On episode four of The Entrepreneurs’ Club Podcast, Carter McKinney sat down at Venture X in Bethlehem with Bart Bailey, COO of Courage to Care and author of It’s In Our Bones. Courage to Care, Bailey explains, is about connecting with other people’s humanity and helping people explore the layers of identity that shape how they show up.
The conversation moved from his family’s history in York, Pennsylvania, to his son’s experience with bullying, to the habits that helped him get his health back. Through all of it, Bailey kept returning to one idea: you cannot take people further than you have gone yourself.
Roots, hurdles and a mentor named Bob
Bailey was born in York in 1968. His great-grandfather brought the family north from Bamberg, South Carolina. A year after Bailey was born, the murder of Lillie Belle Allen sparked a racial riot in York, and his father, civil rights leader Lionel Bailey, went on to lead a community healing process in the city. The family moved to Prince George’s County, Maryland, when Bailey was seven.
Out of high school he was ranked in the top three in the nation in the 110 hurdles, which earned him a full scholarship to Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. He chose it to be close to the business world of New York. After college he joined a utility company and supervised the field crews that restored power after outages.
That is where he met a mentor named Bob, who picked him up every day for 18 months to teach him the electric utility business from the ground up. Bob also spoke up for him in rooms Bailey could not get into. Bob died in 2003, and Bailey says he never got the chance to ask him why he chose to help.
A name that means something
Courage to Care was formed in 2015, after Bailey’s youngest son, Ivan, was bullied by five children over three months. The name is deliberate. Ivan had open heart surgery at three days old, and courage, Bailey notes, is about the heart. The question behind the business is simple: do you have the heart to care for other human beings?
He spent 2015 to 2020 at Cook Ross, a diversity, equity and inclusion firm, before putting Courage to Care to work full time after the murder of George Floyd. That year his team facilitated about 100 conversations on race and racism for a single hospital client with 47,000 employees. Nearly all of the firm’s work still comes by referral. Bailey says he does not market or advertise.
His approach starts with questions. What shapes how you show up? What legacies were passed down to you, even harmful ones? He is currently working with a family whose ancestors purchased six of the enslaved people who arrived on the White Lion in 1619, helping them reckon honestly with that history and decide what they want their legacy to be now.
“Our work is about what kind of human being are you? What’s the legacy you want to leave behind?”
Writing It’s In Our Bones
Bailey admits he was bored in high school and often got kicked out of class. In college he spent hours in the library because, as he puts it, he was not going to lose that scholarship. That habit of taking in information, along with a lifelong practice of slowing down to reflect that he credits to his mother, filled notebooks with stories.
The book’s cover shows a cane corso, with words coming out of the marrow of a bone: integrity, joy, trauma, culture, bias, fear, rage. Each one, he says, lives deep in who he is. “If I choose integrity over fear, you’re going to get the best parts of me.”
He brought in someone to organize the flow of his stories, added reflective questions to most chapters, and self-published so he could keep his rights and own his ISBNs. His publishing coach, Veronica Moore, told him the average author sells 250 books. He sold 500 in six months without a formal tour. He released the book on Valentine’s Day, a nod to the heart, and readers can get it through his website, bookshop.org, or Amazon, in that order of preference.
Health as part of the work
McKinney asked about Bailey’s health, which Bailey has written about publicly. In October 2024 he weighed 290 pounds with an A1C of 7.7, in the type 2 diabetes range. A year later he was at 230 with an A1C around 4.7. He took a GLP-1, but says the biggest changes were eating less and walking 2 miles every day.
He also stopped drinking at the end of March after his doctor explained that alcohol made his medications less effective. Bailey came to see it as more than a health choice. His work means sitting with people in their trauma, and he needs a way to decompress that actually lets it go, like journaling, walking and working out, so he can be present with his family.
“The alcohol is just masking it. It doesn’t release from my body.”
Understanding the assignment
Asked for a final note, Bailey urged entrepreneurs to be specific about their purpose. If the purpose you land on sounds like everyone else’s, he says, it may not be yours. His own is the line at the bottom of every email he sends.
He also spoke about balance. He is wary of chasing RFPs after watching his former employer pour time into proposals that went nowhere. He will take some pro bono work when the relationship and community impact are right, but only so much, because he has employees to pay and insure. Being a student, he adds, never stops.
“My obligation is to remove barriers that hinder myself and others from thriving.”
- Ask what shapes how you show up before you try to lead anyone else.
- Self-publishing let Bailey keep his rights and own his ISBNs.
- Name your purpose in words no one else would use.
- Pro bono work has a place, but too much of it devalues your business.
- Decompress in ways that release stress instead of masking it.
