Succeeding in Business Despite The Glass Ceiling with Dr. Cortney Baker of KidsCare Home Health

Dr. Cortney Baker is the Founder and CEO of Baker Management Group. She is also the Founder, CEO, and Chairman of the Board of KidsCare Home Health, a multi-million dollar enterprise providing speech, physical, occupational, and nursing services to children with special needs from Texas to Colorado. The company has more than 650 employees and has provided healthcare to over 40,000 children with special needs.

Dr. Baker also coaches female entrepreneurs on how to start and scale their service-based businesses. She’s the author of Unlimited: Conquering the Myth of the Glass Ceiling and the bestselling book, The 10 Do’s and Don’ts for Business Leaders. She went from a single teenage mom on Medicaid and food stamps, working double shifts as a pregnant waitress to Texas Businesswoman of the year.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Dr. Cortney Baker talks about succeeding in school despite being a single, teenage mom who worked double shifts
• How Dr. Baker is helping kids with special needs and why she decided to expand KidsCare Home Health
• Dr. Baker shares her experience of going through a seven-hour brain surgery
• How Dr. Baker transitioned out of the daily operations of her business and her advice for people who want to do the same
• Dr. Baker talks about her book, Unlimited: Conquering the Myth of the Glass Ceiling
• What to expect from Dr. Baker’s Women in Business Podcast 
• Dr. Baker shares her biggest struggles and how she was able to overcome it
• What it was like for Dr. Baker to win Business Woman of the Year

In this episode…

How hard can life and business get? Just when Dr. Cortney Baker thought she was out of the woods and ready to expand her business, one of her employees committed fraud that almost made her lose her company. As if that was not enough, Dr. Baker had to go through a seven-hour brain surgery. Thankfully she was able to overcome those challenges and she came back stronger than ever and returned to oversee the growth of her business to a multi-million dollar company.

How did she overcome these challenges? And how does her book, Unlimited: Conquering the Myth of the Glass Ceiling, help in overcoming the limit that could potentially hamper your growth?

Tune in to this episode of Inspired Insider as Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Dr. Cortney Baker of KidsCare Home Health as Dr. Baker shares her inspiring story of resilience, courage, and unapologetic will to succeed despite life-threatening challenges. Find out what she means by a glass ceiling, how to overcome it, and how she braved through her struggles to become the successful woman that she is today.

Resources Mentioned on this episode

• Dr. Cortney Baker’s website 
• Dr.Cortney Baker on LinkedIn 
• Women in Business Podcast
• Michael Gerber on LinkedIn
• KanTime 
• Unlimited: Conquering the Myth of the Glass Ceiling by Dr. Cortney Baker
• The 10 Do’s and Don’ts for Business Leaders by Dr. Cortney Baker

 

