
Linda Ha sets sights on helping freelancers avoid burnout and stay afloat
Linda Ha, a long-time entrepreneur, consultant, and hair professional, is trying to make running a business easier for massage therapists as the CEO of Hivemanager.
"I felt like with my experience of community building, my knowledge of being a self-employed person, and scaling that from being self-employed to managing and consulting with self-employed barbers, then also (my experience) owning a business was something I could bring to this space," Ha, who owned Barber Ha until it closed in 2023 and now works at her sister's BTeam Barbers, told Taproot.
Hivemanager is a software platform that was launched to the public in March. It offers booking, scheduling, payment, staff management, appointment reminders, automation, analytics, and more. The tools are tailored to massage therapists, but are similar to ones that barbers use and could apply to many self-employed service providers and business owners, Ha said. Part of why she took the CEO job, she added, is because the software she used to run Barber Ha was not up to snuff.
"I was paying a lot of money for features that I didn't understand and that I didn't use," she said. "The features that were promised to me were just not doing the trick. On top of that, (the software services kept adding new features). I don't need you to come up with a new feature, I need you to fix what I'm already using."
Ha said training for barbers and massage therapists provides hands-on skills, but does not provide the nuts and bolts of running a business. That's why systems to make running the business easier can be the difference between failure and success.
To illustrate this point, Ha reflected back on her Barber Ha days. "There was all of a sudden this explosion of barbers becoming self-employed," she said. "The problem (for them) is they would only last one or two years. They didn't realize that as soon as they were on their own, they now have to do what they were already doing while working for someone like me, but then they also have to understand how to run the business."
Ha estimates that 80% of massage therapists are self-employed, and the same percentage leave the industry within three to five years due to burnout. "I feel like the self-employment model is very misleading," she said. "It's been promoted as having a lot of freedom and a lot of flexibility — which is all true — but there also is a missing chunk of information and knowledge that is needed in order for people to be successful. Not everyone is getting the whole picture."
One way barbers and massage therapists differ is in opportunities for interaction. At a barber shop, workers chat and can share business skills as they go about their days. Massage therapists "work in isolation," Ha said, because the service hinges on privacy, leaving workers without an immediate peer community.
To foster camaraderie and knowledge sharing, Ha will bring people together to learn how to use tools at workshops and "mix-and-mingle" events. Hivemanager has 60 paid users right now, and these events are also meant to drive the company's growth with word of mouth and customer familiarity. "Our approach is community first, and we want to get our name out there by connecting with people," Ha said.
Ha took the position as CEO in February, and shortly after was part of an Alberta Catalyzer Velocity cohort (of which Zylotex, an innovative fibre maker, was also a part). She is the startup's leader but not a founder. The two co-founders of Hivemanager are Ha's barber clients, own six massage clinics, and don't want to share their names because massage competitors may use Hivemanager.