THE AMBER WEITZER PODCAST SILHOUETTES OF SUCCESS
BRITTANY WILLIS | EPISODE 80 | SHOW NOTES
FEATURED GUEST
Our V.I.P. Featured Guest Brittany Willis is an accomplished Fortune 500 Sales Executive and entrepreneur with more than a decade of business development and corporate account management experience. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University with a B.A in 2010 and MBA from the University of Arkansas in 2016. She has worked for major corporations currently with PepsiCo and has managed some of the world’s largest brands at leading retailers, such as Walmart and Amazon.
She made the bold decision to become a Franchise Owner of PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans by opening the North Dallas location in February 2021. She has been featured on the Today Show, Forbes, Business Insider, Franchising USA, and Dallas media outlets-NBC DFW and WFAA. In late 2021, she created the Protégé to Pro podcast and brand to arm entrepreneurs and career professionals with a range of topics of guidance and thought leadership on Franchising, Small Business Management, and Career.
CONVERSATION HIGHLIGHTS
Matriarchs: Brittany begins with expressing her gratitude for having the opportunity to be raised and around a family of strong, capable women. Her Mother, Grandmother, Aunts, Great-Aunts and cousins helped to light the path with examples of the strength of full womanhood. Girl Power! She talks about the significant blessings for being raised around such accomplished women. Her Grandmother wrote her first Bible, called The Sky is the Limit. Brittany was drawn to PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans franchise for many reasons, one being their blueprint for the business, later she talks about creating her own business career playbook at the age of 13 years old…she professes to be a “Type A”! She wants to be a part of the best and she wants to bring her best! Donut Day…listen up!
Power Up: Brittany has structure in her days and she blocks it like this for us; her 9am to 5pm is her career time and her 5am to 9am and 5pm to 9pm will vary based on the needs with her enterprise, family and personal needs and goals. She talks about getting support from the internal structure of PJ’s, the Addison Chapter of Metrocrest Chamber of Commerce, other business professionals for reciprocal engagement, family, her husband, business partner team and surrounding herself with others that fosters the environment where she is always learning.
Dynasty: Vulnerability is strength. She has learned over the last several years to be vulnerable and ask for help when it is needed. Brittany shares some great examples of this, listen up-take notes then hit replay! Bulldozing is needed, sometimes required in life yet so is asking for help. She reflects back on a time in her career that was difficult, reviews how burnout helped reshape her blueprint and the path, she discovered that she was the common denominator of the successes. She was able to see her value, contributions and worth is a renewed light. She realized that if she could do this for someone else, she could do this for herself. She began to build her legacy. As she started down the entrepreneur path of her franchise journey, the calls and emails began flooding in. Brittany has a passion for helping small business owners and entrepreneurs succeed so packaged her experience, built a course, a podcast on The EBONY Network and launched Protégé to Pro. Tune in!
INTENTIONAL INSPIRATION
You are the asset, invest accordingly.
RESOURCE LIST
BRITTANY WILLIS, MBA
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/the_brittanywillis/
https://www.instagram.com/protegetopro/
https://ebonypodcastnetwork.com/protege-to-pro/
https://www.instagram.com/pjscoffeenorthdallas/
FAVORITES
Book: Lean in by Sheryl Sandberg
Group: NextUp
