CO.STARTERS Spotlight: The Math Success Coach And Impacting Student’s Education
Written by Maddie Steele
Danielle Barbee, owner of The Math Success Coach, can do math in her sleep. She’s tutored students since 2008 in undergrad and has had success story after success story, where she gets to see students go from confused to understanding the concepts they never understood before. But, running a business? That seemed foreign to Barbee as she began thinking about starting her own tutoring company.
Jackson is her hometown and she started her career out of college as a teacher. She began tutoring students while in undergrad as one of only 10 math majors, and she feels like this prepared her for a career in teaching. After she and her husband moved to Huntsville, Alabama, she became burned out from teaching and became an operations research analyst. Although she liked this new job, she missed her students and decided to begin working for a third party tutoring company, building her clientele that would allow her to start Math Solutions Tutoring, where she met students in Barnes and Noble. This small business grew and she rebranded to Tailoring to Your Learning, which expanded the tutoring to other subjects besides math. She was getting pretty successful with her clients.
But then the pandemic hit and forced them to go virtual. And on top of that, she moved back to Jackson, got pregnant, and was a new mom, all while trying to build a fresh business here.
And that’s when she met Trunetta Atwater, founder of SOUL Collective which focuses on elevating the arts, culture, knowledge, and wellness of Black businesses through unity in commerce, education, and social entertainment. Danielle began by simply asking Trunetta to take branding photos for her, but soon Trunetta asked Danielle to tutor her son, and soon after Danielle learned about the opportunities at SOUL Collective.
She enrolled in CO.STARTERS and completed the branding camp through SOUL Collective, and has seen nothing but immense growth in the past year.
“I learned so many things I didn't know, even though I had been running a business for four years at that point,” said Barbee. “It really helped me fine tune my story and build more confidence in myself and my business. I needed the support, and talking to Trunetta and seeing the impact she’s already had on the community, I thought this would be the perfect program for me and my business. And it’s done nothing but grow since I’ve done SOUL and CO.STARTERS.”
Her time in CO.STARTERS gave her the confidence that fuels the joy she receives from seeing the lightbulb moments in the kids she gets to help. Some of them simply don’t have a good foundation for math, and some of them run into a difficult class or teacher, but no matter the situation, her desire is to be their coach and to show students how to succeed as an independent learner in every math class. This is where her new name The Math Success Coach comes from. A desire to see students succeed for the rest of their life because they understand the foundations, how to research concepts they don’t know, and how to be a good learner.
“I can do math problems all day, but actually learning how to run my business and building the business is hard,” said Barbee. “Figuring out marketing and having the energy to continually bring in customers is tough. But the rewarding part is making an impact and seeing the lightbulb moment in the kids. Seeing the students succeed is the best.”
A new city and three names later, Danielle Barbee has succeeded at her business ambitions and her office is now housed in a train at the Historic Jaxon Station. I mean, what kid doesn't want to learn about math on a train? This location has been perfect for Barbee to focus on closing achievement gaps and focusing on intervention for her students.
One student that stands out to Danielle was a boy named John who was a problem in the classroom and failed 6th grade math. His dad decided to send him to Danielle for her eight week summer session and he also continued through the beginning of the next school year. When school started again, his dad came to Danielle and told her that he was still a problem in the classroom, but not for the reasons you may think. He wouldn’t stop answering the questions, raising his hand, and enthusiastically taking over math class. He went from failure, to being the most excited math student in class.
“His confidence was through the roof,” said Barbee with a huge smile on her face. “And he would come in and wouldn’t ask us about math anymore, he would start asking us about other subjects. ”
This is why Danielle does what she does and why she’s poured so much energy into understanding how to run a successful business. She is making a difference in the lives of kids who need her help.
She has gained a community of networking with business owners, not only through CO.STARTERS, but through SOUL Collective. Execution and consistency have been the key to growing her business and maintaining success, and having people around her to push her and keep her accountable has been a game changer.
“Like the quote says, ‘God gave you the vision, it wasn’t a conference call.’ You know it’s just you, so if your family or friends aren’t doing the same thing, they’re not going to understand the struggles,” said Barbee. “Being with other business owners helped keep me motivated, it was like an accountability check each week. Even if I had a terrible week and wanted to quit, I had to come to class and was always motivated again.”
You can follow The Math Success Coach on Instagram @themathsuccesscoach.