Episode Transcript

Jeremy Weisz
All right Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, I’m the Founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders like founders, you’ve heard of some you’ve never heard of, you know? I’ve Dr. Cortney Baker, which I’ll introduce you in a second who’s remarkable as a business person human being and, you know, Cortney, pass gas. You know, I love hearing the challenge story. So, Julie Clark started Baby Einstein grew to $20 million with five employees eventually sold to Disney. But to me, the most impressive part was, she called herself the cancer assassin. She had cancer twice, over, you know, beat it overcame it in You know, there’s enough hard stuff and just business in life and then you have that and then you have to overcome it. So I love hearing those, those stories, you know, and so go check out that and more inspired insider.com This episode is brought to you by Rise25 which I co founded with my business partner, John Corcoran. And if you know me, if you don’t I think podcasting is the best thing since sliced bread. It’s allowed me to form amazing relationships with people. And so we help businesses basically connect in run their their entire podcast connect to their dream 100 referral partners put out their authority into the world and help themselves and their guests leave a legacy. Okay, check out my about page I won’t go into the full story, but I got into it. And it was inspired by my grandfather who was a Holocaust survivor and his legacy lives on because of an interview. Because the Holocaust foundation did an interview with him. You can watch the full hour long interview on on my about page and it’s you know, it’s things that I look at and have gratitude for appreciation for if I find myself complaining, Cortney, like I watch that I’m like I have nothing to complain about absolutely nothing to complain about. Okay, so check out that Rise25.com in general if you have questions about podcasting, today’s guest I want to thank big shout out to Andre Houston, who introduced me to today’s guest on checkout Attitudes Design. They have clients like Microsoft, Starbucks, Salesforce, and they do virtual event production in design. And she also runs an amazing podcast Lead Like a Woman Podcast, where she features epic women, epic women leaders. And so I have Cortney Baker view, you know, Dr. Cortney Baker is one of those people, you know, after hearing your story, Cortney like just truly inspired and now you pop into my head and I’m thinking, Okay, if I’m complaining about something, if something’s not going, right, I’m like, wow, what she is endured. If I was at that place, I don’t know if I would be where you’re at at all. You know, I may be just Have you stayed on the path of not, you know, striving for more? I don’t know. So She’s the founder and CEO and chairman of board of and the Board of kids care home health. It’s a multi million dollar enterprise providing speech, physical, occupational, and nursing services to children with special needs. from Texas to Colorado. The company has more than 650 employees and have provided health care to over 40,000 children with special needs. She also coaches female entrepreneurs on how to start and scale their own service based businesses. And she’s authored books which you should check out Unlimited: conquering the myth of the glass ceiling and the best selling book the 10 do’s and don’ts for business leadership. She went from single teenage mom on Medicaid and food stamps, working double shifts as a pregnant waitress to Texas businesswoman of the year after starting in a successful company. And along the road. She also has a major challenges and had to endure a set In our brain surgery, Dr. Baker Cortney, thank you for joining me.

Dr. Cortney Baker
Thanks for having me, Jeremy.

Jeremy Weisz
I really wanted to start there. Because I think in this environment, every environment, I need to eat like humble pie, I need to be brought back to my roots of really where we came from, which is we all come from most of us, like, start from, not a lot and have to build from scratch. Tell me about that. I don’t know maybe one of the times when you’re single teenage Mom, you’re working double shifts as a pregnant waitress. What was life like at that point for you?

Dr. Cortney Baker
I that was 26 years ago, but I was scraping by. Just I live with my mom when I was pregnant, and had just decided, really, because of when I was 16. I lost my sister and she had multiple sclerosis, and I hope Take care of her. I helped her walk and talk and feed her and I bathe her. And when I was 18, I got pregnant. And at 19, six months after I had graduated from high school was when my son was due. And because I’ve had so much loss already in my life, I just knew that even though I was supposed to give him up for adoption, I just couldn’t. And at that point, I said, you know, what, if I have one shot at this, which I do, then I’d rather figure it out and keep him then have to endure that loss again.

Jeremy Weisz
Was that even a decision? That was that a hard decision? Or were you thinking I’m keeping this no matter? You know, keeping the baby no matter what, you know, some people have different mentalities around that maybe that wasn’t even an option for you like you didn’t even consider that.

Dr. Cortney Baker
At the time. not keeping him

Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, like giving away like you were just mentioned giving away for adoption or You know, Yeah,

Dr. Cortney Baker
I was gonna have I was gonna have a give them up for adoption. I was gonna have them and give them to my seventh grade math teacher. Wow. Yeah. So I already had a family and everything picked up for them and I just knew that I couldn’t do it. And I actually heard the old Dolly Parton song, I will always love you. And I was like, it just broke me. And I was like, I can’t do it. not do it.

Jeremy Weisz
So, you are working double shifts. You’re pregnant and working. double shifts at that point.

Dr. Cortney Baker
Yeah, I was pregnant in my ear lobes, like all over the play. It was huge, huge.

Unknown Speaker
miserable.

Jeremy Weisz
I never heard that thing as a good thing pregnant my earlobes. Um, and at that time, you were seeing your friends going off, right? Mm hmm.

Dr. Cortney Baker
My friends were going to college and I was going to the food stamps office. It was very humbling.

Jeremy Weisz
So you’re living with your mom, you have your baby. What are you thinking at this point? Because it seems like you did you have always have great aspirations at that point to have your own business. What was your thought process is that point?

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