We recently connected with Natasha Barnes and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Natasha thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

The idea for starting “Increasing Our Understanding (I.O.U.) Consultation, LLC” is multi-faceted. I was in my doctoral program for counselor education & supervision, and one of my professors had a great passion for career counseling. I worked with her as a teaching assistant one semester, and I developed a passion for career counseling as well. Never did I think that I wanted to have my own private practice focused on career counseling, but I knew that I wanted to work with career counseling in some facet. While this was going on in my professional life, my personal life was targeting an area of career counseling as well. My youngest nephew, who was in 7th grade at the time, was struggling in his classes, and he ended up failing that year. I was having a hard time processing him failing a grade, because it just seemed to me that it could have been prevented. When I would talk with him about what he wanted to be, he would always speak about wanting to be a welder, but he couldn’t connect what he wanted to be with what he needed to do to get there. This made me think not only about my nephew’s education, but the education of other students. I started to realize that many students were not exceling, because they couldn’t connect their what, when, where, why, and how. Questions needed to be answered for them such as: -what I want to be?
when do I want to accomplish this?
-where do I start to reach my goals?
-why do I have to do the things that I have to do to reach my goals?
-how can I connect what I’m doing now to what I want to do later?

So, I developed my practice on the premises of being someone who could help them answer those questions. My practice focuses on combining my expertise of mental health work with my passion and expertise in career counseling to help students answer these questions and start on an early path to success. Additionally, through my work with kids, I found that there were many adults seeking answers as well related to their own career development and planning. So I opened my practice to services adults and to provide services to businesses so that they can best assist their employees.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I have had to be resilient throughout the development of my practice, as there have been many twists and turns along the way. I started my practice in 2017, and that same year I started a new job as a counselor educator. Given that it was a position in my career, my practice development took the back burner. In 2019, I was finally able to devote some time and energy to marketing and working with some schools, and then Covid hit in 2020 and all schools closed. I was able to do a little work through my practice virtually, but nothing like I wanted to do. Things started to level out with the pandemic, and then my work responsibilities as a counselor educator picked up. In 2022, I accepted an online teaching position which allowed me more time to work my practice….and then my dad got sick with cancer. So I was once again removed from face-to-face work and had to maintain my practice through a few virtual workshops. Then one day I received a call about being a vendor with a grant that serviced many schools in the area, and I accepted that contract which provides me lots of interaction with schools and marketing for other opportunities. So staying the course helped me to secure an opportunity that I could only have dreamed about.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Pivoting has been the name of my game in my career specifically. I started my college journey as a nursing major, but realized that I was living out my family’s dream for me and not my dream for myself. Then I entered the Psychology program with a desire to work as a mental health counselor. I did that for years, and then decided that I could do more good for the profession if I was able to teach those who were entering the profession. So I started my journey to becoming a counselor educator and supervisor. I continued to work in mental health counseling until I was introduced to the career counseling specialty. I fell in love with career counseling, and from there developed my practice that I have today.

Contact Info:

• Facebook: IOU Consultation, LLC