Fireside Chat with Mark Cuban at the 2019 Tech Summit

let's begin with your book that you published in November of 2011 right most of these types of books are not very good yours is actually a very good book it's quick to read you can read it in less than two hours 150 some odd pages not even all right it's it's actually there's some really good nuggets in it so I wanted to focus on a couple so when you first moved to Dallas post Indiana University you made a list of all the jobs that you would love to do at some point in your life right and so if you can remember this list can you share with us what some of those jobs were and how its involved in terms of new additions or perhaps subtractions over the years um when I when I got out of school I had no idea what I wanted to do I graduated from Indiana and one of my couple of my buddies went down to Dallas and they're like you got to come down you got to come down and I didn't know if I wanted to go to New York Chicago LA well I had an old 77 Fiat x19 with a hole in the floorboard and Dallas was the only real city I can make it to and so they're like look the economy's great the weather is great the women are beautiful I didn't hear the first two things but I heard the women are beautiful and so I was down there and when I got there I thought okay what hot industries and so at that time it was cable television computers went through RadioShack I mean bartending and you know consistent things like that and I ended up getting my first job as a bartender at night but then I was able to get a job selling computer software during the day so speaking of interesting jobs you wanted your first jobs you talked about in your book as you were selling powdered milk which sounds interesting it was horrible so maybe you can elaborate on that and tell us how that ultimately played out I've been an entrepreneur my entire life as far back as I could remember I would sell baseball cards to my friends I would buy and sell stamps and stamp collections I mean I was just I was that kid in the neighborhood that was always trying to sell you something I sold garbage bags door-to-door but after after actually after I graduated from college I was like what what can I do I want to start my own business I don't want to get a regular job and so somebody came up to me and had this great idea that I should try and they're like look so expensive if we sell powdered milk we can sell it for less and I'm like that's a great idea so I started going out there and finding these powdered milk formulas and the problem was it didn't taste so good but I was like well people don't need good tasty milk if they save a lot of money so that business lasted about two weeks but I learned you know you that you learn from your failures I mean like I always tell people it doesn't matter how many times you fail you just have to be right one time then everybody can call you an overnight success that's right all right so when you were at IU you started a pub called Motley's pub yep and this was when you were even you would even legal drinking age at the time now it's 20 or 20 yep so alcohol has usually been a relatively heavily regulated business yeah how did you actually pull that off I don't know there's it so again I was that hustlin kid so I used to throw parties to help pay for school my dad would send me $20 every couple weeks and I had to figure out how to pay for the rest of it and and so I got loans and then the rest was figured out and one of the things I would do was we would throw these parties either in our dorm room or we would even go to the National Guard Armory I remember we threw parties and then we would rent out these bars on their slow nights and throw of sorority and fraternity parties and I wasn't old enough then but we were making some money and so the owner of the bar came to me and said you're better at than I am why don't you take it over and I'm like okay and so we didn't know you know I did get a lawyer involved or any of that we just said okay we'll take it over and that's what we did and so no paperwork and it was great literally we were the hotbar on campus now a lot of that had to do that with the fact that I wasn't 21 I led in all my friends and it worked great it worked really really we had lines I can show you pictures with lines around the block I mean I had the Eagles came in there and da-da-da-da-da I was great um until they decided to raid us and realize that three-quarters of the people in there were like 17 18 19 years old so again one more failure that just anymore that's great you have a chapter in the book that is titled what will you remember when you are 90 which i think is a great a great title it's kind of a carpe diem theme if you will so I'd be curious if you can give us a couple of examples of your recent life experiences that you've added to that list so I'm one of the other data too I got from my dad was you know when you're older and you look back at your life what would the what would be the things that you remember and think about that when you say yes or no to doing something that's really bizarre a really interesting and so I've tried to take that attitude whether it was you know buying the mavs or doing Dancing with the Stars or if you really want to see me embarrass myself and look I have no problem embarrassing myself is that all my friends will tell you but if it's something different and it's just something bizarre and interesting I'll do it so if you turn to TNT tonight there's a show called dropped the mic and you'll see me rap and I am the world's worst rapper but it was so much fun and so you know when I'm 90 years old and I look back and say should I have done dropped the mic and rapped and look like an idiot hello yes hell yes right because I got this unique experience where this professional rapper taught me how to rap and they gave me all this stuff and I got to you know battle with rusev this guy who wrestles for WWE who's like 5 foot 8 and 400 pounds of muscle and you know who threatened to kick my ass in our little battle so it was fun you come back to a phrase several times your book when you say you just have to be right one time yep and so you seem to have been right more than most you also talk about just grinding essentially outwork in your competition I'm curious if you've ever had a deal or an outcome where you think you actually lost because you were out worked not because I was out work never and never you know the thing about no matter what you're doing whether you're trying to be a bartender and learning drinks whether you're a sales rep whether you're a programmer whether what you know you're consult whatever it may be information now is available to every and you know the common phrase knowledge is power and acquiring that knowledge is just effort going out and connecting to people and learning is just effort and the one thing I have all these stupid sayings that you know but the one thing in life that you can control is your effort and that's 99% of the time that's the difference between being successful and not being successful who worked a little bit harder when you walk into a room to sell something or to be sold or to try to understand something or to deal with you know a problem with your kids or whatever it may be education who worked harder that's typically who worked harder at learning that's typically going to be the person who has the advantage in the situation because we've all walked into situations where we weren't as prepared as we would have liked to be or we thought we were and somebody knew more that's the king the one thing in life each and every person in this room can control from now to evermore is your effort I like it mark Mark Cuban undefeated and out working everyone that's quite good undefeated but I've gotten my ass kicked many times but no there's a quote that you referenced in your book from George Gilder and instead to the effect that unlimited choice is the holy grail of TV this whole book yeah yeah so this this you know it's back in 2011 when you published and you mentioned in your book that you disagreed with that concept I'd be fascinating to get your kind of updated perspective on that because we're not obviously some people argue we're in this age of kind of peak content is there more content that we can actually consume so how do you think how do you think about that no I mean in terms of content there's never too much content it is just because what we want and who we are and how we consume content changes every day through our experiences the challenge of content isn't can you make it or is there too much the challenge of content whether it's business content the proposals you make what you put on your website how you connect to people is can you tell a good story you know and now storytelling has evolved it used to be we all congregated around the TV and there were 250 channels but you know it was the best alternative to boredom you come home you're worn up you sit there one hand goes in the pants the other hand goes on the beer and you watch TV now all the content comes to us no matter where we are there's there's a source of content and who we are and how old we are and our experiences that defines what we like just go to twitch like I have a nine-year-old son who plays fortnight all day every day if we would let him right and he'll watch ninja now Ninja is a I don't know if you all know who he is he's like big guy on Twitch that streams fortnight games and he came to the mavs practice facility one day because we got to be friends just through random sources he was a bigger star than when Tom Hanks came to visit I mean and this is a guy on twitch now twitch is unlimited options of content related to gaming and other things and they're expanding YouTube obviously just unlimited content and it's not like YouTube's struggling where the the takeaway from all this is when there's so many options for content as business people you have to figure out how to connect with people you have to know your audience and you have to know how to tell a story and honestly that's not my strength I literally and I forget the name of the book I'd have to look at my phone I'm reading a book on storytelling because that's how people connect we have so many choices if you can't absorb us with something that engages us a story and simplify it into a story that we want to connect with the next person is going to be who come the next person is going to come in and take your business so you also mentioned in the book and this you know maybe it's changed but you read on average three hours a day at least Wow you said your wife hates it she hates a lot of I do we stuff it's what get along so I'm curious you mentioned you have three children do you ask them to maintain a similar reading regiment yeah I mean with my kids it's yes in my household I can be bribed if you read a book dad how much do I get or what can I get if I read this book in this book in this book my middle daughter Alisa my 12 year old wants a love sack and so I gave her a book on girl entrepreneurs that she's got to read my son wants an oculus rift headset so he's got three books he's got to read I'm not above bribing bribing my children I mean it works but yeah reading to me is important I've got two dollars 12 and 15 and you know they're not big readers but hopefully I can get them to adopt in and adapt because you know information is always going to be important and there's different sources podcast and listening and even discover on snapchat you know is a source but it's just about getting them excited about learning because you know one of the greatest skills we all will have for our lives is you know a thirst to learn and knowing how to learn not everybody knows how to learn and so I'm trying to get them you know educated early that you know life is constant change and you're always going to have to learn did you give us your favorite book that you've read in the last year I don't know if there's one that stands out I forget the name of the one on storytelling I'm reading now it's good I mean there's I read a book called mr. Putin that was really cool you know that I was just curious about Vladimir Putin didn't know that he was a lawyer didn't know he you know was the assistant mayor and Leningrad I mean I read a book called the master algorithm by a guy named Domingo because I wanted to learn more I'm firing my way through machine learning for idiots you know just I just try to grab whatever I can so let's go back to the topic of media so you probably know a buddy of ours Thomas Tull so Thomas I that's how I actually been doing independent film for the last ten years and so we're probably shooting our next film in May and I'm curious since you run Magnolia pictures I'm curious to get your kind of State of the Union on the independent film business especially as it relates to Netflix and Amazon and some of the big tech folks that are likely coming into the space independent film is hard it's really really hard if some of you have aspirations of making a lot of money and then getting into film stop right now I'll tell you a little known fact I've been nominated as an executive producer for seven Academy Awards have won yet but I'll give you a quick story how hard it is I got an email from a guy named Alex Gibney if you've seen this movie I'm about it's called the inventor I think about Elizabeth Holmes who would people in bad blood yep he did that movie and so he emails me just a cold email in 2003 and he says I've got all this Enron footage and I email them back and I'm like is it exclusive to you do you have the rights to these emails me right back yes email him again how much to do this documentary emails me right back $770,000 email him right back let's do it twelve minutes I greenlit that movie that movie went on to be a documentary called Enron the smartest guys in the room that at that time was a top 10 all-time grossing documentary got nominated for one Academy Award not three months later my partner Todd Wagner who I do almost everything with is incredible comes to me and says we've got this deal with George Clooney and partisan participant films and it's a movie that's going to be in black and white about old-time newsrooms and it's going to be eight million dollars we pay half but it's going to start your journey I'm like do we get to hang out with George Clooney like yeah okay regice gripped it was really good so we do this movie good night and good luck second movie ever greenlit took minutes gets nominated for six Academy Awards and I get to have an Academy Award night party with at Dan Tana's in LA I'm think okay I'm killing it literally my first two movies seven Academy Award nominations that was 2005 anybody know any other movies I did it's it's hard and so we actually have gotten out of the original production business because it's that hard and with Magnolia we stick to just distribution and you know we just did a movie RBG that got nominated for an Academy Award but we distributed it as opposed to make it and so the reason it's so hard is that there's a lot of choices now people will still go to the movies we you know we just sold landmark theaters but we had a great year you know so people go and it's a great way to get out of the house it's great something to do movies had a great year last year but if you're producing them particularly independent films it's hard there's no formula there's no way you can assure you're gonna make money and if you don't tell a good story you know you're gonna lose all your money very very true so sticking in the media theme last November you sold your theater chain Landmark Theatres alright sorry I think there's a perspective that if you're buying from Mark Cuban mark may know more about the business than you do so should we interpret that sale as a market top know a strategic shift or other other I was just tired of it yeah you know it's like okay why am i doing spending all this time on this and not even spend all that much time and it was like time to move on that was it in a nutshell the guy who bought it would be great I'll probably do a better job than we did got it alright let's shift gears entirely let's cover kind of beyond media some kind of popular currently popular investment topics so yeah been on record with respect to crypto at Bitcoin yep so I've heard something to the effect that you you rather own a pet rock than a Bitcoin I didn't quite say that know what what I said was they're more like baseball cards or gold right crypto currencies are worth what somebody else will pay for them and that too if you want to get fancy people will call it a store of value right it's a way to a store value which is kind of like gold right people go to religion to a lot of people that's it well if everything goes to hell in a handbasket and everything collapses Gold will be there and you use gold who the hell is gonna carry around gold bars hey I got a gold bar here in my back you're dead it just doesn't make any sense and kryptos a little bit at least least there's a technological value behind crypto currencies in terms of managing a distributed database in terms of having authentication for information smart contracts there's a lot of arguments you can make why there's value particularly with the blockchain but in terms of vesting in Bitcoin and I've bought some and I've sold some it's a crapshoot it's just worth it's like buying a baseball card or buying a comic book you know once you look at the baseball card and says Oh Mickey Mantle that's cool time to sell it what will someone buy it for so be careful if you don't have an exact thing don't buy it expect expecting it to go up there's already been a lot of people that have lost money I'm not saying it won't go up I'm not saying it won't go down but just realize it's about supply and demand and not some intrinsic value pushing what it's worth so another sector so to speak this gets a lot of hype right now is cannabis uh-huh and so you have a phrase which I love there's a sequence of inventors imitators and then idiots right so where are we in the sequence of those three eyes so I stole a line from Warren Buffett who says first comes the innovators then the imitators then the idiots think about it and when you're looking to get in in a business that ten thousand people are already in why do you want to be ten thousand and one and so cannabis you know I guess you got to be careful how you sample your own product but it's I'm not against the cannabis business per se but it's like any other business now you know the emails I get and the people who come up me dude to cannabis it's the future you know it's and and so it's it's no different than any other business there's there's no real advantage except that it's regulated and if it's regulated big companies are going to get into it and if big companies get into it they're gonna use regulation to their advantage so be careful I mean unless it's just for recreational use then call jack good stuff there's a YouTube video of you doing an interview at a Goldman Sachs event about a year ago and there was a great great bit about you telling the fellow about how you essentially called the demise of Netscape in advance and so I'd be curious given that I think we could probably argue that we're not in the early innings of the tech cycle now nope would there be a similar company or at least a sector that you think is potentially going to go a similar kind of a route of the dodo that Netscape did it's it's really different now there's probably some out there what's changing everything I know you're going to get into future is artificial intelligence artificial intelligence is changing everything and you know I've been through a lot of technological revolutions I was there when pcs first started I was there when local area networks first started I was there when the internet first started I was there when HT start first started I make money and each of those sectors because I can stay a little bit ahead but if you think back to all of them when I first started selling pcs which is my job I got after I was a bartender in Dallas I would walk in and people say we don't need pcs I'm right in my hand I've got this ledger I've got this person here who types it up on her typewriter and then I was like okay here's what a spreadsheet does yes friend she costs $500 back then but you can use it to play what F and learn and it had an impact it improved productivity then we started connecting them together and I would say one if you connect these pcs together offices can talk to each other people can share data I don't need to do that I just carry this five and a quarter inch floppy from this PC to that PC and everybody shares it and then people now we can't live with low query networks then the internet that changed everything to now we can communicate with everybody but now we've seen those advances with artificial intelligence it's what if to the thousandth degree right now the challenges we have as entrepreneurs and business people is we use our experience and based off our experience we put ourselves out there and say here's some different options that I want to explore because I've done these things a thousand times before or I have a feel for this business where I have a spec I have it I have the ability to tell a story or sell this product or understand this product but we're limited by our time or the people we have around us or the access to information what AI does whether it's machine learning neural networks whatever it is but generally it's able to take an unlimited amount of data and go through it and pop out information that even the best experienced person couldn't couldn't think of and why is that important well why it's important is bigger companies have more data have more processing power can go through more options more variables and start to compete in different ways that's why that's how Amazon knows that if you had a stomachache they're gonna you know send you five other options when you go to Amazon because you bought you know medicine for your stomachache or something for your stomachache that's why Netflix knows if you watch this and it says if you watch this you might like that well what do we as small businesses going to do that's the challenge right now that's where you as a small business entrepreneur or working or running a small business as a CEO you have to take put in that effort to start to understand how it really works now what did I do I literally went onto Amazon AWS and took their tutorial their introduction to machine learning it you know took me some time to fight my way through you didn't have to learn stats you didn't have to be a programmer but it educated me on how to use it I got I mentioned earlier if the idiots guide to machine learning for those of you who are old enough who remember getting on the internet for the first time and struggling through it and expecting someone to teach you about it and getting on mobile and what's this app thing that's going on this is the same thing times a hundred you're gonna need to know how to integrate it into your companies because you're gonna need how to do more than just what if from your own personal experiences you're gonna have to know what all the data that is coming from your customers from your products for however you can source data what it's really telling you because as Jeff Bezos says your margin is my opportunity and so if you don't do it even in the smallest business if you don't understand the relationship between capturing data that represents your business your customers and other parts of your business and plowing through it with machine learning and then having the machine learning spit out recommendations or options that you probably hadn't considered you're going to be at a disadvantage to the 23 year old kid coming out of school right now I'm taking you know a class right now in Coursera introduction to AI I mean it's boring as but you know we took accounting classes we took finance classes we took whatever classes you took marketing sales those are skills that you need to be successful at some level in business this is the new thing you need to be successful up so in terms of you know who's gonna jump the shark what are the problems that's a problem for small business that we have to address and it's not just about I'm just gonna hire some kid who just graduated in computer science because you have to have an understanding right now we as individual we capture so much data our brains are the best computer ever and we process through it and we're able to understand what's happening in our business and that's good but now you have to start looking at that data and how do you make it capturable in spreadsheets to start databases whatever it may be for your company but you need to do it now and you'll thank me in 2 3 4 years because it's not gonna slow down it's only gonna get more advanced so to follow up on the AI topic just to jump ahead a little bit in my notes so our mutual friend Elon Musk claims that AI is more dangerous new nuclear weapons how do you feel about that I mean you can make the story that that's true I don't know when but yeah so put your Terminator hat on and processor speeds and performance are going to go like this right that's what's really the reason AI is become so big in the last few years is because companies like Nvidia and others Taiwan Semiconductor their prot Intel their processor speeds have just accelerated in ways that we hadn't expected or didn't expect where I didn't expect and now you can process all this data so think about Arnold and you know coming back and the chip that sees everything in front of them and processes the data that chip is already there the two things that are missing are the manual dexterity for Arnold to be able to grab things and ride a motorcycle and you know twirl a gun and put on clothes that's 30 years away and the power sources that's small enough to fit in a you know a steel Arnold and lasts for 24 hours I don't know how far away that is it could be three years it could be a hundred years I don't know but when those two things come together it's going to it's going to be crazy and it's not I don't think it's going to be more probably not worse than nuclear war just because you can't come back from that I think it'll be more like biological warfare right where there's always that fear that some idiot put something in the water stream and impacts a lot of people but you know we kind of come to agreements around the world you know in ways to prevent that I think we'll be able to come up with ways to detect serial numbers and track serial numbers of chips and batteries that are that powerful and then the robots that do those things so I'm not as concerned as Elon is but it's something that our kids are gonna have to pay attention to so sticking on the topic of Elon you came to his defense a couple days ago with respect to a spat that he's been having with the SEC right and you have your own history with the SEC yep I'd be curious if I were to anoint you the Commissioner of the suc what you would do to fix that organization I'm glad you asked so anybody can run a public company or had to deal with the SEC okay just a few folks so if you ever have to deal with SEC related issues and you're curious about is this okay or that okay or is this a problem can I do this can I tweet about my company can I you know and you went to the SEC well I did that and I went to the SEC and I said I have a question I want to talk I'm potentially going to invest in a company and I want to talk to the CEO before I invest I want to know what I can and can't ask him and what he can and can't tell me because I don't want to get in trouble with the SEC I fought them for eight years they're they're sleazy as hell and I kicked their ass but I don't want to deal with that again and so I called him and I talked to him twice on the phone and you know what they told me they sent me if you have any questions they sent me to a webpage on the SCC gov website that was a picture of a fax data in 1980 saying whatever questions you have fax eight copies of it to this number and we'll try to get back to you that's our SCC that's who we're looking to protect our market so what would I do I think what we need are bright-line regulations what the SE does SEC does they do something called litigation through I mean regulation through litigation they'll sue somebody in order to get a precedent put in place in order to have a new law that they can sue other people over and like with Elon Musk's with Twitter you know Ilana made a mistake he was wrong on what he did but at the same time he should have been able to there should have been bright-line guidelines to say you can and cannot do this they shouldn't have to sue him for everybody to know that this is wrong and so what I would do is just put up the bright line regulations I would put up a list of things that says here are the things that we've learned from all the lawsuits we filed and you can or cannot do this and if you aren't sure here's a number to call that's it that is it and so with that mine no one will have any excuses if you see if those are there and you have the ability just to google them and have them come up and you still violate them go to jail do not pass go you're screwed right but there shouldn't be a situation where you weren't sure and you don't know and you have to pay a lawyer $900 an hour to tell you what we're not sure either because the SEC won't tell us that's just wrong and so I said you know the SEC the head of the SEC is chain multiple times but they haven't gotten any better when it comes to regulation excellent so sticking on the regulatory topic there's been a lot of backlash towards big tech recently yep Elizabeth Warren calling for the breakup the big tech yep ALC essentially driving Amazon out of New York what's your take on all that or you think the pendulum is going to swing back at some point or do you think it's not going to continue no it's going to continue first of all Lizabeth Warren is wrong when she talks about breaking up big tech in there's nothing to do with whether I like her just like Elizabeth Warren you've just heard me talk about AI over and over and over again right now we're our federal government and our states are just starting to put together policies on AI and trying to determine what the investments will be for AI do you know who the biggest or who was making the biggest investments into AI that are allowing us to compete with China and Russia Vladimir Putin said whoever dominates AI dominates the world you know who's investing the most the big tech companies so if you break them up you're diminishing probably the most important topic and the most important issue that we face I just talked about terminators you can laugh you can think I'm an idiot or think I'm right but we're not fighting that battle the way we need to our defense are the defense different three-letter agencies they're going to those big companies trying to get their help those are the companies that are hiring the best talent everywhere paying the million dollar salaries plus and if you break up those companies you immediately make each one of the I think she wanted if a company had more than 25 billion in sales I forget her exact criteria but you immediately diminish our abilities within artificial intelligence now that said that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be issues that we address with all the big companies I'm an Amazon is my largest stock holding it's grown and grown huge and Netflix is my second largest same thing but I think Amazon is wrong when they make their own o a.m. or white label versions of things that they see are selling I think if they don't change it they're gonna face federal in antitrust litigation and so doesn't mean all these companies are right and everything that they do and it doesn't mean we shouldn't change some things and it's the same with Facebook look Facebook isn't a utility it's not you don't have to use Facebook you can still text pictures to Grandma you can still text do whatever you want but Facebook worldwide has taken on a completely different level of import and so I think maybe regulation is isn't the right word but being able to have a closer relationship and dealing in adding different regulations and I'll give you the perfect example elections right this coming election and we got a lot of folks here that are involved in politics people are going to run ads and they're running now every election there's ad after ad after ad and the way to really put out the best ads to get the greatest results is on Facebook why because Facebook has so much information all that AI we talked about so much information and so much influence on tens of millions hundred million plus people in this country and what advertisers political advertisers are doing is using that information and really hitting home with things that are important to us now that's okay but when they do that they don't just run one ad they'll run hundreds of thousands of ads looking for the things that catch your attention you are a pet lover that thinks it's horrible that pets need to be spayed yada yada they'll find you and run an ad that says my candidate thinks it's horrible to spayed pets just to get you to vote now I'm fine with that as well but what I think needs to happen is there needs to be a registry of every single ad so that we know that everybody everybody's in a race all Americans you know everybody in this country knows what ads are being run what criteria they use for those ads only you know love spayed pets or doesn't like spayed pets and that's in a registry that's public on dot-gov website and available to everybody then we know what's going on then at least we have the information right now we don't do that that's part one the second thing I would do applies to a out AI algorithms we talked about machine learning neural networks is a little bit different machine learning doesn't think for itself it doesn't do what's called generalizing neural networks that these processors get faster it starts to think isn't the right word but it starts to generalize and come up with new things it reacts to the knowledge it's already created for itself you can call that learning maybe maybe not but that creates those algorithms what that are behind it they're come black box we don't know what they're doing Facebook Google don't know what their algorithms are they're most advanced algorithms nor should say they're most advanced neural networks are doing those black boxes those algorithms need to be in a vault somewhere just in case the hits the fan and something goes wrong and so that type of regulation I think is warranted but just Elizabeth Warren saying break up companies you know you always got to be aware of the law of and attending unattended consequences and I think it would backfire on so speak you staying on kind of the regulatory theme you've been a critic of the ACA and I was listening to your interview you had with the Goldman folks you had a really innovative point I think you called it the ten point yeah we changed the name but yeah that's what it was so maybe you could just give us a quick cliff notes because I know you're working on this politically you're kind of making the rounds talking to folks to be great to kind of get get the gist of it so we called it the temp plan originally effectively the only safety net if you don't have Medicare Medicaid or employer-based insurance the only safety net you have is the ACA or go fund me I mean think about this and if you need the government to guarantee a student loan you want to go to University of Arizona you can get that guarantee if you need if you're a small business and you get a small business loan through your bank you can get the government to guarantee that somebody will loan you money for your small business if you qualify if you're about to die and you need a heart transplant and you don't have insurance what do we tell you to do your best option your friends tell you to go to GoFundMe we won't loan somebody money we won't help somebody that's about to die so I looked at it and I said okay as an entrepreneur how would I solve this problem and I looked at my own businesses and my own businesses we self-insure we don't use an insurance company I looked at the top the the companies that have 5,000 more employees or more employees 95 96 percent of them don't use insurance companies for insurance so I said you know what would something look like if we self-insured we originally called it the 10 plan but effectively I put together a plan that I've been working up the ladder that says instead of giving money under the ACA to insurance companies because what does an insurance company do they create their own networks they complicate things they obfuscate the data but if you give money to insurance company to subsidize an insurance premium that person who has the insurance has to fight to get it back and out of the ACA of the 47 million people who are eligible in that market like 12 million people don't have insurance that leaves 35 million people whose best option is GoFundMe or credit cards so I put together this thing called the ten plan we changed it to the safety plan that effectively says rather than giving that money to the insurance companies let's give it to the providers to pay the hospitals the health care providers to pay when someone needs help but before we pay for that we're going to look at their earnings and the income of the person who needs help if you work for $10 an hour and you work in you know in home health care and you're you know whatever you do $10 an hour 40 hours a week you're making $20,000 a year you're gonna pay a $25 copay that's it instead of giving that money to the insurance company that money is coming to help you if you make $100,000 a year you're gonna pay 10 percent of your income you're gonna pay what you can afford to a pay effectively it's means-tested and if it's you know you sprained an ankle and it cost you $1,000 and you can just write a check great because you didn't have to pay insurance premiums if you lose life's lottery and it costs more all right we'll loan you that money now we're going to deduct it from your payroll and we're going to take between you know three and ten percent depending on how much you are but you're gonna be the first person to pay that back if it's just horrific and you have a chronic illness okay you're still going to pay your percentage it might be nothing if you make twenty K it might be ten percent if you make 100 K but after 15 years we'll waive the balance so you'll you'll have to pay it out and what you can't pay the government will pay but unlike some of the single payer things or medicare for all we're not going to have to raise taxes because all that money has already been allocated for Obamacare it's already there now how do I know the math works I went to the most far-left economist that I could find and I went to the people who helped start the ACA and I said help me design this model and you know what they came back with that doing the 10 plan now called the safety plan just as I explained it you pay what you can afford and above no more than 10 percent your income the government helps with the rest we say forty five billion dollars a year for patients forty billion dollars a year for the government for the federal government just by letting people pay what they can afford but most importantly taking the insurance companies out why did insurance companies had so much cost because think about your insurance programs right now every year is a different network every year different doctors now when that happens they have to negotiate those deals with the hospitals and all the care providers which means the hospital's 31 percent of their costs are via administration costs then there's the 15 percent that the insurance companies get they take called the medical loss ratio right off the top when you put all that money back in instead of giving it to the insurance companies it actually pays for health care and the numbers work so what am i doing in dealing with it and I mentioned this to the governor I went to HHS secretary azar and SEMA Berna head of the CMS and there's actually a waiver a 1332 waiver and I'm working together to put together the waivers and I'll be going to different states hopefully included Arizona including Arizona so instead of Obamacare you'll have the safety net and instead of paying insurance premiums if you're healthy you'll never pay an insurance premium again you keep that money in your pocket you can put it in an HSA health savings account and pay for it when you and use that when you need it and so I'm going through that process now it works I think it has it has great upside that is what I want to be my legacy that's what I've been working on this for two years I can tell you more about health care and health care costs I can tell you that you know 27 million claims insurance claims are denied a year under Medicare that'll change with this I can tell you that insurance companies silo all their data so artificial intelligence can't be used to find better cures and find better outcomes that'll change so I don't want to go on too far because I get all worked up about it but there you go last question on a more serious note you've been involved with the Fallen Patriot fun it's very special to you I want to let you know that envision is gonna make a donation I'm personally gonna match that you're welcome I wanted if you could just kind of tell us how you got involved I mean what it means to you well the fall papers is actually more afraid so it was part of the Mark Cuban foundation now but when Operation Iraqi Freedom happened back in 2003 I've just said anybody any families of soldiers who are out there serving our country putting their lives on the line who needed financial help I would provide it and so I didn't go out there or solicit and donations even though we got it's got some and so you know I think I've spent now 5.8 million dollars I forget whatever it is just well if somebody needs a bill paid and they were part of Operation Iraqi Freedom then I pay the bill if somebody needs a procedure done I pay for it you know I before every game I say a little prayer that says I'm not here doing what I do unless those folks to people who serve our country do what they do I never want to take them for granted and so you know I whether it's up to you with the fallen patriot fund or other things or investing in servicemen or service family-run businesses you know I never want to take it for granted and I always want to help where I can so thank you [Applause] well mark this has been a lot of fun we want to be respectful to your time thanks for making the trip to Phoenix here today and again well we really appreciate it and thanks again thank you guys appreciate it it was fun [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Chamber Business News

Views: 18,595

Rating: 4.7755103 out of 5

Keywords: Arizona, business, Mark Cuban, Shark Tank, Technology, Innovation, Tech Summit, 2019, Jack Selby, Thiel Capital, entrepreneur, startup, investing

Id: mWAVx8Kt8ww

Length: 44min 33sec (2673 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 22 2019