Against All Odds with Mark Hutchinson

In this episode, we’ve hit the jackpot! Literally. The lottery is a staple for the convenience store small business owner, and in this week’s episode we are catching up with Mark Hutchinson, a name you’ve probably never heard of and yet has likely impacted your world in some small way. If you’ve ever bought a lottery ticket or been in a convenience store and heard the sound of a winning ticket - that moment is because of Mark. We sat down with Mark to hear his extraordinary journey and learned how one single small decision to chase after his big passion against all odds led him to some of his greatest adventures, and along the way we unpack the unlikely shared connections between lottery tickets, progressive web apps, the start of our small business InspireHUB and Nelson Mandela!

FREE Loving Remote Book
A path to creating an inspiring culture that your employees will love!

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Big On Small - The Official Small Business Podcast

Ep. 005 - Against All Odds with Mark Hutchinson

[MUSIC: Noah Smith “New Girl”]

Karolyn Hart You’re listening to “Big on Small”, the official small business podcast powered by InspireHUB, I’m Karolyn Hart.

Samantha Castro And I’m Samantha Castro.

Karolyn Hart We unpack the big ideas happening in small organizations for businesses, agencies, schools, towns, charities, and teams.

Samantha Castro Because what we know is that good things come FROM small packages and there’s nothing small about doing good.

PART ONE - Taking a Chance

Samantha Castro Before we jump in, I want to take you on a short trip down to your local gas station, convenience store, or corner shop. Imagine this with me okay?

You walk in, and there’s the aisle of goodies like fresh bread, candy, end cap knick-knacks, magazines, beer, all that good stuff. After picking up everything you need, you walk towards the counter and are greeted by not only the temptation of chocolate bars, even though you had passed the good stuff earlier in your visit, but also the temptation of winning big.

You turn your head to see the lottery scratch cards all neatly assorted in their little clear plastic homes, just waiting for you to take, scratch and hopefully win. You may have a tradition of going to this store and putting down your favorite numbers for that week’s lottery, which you have yet to win but this time could be the one!

Before you know it, the cashier is greeting you as well, and as they’re checking you out, you give in to that temptation and purchase the ticket.

Now that the ticket is yours and in your hand, the possibility of winning has never been more within your grasp!

This feeling you’re feeling right now is the feeling the lottery was created for. And that feeling that you’re feeling or have felt before may not have been possible if not for our guest today, Mark Hutchinson.

Today’s episode is a little different. Mark’s journey is a little different than what we’ve previously done on the show. He doesn’t have an extensive list of places he worked before he found his passion, but I think that’s one of the unique and inspiring parts about his story which begins in the late 1970s.

Mark was working for his dad in the Pepsi Cola business in Denver, Colorado.

Mark Hutchinson In the state of Colorado. My dad was one of the original employee founders of the Pepsi Cola franchise in Colorado. Pepsi in Colorado was notorious for being the best run franchise in the world. In fact, in the, I don't know if you remember, a hundred years ago, the Russians came over and traded Pepsi for vodka with the United States. And they didn't take him to a corporate Pepsi business, they brought him to show him the Denver Pepsi, cause it was such a great operation.

Samantha Castro For our history buffs that want to know more about this Soviet Union Vodka for Colorado Pepsi Cola trade that happened, I had a blast reading through how this came about, and we linked a few articles on the podcast post for this episode.

Anyways, Pepsi Cola was a family business for the Hutchinson’s. Many people within Mark’s family participated in the franchise in some way.

Mark Hutchinson It is definitely a family business. My little sister's husband's still employed at Pepsi. So the family was involved. One thing's for sure, if you cut my dad, I'm sure he bleeds Cola. And I started as a summer helper. We used to ride on the trucks and help guys on run their routes. When I went to work for him, I was a, I was a route salesman, had a specific group of retail customers.

And every morning, in fact, I used to start my route at five o'clock in the morning cause I could fill the shelves at my Safeway store. Make them look nice. Do all the things that you're not supposed to at the time you weren't supposed to touch the product. So I started at five o'clock in the morning, so I could make my section of Pepsi products look better than the Coke guys.

Samantha Castro With so many of Mark’s family being involved in this company, I wanted to know if Mark had foreseen himself leaving it, eventually taking over the business.

Mark Hutchinson It's a good, that's a good... No, never, ever, ever. As a matter of fact, we were really well-paid route salesman cause we got paid on commission for the pop we sold.

Samantha Castro Of course when we think something’s never going to happen, like leaving a job because, well, why would we when we have all these great benefits and the security that it provides is amazing? -- that’s often when it does. For Mark, it wasn’t until 1983 when his future changed completely.

Mark Hutchinson There was this weird business going on in the U.S. that nobody really understood. I think there were 10 States. There were legal U.S. state lotteries. One of the creators, the gurus of the United States lottery business, was a guy named Owen Hickey. Now Owen Hickey got all of his education from the Canadians that business, as far as Americans is concerned, and not that we like to admit something like that was born and bred in Canada. Canadians were the geniuses in the lottery industry.

Karolyn Hart Wow. You know what? I actually did not know that. I really did not know that.

Mark Hutchinson There's a true story. You asked me my linchpin, you know? Owen Hickey had started the Pennsylvania lottery, and he was moving on his way to Colorado to start the Colorado lottery because this business didn't exist.

