Bruce Hamilton

A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking with Bruce Hamilton. He’s an entrepreneur with an incredible story and I hope you enjoy reading it just as much as I enjoyed hearing it.

Bruce’s journey started at Florida State University. While at Florida State, Bruce started working at a radio station. This led him to realize that he wanted to seriously pursue one of his many passions, which was music. Bruce wanted to work on the business side of music and felt that Full Sail University was the best place to cultivate his desire to work in the industry, so upon graduating from Florida state, he attended Full Sail University.

As a student working in radio, Bruce was a board operator. This allowed him the opportunity to understand everything from the on-air talent, to brand sponsorships. Having such a hands-on experience is enough to allow for anyone’s imagination to wander and explore the various possibilities for themselves. As a creative, Bruce adapted and used his skillset and knowledge in order to expand to other areas.

After graduating, Bruce worked at a record label and owned a talent management company. He was doing everything from managing artists and putting together events, to running social media campaigns. His knowledge of music, business, social media, radio, and people put him in a rare space as someone who understood culture and business at the same time.

This keen understanding is what eventually led him to develop an idea for a social music platform. Being someone who was in the music as well as the social media space, Bruce felt as though this idea was important for the progression of where music was going. This process is actually what changed how he saw music and changed the mindset for business forever. As he developed the platform, he did a self-assessment and honest critique of this huge project. The lesson learned was that ‘simple is better.’ Bruce realized that the platform had a lot of components and wouldn’t be simple for the user to navigate or easily understand everything it was offering.

When you’re suddenly hit with such a dramatic and life altering realization, you have 2 choices. Ignore the epitome and push on, or pivot and learn from the lesson. Bruce understood that pivoting would cost a lot of money, but introducing a platform to the market that isn’t easily adopted would cost much more.

Bruce took a step back, and examined his skill set and the direction things were going. A big picture approach to his next step was realizing that social media is a major key. This was how CrwdBoost was created. It’s a platform used to grow your social media audience and assist in building a great brand. Simple. To the point. But as with all things, Bruce was tested. Due to an article in an influential tech magazine that praised this new platform, Bruce found himself working for 2 weeks straight managing thousands of users. The job of 5 or maybe 6 people was being done by one person. When faced with the option of quitting, Bruce kept fighting and that’s what makes the difference between success and failure.  His ability to keep going and remain consistent led to his first major win.

Entrepreneurs don’t stop. They keep going. They leave no rock unturned and let their creativity guide them. After the success of CrwdBoost, Bruce created Doly. Doly is an all-in-one mobile app builder that allows users to build their own mobile apps in a fraction of the time and cost. Bruce went from making an audience more accessible with CrwdBoost, to making entering the app space more accessible.

We asked Bruce if he ever sees his multiple ideas and ventures as too much, and if some people may see it as lacking focus. His response was expected. “Fuck those people.” It’s safe to say there’s more to come for Bruce Hamilton. Currently keeping all his ventures under a single umbrella company called Wing Zero, his vision is clear, and his imagination is unimpeded.

For any person out there, who wants to walk down a similar path, those are words that have to be written stone. And for all those creatives and business people who are already down that path, Bruce has simple advice. “Keep it simple.”