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 Summary

Colin'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 go

He 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 counting

When he was 22 a friend gave him a book about card counting to win at blackjack

Colin then talks about his practice schedule went

After 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 efforts

For the first few months, he wasn't really making much

His friend got picked up by a national card counting team

Then, 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 with

For his career-high, he earned $434 dollars per hour

It took them 6 months of 30 hour weeks to get to six figure earnings

After 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 missionaries

Then 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 works

One interesting thing is Colin has never put money into the stock market

He prefers to invest in real estate and grow his online business

His online business is Blackjack Apprenticeship

The site has online forums, software, and training videos to help you learn card counting yourself

On 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 independent

Key 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 Action

Write 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 Cardcounter

Documentary Snippet

 

Learn More About Your Hosts:

Fly to FI (Cody’s Blog)

Saving-Sherpa (Justin’s blog)