This was, you know, everybody talks about lottery businesses being twice as big as the film industry. It did not exist in the United States. Hickey came to Colorado, and he was getting ready to start this lottery. Him and my dad ended up playing racquetball in the mornings, and he asked my dad to take a year off and teach the new Colorado lottery how to run this sales and marketing system to take out instant lottery tickets. My dad told Mr. Hickey that he was on drugs. He wasn't going to leave his business for a year, but talk to his kid; that I did the same thing he did, and I was cheaper and younger and faster. So that's how I got into the lottery business. That's where it all started for me.

Karolyn Hart You know, one of the things I love about our show and the stories that we're finding out about is the reality that we have this assumption, I think, as humans, that things have been around longer than they are, and that there's all these, I don't know, magical innovators around the world who come up with these brilliant ideas.

And I love the fact that we're just sitting here talking about your whole career started because your dad was like, yeah, I'm not going to leave my franchise. I'm too busy running this company, like most small business owners, right. When you're, you're running it, you don't have time to take a year off.

That's not going to happen. Here's my kid go and teach him. And the next thing you know, you're doing something that hadn't even been done yet.

Mark Hutchinson You're so right. My dad actually quit talking to me cause you don't leave the family business. I don't think he talked to me for probably six months after I left and went to work for the Colorado lottery.

But I can tell you after the evolution of that, when I, after I did as much as I did the United States and I left the country, he used to come visit me for at least a week or two to the new countries or places I was doing startups. So it went from: “You can't leave the family business because this is how things work”. It went to - “Where's the next startup? Your mom and I want to vacation to go see these cool places”.

Samantha Castro If people in your life are giving you flack for switching careers or starting your own business or going to pursue your passion, give them time. They’ll come around, and if not, at least you’re doing what you think is best for you.

So Mark took the opportunity to go pursue this new lottery business model with Owen Hickey even though it meant taking a 50% pay cut from the job he had. But this job was meant for him because Owen wanted someone who was ready to come along with him and build this industry.

Someone ready to learn this new business inside and out and someone who already had a mind for marketing the way Owen Hickey envisioned, the remote salesman way of making the merchandise look enticing for the customer.

Mark Hutchinson He wanted to use that system to distribute instant lottery tickets in the soon to be Colorado lottery. Whereas the States, up to that point, they were pretty much run like bureaucracies, hide the tickets in the cash register. There was no impulse purchases. So instant lottery tickets, when this all started in the old days were just paper lottery tickets.

You take the tickets, you go to the stores, the Seven-Eleven, they'd order however many books or tickets or whatnot, you put a point of sale material,merchandise the store because it was completely an impulse item. So it was the same system. Helped build it into the Colorado lottery and the Colorado lottery took off, and sales … was crazy how well it did.

Samantha Castro Mark stayed within Colorado building up the lottery there until 1987 when he was tasked with setting up the Kansas state lottery. It was here that he changed the lottery game in two major ways. The first -

Mark Hutchinson In Kansas, we were too small to make big jackpots. So in my humble opinion, the greatest genius in the U.S. lottery industry was a guy named Dr. Ed Stanek, who was the commissioner of the Iowa lottery. He invented a game called Lotto America. I went into it as Kansas lottery, as one of the founding seven. Took us forever to get seven States in it.

I went into it, we launched—it was called Lotto America—and that game has now grown, and it's called Powerball. And it's the biggest lottery brand name in the world.

Samantha Castro Yep. You heard that right. Mark was one of the first to jump into the Powerball jackpot which today raises over $22 billion for good causes supported by lotteries.

So that was item number one while at the Kansas lottery. Lotto America happened in 1988 and also happening around this time was Mark’s second game changer -

Mark Hutchinson When I did the startup of the Kansas lottery, we actually ran our own television game show called Kansas Lottery Live.

[SFX: Lottery TV Show 'The Big Spin']

In the middle of Hollywood and USA productions, Kansas Lottery Live was the number one television show in its slot.

Samantha Castro Now Mark will be the first to tell you that he does not like the spotlight. He is someone that loves to work behind the scenes and see other people take the stage and be the face of all that they’re doing. So doing a T.V. Show was definitely out of his comfort zone.

And even though Kansas Lottery Live was number one in their slot, Mark wondered what it could really be like if they got someone who knew the game show business to take his production to the next level.

Mark Hutchinson I tried really hard for a month to get a meeting with the world's legendary game show producer, Mark Goodson - Goodson Todman with Price is Right, Family Feud and all that good stuff. So I tried really hard to get a meeting with him. Cause I thought, what if we bring in producers for these lottery game show, how great it would be.

I couldn't even get a meeting with him. I had to do the good old fashioned state lottery. I had the senior Senator in the Kansas Lottery was Bob Dole, and I went through his office. They helped me get a meeting with him, so I finally got a meeting with Mark Goodson, went to L.A. with a good friend of mine who was administering the Powerball game. Went in and had a long conversation with them.

And after that long conversation, he looked at me and said, "Are you done?" And I said, "I'm done". He said, "No, thanks.'" And I looked at him, and I said, I just spent an hour giving you the best T.V. sales pitch of my life. We've got a number one show, and your answer's “no, thanks”? He says, "You know what, pal, I'd probably lose more money in 15 minutes, than you state operations will ever earn me. No, thanks."

