Episode 11 - Entrepreneurship With Heart:
Blending Profit and Purpose
Join host Aaron Burnett as he sits down with Andrea Duffield to explore the defining moments of her entrepreneurial journey—from single motherhood and launching pediatric clinics, to leading Bridgeways, a social enterprise that blends aerospace manufacturing with meaningful employment for individuals facing mental health challenges. In this candid conversation, she shares lessons in resilience, values alignment, the power of Forum, and how Entrepreneurs’ Organization shaped her leadership, marriage, and vision for belonging in business and beyond.
Note, this podcast features real entrepreneurs sharing real challenges and solutions. No pitches, no sales - just honest conversations about the moments that shape successful businesses.
Aaron: Tell me your story, your entrepreneurial journey.
Andrea: Sure. So by accident I went to school to be a speech pathologist, which is what my career was in. And I quite enjoyed being a speech pathologist. The catalyst for change was my daughter, Izzy, was born in January of 2000. And about three weeks later, I separated from my husband at the time.
I had a pretty strong "aha" of that. I didn't wanna raise a child thinking that's what love in a marriage. It was about,
A whole lot of baggage in there that doesn't really matter, but made the decision that I had chosen to become a mother and to have a child and I had a responsibility to her.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: And so when I did that, there was the, okay we'll always be okay as a speech pathologist, but I felt a really deep responsibility to her and the choices that I made. So when she was 10 months old, I decided to go back to school to get my MBA, which was tough working full-time. Maybe going to school full-time.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: For the company I was working for, I developed a business plan as my final project.
Which was for the pediatric clinics that ultimately, so that was the business plan for school, which we then opened the first clinic based on that with the company I worked for, opened a few others, and in 2006, they gave me the opportunity to purchase those clinics and then run them as my own.
So it was a pretty cool way to go from. School to a very long school project on someone else's dime for a few years. Yeah. And then take over operating it. Grew that to multiple clinics. At one point, we were the largest pediatric provider in the state. 2015, I brought on a business partner for an area of the business.
I wanted to expand to lesson learned there in how you vet someone and know about. Truly how you look at running things. Sure. From your or values mandates that you had. Because we were not aligned. If you have two people at the top that are not aligned, just we created chaos for everybody within. By 2018, we ended up that we shut down part of the business.
We sold part of the business. And had to separate and end things with. That is another painful story, but lessons learned. Finished all of that in 2019. Took a little bit of time to figure out what I wanted to do next. Decided I didn't want to start something new, but found a unique opportunity to be running a nonprofit Bridgeway.
It's unique because it's an employment social enterprise. So we have one side that we're doing contract aerospace manufacturing, which we run the same as a for-profit business.
But more than half of our employees are what we call mission-based folks that have been challenged with chronic under or unemployment.
Primarily related to mental health challenges.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: So, creating a workspace for people that allows them to maintain ongoing work with decent pay. It's there working at the same level as anyone else that's building airplanes, but then we're able to take the money from that to use to fund our social programs.
So which ranged from homeless outreach, jail diversion, and transition. Supported employment. Supported housing. So I get to be entrepreneurial.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: And run that side of the contract assembly, a big lift because the through line from speech pathology to building airplanes. It's not.
Aaron: Not
Andrea: obvious.
Yeah. Just a little. So it was a big challenge for me figuring out what I was doing. And I thought the medical field had a lot of acronyms, but
Aaron: yeah,
Andrea: aerospace and Boeing, they beat it. So just figuring out that and getting to do that entrepreneurial side. And I've always been very committed to sort of social service type of work, giving back, doing things within the community.
So it's been a beautiful blend for me. Of being able to. Work, but do work. That does good.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: It's been a journey, but it's been up and down, but fun.
Aaron: How big is Bridgeways either in terms of people served or the staff that you have?
Andrea: We're around 75 ish. 80 employees? Yeah. 50 to 60 of them are gonna be on the manufacturing side.
