"I ended up calling my mom. I was in tears. I made a statement in that phone call; little did I know that statement would label my entire career. I said to her, 'if I'm going to be in this business, I'm going to do it my way.'"
Now, 13 years later, Andrews laughs in the trademark bray that prompted Howard Stern to call her "the Fran Drescher of porn." Thinking back on what she'd told her mother, she adds, "That pretty much sums it up in one sentence."
Mainstream Appeal
Brand names, trademarks and labels are familiar territory for Andrews. Featured in numerous articles and interviews for mainstream publications including Variety and the Wall Street Journal, her leggy, artificially endowed figure has been photographed for hundreds of adult magazines. A formidable list of film credits and media appearances confirm her credentials as an adult performer, as well as being named one of the top five porn stars by Cosmopolitan Magazine and "Entertainment Tonight."
A three-year stint as hostess for cable access talk show "Talking Blue" led to work in production management, directing and co-producing, as well as several Cable Ace awards for the show.
Online, Andrews has created a unique presence as the Niche Bitch, with a penchant for fetish and a network of websites that fall under the umbrella of her production company, Britco Pictures. The signature on her emails lists her as "CEO/producer/director/superstar."
"Being a girl and being a porn star, nobody gives a fuck about me, you know what I'm saying?" Andrews says. "They're just patting you on the head and telling you, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go stand in the corner and be pretty.' So, being in this business, I've always had to work four times as hard just to be taken seriously and make them shut up and listen to what I have to say."
Citing frustration with the male-dominated infrastructure of the industry and female performers' willingness to accept substandard treatment and compensation as motivations, Andrews decided early in her career to take a pro-active, business-minded approach. An unrepentant "condoms only" stance, she says, also forced her pass on many deals and contracts.
"I was really concerned what my name meant and what it represented," she says. "I didn't want to ruin it by making bad decisions and working for different companies that would ruin my brand. I turned down a lot of work because I didn't want to get pigeon-holed into certain kinds of genres and areas of the business."
As a porn ingénue, Andrews was anxious to move from feature dancing and photo modeling to film work. She sought guidance from successful business role models such as Jenna Jameson and Danni Ashe.
Jameson's advice was a move from Texas to California in order to make the transition into adult films, eventually providing Andrews with a place to stay upon her arrival.
At the same time, Andrews also was ambitious to move her fan-based mail-order catalog online.
"I had met Danni Ashe on one of the Boob Cruises, back before she had Danni.com and Danni's Hard Drive," she says. "She had a really good mail-order fan club at the time and I was very impressed - looking at it as where I'd like to take my own company as far as marketing."
Solo-Girl Celebrity
While Ashe eventually evolved to become "the most downloaded woman on the Internet," Andrews was also on her way to solo-girl celebrity status. Three years of litigation against various cyber squatters ended with the acquisition of BrittanyAndrews.com, and the Niche Bitch was born.
A Leo with a Virgo rising, born under the House of Organization, Andrews believes that her tendency toward micromanagement is astrologically influenced.
Britco's webmaster Neil London acknowledges her attention to detail.
"She knows exactly what she wants and she knows how to go about getting it. When she asks for a certain task to be done, she generally likes to understand how it's going to be done as well," he says. "She's pretty much the main attraction and CEO, and anything that we do has to be overseen by Brittany."
"Unfortunately, I'm extremely involved," says Andrews, facetiously. Despite a rigorous travel schedule, Britco's half-dozen employees send daily reports to her via email and text messages.
"When you're talking about women in this business that run their own business," she says, "and try to do negotiations, wireless and distribution deals, and things of that nature, I'm still one of the only women that goes to all these business meetings and speaks for myself and negotiates everything myself."
With a daily average of 20,000 unique hits at BrittanyAndrews.com alone, there are a dozen more Britcoproduced websites linked to the Niche Bitch Network. Club Brittany is the result of a crosspromotional partnership with ClubJenna.com, while BitchPayz.com is Britco's affiliate program website. BritcoPictures.com resources the company's production studio space, located in downtown Los Angeles. Other sites feature gay, BDSM, female-oriented and fetish content.
The success of Britco's stable of sites is enhanced by Andrews' reputation as a fetish diva. Lately, she and London have been focusing efforts on ExquisiteFeet.com, Britco's foot fetish site.
"Why do the fans like me? Because I have foot fetish!" she explains. "I'm not a girl in a magazine that's doing a job. You can obviously tell I enjoy it."
London, who prior to working at Britco, came from a background in mobile gaming websites, agrees that he's been trying to get into the minds of foot fetishists.
Since working for Andrews, he has developed his own obsession with feet. His personal blog, FeetOfReason.blogspot.com, features an online diary, foot photos and links to Exquisite Feet and a Yahoo Group affiliated with the site.
"The whole thing with the blog," he says, "is I'm trying to drive traffic and also raise the profile of the site." So far, the blog has been a successful promotional tool.
Between being a porn star and a businesswoman, it's difficult to imagine a time-management system that would allow for much more beyond appointments, meetings, travel time and other business concerns. Andrews has been experimenting with the Tony Robbins' Time Management System and Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People."
Pending Deals
Currently, she is in negotiations with MTV for an upcoming comedy show, talking to Playboy about producing fetish content for their Spice Network and plans on hosting a talk show for NakedSword.com.
She keeps a book for writing goals in, which is categorized, sub-categorized and updated daily, weekly and yearly. This year's goal is to focus on leadership and allow her employees to grow within their positions, without so much micromanagement; or one could say, to be a loving, more compassionate Niche Bitch.
Andrews also has been attending real estate seminars. As aspiring public speaker, she would like to host seminars on women's sexuality and business. More active roles in the Free Speech Coalition and Women in Adult also are on the agenda.
"I'm a woman that's able to produce, direct and distribute my kind of sexuality," she says, "which is very female strong. I feel so blessed God picked me to have that kind of opportunity and to be able to express that with humanity. That is definitely a huge driving force of why I enjoy being in this business, and why I will keep being in this business."