So I was really deflated, and I was walking out the door, and he says, you know what? He says, my son, Jonathan Goodson. Produces and creates and directs all my shows, go talk to him. He's looking for his place in the sun. So I did. Jonathan loved it. We'd done 25 shows around the world now. We're to this day, we're still partnered up.

Samantha Castro It’s funny the parallels that the Goodson family and the Hutchinson family shared in that moment. Someone came in, pitched this new and innovative idea but the leaders of the company, the dads, said ‘No thanks, go talk to my son though, he may be interested.’ And then it worked out!

It led to a whole new chapter in both their lives and subsequently thousands of other people’s lives. Mark shared with us a moment when he was at his first job, the Colorado State Lottery, where their needs within the sales and marketing department had a direct impact on a manufacturing company which since then has helped with the COVID 19 response.

Mark Hutchinson The problem I had with that store door distribution system of Colorado was lottery tickets were very high security, those past tickets. So you couldn't display them on a shelf like you could Pepsi. I was approached by a guy out of Oregon, who said, "Hey, I got a wild idea. I'm going to make these cool plastic boxes. And the store can put them on their shelves and sell - it's an impulse item. People see the ticket and buy it." He did. Made a company called Take a Ticket. They manufacture plastic boxes for every lottery in the world, in the counters at convenience stores. So you can see, I called him during the pandemic.

[MUSIC: Noah Smith “Giving Up On Love”]

I said, “Remember the good old days come lottery tickets? You need to start making plastic partitions for blackjack tables.” I would love to somehow wave over a magic ball and see how many jobs have been created around the world, just from, from the industry and everything, but also in T.V. also in... it's just, it's a great feeling, but you gotta think big, no matter how small you are.

Samantha Castro After the break, Mark decides to go international and help countries establish their lotteries which leads him to working in South Africa with the one and only, Nelson Mandela. Stay tuned.

[AD MUSIC - Rhythm Scott “Old Skool 808”]

This episode of Big on Small is brought to you by us! - InspireHUB, creators of the Award-winning IHUBApp, the small business digital experience platform that allows you to rapidly build websites, apps, and portals to help your small business thrive!

Long before the pandemic, InspireHUB was working 100% remotely and creating a platform specifically to help under-resourced small businesses better engage. With InspireHUB on your side, you'll receive our award-winning Digital Experience Platform, world-class branding, personalized training, and the trusted consulting you need to take your small business to the next level. We even wrote the book on how to engage in this remote world. ‘Loving Remote’ a free e-book to help you navigate this new digital world.

Learn more about how InspireHUB can help you build relationships with the people who help build your small business, including customers, employees, and partners! inspirehub.com/remote to learn more today. That’s InspireH-U-B.com/Remote.

Part Two: Winning Big in More Ways than One

[MUSIC: Rhythm Scott “Tropical Marimba”]

Samantha Castro Mark is very passionate about the lottery industry.

Mark Hutchinson At the end of the day, I'm a lottery guy. I start up, I find markets. I start lotteries.

Samantha Castro Before the break, we had mentioned how this industry in the states is fairly new. Karolyn loves history and it's one of her favorite past times so when she asked Mark who is also passionate AND educated about the history of the lottery he indulged her and here's what we learned..

Mark Hutchinson What American lottery business doesn't understand is the industry's been around forever. The oldest lotteries, I think recorded lotteries in the world are in the continent of Africa. So the lottery industry has been around forever.

Samantha Castro He went wayyy back!

Mark Hutchinson The earliest lottery, I know of was in the Bible when Moses handed out land by lot.

Samantha Castro He told us about U.S. history -

Mark Hutchinson The best quote about the lottery business was Thomas Jefferson in my country. Perfect tax, only paid by the willing. Um, I always bring up stories, people don't...

Samantha Castro About historical lottery memorabilia he collected -

Mark Hutchinson I'm looking at a Louisiana lottery ticket in my office here. The Louisiana lottery was one of those companies that the only people that made money from it in the old days were the directors that started the Louisiana lottery. That's why in there was a prohibition on lotteries...

Samantha Castro And also about how the history of how U.S. lotteries are run all the way to today.

Mark Hutchinson In the United States, everything about the lottery industry is regulated and governed by law rather than commercial rules. So it's a really tough business to walk, especially for a small guy. I mean, I couldn't hire a marketing director at a couple of the state lotteries cause I needed what you and I know is a real marketing director. And I had to figure out a label like Admin Officer 27 in the state system to get them enough money to come work from the lottery.

Samantha Castro But outside of the states, lotteries don’t necessarily operate in the same way.

Mark Hutchinson The lotteries typically out of the United States are run by commercial business under strict rule and regulation, that's my role. But the more tickets I sold in that operation, the more money the business made, which the important part is because a lot of naysayers about the lottery industry think, 'Oh, you shouldn't be making more money than that money', but the more money you make, the more the money the good cause makes. My incentive big time was the more money I can raise for the charity, the more money my business makes too and innovate and come up with new ways to do it.