And then the social and community services, 15 to 20. Folks in that area saying how many folks we serve can be challenging. 'cause we have some programs, like our mental health court programs, that case manager will serve a small number of people for two years. 'cause it's intensive services.
Homeless outreach programs, their services can be just very brief so they can be making contact with over a thousand people in a year.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: I would say for last year, probably a thousand to 1500. But then the others are going to be. Serving various numbers. So I think it was less than 2000 this last year when we like added all in, in terms of folks in Snohomish County and we're on a big growth trajectory.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: Part of Boeing right now has gotten a lot of things sorted out and there's a lot of building and growth going on. So it is an exciting time. We. Brought back to employees that had over the pandemic and that time that had been laid off.
Just came back and I think we brought on five new manufacturing folks this week. It's got a big curve going up right now.
Aaron: That's great. How do you create an environment or I guess, what sort of things do you have to do to support people who have mental health issues but also need to do work that is demanding?
Needs to be precise?
Andrea: It's a challenge and I don't think we. We always have it completely figured out. We do a lot to focus on our values. One of the things that I believe strongly in, in what we do at Bridgeways and overall is that it is not helpful to give someone a handout. It is helpful to give them a hand up.
Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't provide food or basic necessities to people, but in general to help someone to become. To be living it their best lives. For them, it's about a hand up. We work really hard to. To be pretty direct and thorough on our training things of what we're doing and what our expectations are, but also knowing coming in where someone is at so that we can start where they're at and have our expectations for what they can be doing.
At a rate that they can do. So we have some employees who can't work full-time. And they won't ever work full-time.
We have some employees who can't work full-time now, but over the course of time can add more time to what they're doing. We have some folks who, depending on the time of the year, will need to work less.
So we have some folks that holiday times can be very triggering this time of year commute trigger. So we do have to deal with a lot more leave of absence type of things. We will adjust when people start times are. Like a lot of manufacturing facilities, our shift starts at six and it goes till the, we have some folks that have to take medications in the morning and need a period of time for those medications to be able to kick in.
Aaron: Sure.
Andrea: And if we said you have to be here at 6:00 AM. They're not, it's not going to be sustainable
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: For them.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: And it's as simple as having them start at seven. So it's not always big things with it that we have to be doing. But then we also look at, in terms of creating belonging, like the types of things to do that we support people and events.
So when I first came in, I was like, we should do a holiday party. Let's go do something here.
And it wasn't really well attended.
And I was naive to that because we have a lot of folks who, anxiety is a very big deal. And social anxiety is an even bigger deal. So to ask them outside of their work to go to an unfamiliar place,
Aaron: Sure.
Andrea: There's gonna be unfamiliar people wasn't the best idea.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: We do our holiday thing that we do a lunch at work on a workday. People love being able to do that. They get to break bread together and have that time together in a familiar. Environment for what they're doing. We do things like, we have a sundries cabinet, toothpaste and hairbrushes and shampoo and conditioner and things like that.
And we've done a lot to improve the wages of what people have. Having things that are not expensive for us to have there. That if someone needs that,
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: Those toiletries, then great. People wear shirts and sweatshirts and sweaters. So when you start, you get one, and then every holiday and different things. So folks aren't having to think so much about what they're wearing at work.
That's again, like a differentiator of where people are at and it equalizes things.
Aaron: For
Andrea: people. So it's not always big things, it's, it can be little things. I think we're, we've just been talking about in our planning, what can we be doing better and more to be supporting people?
Because there are some folks that it doesn't work for.
Aaron: Yeah,
Andrea: for us. And so we wanna kind of case study it as a leadership team and say what was the miss for us there? What was the work environment like for someone where they triggered by noise or space or. Who they were working around. Can we look at changes like that?
It takes some introspection and looking at we'll often, like people will say it's just common sense. And it's but it's actually not.
Because common sense is only common if you learned that
Aaron: Right.
Andrea: As a child, if you haven't learned those things, then it's not common sense about what you talk about in the break room or.
