Welcome to Season 2, Episode 25 of Meet the Expert® with Elliot Kallen!
In this episode, Elliot Kallen brings on Chris Hanna, a Financial Coach and Professional Blackjack player, to talk about how the world of personal finance extends from athletes and UFC fighters to novice blackjack players and millennials. A personal believer in investing in yourself, Chris encourages people to take control of their lives and their wealth.
Meet Our Guest
Chris Hanna
Financial Coach | Card Counter | Podcast Guest
Chris Hanna holds a degree in finance and economics from The George Washington University and spent a year interning at various Wall Street hedge funds. His experience as an entrepreneur, background in finance, and interest in Brazilian jiu-jitsu developed a successful career as a financial coach. Chris helps UFC fighters and entrepreneurs manage their money and avoid the pitfalls of working in the sports industry. He is also known as a card counter and professional blackjack player, lending much of his success to knowing the numbers, counting the cards, and playing a perfect strategic game.
What does a financial coach do?
Elliot Kallen: I want to welcome Chris Hanna. Chris is a personal financial coach that’s different than a financial advisor. He’s not licensed. He doesn’t use specific investment advice. He coaches.
I have a gym coach. Why? Because that gym coach motivates me to do a better job at the gym. I’ve lost 34 pounds in the gym since July. I don’t know if I would have done it without a coach. So, coaches can make a difference.
Does everybody need a coach? No, I’m at the gym. Not everybody needs a coach. Lots of great workout people at the gym. Same thing with finances. There are people with great discipline, great ideas, great direction in their life, and they don’t need it.
Let’s just talk about what a coach does. Chris, let me welcome you to the show.
Chris Hanna: Hey, Elliot. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I’m happy to dive into sort of what a coach does. Interesting that you bring up the fitness coach. I mean, financial coaching is very much akin to a personal trainer for your financial health.
“I’m your accountability partner. I help you build strong financial habits. See your whole financial picture very clearly so you can really understand what’s going on.”
I work with you on a high-touch basis, meaning that while we have our regularly scheduled calls, you also have access to text me between those calls when you have questions.
When you need someone to tell you not to go blow another 10 grand at the blackjack tables. Go spend it on your partner or your kids or what have you.
Coaching is definitely different in that way.
As you said, I’m not a money manager. I’m not managing your money or investments for you or advising them. Your team and firm over at Prosperity Financial Group are going to do that much better than I would.
How does fame differ from reality?
Elliot Kallen: So I work with some celebrities and some sports people and I know you spend a lot of time with UFC people and sportspeople. There are some horrible facts in that world, that is about four or five years out of retirement of the NFL or major league baseball and probably UFC as well.
These people are broke. It’s sad. They’ve got entourages. I remember Floyd Patterson when I was young, and Joe Lewis had to fight again because of retirement because they had no money.
It’s just sad and you do hear about the people that make a lot of money and these are the people on TV and everybody thinks that you know you’re gonna leave $25 million. And you know, Patrick Mahomes makes 25 million this year. So he’s set for life and so forth. But the reality is so different.
So, I know with sports stars what you tell me is that the state of mind is how you get in the business of dealing with sportspeople.
Because we’re all sports people at heart even though we don’t have that talent. But we don’t want to end up like that.
“We want the glory. We want the fame and want the shooting stars. We love that.”
As people, we watch Entertainment Tonight because we want to be, you know, I don’t want to say Alec Baldwin that’s probably not the best example ever which We want to be a star here. We want all the fame and fortune of stardom. Yet it’s not all it’s cut out or how we think of this, right?
Chris Hanna: Yeah, exactly. There’s a two-part approach to how I got into that. The first is, it’s kind of crazy to think that athletes were getting paid all this money. Yes, many of them aren’t managing it well and they end up broke maybe four or five years after they leave.
What really hit me is that I come from a background in finance and economics. That’s what mine degrees and you know, I had an internship at a multibillion-dollar hedge fund some trading on Wall Street. Despite that, two years after I graduated with that degree, I was just felt I just found myself completely lost when it came to my finances.
It probably hit me harder than most particularly. Let’s say an athlete who has never spent time studying finance. It hit me hard because I felt like I should know what to do with my money. I should have a clear understanding of what to do with it, how to track it, how to make good decisions and stick to them.