Samantha Castro This was the part of the job that Mark loved the most. You’ll hear from this point on Mark’s excitement because when he gets excited, he talks more with his hands and you’ll hear an occasional bang on his desk. But I mean c’mon, who doesn’t get excited about something as great as raising billions of dollars for good causes, am I right?

Anyways, it had always been the plan for Owen and Mark to perfect the way the lotteries in the States were run and then move abroad and work in the commercialized fields. It was just the next logical step. But unfortunately, they were never able to do this together…

Mark Hutchinson Owen Hickey died in his fifties of a heart attack. It was traumatic, I mean, on a personal and professional level, we have a lot of plans in place. Worst day of my life. I actually ... I actually picked up the phone, called my dad again and said, "Okay, what do I do now?" And he says, "Well, do it yourself." So I did.

Samantha Castro Pause for a moment with me here because this is a pivotal moment, I think. This could have been the moment where Mark could have let this dream of moving internationally die with Owen. He could have not taken offers from abroad to go join the market there and build up those lottery industries. He could have said: “No, I won’t leave this here yet because it’s not perfect, it’s not the right time, there’s still so much I have yet to do.” But he didn’t. Instead, he took Owen’s sudden death as one of the driving factors and used it to push himself forward.

[MUSIC: Rhythm Scott “The Sunniest Kids”]

So when the offer came to go work as the Vice President of Sales in New Markets for an instant ticket lottery company, Webcraft, he took it. And it was through this company that the opportunity to jump into the international market and help startups create their own lotteries within different countries happened. First London -

Mark Hutchinson I relaunched U.K. charity lotteries in '89.

Samantha Castro Then Romania -

Mark Hutchinson I went to Bucharest, Romania to raise money for... it was property development for them…

Samantha Castro Greece, Brazil, Rwanda, and so many other countries within Mark’s international career! But the country to impact Mark the most on a personal level is South Africa.

You see, before Mark ever went international, back in his time in the Kansas lottery, he was yearning to help the people of South Africa but just wasn’t sure how until someone called Nancy Castlebam approached him with an idea.

Mark Hutchinson Nancy Castlebam way back then was the head of the African affairs committee in the United States. And, we had a really short conversation, one time about all this money that the lottery raises for economic development. It's amazing. How can I raise some money to help guys that are in exile from South Africa to get their kids in school?

And I just, I kind of laughed. I said, I'd love to, but you know, better than anybody, the money, the lottery raised in Kansas is legislated to go to specific places and they can't go anywhere else.

Samantha Castro But the legislation, as annoying and cumbersome as it can be at times, wasn’t going to stop Mark. Throughout his international travels, he continued to work with different fundraisers to get those kids that he spoke with Nancy about, into schools on the east coast. Sure, he wasn’t able to do it as fast as he’d have liked to, but it was a start. A start which, in the early 1990s, led to him getting in touch with a black business owner in South Africa.

Mark Hutchinson His name was Mohali Monelle, and he owned a business. It was the nation's largest African brewery. He owned the national Sorghum Breweries. Even beer was under apartheid. The black guys drank Sorghum beer; the middle class, white guys, like me, drank Coors Light and the rich guys drank imported beer. So even the beer was under apartheid.

So Mohali calls me and says, “Come down here to South Africa. I think there's a real opportunity for this lottery business and I'll use the proceeds to buy land, to grow sorghum, to make beer.” And that whole chain goes, and he was employing huge amounts of people. So I went down to South Africa from London. I went down there, and I looked around the place I fell in love with South Africa.

Samantha Castro Mark’s first visit to South Africa was around 1992, and it was during a very historic time in South Africa for the reason he just mentioned - apartheid. Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s. And it separated everything based on the color of your skin - where you could live, what jobs you could get, even what beer you could drink! Here’s Mark again -

Mark Hutchinson My other message for small business guys: If you pushing and thinking big enough and working hard enough, it lets guys like me, that aren't supposed to be in places like that, be there.

I'm in the middle of rare times in South Africa, the complete overhaul-throw out of apartheid, the takeover of the Democratic system, which probably one of the coolest days of my life was the first time there was ever a free and fair election, in that whole country, mile long of people lined up to vote for the first time in their lives.

Not complaining, not yelling, standing there waiting to vote cause it'd never been done for, I drove around, took pictures of the voting lines. So anyway, while Mohali was out running this brewery, so I said, “Okay, I'm going to start a lottery down here. I love this place.”

I packed my bags, and I left England, and I went straight down to Johannesburg to figure out how to operate this national lottery. Privately run and operated, but I dedicated portions of it to the good cause, exactly as we did in the U.S., so we were selling regulated to the same levels as the world lottery industry, even though all we needed was a license to sell scratch cards, which we had. So I duplicated, I didn't reinvent any wheels. I duplicated a traditional U.S. scratch card operation.

Samantha Castro Throughout all of his travels setting up and starting up lotteries, Mark wasn’t reinventing the wheel. He had a model that was working, and he took that model and reshaped it to fit wherever he went next.

I think that this is important for small businesses. Sometimes I think we feel pressure to come out with a new product or a new service when we’re doing really well with what we have. Now is that to say that we shouldn’t be striving to innovate and do more within our business? Absolutely not. But innovation doesn’t have to mean creating something completely new. It may mean just looking at your surroundings and figuring out how to work with what you have and what you know works.