If you take food out of the we have to be aware of really looking at that whole person and that person first.
Aaron: It's fascinating.
Andrea: It is.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: It's an interesting way to look at things and it's changed how I look at the world a lot. I think EO has also taught me this a lot too. Not judging a book by its cover.
And really looking at people individually and recognizing you can be the most put together person in the world. But what's going on inside can be very different. And you can also show up. Not looking like the most put together person in the world, but be just fine.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: I've had some whoopsies for myself of having to say, i, I had some preconceived notions and judgements there that I should be checking at the door and recognizing what I'm doing.
Aaron: Yeah. Before we continue, I want to tell you about the community that made this podcast possible. The Seattle chapter of eo, that's Entrepreneurs Organization. It's not networking, it's not selling to each other.
It's real entrepreneurs sharing real challenges and solutions. If you have a business that does at least a million a year in revenue. And you're curious about joining a community that gets what you're going through. Check out EOCF. What brought you to eo?
Andrea: So Steve, my husband, brought me to eo.
I met Steve right at the transition of when I was going to be taking over ownership of Mosaic, my prior company.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: He was already a member, so I thought he was in a cult. First.
Aaron: Sure.
Aaron: Kind of a typical spousal
Andrea: Reaction. A common, yeah. Like you're gonna go do what? Okay.
Tell me about it. I eventually joined spousal form, which to this day is some of my strongest form experiences in eo.
I think it's such an underutilized resource. All of the other members in my spousal forum also either had their own businesses were key partners in their spouse's business. It did so much for me for. Not just understanding myself, but also seeing other couples and how they went through challenges of businesses together, what they did and didn't communicate.
So I did that for several years and then I ultimately decided to join full EO primarily for more access to more learning. There's a limit to the what spouses can be a part of and I wanted more, and it has continued to deliver for me, obviously, 'cause it's been. 10 plus years at this point. 12 plus.
Aaron: How has EO changed you?
Andrea: It's changed me fundamentally really stepping back and not making assumptions or judgements about people. The process in EO of sitting down with a group of people. Who you have a commonality as an entrepreneur with, but often no other commonalities, right? That single point that you come together on, spending regular time with them, sharing deeply about yourself and your experiences, and then having people.
Share their own experiences, the way we bear our souls to each other and are able to say, here is the good of what I've done. Here's the bad, here's what I'm proud of. Here's what I'm not. Being able to share that us all, to be able to learn from it is a huge gift to receive. It also feels like a good gift to give back to my community.
The ability to listen and just hear people and really see I thought there was only one common thing,
Aaron: right?
Andrea: Each person that I've met, I can find. Other commonalities. And I think my biggest learnings in EO have actually been with the people who I went into thinking I have the least in common with.
A former member, Dave, you know me, I would consider myself fairly progressive. And I would consider Dave fairly conserv. In terms of beliefs on things, we were very far apart. If it hadn't been sitting down in a forum situation, I don't think Dave or I would've ever. Listened to each other, I would've stayed in my echo chamber and he would've stayed in his.
I learned so much more and gained so much greater understanding of his perspective. We were both really able to appreciate each other's views.
Now, we'd go to dinner afterwards and our four mates would often say, look, the two of you can't sit together. You're going to argue. And we'd be like, yeah, but we love each other.
I learned from the people who know and think like me, but I can learn even more for those. I don't think, like me,
Aaron: you are in not a unique situation, but an unusual situation.
In that you are married to someone who also is in eo.
Andrea: Yep.
Aaron: How, if at all, does EO show up in your marriage help hinder?
Andrea: Oh, I think it's been a key part of our marriage.
I think we went into our relationship both very intentional. We both knew really what we wanted. Both of us a second marriage. So saying these are the things that I want and are important, and EO has been really helpful for us in being able to communicate those things and share and listen to each other.
Steve and I, we don't so much now, we still share updates, but for a long time we would have a monthly date and we would share our updates with each other that we'd done in form. 'cause you tell things different in your update than how was your day and have those. Learnings like, oh, like that was a high for you this month and I hadn't that didn't even really register for me or this happened.
