EP812: Terry Donnelly - Always Be Hustling!
“The thing about being a musician is once you finish your gig, you’re unemployed. So you have to be hustling nonstop to get your next gig.” — Terry Donnelly
Most people think reinvention means starting over. Terry Donnelly has done it six times — and what’s remarkable is that he never actually left his core behind. Whether he was building one of the first digital out-of-home media exchanges, launching the world’s most award-winning alcohol-free craft beer, or turning hotel room tablets into a $220 million advertising platform, the same operating system was running underneath: a creative eye for how disconnected things can be combined into something entirely new, and a musician’s understanding that the gig always ends and the hustle never stops.
Terry’s career arc — from touring musician to HR consultant to venture capital partner to tech founder to CMO of a $1.3 billion agency portfolio — looks chaotic from the outside. From the inside, it’s a masterclass in applied pattern recognition. He sees the same disruption opportunity across wildly different industries: find a fragmented market, find the technology that can unify it, and build the platform that owns the transaction. He did it with digital signage. He did it with cannabis-infused beverages. He’s doing it now with Hotel Communication Network, which is on a trajectory from 8,000 hotel rooms to a million by 2030 — by giving the tablet away for free and monetizing the media on the screen instead.
The insight that threads all of it: knowing what you bring is not about cataloguing what you’ve done. It’s about understanding how your brain works — and having the courage to keep saying yes.
Terry Donnelly is a serial entrepreneur and executive with a career spanning music, HR consulting, venture capital, and digital media. He co-founded Adcentricity, one of the first cloud-based digital out-of-home media exchanges, and served as Chief Marketing Officer of MDC Partners, overseeing a $1.3 billion portfolio of 70 marketing agencies. He founded Hill Street Beverage Company, which produced the world’s most award-winning alcohol-free craft beer and best-selling alcohol-free wine in Canada, and holds over 200 patents in cannabis beverage technology. He is currently Chief Revenue Officer of Hotel Communication Network, the world’s largest in-room hotel tablet media platform.
Learn more & connect:
Terence Donnelly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terencedonnelly
Hotel Communication Network: https://www.hcn.com
Resources mentioned:
Hotel Communication Network — https://www.hcn.com
Adcentricity — digital out-of-home media exchange co-founded by Terry Donnelly
Hill Street Beverage Company — world’s most award-winning alcohol-free craft beer and best-selling alcohol-free wine in Canada
The Pyramid of Success — John Wooden’s coaching framework, foundational to Terry and Nicky’s discussion on detail and excellence
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill — philosophical ancestor of the mindset principles discussed throughout
Visit https://www.eCircleAcademy.com and book a success call with Nicky to take your practice to the next level.