And this is exactly what Mark does when he gets to South Africa and is trying to solve the problem of how to market and display these scratch cards.

Mark Hutchinson Back then they didn't have convenience stores where you normally buy a scratch card. So I went out looking around at the market and what I noticed is what they did do down there is they don't have post offices that deliver mail to your door. So they had post offices that people went to every day to pick up their mail.

So they basically treated them just like convenience stores. So I spent months trying to convince the heads of this bureaucratic post office to become a retailer of lottery tickets. They finally did. They became our number one outlet for selling tickets and actually ended up owning a piece of the consortium that ran the national lottery eventually in South Africa. So the whole thing turned into just this amazing tool for raising money for good causes.

Samantha Castro So Mark’s there in South Africa, laying the groundwork for this new initiative of raising money for good causes while at the same time this new era is beginning in South Africa as apartheid is ending. Mohali, the brewery owner, wanted to introduce Mark to some friends who were just released from prison and thought would be good potential partners for some of the causes they were serving.

Mark Hutchinson When everybody got out of jail because of the apartheid days I was working with Mohali who introduced me to the Mandela family, the sister Zunami and her husband, Musi, and, Walter and Albertine Sisulu. Since these are private run industries or operations over in South Africa, I brought in a shareholder called Tebe Investments, which Tebe was run by the ANC, which was the party that Sisulu and Mandela started and ran as a business in South Africa. So they were one of my shareholders. We branded it “ Ithuba” the good cause, which means “we're all what we are because of everybody else”.

Samantha Castro I’m going to pause for a moment here to break down what Mark just said here because he threw out a lot of names.

Mohali, the brewery owner, introduced Mark to the Mandela family. No big deal. The Mandela family which included the Sisulus, and specifically Nelson Mandela were apart of the ANC, the African National Conference, who opposed apartheid and was apart of this massive movement politically in South Africa. Mandela during this time frame was starting to move into the business sphere where he was working with private investors like Tebe which eventually partnered with Mark and the South African lottery to help raise money for causes that were near and dear to their hearts, like Ithuba.

Got it? Okay, so moving on - Mark is now working with the Mandela family as part of establishing this lottery, and much like the lottery, his relationship with them grows in ways he could have never imagined.

Mark Hutchinson I actually became, I pretty much did become family of the Sisulu’s. I got along really well with Walter and Nelson. Nelson said to me, he said, "You know, there's this pandemic." At that point in time, his worry was AIDS is a pandemic on the African continent. I was selling tickets at the South African lottery in the 90—early nineties—on a state of the art, GSM wireless system.

So we're selling tickets over the phone. I told Nelson, I said, "Listen, we revenue share selling tickets over the phone and probably make more money for the good cause on the telephone than we do on the paper tickets. If you get out there and lead the marketing campaign, we'll raise some serious money for the AIDS pandemic."

And, he loved it and said, "okay, let's do it. What do we do?" So I'm now making the plan and me being the kind of techno fool I was, I didn't realize I couldn't have just one phone number around the world to revenue share to raise money for it. So that plan kind of came to a stop.

Samantha Castro Mark’s idea of going wireless was ahead of his time, and when he came to this roadblock of not being able to collect the funds, Nelson and Mark had to turn their attention to something else that would help the pandemic in a different but equally important way.

Mark Hutchinson There was one children's hospital in the entire country of South Africa with 55 million people. One children's hospital.

I thought it was disgusting. I wanted to figure out how to help him. He asked me how to help because they were raising money to build this hospital for years. A lot of employees, there are a lot of employees around the world for the Nelson Mandela children's trust, but they hadn't laid a brick for that hospital.

So I went into a meeting with the board. They said, ”Well, what can you do?” I said, “Give me the rights to the small business, give me the rights to raise the money, to finally build those children's hospitals, and we'll do it via the telephone.” And that's where, InspireHUB was born - to work with and administrator and coordinate that whole project.

Samantha Castro That’s right. Mark and the work he was doing with lotteries, the Mandela family, and good causes was the catalyst for OUR small business, the one bringing you this podcast right now, InspireHUB. Here’s Karolyn -

Karolyn Hart For InspireHUB, the whole idea was: how do we take technology to help good people do more good? Which really came out of your experience, your love with the Sisulu's and Mandela. That whole desire of, how do we address, you know certainly for the AIDS pandemic that was happening before that, but the specific, the pediatric healthcare crisis going on in South Africa. And I remember you tried to warn me at the time that it wasn't going to happen quickly.

And I even remember cause you know, I'm this Canadian girl from Windsor, Ontario, Canada in Montreal meeting you. And I remember you saying to me, “No, really there's a thing called South African time, and it's real, and whatever you think, however a long time in your head is, you know, like times it by seven”, I think you said.

And what's interesting is we're sitting here. So, I mean, I met with you, it would have been almost nine years when we started the conversations. It was just over seven years ago that InspireHUB actually, we started... You know, we started, I came in, we started doing just the research, for things. And I've been told, this is not a new usual, you know, we are just now launched, in 2020 with really our first worthy cause, which is St. Augustine on that platform that we started all those years ago.