And that affected you more deeply than what I realized. We don't do a lot of telling each other of you should and
Aaron: wouldn't.
Andrea: Certainly I make sure to tell him a lot of things he should be doing 'cause that's my wifely duty. But really being able to hear each other more and listen to that perspective without saying.
This is what I want and this is how I want.
Andrea: part of our wedding vows and we sign every card that we have to each other is that we say, I get you. Not only like how lucky am I that I get this like amazing guy in my life, but also that we both feel like I get him, it significantly impacted how we raised our kids.
When there would be things going on with them of very much of especially in their teenage years. Yeah. Sharing things that we did and or didn't do, and not saying what they should do, there was a time when I got in a car with my friends and we did this, and this was the outcome that wasn't,
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: Like being able to share, I went and did this exchange when I was in high school and it, these were the amazing experiences that I had. You get to decide if you want to do it, but here's what I did and what happened for me. Share our knowledge and experience and I think try to give them some more agency
To be making decisions rather than telling.
Aaron: Yeah. I think that's wise. Even just the habit of saying my experience has been, rather than you ought to,
Andrea: Yeah.
Aaron: Makes such a big difference.
Andrea: Yeah.
Aaron: When you reflect on. Your business career, your entrepreneurial career, what has been possible with EO that might not have been possible otherwise?
How has your trajectory been different?
Andrea: I went to school because of a situation, but it wasn't on my radar long term. So I hadn't, I didn't come into owning my business with. Prior experience of thinking about what's the network that I'm casting and doing in order for if I want to build things.
So I didn't have any relationships with any bankers or accountants or real estate brokers business like, things like that. So I met Steve right as I was looking at taking over operations and we'd gone for lunch and our next date was a we've had at happy hour. And he showed up with a folder for me.
Of information on some like business insurance, things that, 'cause we had been talking about and he said, I'd been at this presentation and they talked about this, so I made a copy of it for you. And it was information about business insurance that I would not have known otherwise. Yeah. And contact that he got from an EO presentation.
The starting out for me with eo. I was moving clinics, adding clinics. I didn't know any commercial real estate brokers. I needed to do things differently with financing, so EO gave me direct access to resources for helping to build the business. Some through SAPs, some through other members.
Alan Chaffee has been someone that I have worked with multiple times as I'm looking at. 'cause I bought another clinic one time and so they went through and helped me look at their financials. With Bridgeways, we've looked at a couple of opportunities and we've utilized their services. I don't have to go out and vet someone the same way.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: cause it's already a trusted
Aaron: Right.
Andrea: Partner, whether it's a member or not. So in the actual building of the business, there's that. I think whenever I have had a challenge, if you put it out into the EO community. Someone answers and they answer like faster than AAA does. When your car is on the side of the road
Of Hey, does anyone know? Someone that does blank. That sort of vast amount of knowledge
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: Of experiences that on your own, you just don't know. Expanding from that, going beyond the chapter level. Starting to do things regionally and globally. EO has exposed me to and given me the opportunity to travel the world.
I've been to multiple. GLCs. I'm leaving on Friday for the president's meeting in the Dominican Republic. We'll be in Dublin in April. I've met people in chapters around the world. We did a group event in Vietnam with the Nashville chapter and the chapter in Vietnam where we. Did an amazing race around the city on the back of scooters, like I don't know how else I would've ended up doing.
I went to Pacha in Ibiza with EO members from Switzerland. Like how would that have happened? It wouldn't have happened from the day to day of like basic business insurance and where I'm banking. To elder care and dealing with that travel and once in a lifetime experiences, I don't know where it hasn't contributed.
Aaron: Yeah. What do you want people to know about you?
Andrea: I deeply and sincerely care about people.
I like to be a support and a help. To people. I get fulfillment out of being able to share that. I feel like I am extremely lucky in the life that I live and by where we live in the world and the work that we do.
