Natasha Bowen might be the new president of the Memphis chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners and president of the Memphis chapter of the business consulting firm The Growth Coach, but success hasn’t always come easy for her.

Natasha Bowen teaches business owners how to make their businesses successful.
(Photo: Lance Murphey)

Before affiliating with The Growth Coach – a Cincinnati-based business coaching franchise with chapters across the nation and in Canada – Bowen had several failed business ventures. And the onset of starting The Growth Coach more than two years ago had its rough patches.

“The first year was hard, but that’s common in any business,” she said. “I really wanted to differentiate myself from others, so I worked even harder.”

It paid off. Bowen’s chapter of The Growth Coach raked in the highest amount of revenue of any chapter in its first year, earning it the New Market of the Year Award from The Growth Coach corporate office.

Bowen can pinpoint the main reason her chapter has found success.

“It’s all about my passion about being an entrepreneur and helping others to be successful entrepreneurs,” she said.

The Growth Coach is a consulting firm designed to help businesses streamline their practice, making them more marketable, efficient and attractive to consumers. Her sales background has enhanced her consultant work because companies are too focused on technicalities and not sales strategies.

Bowen said businesses often focus solely on the products or services they produce, and let the sales, marketing and hiring strategies take the backburner. The Growth Coach seeks to remedy that.

When Bowen started The Growth Coach Memphis, she had to lead her clients by example. That pressure to follow her own advice helped make her own business successful, she said.

“I couldn’t tell someone to do something effectively if I wasn’t doing it myself,” Bowen said.

That integrity and the desire to be an example for businesses in the Memphis community is what has made Bowen a leader, said Shayna Rattler, Bowen’s business partner.

And with her position as president of The Growth Coach Memphis, president of NAWBO, and a member of the city’s EDGE (Economic Development Growth Engine) board – not to mention a wife and mother – Bowen juggles the role of leader well.

“I’ve always been very active; I always have been a leader,” she said of her many projects and positions. “So this is my normal.”

She joined NAWBO as a member her first year starting The Growth Coach Memphis and moved up the ranks until June, when she was elected president of the Memphis chapter of the organization. She has a vision for NAWBO having a greater influence in the community, but she said there’s a long way to go. Once again, she said she will lead by example.

“I will pave the way,” she said. “But I have a lot of women behind me doing the same.”

Most of her business clients are white men. So while Bowen said her status as a minority business woman has never had an effect on her business, she did say the city’s diversity needs to be represented better in the business world, in both race and gender.

“If you look at the revenue for women-owned businesses, it is pitiful compared to other businesses as a whole, but there is an increase,” she said.

Through The Growth Coach and NAWBO, Bowen said she hopes to empower minority and female entrepreneurs in the community, specifically by encouraging collaboration between and combination of small businesses with similar aims.

Rattler said the two outlets work well together and feed off each other – by improving the way small businesses operate, they can help minority- and women-owned businesses become more effective, and NAWBO’s advocacy furthers that aim.

“There’s a very synergistic relationship,” Rattler said.

When Bowen is not at work with one of her business ventures or organizations, she stays busy with her family – she said her daughter will be a businesswoman, probably running one Bowen owns – or doing zumba at the gym. Her energy and charisma is compelling, Rattler said.

“The true definition of a leader is one that empowers other people to want to follow you,” she said. “The fact that’s she’s passionate about what she does and has makes people want to join her cause.”