[MUSIC: Be Still The Earth “i've seen you in all your light”]

What I remember when we went into South Africa, when we started doing that research, I think it was probably you, you said, you know, just remember this, no plan will survive the enemy, right? So no plan, whatever you think is going to happen when we get into South Africa, just be very open to being willing to change it. Which we did. Which we had no choice because I remember when Prince Zinnle was taking us on the tours of the hospitals for those listening, Prince Zinhle is, you know, a doctor and Mandela's grandson and the connection between all of us.

And we were talking about at the time thinking of building this, you know, fundraising app and we were going to do all these different things, you know, all through the phone. And then we get into these hospitals where, you know, there's no wifi, the power's out. There's not even... like forget... the wifi coverage isn't what we think. And also we're looking around because I need to be in a space to really understand how do we solve a problem. And I realized, you know, even before that I'd seen the numbers that, you know, smartphones were a negligible use in South Africa. But reading numbers in a report and then going into the country and being on the ground and actually understanding all the environment around you - it's a very different experience.

I think one of the things I love about this story and our connection and just how everything has evolved for, you know, the platform that we now built, ultimately that was created to help good people do more good, is now being used by small businesses to actually host everything from an app to a website.

And I remember you were saying they're so under-resourced Karolyn that we have to make sure that whatever you build is, you know, not complicated. And that it takes care of a lot of things so that people don't have to think about it.

That was one of the reasons, you know, not to talk about just the IHUBApp here for a minute, but I think it's interesting that that conversation being in-country, trying to do this worthy cause—that's the whole reason why this one feature in our platform, which is automated newsletters and it just automatically manages all the notifications out to the people you need to talk to—came because of that specific in-country need. And it's just one of those things where I personally, as a part of the journey, does the world even know there is a connection to progressive web apps, this technology, to Mandela, like it's just this, you know, think about your connections, Pepsi, you know, London, Nelson Mandela, apartheid, all these things that seem completely disconnected and yet we're all together. What was that word that you said that means, you know, we're all in this together, kind of you were talking about it earlier?

Mark Hutchinson It's a Ubuntu. Our brand was Ithuba because that was the charity. But Ubuntu is the name, and you'll see people using Ubuntu all the time. We are all what we are because of everybody else. It's like you walk in and say, “Shit, my whole life I've been living, working like this. Ubuntu.”

Samantha Castro Ubuntu, we are what we are because of everyone else. The people we surround ourselves with shape our personalities, our characteristics, our beliefs, our products, our services; Ubuntu.

Karolyn had to go to South Africa to see what it was like and gain a full understanding of the situation before she could even begin thinking about a solution. While in South Africa, Mark remembers Karolyn coming up with a possible solution.

Mark Hutchinson The only way you know where something was really invented is when you were there. You and InspireHUB, we're talking about 10 years ago, seven years ago, you were talking about using video doctors in South Africa. And I thought it was the coolest solution idea and technology I'd ever heard because you know why you can't have one children's hospital in the whole country and think that you're going to have the doctor's office scenarios us North Americans think about.

You guys came up with using video conferencing. I had a lot of conversations with doctors here in the United States. They all wanted to help. They'd all donate the time. The problem they had was they didn't have two weeks, which is what it takes to get there and back, just to do it. Now they could do it on your video conferences system.

I'm sitting there watching T.V. the other day, and I see how popular televideo for medical appointments is, and I'm thinking to myself, I know a person named Karolyn that was trying to make me understand that seven years ago. And that, that is the truth.

Karolyn Hart That is, and I think... yeah, it's an interesting thing because so much has evolved in seven years, when it comes to technology at the time that I was proposing with our team telemedicine, there was a lot of challenges.

The technology has certainly evolved the video conferencing that we now have really wasn't there. There was a lot of concerns about, could you trust what you were seeing through the video conference? I remember having conversations with doctors from around the world about, you know, what that would mean because all the different restrictions that they have to have to see a patient in person.

And I think interestingly, that idea that we were working on at the time. To help do all of that. Certainly, you know, we could not have predicted that seven years later there'd be a global pandemic at this scale. That we would be, you know, seeing what we are today. But yeah. And now I'm happy to say that the technologies are definitely there to get some of those programs into place for South Africa, even though our... I feel like our part of the journey was to, plant the seeds. When people say, well, did you end up implementing all those things? We didn't, but we did so much groundwork as a company and in working with the hospitals and the doctors.

And I do remember distinctly, I believe we were in Soweto and... this is the one story that always, you know, just kind of pulls at my heartstrings and it was a really profound life-altering moment for myself and those we were with.

[MUSIC: Bryant Lowry “Denali”]

The one doctor I, all I did was kept asking questions and documenting what he had to say. And then to make sure I understand, cause I don't have a medical background, I'm all just digits and computers. And so I kept saying, you know, repeating back to him, the problem, and then asking, "What if we did it this way, would that work?" And then he'd say yes or no. And then if he said, no, I'd say, tell me more.

And then I would repeat it back, and we were trying to find the solution. It wasn't about being right, but about doing right. And I will never forget that moment. This doctor who had shared with me that, he wasn't making very good money and the little money he had, he would buy his own syringes because he had to, and it was just like this profound moment.

And I remember after this consulting session, we were in with him and we looked at him, and I said, what about this? Because we hadn't figured out the plans. And he started crying and I... I didn't understand until he said to me, "You are the first people who have come here to listen, to solve with us and not tell us how you're going to fix this for us."