There's so much abundance and and why not try and share whatever we can within that? My intentions and my hopes coming into the presidency is really about continuing to work on. Creating a sense of belonging for everybody. I talked about like my experience with Dave.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: There are times I think COVID was a driver of a difference in how we connected.
And I think our world right now is a big driver of you are either with me or you're against me. You see the world like I do or you don't. And then here are each of the boxes that we're in. I think some of those boxes are there for people's. Comfort and safety. I think we have different groups within, like the women of EO is one group of having that to be a good, safe place where you feel like you don't have to explain yourself quite as much.
I think we can have those spaces of belongings within that and across that.
I really want us to continue to be working to say, how do I create spaces where other Dave and Andreas. Can be together and have meaningful conversation without opposition. I was at the EO Legends event this morning. The folks that were on the panel have been in business for decades, and as they look forward like we reach a certain point where we can be doing more to be giving back and seeing like the changes that we can make in the world.
I think entrepreneurs are. The key and our kind of size of business of the changes in the world. We fuel innovation. I think we fuel change, and the more that we can bring us together without making us all the same, the better off we all are. And we need to look at. How do we do that? How do we do it so that someone that is conservative and progressive new in business, been in business for a long time, younger, older, east coast, west Coast, like wherever people are from, and what the, how do we make it so that there are spaces for everyone to be able to be together and learn and grow from that?
'cause I think we can,
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: As entrepreneurs we often do things. Without having an example of it ahead of us.
We're not doing it because someone else did it before us or someone else thought of it before. We're like, I think I could probably do that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give it a go right now. There are a lot of folks who don't have an example of how we can do that, how we can bring people together.
So who better than us? To show that we can,
Aaron: Right.
Andrea: That we can cross aisles, we can work together, we can find paths and ways that are good for all of us.
Aaron: Yeah. That's a fantastic answer.
Andrea: Thank you.
Aaron: You answered two questions in one. I was going to ask you about your vision
For next year as well.
I think that's,
Andrea: Yeah. So it is a lot about belonging.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: And we've been talking about it in terms of today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow.
Today in EO for us, thinking about day-to-day things. In business, family, and personal. So what are the learning opportunities and events that we have for people dealing with payroll, HR issues, but then what are we looking at for tomorrow?
What are we doing to help each other to be thinking about. Growth strategy expansion for what's gonna be coming next, and then the day after tomorrow we dealt with, today we did some planning, and now we've reached some milestone. We've exited, we've sold, we've started something new. What does that look like?
What's the next version? Us look like the next opportunity, retirement, volunteering, new business, nonprofit. And so how do we provide opportunities for people in all those different stages across business, personal, and family.
I look at it as a bit of a matrix and making sure where are we filling each of those.
Boxes isn't in what we're doing.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: I don't know if I have the answer fully, but I'm putting together a board of people around me who I think with that shared idea are like when we started talking about it, like Mark Sims and I have been talking about tenors. That's a lot of folks that are in the day after tomorrow.
Whereas the value there for what we're doing and how do we expand upon that. But then how do we take that and look at those folks that are in the today and bring all of that knowledge back to the today things?
Aaron: Yeah. What can you share about chapter retreat?
Andrea: Chapter retreat is in Kelowna. I think our theme will stick of Welcome to Wonderland.
We're taking that today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow. But looking at it from a perspective of wonder and awe and. What are all the things that could be Brad Mokey is gonna speak at our first dinner. Yeah. A beautiful winery over the lake, and then he's doing a session in the morning.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: Our adopted forums. He's helping us with developing what we're gonna do in the adopted forums from that.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: And then we'll do the future camp. We're building our content around him. Yeah. We've got some things that we're rinsing and repeating that we know. It goes well, we've got two dinners out.
We've got a smaller group dinner, dine around one night, the large group learning, and then we're gonna do some smaller group learning, eshs running that. So taking a little bit of the idea of the breakout sessions that we did.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: Kind of evolving in what's the next level of what we do for that learning today, tomorrow, and the day after.