So it was actually from that point that I decided that I needed to take a closer look at my personal finances and how to master them because it’s not something that you learn in regular school or even in college with a finance and economics degree.
So from there, that’s when I started looking at personal finances for several years and eventually developed this skill in managing money, creating a system that allows you to make good decisions and stick to them. How to track and organize your money efficiently.
That’s when I decided I wanted to start helping others. I had been a fan of the UFC for years. I had trained jujitsu myself, which is the grappling martial art MMA, which is what they fight the UFC. I was aware that they were UFC fighters, only got paid maybe two or three times a year.
So you’ve got different aspects of the sports industry who are getting paid a lot but here now in the UFC, not only are they getting paid a lot, but they’re not getting paid very often at all.
That brought in a brand new sort of variable that I said, “Oh, this is the this is the first group of people I want to start working with.” That’s sort of just kind of how I came into that space.
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Elliot Kallen: Well, that’s exciting. Are you working with other people besides the same people or is this the niche that you’ve developed?
Chris Hanna: I’ve started with UFC fighters. I’m now open to expanding. I wanted to start with that niche because I just knew that it was an easy one to start with, in the sense that I could tailor my message to a very specific group of people.
The more that I’ve worked with them, the more that I’ve realized that there are lots of people who just have highly variable incomes. Particularly entrepreneurs who just aren’t used to paying their taxes, everything that entails, and the traps that you can get in when you’re not used to handling your taxes on your own. I started with them, but now expanding to others.
What are some typical financial mistakes that everyone makes, including athletes?
Elliot Kallen: Wow, exciting stuff. So these are smart people. They do well in their jobs. We’re not talking about low IQ people. We’re not talking about you know, the people that don’t watch TV or don’t get it. They get it and they want their money.
So what are typical mistakes that everybody else makes, what are the typical mistakes that professional sports professional athletes are making? To not keep their money when they need it most.
Chris Hanna: Yeah, a couple of things. So the first is probably not setting aside their taxes. This is of course true for independent contractors, like UFC fighters like NFL players, or even entertainers.
The problem with that is not isolated, you know, so the first time that you rack up a big tax bill and don’t proactively set money aside to pay that you are now in a hole. That means that not only do you have to pay that back, but come next year when your tax bill is due, you’ve already started earning for the next year and anything that you earn, you’ve got to dig yourself out of that hole.
It’s this vicious cycle that I have seen fighters get caught up in just four years. I’m talking four or five years or more in back taxes that they are struggling to pay up and that they really could have avoided if they simply set aside an estimated amount for taxes from the first time that they earned money.
That’s probably the big one of the biggest things and the other is not really actively deciding what to do with their money when they receive it. And this is true not just for fighters and athletes, but for other folks.
When you receive money, you have an opportunity to decide what to do with it before you spend it and most people don’t.
How do you deal with the “short-term” state of mind many athletes have?
Elliot Kallen: As I translate what you’re saying into the reality of for clients or prospects, and so forth, so on. One of the deficiencies in the industry that I’m in is when you do financial planning, there are about five pieces of software out there that do competent financial planning. Some are more math-oriented, and some are more illustrated-oriented.
But if you just do it based on the program, then the math will work out or not work out. You’ll get red or green or yellow in your online programs and so forth. The question that some people forget to ask your business is, “Is that okay?”
I think you feel it when you’re dealing with short-term careers like sports. You know how to do your job well. You know, in this case, you need to be in the gym X times.
If you’re in a football world, you know you need to be on the field or at the gym and eating well. How many Tom Brady’s are around? There are very few that are the full package. Most people do some of that, you know, alignments world at 325 pounds is different than Tom Brady’s world.
One thing that they all forced off is developing goals that are beyond the next 12 months or three years. All the software out there won’t help you do that. Because they all work on financial goals.
“In reality, we try to develop life goals. A life goal is what do I want to do at a certain point in my life, and then a financial goal is how do I get there.”
Then in your world, you have X number of years in your to earn this money. There was life after 32 years old or 30 years old or 42. We’ve learned that but for so many, again athletes in light of so broke is that short-term thinking is so pervasive, so cancerous.
At the same time, they can’t think about life after that. Do they think I’ll just become an announcer? I’ll just be on NBC. Who wouldn’t want me with my face and my voice? This is easy. That’s not real.