And I remember thinking that cannot be possible. Surely, I can't be the first person that said, we're going to come in and ask questions and create an answer with you. But as I've since discovered, there was a lot of, well-meaning people who came in with their, I don't know, presumptions, I guess. You know, just like I had read the numbers. I had done the research. But my gut was saying to me, I don't care what's on a paper, I need to stand in that environment and I need to talk with the people to really understand how we create an actual solution to this problem that is being faced.

What we're trying to solve with such a big problem. I can't imagine another way to try and solve anything except that the knowledge that all of us as a team would need was in the minds of those doctors that were dealing with the crisis.

Not in my mind. Why would I have that information? They have the solutions. I have the tools. We just have to pair them together. And so I think, you know, the whole Ubuntu philosophy and now we really are all in this together. I mean, like now it's at a next level. Now it's not just a South African country issue that we're looking to solve.

And, and for our listers, we ended up morphing as a company, for a variety of reasons. Again, we just finally launched our platform in 2020 for St. Augustine University there, and now we're starting to really take it to the next level, but it's not a matter of... it's all about the planting of the seeds, those informed experiences.

How do we do things together? And we were a small business. That's what people don't understand, you know? Yes, they think because you're working with the Mandela's or you have all these people that you're doing things with that you're this large organization. But you, myself, the team, all of us were, were really this tiny, small team saying "Can we possibly do something here and think differently?"

And I think that is how extraordinary journeys. How, how did you go from Kansas to working with President Mandela? I mean, there's a lot of steps along the way. Right?

Mark Hutchinson Exactly. It's always been my golden rule. I wouldn't go start up anywhere—my business—unless I go live there for a while. So I truly know what I'm talking about. You guys did the same thing you understood.

Samantha Castro The time spent in South Africa, like I said, had a major impact on Mark, but it also impacted Karolyn, and she spoke to Mark about this.

Karolyn Hart I actually had culture shock returning to North America after my time in South Africa because of the sense of community of doing things together. I realized that we are so focused on, in a different capacity here in North America... You know, if you show up late to a meeting in North America you're severing relationships. Right?

And what I discovered, when we're spending that time in South Africa was that even lunches, dinners, appointments, meetings, going to people's homes, the schedule was a suggestion; a recommendation.

And what it taught me though, was that there's this great level of patience and at the heart of that is not because people are disrespectful of one another, but it's actually quite the opposite. There's this sense of relationship above all else... and of an accommodation, and the reality that something might happen where, you know, something came up and yeah you want to meet with those people that you have a meeting with, or these Canadians or these Americans that say they're going to do stuff, but there's this understanding that what was really paramount, what I took away is the idea of the relationship above all else that I feel like we have not had in Western society. I think the dollar above all else, there's a lot of things that go above all else that makes it very, very different in South Africa. And I was surprised when I returned to North America to realize how much I missed it. I'm returning to my... this where I grew up this is the society I know.

And I felt, I guess the word I could say, and especially right now with the pandemic, maybe people understand this, but I remember feeling a level of loneliness because it was just so different when I was in South Africa. I did not feel lonely the entire time we were there. And coming home was a very isolating experience.

Now it didn't help that I was coming home in the winter in Canada, in snow and ice, when we all hibernating. Okay. So, from the beautiful, you know, seeing the beautiful flowering trees in Johannesburg and all that, but it was definitely this sense of togetherness that is a lesson, I think, for the rest of the world.

Samantha Castro This sense of togetherness that Karolyn felt, it’s kind of hard to imagine as only 30 years ago segregation and division was so rooted within that country. But that was the thing that shocked Karolyn and what she also admired about South Africa - their openness to talk about their history.

Karolyn Hart The amount of time that we spoke and so important right now with what's happening with Black Lives Matter is the amount of time that we spent at the apartheid museum. I ended up becoming good friends with Mary Millben, who is the ambassador for Education Africa. Also a friend of the Mandelas’. That's where our friendship got born.

The conversations were so open in South Africa about racism, and this is eight years ago because they acknowledged that that was part of their healing. You know, having the apartheid museum, being able to talk about things, talking about all the different things and processes being put in place to make sure the absolute horrors of apartheid would be healed over time. And that was another thing they talked about - it takes time to heal, and I took that away as well. And so I'm in love with South Africa. That’s absolutely true. I'm in love with their people the way they do things. And that's why someone asked me, Mark.

They asked me. Yeah, but it's taken so long. Just for one small thing, “like aren't you frustrated?” And the only thing I can say is, you know, love is patient. And I love that country and its people, and it's absolutely worth it. And the amount that they have given back to my personal life, that people don't really understand the way it altered my worldview.

Yeah, of course, it's worth it.

Mark Hutchinson Yes, 100%, a hundred percent. That actually... what you just talked about? That was my, bonding final piece of cement with the Sisulu families. I don't think in the 10 years that I lived down there, nobody ever talked to me about being a white guy and I never talked to anybody about being a black guy.