So there's. Info on that, there's gonna be at least one, if not two options, that are community volunteering. So when I went there, we went and worked in a community garden. All of the food that they grow goes to food banks.
Supporting folks. So physical things. Non-visible things during the area of wine tasting kind of things 'cause there's a lot of great wine.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: But we're gonna have kickoff at south Fork, which is up by North Bend. Used to be a golf course.
And now it's got like a restaurant and a vent ish. Center sort of thing, but outdoor thing. So we're actually looking at doing a full day for kickoff.
So the morning will be a keynote speaker, Yancy Wright. There are several members that have done retreats with him, his retreat center in Puerto Rico, but he's originally from here. And then in the afternoon there'll be form time a bridged forum for updates. And then there will be a sort of adopted form ish scavenger hunt.
Aaron: Oh.
Andrea: with curated things that you're doing related to the keynote, plus some fun, giant slingshot ax throwing competition, things in between make it a little fun, and then it's an outdoor area, so we're doing like a barbecue. Coco kind of a dinner.
Aaron: That's great.
Andrea: Yeah. I'm gonna try and bring back some learning things that we used to do a little more regularly.
One of them, we started talking with the folks at Profit Mastery.
Essentially, you go to the session with your financial reports, with a profit and loss and balance sheet, and they go through and teach you how to be like, when the banker talks to you about these ratios, what does that mean and how do you calculate that?
Aaron: Sure.
Andrea: And for me, when I did it, it was pretty life changing of oh, balance sheet.
Aaron: Right.
Andrea: Got it. Not just something that I hand to the bank but has meaningful
Aaron: Yeah. Yeah.
Andrea: Things in there for me. Having some things to really look about and that sort of a bit of the day to day right. Of what we're in now to try and.
Focus on those different learning things of what we're doing. So who knows what else.
Aaron: That's great.
Andrea: Yeah.
Aaron: It'll be a fantastic year.
Andrea: I hope so.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: I hope so.
Aaron: What have I not asked you that you'd like to talk about?
Andrea: At the beginning we talked about my daughter and having her and Yeah. That, and when I think about the impacts with EO and what it is that, I had this very life changing thing of saying I have this child and so what am I gonna do to make sure that I'm.
Raising her in a way and the world the way that I want to. Yeah. Which meant a lot of sacrifice, right? It was hard to work full time and go to school full time and to be a single mom pretty much until Ste came along. Till, yeah, she's seven, eight years old. She has always been my north star on things. I actually think about when I make decisions of if I'm gonna do something about what two people will think about it.
One is my mother.
If I tell my mother, this is what I did, or I'm going to do all my life, if it was something that maybe I shouldn't be as proud of, she didn't yell, she didn't say. She would just say, oh, Andrew. And that's when you do
Aaron: The sound of disappointment. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrea: If Isabella, if Izzy knows what I do, will she be proud of it?
Is it, am I being the wife, mother, friend, human being that she will be proud of? Of course. She's at. And I might get a little teary, but she gave me this for Christmas. So it's broken glass.
Aaron: Oh yeah.
Andrea: And it came with a note.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: To representing the breaking of the glass ceiling for women.
Aaron: Ah.
Andrea: So to have her at 25.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: Give me that. She's very thoughtful about gifts.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: But that idea of. And thinking about like EO with it and the impact, of setting what it is, of who we wanna be and how we wanna get there, and the example that we wanna be for the next generation.
For other women being able to, like you can do and accomplish whatever you want.
Aaron: Yeah.
Andrea: You can grow up in a small town in Western Canada and. Be sitting in Seattle on a crazy sunny day and talking about being the president of the chapter and traveling around the world and making like we can do whatever we wanna do. And I think that EO has been a big part of my being able to achieve those goals.
Realize that I can do more than I ever thought I could.
Aaron: I think that's a beautiful and inspiring way to wrap things up. Thank you for talking with me.
Andrea: Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.