We were lucky to catch up with Bruce Wawrzyniak recently and have shared our conversation below.

Bruce, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a fun one – what’s something you believe that most people in your industry (or in general) disagree with?

I maintain a firm commitment to quality over quantity. I cannot and will not work with a client that I just don’t believe in and/or can’t get behind. Far too many people are more interested in the proverbial, “As long as the check clears,” but I can’t in good conscience take on a client that I wouldn’t be motivated to work for, just because it means additional revenue for my company.

I recently was a speaker at the 18th San Francisco Writers Conference & Writing for Hollywood Summit and an audience member asked the question, “I’ve heard that clients don’t choose the agent, the agent chooses the client.” Later on in the session a different hand was raised and I was asked directly, “Do YOU, Bruce, choose your clients or do your clients choose you?” You can tell what my answer was.

In fact, one week later I was putting on a 90-minute seminar at a songwriters festival in Alabama. Someone had to leave early for another commitment, but afterwards the host at the venue gave me a handwritten note from the departed audience member and said, “He said he’d like to hire you to help with his son’s band.” Just about anyone else in my shoes would hear the cash register ringing. Instead, my thought was, “I’ll look them up and see if it’s someone I’d want to work with.”

Bruce, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have spent my entire professional career in communications (public relations, media relations, marketing, the Web, social media) and, for all intents and purposes, all in sports and entertainment. I spent ten seasons working for a National Hockey League team, three years as VP/Public Relations at the league office for North America’s premier pro indoor lacrosse league, and ten-and-a-half years working in the Olympic Movement, including being a Chief Press Officer at two Summer Olympics.

The focus with my company, Now Hear This, Inc., has always come from a foundation of the above services. While the early years were spent working strictly with entertainers (music), I later widened the scope to where a client could instead be, say, an author, an entrepreneur, an actress, podcaster, filmmaker, or even a small business owner. The bottom line was that I was providing services from that skill set that I’d developed for so many years in professional and Olympic sports.

Since music was always at the core of the business, I started the weekly “Now Hear This Entertainment” podcast in February 2014 and have gone full speed ahead. That tool has allowed me to interview guests in a way that not only educates listeners whose questions I already know since they’re the avatar for the clients I serve, but, start relationships with guests who I can then connect with in a way that helps further the services I can provide to my clients. And yes, I certainly aim to entertain the portion of the podcast audience who are simply fans of the guest or fans of music in general, but, it boils down to the show being something far more than I envisioned when I first launched it, having thought back then that, “This will be a good marketing tool for my business. Maybe someone will hear this in (insert city here) and think, ‘Wow, this Bruce guy knows his stuff. Maybe he can manage and promote me from across the miles’.” Of course, it’s also a testament to where podcasting has so quickly come to over the years.

I must say, I think I would’ve been thrilled if you would’ve told me way back then that I’d get to the point where “Now Hear This Entertainment” would be one of the top two percent most popular shows out of more than 2.8 million podcasts globally, having gotten listeners from 160 countries around the world.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Since I worked for the person largely credited with single-handedly having gotten softball into the Olympics, I very much had the “never give up” message reinforced regularly.

In 2005 I had my second open-heart surgery. My business, Now Hear This, Inc., was still, for all intents and purposes, in its infancy. Having a major medical setback like that would be enough for most people to say, “Never mind. This is the wrong time for a startup. I’m just going to pack it in.” But for me it was a case of, “I need to get better — fast — so I can keep building up my new business.”

Interestingly, I was put through a similar test in early 2021 when I was hospitalized with Covid. After I was discharged, I actually got worse before I got better. I was quite caught off guard by one of the symptoms, which was a general disinterest in doing anything. At all. Period. Fortunately, needing to keep on a regular schedule of releasing podcast episodes forced me to be resilient and not just take time off.

Sometimes you have a client whose departure isn’t over anything you or they did wrong, but you still have to overcome those losses. I was working with a high school performer that had done lots of musical theater but felt it was time to test the waters and immerse herself into pop music and performing at traditional venues. Even though we were having success and she was enjoying the results I was producing for her, it actually was a means for helping her make the informed decision that, “Okay, never mind. This has been tons of fun, but I think I’m just going to stick with musical theater after all.” You frown, you wish them well, and then you move on to find the next new client.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

It was actually when I first started my journey into the Olympic Movement that the opportunity came up to work one-on-one with a singer. We needed a national anthem singer for an international softball tournament, and so I asked a vocalist in church whose voice I really enjoyed, “Do you ever sing outside of here?” When she said Yes and I told her of my willingness to help because more people needed to hear this talent that she’d been blessed with, she immediately recoiled. She explained that while she appreciated my interest, her father was already doing that for her.

She WAS interested in the national anthem opportunity and the more that I got them to realize that I was actually volunteering to help and had a professional background in promoting, the more they started to see value. Since the father was neither in communications nor entertainment, he was happy to step aside for someone qualified — who he didn’t have to pay.

Once they saw that I was getting lots of results for them, they’d been convinced that I was the guy for the job. At the same time, I then saw that this was something I could turn into a business.

When I took on a client who I really rolled up my sleeves with and started reaching new heights, Now Hear This, Inc., was establishing itself. I was doing everything from going to recording studio sessions to booking appointments in Nashville to getting a performance at the House of Blues inside Mandalay Bay on the Las Vegas “Strip,” and securing interview/performance opportunities on network TV affiliates.

In later years as I started to land clients from the likes of Hollywood, Nashville, and other markets, I knew the company was operating on a higher level.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.now-hear-this.net/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nowhearthisentertainment/
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NowHearThisInc
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brucewawrzyniak/
• Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/NHT_tweets
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/watchNHT
• Other: https://speakerbrucew.com/
  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/now-hear-this-entertainment/id823943478
  https://open.spotify.com/show/3pBKyMjbd1KelMVnogf3XF?si=4YoAQyM5RHGmHm9vIHpkJA&nd=1