We talked about the travesties of apartheid, and that was the first thing I did down there. I helped form a division in it, Education Africa, and I called it the Walter Sisulu Training and Bursary Program. And what we were doing was raising money to get shooting stars cause... that's always been my personal claim, that my claim to fame, I always say I can identify … I'm a connoisseur of talent. I can find youngsters and put them in positions. But anyway, we started, I started this thing. I said, “I want to send people to the United States to be trained by companies” because it was illegal for black people to get educated back under apartheid. So I said, “I want to send them for hands-on experience in the United States and brought back to South Africa”.

So Education Africa started this big division, and they call it the Walter Sisulu Training and Bursary Fund. Now I got in a fight with Walter Sisulu, who is, in my opinion, the most humble human being I've ever met besides my dad. But he said, "No, no, no. We're going to call this the Nelson Mandela Training and Bursary Program." I said, "No, we're not." And he said, "Yeah, we've got to call it Nelson Mandela. He's running this country. He's the man." And I said, "Well, I'm not going to build it." So anyway, I finally got him to agree to be the namesake of the Walter Sisulu Training and Bursary Program, and we went around the world, raised the money for it. And it's still operating now. And I've got friends in South Africa that are operating at world-class levels that I'll just smile and look back and say, I know I helped somewhere somehow.

Samantha Castro Mark was able to help those needing education in South Africa years after his initial conversations about it. Remember that. You may have an idea today that you might not have the ability to execute tomorrow, but one day you may find yourself with the right people and resources to get the job done.

When we asked Mark what the best thing he’d seen come out of his time in the lottery industry, he couldn’t give us just one answer.

Mark Hutchinson Africa was... for me was a huge place, but there's been so many things that come out. I mean, I can pick one thing from each of the markets and talk about it. What I love about the international business is that it's flexible enough that it raises money for good causes during tragedies. I mean, there were so many, I can't even... I can't even... I can't even say, I don't even know.

Samantha Castro One thing was certain though in our conversation was that his time in South Africa definitely was his most memorable, for all the things that we just spoke on in this podcast plus the funniest moment Mark had with Mandela that we had the opportunity to capture on camera.

Mark Hutchinson I don't know if I ever told you this about Karolyn, but he retaliated. The picture you guys use of my family in South Africa, it's Nelson and my ex-wife and my two kids. My youngest daughter is busting out, laughing in that picture.

And Mandela has probably the best smile that I've ever seen him in a picture with, and I know exactly why that looked like that because the night before we went to that... my one daughter was doing a project in school. She was doing this report on Mandela. So I called him and asked him if she could come down there and interview him.

So he said okay. So we went down to his office at the ANC, and she asked him all the questions about it. And the youngest daughter, all your kids are different, the night before that we went to Harlem Globe Trotters game because it was the first time ever the global trotters had been to South Africa.

She was the kid that got picked to go out on the court. You know, the Globetrotters always take a fan out there and do all kinds of ticks. So that was my youngest daughter. So before that picture, Mandela looked at her, my daughter Carie, and shakes her hand and she looks up at him and says, "You know, sir, I'm never washing that hand again." And he looks at her and says, "Oh, that's, so sweet."And she says, "Yeah, because last night I got to shake Curley's hand at the Globe Trotters."

And he busted out laughing and right there with the photographer was a stafferable to take a picture of that. So that picture—every single time I looked that picture just—it's one of those money-can't-buy moments.

Karolyn Hart Wow. That is an amazing story.

Samantha Castro Amazing story indeed. To go check out that picture, go to bigonsmall.biz/podcast and find the podcast post for this episode. We’ll also post it on all our social media sites - @BigOnSmall to see it.

Before we end the show, here’s Mark advice to small business owners.

Mark Hutchinson Every single business that a small business does somewhere inside that has a real niche and focus. If you find that niche, you're going to fulfill a huge need for especially the big companies or especially big markets. Focus on the niche and take it and put it in place where it needs to be put in place. And if it's a good product, a great-needed niche, they're going to make money out of it.

Innovation and passion and the good Lord above will make things happen. And we all have to take and go after the good stuff and make things happen.

Samantha Castro Mark’s small business, Lotix, is continuing to provide lottery services around the world, wirelessly. To connect with Mark, visit the podcast post for this episode.

CREDITS

[MUSIC: Noah Smith “New Girl”]

Samantha Castro We hope you enjoyed this episode of Big on Small and if you did, be sure to subscribe and follow us wherever you listen to podcasts.

Karolyn Hart Visit bigonsmall.biz to join our community of small businesses and find helpful resources. To learn more about what we talked about in today’s episode, read show highlights, and more, go to bigonsmall.biz/podcast and visit the post for this episode.

Samantha Castro We’re working on new stories where we need your help. Call and tell us how you’ve had to make small or BIG changes to the way you do business since COVID started. The number to call is 1-844-967-CHAT. That’s 1-844-967-2428

We listen to each and every message.

The Big on Small podcast is powered by InspireHUB - creators of the award-winning IHUBApp Digital Experience Platform.

Big on Small is produced and directed by me, Samantha Castro

Karolyn Hart And me Karolyn Hart. Additional support by Sue Braiden, Richard Brashear, Audrey Duncan and Sue Jenks. Music by Noah Smith. Mixed by Samantha Castro.

For the full list of credits visit the podcast page for this episode.

Thanks for listening!

Big On Small - The Official Small Business Podcast

Against All Odds with Mark Hutchinson

Listen to this podcast on