So you’re talking to people about short term versus long term, like can we put some money aside besides just paying taxes, which is the short term world. You got a hard place to go anywhere on that. Although the IRS has become very forgiving these days. Which is good. How do you deal with that state of mind?
Chris Hanna: Well, it’s a great point that you bring up that it’s the long-term thinking. The long-term goals and differentiating the two between lifestyle and financial goals is one of the roots of questions or mindsets that you need to address before a lot of the other shorter-term actions fall into place.
“In the same way that you differentiate the two, I think about lifestyle goals as also how you want to feel. How is your health? How are your relationships with your parents, your kids, your family?”
Not only do you want to be using your money to reach these longer-term goals in the future, but what kind of relationship do you want to have in 20 years. How are you investing? How are you using your money creatively?
I think that long-term thinking is what people should start with more, but in reality, there’s so much short-term especially when you’re making all that money, you feel like it’s gonna last forever. And you know, the last thing on your mind is what you want to do in the next 10, 20 or 40 years.
How can you help people bring their financial egos back down to earth?
Elliot Kallen: Now, remember, Chris, I was talking to a professional baseball player, and he had white his and her navigators. I said, “I think you should return one of them. Boy, were they angry with me. I said, “I don’t think you understand if you need them. I’m all in favor of them.”
Hey, I got a navigator or an aviator. I’m an American Lincoln person. I can admit that. But that was a quick $120,000 $140,000 of cars. I think you’re coming to the end of your career here.
So how do you deal with it, Chris? Because in our world, you have to be a little bit of a psychologist. We give no psychology advice here on this show. We have to deal with that. We call it behavioral science, behavioral finance, and egos can run amok.
They run amok in sports. They run amok in finance. Whatever I’m making this year, I’m gonna make it for the next 50 years. But that’s not the reality. So what are some good tools that you’ve seen to help people out to get their ego back to Earth?
Chris Hanna: That’s a great question. And one of the first things that come to mind is an even deeper level of realization that I think underlies a lot of these tools or actions that you might want to take.
“Once you understand what you can do with your money and what your money can do for you, you will never handle it the same way again.”
When someone says they’ve got a spending problem, I look at that and say it might be true. But what might be more true is that you don’t understand how far your money can go. That $120,000 that you spent on a new car and realize that compounded over the next you know, 25, 40 years can turn into multi-millions.
So I started there just explaining, helping people understand what their money can do for them. And then in terms of actionable steps, tools to use. Taking a holistic approach or taking a holistic view of your finances is the first step.
You’ve got to kind of see where you’re not first to see where you’re at first, set some lifestyle and financial goals so you know where you’re trying to go. And then from there, you can start making strategic decisions about what to do with your money based on those things.
People are trying to, you know, make these financial decisions without a clear, holistic understanding of where they sit. What their assets and liabilities are, what their income and expenses look like. It’s difficult to make good decisions without that knowledge.
What is your trick to get people to think about their finances more?
Elliot Kallen: So I know you have a trick that you use with bank accounts, for getting people to think about that. I know it’s a mind trick because some of this you have to do to get people to think properly is a mind trick. No doubt about that. So tell me what that is.
Chris Hanna: You want to use your money in the most effective way possible to live the life of your dreams. Whichever way that impacts you and your family, friends, even strangers around the world. Most people will call you and say what you need to do is budget.
In reality, budgeting is just a very small part of the picture. What you want to do is decide what to do with your money. You need to make sure that you’re ensuring that you stick to those decisions, and you need to be able to track and organize those decisions.
Keep your money in an efficient and organized way. The reason that I use bank accounts is that without them when you’re only using one primary checking account for all of your spending, the best that you can do is create a plan for your money typically by going to Google or looking up a budget template or whatever it might be.
Then you necessarily have to track every single expense, categorize it, and then subtract it from your original budgeted amounts to know how much you have left to spend in that category. From your one bucket, your one checking account.
The way that you evolve past that is by recognizing that, hey, if I have let’s say three spending accounts, I can decide the core aspects of what I want to spend my money on. Let’s call it your fixed expenses your variable needs and wants.
If you can decide how much you want to use for each of those, let’s say monthly, you can transfer money into those accounts. As long as you only use each account for its intended purpose, you are ensuring that you stick to your decision. You don’t have the tedious task of having to track every single expense, which is ultimately not sustainable in the long run.
Is discipline the main issue in personal finance?
Elliot Kallen: So I know clients come to us or prospects come to us, and I feel sad because they’re 50 years old. They have $50,000 in savings. Some of them are 60 years old and have $50,000 in savings. We can’t do a lot for them. I can’t work with them. I don’t have the ability.
I have other people here that can. It’s a discipline that seems they didn’t have when they needed it. When I hear you talk about templates and budgeting, really what you’re talking about is they don’t have the discipline and maybe the software that iPhone will help them get the discipline. Is that really where you’re going with this?
Chris Hanna: Yeah, and I look at it in two ways. If you think about wanting to have more fun and be more physically fit, there is the side of it where you’ve got to be motivated and disciplined to get to the gym. Then there’s the other side of it where you’ve got to ask yourself how easy or difficult it is.
Am I making the habit of working out? You might very well have strong motivations and strong discipline, but if the gym that you need to go to is 45 minutes away, you’re not going to go there very often.
On the contrary, if the gym is you know, in your house, but you don’t have the motivation or the discipline to go consistently. You’re also not going to go consistently. So you have to have both. You’ve got to have internal self-motivation.
When it comes to your financial fitness, the sort of banking design system helps you with the sort of the second part. It’s bringing everything closer, making it easier so that when you do have the motivation and the discipline, you can follow through with it.
What does it mean to invest in yourself?
Elliot Kallen: Right so we’re talking right now with Chris Hanna, who’s a personal financial coach on the east coast. I know you’re a big fan of investing in yourself and outside of just buying something from your phone here. And there’s got to be more to investing yourself than just that. What do you mean by that?
Chris Hanna: Investing in yourself is really about using your money creatively to create a better life for yourself. So again, like we were saying before, your life and even your financial goals, you know, everything is not a number on a spreadsheet. It’s about day-to-day happiness.
How are you with your health?
How happy are you with your relationships?
How well can you generate income?
Investing is a whole other side, but if you can increase your ability to earn income, you can progress that a lot quicker.
There are these different aspects of it. You can buy courses, you can buy books, and these are investments in yourself and your education. You can sign up for that yoga class because it is, you know, both physically and mentally going to help you.
There are so many different things you can hire a coach or an expert for to help collapse the amount of time that you would normally take to get from point A to point B.
There are things that you can do to improve your life and there are ways and methods that you can use your money to get there.
What personal advice can you give people who have made financial mistakes?
Elliot Kallen: So I know you’ve seen, Chris, people make all types of mistakes. I mean, I want to remind people when it comes to making financial mistakes, that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world for you. People have made financial mistakes, and I’ve recovered those stories.
They’re very famous people that ended up coming out of bankruptcy. Their business went bankrupt. They went bankrupt. I’m divorced. Some people have lost a marriage or bet on business. I did not, but some people who have done that, or sadly people who alienated their children along the way, but they’re able to circle back lots of mistakes.
“I‘m a big fan of today’s a new day. If you’ve made mistakes, now’s a good chance to go and try to do some repairing and move forward.
You can’t fix every mistake, like a financially bankrupt company or alienating your children. You can work on that with the children and the company might not be an opportunity for you to go back.
What are some mistakes made, since you’ve been around a long time, that you see and what kind of advice can you give on a very personal level for those?
Chris Hanna: Yeah, that’s a great question too. I think that on a deeper level, just a lack of presence, and too much just sort of being in your head thinking about you know, even too much thinking about the future or too much thinking about the past is one of the biggest mistakes that you can make throughout your whole life.
“If you’re constantly just thinking about tomorrow or yesterday, you’re never really getting to enjoy life, as it exists.”
You can go your whole life, some people die without ever really, you know, just enjoying life for what it is enjoying your relationships and the time that you get to spend with your friends and family.
Especially now with the world as crazy as it is, it can be very tempting to sort of just get caught up in it and constantly be sort of anxious or wonder about what’s going to happen. The reality is that life’s and it’s been going on for a long time. It’s going to continue to go on and like you said, Elliot.
“If you just take it day by day, that’s all you can do.”
What kind of advice can you give millennials who compare gambling to building a portfolio?
Elliot Kallen: Okay, so I know you’ve talked to millennials a long time. I know that you have a little bit of a blackjack background. It’s funny. So. many millennials equate my world of investing to the world of blackjack, the world of rules, Vegas.
Casinos, they’re all kind of the same and they’re not, but that’s how they put them together. When have you learned along the way to teach millennials and give them better advice on how life, playing the roulette table, blackjack, and holding it at 15 is not the same thing as building a portfolio and working towards your retirement?
Chris Hanna: Yeah, one of the single biggest mistakes and I’ve made this mistake as well. Thinking that because you are buying something that other people invest in, that means you are now automatically also investing. You know, the easiest example is people that think every stock that you buy is automatically an investment.
“If you don’t understand the company or you don’t understand the market and the risks associated with it, maybe in a couple of months you sell that stock because the price would go where you thought it would. You are not investing, you are gambling. Just because you bought a stock does not mean that you are investing.”
Similarly, I have this background in being a professional blackjack player, where there is only one correct play for every possible hand. There’s only one correct amount to bet for every count.
And so you can actually play like a computer very different than let’s say a professional poker player who I think, you know, you probably could say they’re a professional gambler.
But you know in reality when you can manage your bankroll, count cards, and play perfect Blackjack, you can turn the edge in your favor and win over the long run.
I bring that up to say once again, here is a vehicle in blackjack where 99% of people are gambling, but it’s not about the vehicle. It’s the knowledge that you have the way that you’re managing a bankroll and your long-term thinking that differentiates the two.
How do we help people discover positive goals and dreams?
Elliot Kallen: Great, so I know we talked about life goals. I mentioned that earlier on in your show. Let me rephrase it differently and that’s dreams. I know that people talk to you about dreams and I don’t mean dreams about you know, winning the lottery. I mean, what are my dreams? You know, my dreams at 27 are different than my dreams at 57 or 37.
Our little kids with dreams. You want the best for your kids and hope they stay safe and make good decisions.
They’re all different dreams, but you know in a financial advisory world my world that we come from. It’s so important that we help people identify those dreams, those financial aspirations, what does that mean?
And let me give you some examples of that have occurred and I’d love for your comment on it. And that is if I’m, you know, our typical client in our world is 50 to 70. That’s not everyone, that’s your most difficult client in the world. They’re pre-retirees or just retired. They want to do something with their money. They get it and so forth and so on. They have kids. Some of them have young kids and their dreams are for young kids. I want to put them in college. That’s about where the dream is.
They have adult kids and are thinking, “I want to leave my kids money.” I’m very involved with my church. I’d like to leave them money from me.
I’ve got a charity that deals with the stress and depression of teenagers because I have a 19-year-old who sadly took his own life. That’s an important concept for me. That’s my dream. I had to leave the world a little better place.
When you’re talking with people and they’ve got these dreams or they don’t even have a dream, how do you get them to have a dream and then how do you get a dream once they give it to you into some form of reality because we know that so many dreams are Lala land and then they’re not grounded.
They have no sense they’re never going to be hit. I always thought that I would be the next Joe Namath of the New York Jets. I’ve got his uniform hanging up. Could have been, should have been if I was six inches taller with a slightly stronger arm. Maybe they had that opportunity to do that.
But you know if I just went through my life, they get bored and I miss out on that. That’s a dream that’s not based in any sense of reality at all. Even though it’s a nice fantasy. It may be in my fantasy league. I could have done it.
How do we get this grounded? How do we develop some really good positive dreams for people?
Chris Hanna: I think the first part is probably the most difficult for people, to just even start dreaming. I remember having conversations with folks years ago, just asking them, you know, what do you want to do in life? Not just in the next 30 years, where do you want to be even the next five or 10? This happened numerous times where they would just respond, “I don’t know I’m kind of just stuck.”
I’m destined to sort of just go work a job that I don’t necessarily hate but don’t love, and this is my life. I’ll probably get married and have kids. Honestly, I don’t know how to answer that first part about how to get people to start dreaming. I can ask strong sort of thoughtful questions.
At some point, you’ve got to recognize that your life is what you make it and you probably have a lot more control than you think. That you do in terms of taking action on those dreams.
I think it boils down to taking it day by day and making the most strategic decisions that you can with the resources that you have. Whether that’s resources of your money, your time, your network, or whatever those things might be.
Recognize what resources you have available to you and be strategic with them. Don’t just have that dream and hope that it’s one day going to come to fruition. You’ve got to take an active role every day.
What am I doing to move forward and live the life that I want to live?
How do you keep people focused on their goals?
Elliot Kallen: I’ll probably be a little self-serving with what you just said. We wrote a book. I wrote it. I’m going to hold that up called Mission Matters with Adam Torres who was an author out of LA. Very successful, and it’s tips to success. We’re giving these away for free.
Elliot H. Kallen
AUTHOR, WEALTH MANAGER, REGISTERED PRINCIPAL
Elliot brings over 25 years of entrepreneurial business ownership insight to this book series. He provides an unparalleled insight into the world of finance, marketing, and motivation. Elliot has been awarded twice in International Who’s Who of Professionals, received the Ronald Reagan Gold Medal Award, and was named 2003 Business Man of the Year by the Business Advisory Council of the National Republican Congressional Committee. He also serves on several boards for nonprofit and philanthropic organizations.
So if you reach out on my phone number we’ll send you one for free. I’ll sign it, we’ll do all those things. And maybe in 30 years, I think that will be worth 10 or $20 or whatever. And maybe it’ll be worth a lot more.
We’re doing it because one of the missing links out there from all your experience is a personal mission. How do I succeed?
There was a wonderful book I read early on by Og Mandino called The Greatest Salesman in the World. I get it it’s not politically correct to say salesman anymore. That’s the book. It comes from I believe the 1940s or 30s. It’s one of my favorite books because it’s written in a very, very simple language. Simple English, easy to understand. It’s probably $7 on Amazon.
“It’s about coming up with a critical mission in your life. So when we’re dealing with pre-retirees, and we’re talking about that, what is that critical mission? Where are we going with this?”
When you’re talking to people, sometimes younger and you’re talking to professional athletes, whose egos have run amok, and again, it’s not unique to the sports industry.
I think in my 20s, I was pretty invincible to how do you get these people grounded and get tipped? So these are hard concepts to pin down and folks like you who are in the trenches and getting especially professional athletes to understand that, hey, this money is not going to last forever, and your career doesn’t last forever.
My career can go on for a long time. It’s you know, as long as I stay healthy, and you know, my mouth keeps working and so forth. It can go on a long time, but it’s so important that people understand that we need to put a plan in place.
“What’s that plan look like? That plan is as unique to you as it is to anybody. We call that fingerprint financial planning because it’s unique to you like your fingerprint is.”
We have another phrase here that says, “if it’s money, it’s personal” because everybody’s money is so personal. Even though we all judge ourselves by other people’s wealth, we need to be judging ourselves by our wealth.
So again, I’m going to go back to you and when you’re dealing with these people, you’re trying to get timeframes and get them to understand because the average person doesn’t understand timeframes. If you’re 40, you’re never going to be 65. It just doesn’t happen.
When you’re 25 you’re barely going to be 40. Just can’t think in those terms. My mother told me in my 20s, “Elliot if you just save $2,000 a year, every year for the rest of your life, and it grows an X percent and when you’re 65, you’ll have a million dollars, and that will be enough money to retire.”
And now with inflation at 3 million to do the same thing. It’s totally different. That’s not just a simple thing to say 6000 instead of 2000. There’s more to it than that. You know, buying a house is the most expensive real estate here in California.
It’s very different than buying a house and Virginia and Maryland like where you live and buy a house Tennessee the hottest market Nashville in the country and you know where you get so much better bang for your buck or Las Vegas or Reno or you know, Texas where you can really do a better job without spending money out of pocket.
How do you get them focused and keep them focused? Because I just brought up about nine different things in a heartbeat that you’re bombarded with. How do I get this person on track?
Chris Hanna: Yeah, it was something that comes to mind is something that Tony Robbins said one time. He said most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10. This goes back to a lack of a realistic dream or goal, thinking too short term.
That means, in terms of grounding yourself in such a way that you can achieve these things that you want. You have to think about what could I do consistently. It doesn’t have to be every single day.
I’m wanting to be fit like most listeners want to be physically fit. I generally want to eat healthily. Every now and then you can have a cheat meal.
What do you want to do in your life? What skill do you want to practice?
You know what’s in a habit. Do you want to practice on a semi-consistent basis, whether that’s daily or every other day or weekly, that can help you get much further in the next five or 10 years? Then it would just be creating a plan on a piece of paper or a spreadsheet.
That’s really what it comes down to is your habits and what you’re doing consistently. In terms of turning that goal or that dream into a reality.
Something else that I’ve heard is this author of Atomic Habits, James Clear. He says, “You’ve got to have an identity-based goal first, and what kind of person would be I would achieve the goals that I want to achieve?”
So he says it’s not about your goal should not be to run the goal should be to become a runner. And when you identify with that we are so close. We care so much about our identity and how we think of ourselves.
Think about what is the type of person that would be living the life that you want to live and what habits do they have that you can practice to get there yourself.
What are some simple blackjack tips?
Elliot Kallen: So let me have a little bit of fun with you for a moment because I know that you have a blackjack background. Blackjack reminds me of gambling. I’m not a strong gambler, but can we use the phrase FOMO — the fear of missing out.
You talk to people who come back from Las Vegas, we just use Las Vegas as an example. They keep building new casinos and high rises. Not for the winners, but for the losers. But it’s different in my world of equities and bonds and so forth because they’re long-term.
It’s very hard to lose when you’re in long term. Gambling in Las Vegas is not designed to be a long-term weekend. So it’s a different state of mind on gamma, but the only sets of rules and or sets of rules in my industry like think long term. You know, get good advice.
When everybody’s selling the Rothschilds; we always have that phrase. Pathways that you want to buy when everybody’s selling and they want to sell when everybody’s buying. We look at today, in the last three months everybody’s been selling so it’s a great opportunity to buy but not the short-term, because it’s super painful.
So in blackjack, how do I become a winner in blackjack with maybe three or four simple rules and not overstay my welcome to give it all back?
Chris Hanna: Yeah, so first of all, I hate gambling. I just want to be clear. I don’t recommend that anyone gamble. I’m a math and statistics guy. So I understand that the more I play, the more I will lose when I’m gambling. Spinning the roulette wheel or you know, playing some craps. The game is quite literally designed for the casino to win and it doesn’t matter the short-term wins and losses. The more you play the more you’ll lose.
Every game in the casino has a house edge, the average a little over 5% of every dollar that you wager, which is crazy, because you can easily spend 1000 bucks, 10 grand, 100 grand you can easily lose. Tons of money just spinning that wheel with blackjack.
The house edge is just half a percent. It’s actually 10 times better than roulette. It’s the nature of the game that lets you know the wheels or the spins are independent of each other.
Blackjack Strategy
Blackjack. Every card that comes out affects the ones that are remaining. And so because of that, the edge in blackjack fluctuates from positive to negative.
The only way that you’re going to win blackjack is if you can count cards which is just a reflection of the edge.
Bet more when the edge is positive and bet less when the edge is negative. Being able to do that without getting caught.
That’s the only way that you’re going to win playing blackjack. Anything else is just gambling.
Elliot Kallen: That sounds like you’re describing cheating a little bit there.
Chris Hanna: It’s using your brain, and there’s no world we’re using your brain is cheating. The cheating in a casino would be you know using a computer device or something to help you keep track.
If you’re playing a chess match and someone says hey, use this much of your brain but not all of it, you can never sort of telling someone that they’re cheating by playing as best as they can.
Roulette or blackjack?
Elliot Kallen: If I’m trying to play, are the odds better on roulette or better on blackjack?
Chris Hanna: Well, the simple answer is probably blackjack. However, that is half a percent edge. It’s so that edge is standard with roulette. Like there’s nothing that you or anyone’s going to do that’s going to change that average advantage.
With blackjack the only way that you’re even going to get that negative half a percent, meaning that for every $100 you wager you’ll lose about 50 cents on average. The only way that you can minimize the edge to that degree is by playing perfect basic strategy meaning that for every hand that’s dealt there is only one correct play statistically for that hand.
If you want to take one of those cards to the table, oftentimes the casinos sell them in the gift shops. You can take a basic strategy card with you if you play perfectly and the casino has good rules for the blackjack table.
Nowadays, they’ve got 65 blackjack rather than three to two and which is horrible. You should never play those 65 tables but simply to answer your question. It’s kind of a toss-up unless you are playing very well in blackjack.
Elliot Kallen: Chris, how do people reach you in the future?
Chris Hanna: Yeah, the easiest way is to shoot me a text to 406300568 and either myself or my system will get back to you. You can also follow me on social media I’m active on just about everywhere I can be so Chris Allen Hanna, no h at the end of that Hanna. That’s where you can find me.
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