Brittnie “Britt” Hall: Vision in Motion— Creativity, Community, and Resilience in Military Life
Brittnie “Britt” Hall is a down-to-earth military spouse entrepreneur from Orlando, Florida. She jokes that she “did the daring and adventurous thing of staying home, attending one of the local community colleges, where I changed my major from Political Science and Journalism to Psychology.”
That path eventually led her to earn her Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Central Florida through the Neuropsychology track. But while working as a research assistant, she found her fascination drifting toward the industrial-organizational side of psychology—a shift that would eventually influence the way she approached business, community, and resilience.
Her introduction to military life was gradual. Britt met her husband, Brian, in 2006 through their marching band network while he was a lead trumpet and Det 159 Cadet at UCF. They didn’t start dating until three years later, just six months before he commissioned, and spent the next five years long-distance. Britt even did what she calls a “two-year tour as just the fiancé” during his assignment at Robins AFB, where he was an Air Battle Manager on the JSTARs mission.
A few days before their wedding, Brian received word that his dream of becoming a pilot was about to take flight. Six months later, they were headed to Columbus, Mississippi, for his nine-month Undergraduate Pilot Training.
Most of their PCS moves kept them east of the Mississippi and relatively close to home. Along the way came seven deployments, countless TDYs, a major kitchen renovation (which Britt fondly refers to as “Destroyment”), multiple job changes for her, and career advancements for him. Eventually, Britt decided it was time to leap into self-employment.
The Leap into Entrepreneurship
A disappointing contractor position had pulled her away from a steady job in the benefits industry, and after leaving, she spent weeks polishing her résumé and searching for something more meaningful, only to find that nothing she wanted to do was deemed “qualified” by metrics she felt were irrelevant. “I was tired of outsourcing myself to other people,” she says. “My creativity, my work ethic, my time, and my energy were historically at the disposal of other people’s missions and objectives.” She also knew that career progression isn’t easy when you’re moving every two to three years with an active-duty spouse.
After a break from job hunting, Britt found herself in a string of conversations with friends about their creative pursuits, family life, and work struggles. She asked questions to help them think about what they really wanted, and after a quick recount of the types of conversations, Brian said plainly, “You should be a life coach.”
This next season of life would have Britt diving headfirst into launching two businesses while creating a Facebook group dedicated to supporting active-duty military service members and their spouses. Up first? Her photography business!
That’s when Britt Skye Photography (BSP) (Accessible | Escapist | Photography) came to life. Britt used her photography business as a set of “training wheels” for running her own small business. She sells smartphone downloads and drop-shipped prints of her work—what she calls “escapist” photography.
“Art is for all,” she says. “It shouldn’t break the bank to bring home something original, and you shouldn’t have to have a giant home to display your collection in.” She wants people to know they don’t have to settle for big-box store prints, often mass-produced overseas and sometimes ripped off from artists.
And she wants to show that AI won’t make human art disappear anytime soon. “I’m just a girl with a camera and an attention span that doesn’t allow me to spend a ton of time in Lightroom editing.”
Her next project was born from what she calls “the root of all evil—sales tax.” When local MFRC and CPA resources couldn’t help her figure out Oklahoma’s requirements for her drop-ship business, she turned to other business owners and found better answers than any industry expert could offer. That experience inspired Entrepreneurs on Orders (EoO)—a Facebook group run by Britt and Katie Prill (a fellow military spouse and formerly featured on the blog!) for active-duty service members and spouses running small businesses.
EoO began to take shape between the launch of her photography business and her training to become a life coach. Britt followed her instincts and took on all three paths all at once The group shares resources, holds monthly discussion topics, hosts community calls and guest speakers, and offers “community & catharsis” sessions—group coaching-style calls where members vent, problem-solve, and keep each other moving forward.
“It felt important to me to build EoO as a central place to simplify the scavenger hunt of finding answers and learning about all resources available to us in our Active Duty (AD) life while we’re running businesses,” Britt explains. “This season of life is chaotic, information is so scattered, based on word-of-mouth mostly. My hope is that the resources and relatability found in EoO make choosing business ownership while navigating AD life less scary and feel more possible.”
Pattern and Purpose: Helping Others Find Their Path
As her photography business took root, she knew she would launch her coaching practice the following year. She discovered iPEC and its mission to raise awareness one person at a time. “I found what I want to be when I grow up!” she says. Today, she’s trained as a Core Energy Life Purpose & Transition Coach and is an Energy Leadership Master Practitioner.
Her latest venture, Pattern and Purpose, helps clients who feel stuck—whether in people-pleasing, time management, goal follow-through, or burnout. Her mission is to help clients walk away with a clear vision of who they are, what they want, and the power to tune out the noise that keeps them from living a life they’ve intentionally created.
Choosing Resilence
Britt knows resilience is a buzzword in military circles—one many spouses are tired of hearing. But she believes resilience is a choice that starts with vision. She looks at what her vision is for today. Some days it’s about bringing ease to her husband’s stressful responsibilities; other days it’s committing to a ten-hour training while leaving the household to him.
“With each season of life, each move, each pursuit, it’s having a vision for what my energy and effort is actually feeding into that helps me stay clear on when, how, or why I want to show up and choose to be resilient.”
The path for military spouses often looks very different from the traditional career or life trajectory, with challenges few outside the community ever see or experience. Britt’s journey is a reminder that this is not only okay—it’s an opportunity. Your path may look different, but along the way, you can build beautiful, diverse businesses and creative projects while still navigating the unique twists of military life.
Britt invites anyone navigating entrepreneurship to connect, join EoO on Facebook, and tap into a community ready to help you not just navigate your business, but truly thrive in it.
To learn more about Britt, Pattern+ Purpose, Entrepreneurs on Orders, and Britt Skye Photography, use the links below:
