Blackjack Your Way to Financial Independence|Colin Jones from Blackjack Apprenticeship - a podcast by Cody of Fly to FI and Justin aka Saving Sherpa
from 2019-10-08T17:07:40
In today's episode, you'll hear how to get to financial independence via Blackjack (wait, what?).
Yep, that's right. Cody and Justin are joined by Colin Jones from Blackjack Apprenticeship.
Colin got an education in mathematics and started out as a teacher.A buddy introduced him to card counting and changed his financial path forever.
He turned a couple thousand dollars he and his wife had saved and tried his hand at the card tables. That small amount of seed money would lead to millions in earnings, a team of prolific card counters, a documentary and his website where he looks to train the next great card counters.Listen and read below to hear this incredible story.
Episode SummaryColin's upbringing led him to be frugal
He really just wanted to be in a band and wasn't interested in college
His parents urged him to goHe decided he'd rather go to school than go out on his own
Colin ended up studying mathematics which was a great foundation to card countingWhen he was 22 a friend gave him a book about card counting to win at blackjack
Colin then talks about his practice schedule wentAfter his friend started ramping up his earnings to $80 an hour, Colin decided to give it a real try
He took $2k of the $6k he and his wife had saved to seed his effortsFor the first few months, he wasn't really making much
His friend got picked up by a national card counting teamThen, later on, that same friend transferred all that knowledge to him and that really upped his game
After a bit, they realized they could make $200+ per hour if they had $100k in money to play withFor his career-high, he earned $434 dollars per hour
It took them 6 months of 30 hour weeks to get to six figure earningsAfter a couple years they had formed a team that was making $500k per year
Colin opens up about how his profession was viewed by his family which were missionariesThen Colin talks about the legality of card counting at a casino
Spoiler alert: it's perfectly legal
Colin also gives us a brief overview of how card counting worksOne interesting thing is Colin has never put money into the stock market
He prefers to invest in real estate and grow his online businessHis online business is Blackjack Apprenticeship
The site has online forums, software, and training videos to help you learn card counting yourselfOn top of that, he does three or four live events where he helps polish fellow card counters'skills
Colin signs off by challenging everyone to question why they want to be financially independentKey Takeaways
Money can be made everywhere: This is just another example of the limitless ways you can earn money in today's world.
Easy money is hard: Colin can repeatedly walk into a casino and earn money but it took countless hours of hard work and practice.Tombstones: We absolutely loved his statement about the goal isn't to have financially independent on your tombstone. Life is bigger than that.
Call to ActionWrite out five things you envision you'll do in retirement and then elaborate on why you actually want to do those things
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Connect with Colin:Via his website Blackjack Apprenticeship
Also, check out his book 21st Century CardcounterDocumentary Snippet
Learn More About Your Hosts:
Fly to FI (Cody’s Blog)Saving-Sherpa (Justin’s blog)
Further episodes of The Financial Independence Show
Further podcasts by Cody of Fly to FI and Justin aka Saving Sherpa