person hasn't had a session in 45 days" — can be the difference between keeping a client and losing one.
They need revenue visibility. Not a full accounting suite. Just the basics: how much did I make this month, what's my average session value, who are my highest-value clients? Most solo providers genuinely don't know these numbers until they do their taxes.
They need it on their phone. These professionals don't sit at desks. They're in studios, in gyms, in clients' homes. Whatever tool they use has to work one-handed between sessions. If it requires a laptop, it's dead on arrival.
The Real Cost of Bad Tools
This isn't just an inconvenience. It has real financial consequences.
When a trainer can't easily see that a regular client hasn't booked in six weeks, that's lost revenue. Not hypothetical future revenue — real money from someone who was already paying and just needed a nudge to re-engage.
When a therapist can't pull up a client's session history and has to ask them to repeat their preferences and issues, that's a diminished experience. Over time, it's the thing that makes a client switch to someone who seems to "remember" them better.
When a stylist has no idea what their actual revenue per client looks like, they can't make good decisions about pricing, scheduling, or which services to invest in growing.
Add it up across a career and you're looking at tens of thousands of dollars in preventable churn and missed opportunities. All because the software industry decided that a solo massage therapist isn't worth building for.
Building for the Overlooked
This is why we built Seshi.
Not as another booking tool. Not as a scaled-down enterprise CRM. But as something purpose-built for the way solo service providers actually work: fast, mobile, relationship-first.
The premise is simple. Your clients, your notes, your sessions, your revenue — all in one place on your phone. See who's active, who's falling off, and what your business actually looks like this month. No pipeline stages. No lead scoring. No features you'll never touch.
We're building it because we believe the people who keep millions of small businesses running deserve tools that respect how they work. Not tools designed for Fortune 500 sales teams and watered down. Not booking widgets dressed up as CRMs. Something built from scratch, for them.
The enterprise world has had custom-built technology for decades. It's time the rest of us caught up.
Seshi is currently in development at Novus Broker Technology. Sign up for early access or follow our progress as we build in public.
