229. 5 Bull Market Mistakes That Keep You Poor

Welcome back to another episode of the Ben and Bergs podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of Collective Shift alongside Ms. Burgs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift. We're here to bring you world class crypto research strategies and insights to help you crush this crypto bull market. Plus get an exclusive behind the scenes look as we scale Australia's leading crypto research company. If you like the podcast, we'd love for you to share it around with a friend or family member. It's how we grow podcast each and every week and we've been in this game now for nearly eight or nine years, which is absolute bananas. Lost money, my first cycle round trip and the last two cycles made. We work with thousands and thousands and thousands of people, specifically high net worth individuals now and we have a team of 15 people helping our clients make money. And we have brought together, we have looked through the endless amounts of data to pull together the top five mistakes burks as the market's pumping, the top five mistakes that our listeners, that you guys listening to this podcast today are going to make. Well, we hope you don't make after today's episode, but you will make. That will keep you poor and we don't want you to be, I've made.

All of these mates, we want you.

To be rich, so we're going to share these with you. And.

With the market pumping burgs, you know, I think it just wakens everyone up, it gets everyone pumped up again, it gets everyone euphoric and all of a sudden the market's moving. We want to pump more money into the market. And the big one is.

Every cycle I see this, people not having an exit plan or having a shitty exit plan that they adjust.

And then don't end up taking profits. And it doesn't need to be complex. I've seen people with spreadsheets, I've seen people with notepads, doesn't need to be complex. But without a plan, emotions take over and you either, you either sell too early or, or watch your winners round trip and the market rewards those that have logic and that make the tough choices. And I've already taken profits on two of my assets this cycle and it's not about getting in all the way in, all the way out, but it's taking profits, stacking the chips, keeping exposure to the market, but executing and that's the B1 burgs like actually pulling the trigger. And you can do this across many different ways of thinking about sales strategy. We have A huge number of resources that we help our members with. If you, if you need help with exit strategy, we've done episodes on it. You can jump over to our website, we do live masterclasses, we go through it. If you need help one on one, we can help you one on one with our programs. But the exit plan is very, very important. And without that, most people round trip.

And their books, absolutely. And you need to sell, just build those neural pathways. You're in this to make money, right? You invest to make money. Money and assets, they're just spending tokens, future time that you have and have a plan and fulfill those goals. Take that money and spend it on things. Change your life, work less, buy a bike, buy a car, pay off some of your house, do whatever it is, take that holiday, go see that girl, whatever it is, go and do the thing that you want to do. You're in this so you can achieve those goals for faster than just working at your job or having the money that you normally have. And when prices start to appreciate, when they go up, you wake up, you look at the price, things are going higher. And you're a human, you have emotions, this will cloud your judgment. You need to have something that you've set previously and you can look at that and be like, this is my plan. And start to ameliorate some of those emotions and those crazy decisions that you're thinking of making. You're thinking you're infallible, you made all this money or go to the next coin or jump out or jump back in. That's all nonsense. Your brain is literally on drugs because it's seeing that euphoric price, it's creating all these chemicals and make you believe something that is not true. Look at that piece of paper and execute against it. If things have majorly fundamentally changed from the assumptions you had, great, go away, get away from the screens, take half a day or a day, rewrite that strategy and that plan, but stick to that plan and that is how you will succeed.

Totally bugs. And look, it doesn't need to be complex, but you know, simple works. I've been in this space for a long time and my strategy combines things of price targets, time based and also sentiment based strategies. And sentiment is really good with the data we have. Like we spend $200,000 a month on our team to help us give the best indications and best data and research possible. Sentiment is so, so good at the top of a cycle. But price targets move and things move. And that's why you need to have that data and updated insights as you go. Because when I made my targets back in the metaverse, when I was selling some tokens back then at really good profits, the targets I set back in 2018 for 2021 or 2019 for 2021 got absolutely annihilated early in the cycle. It went so much higher than I thought it ever could. Right. So having a sales strategy, you're not going all in or all out, but taking chips off as you go up, I find is the. Is one of the best ways to do it.

Exactly. And tie your plan to and your targets to a goal. Your goals don't have to be big, but they do have to be yours.

Love that.

You have to have your own individual goals, not someone else's, not their sell targets. It's what you want in your life, it is your plan, and you're investing to fulfill those goals.

Love it. Number two, trying not to catch every pump. So we get it. You want to make the most of the bull run. But jumping from coin to coin, trading from one to another is going to leave you stuck. It's going to leave you chasing tops. It's going to make you feel frustrated. You're going to make poor mistakes. You have a big tax bill. Just be in strong positions. Hold, be patient. That beats perfect timing every single time. As a time for our investor, the big one that we learned early on, Burke's, you know, you get the fomo, but you need to. You need to try and not buy into it.

Yeah. And there's a couple of tokens on our shift list that I haven't bought. And they are doing phenomenally insane gains. And the Platinum chat is going off. The majority of people have are in those positions and they're reaping the benefits. And for me, it comes down to. Well, first of all, it's. I'm not going to FOMO into that. And I celebrate their joy. Right now. I've got Jomo. I'm like, great. All these people are winning. It's amazing. And it comes back to, you know, you know, comparison is the thief of joy. I don't need to compare my portfolio to theirs. I'm happy that they're winning. I chose not to go into that position and not have the stress of looking at another thing and monitoring it and wondering how my portfolio is going. And I'm just happy for those guys and I'm running my own race and I don't have to catch every single pump.

Yeah. And you only hear the good stories, right?

Burks that's exactly right. There's a million stories that have gone the other way that people don't talk about. And I don't experience those either because I'm not playing that game.

And I recently hit my second 10x this cycle and it was a high risk, high reward play. But was I buying in and out of it? No. I held that, I bought that nearly 18 months ago. It did nothing for 12 months. And when I first started and you.

Copped a lot of, for me about it.

A lot of. Right. And you know. And did I have conviction? Yes. Did I believe that, you know, it was going to, could, could one day do, actually do something? Yes. But also, did I fear that I may have had, like, would not pull it off? Yes. But one of my biggest lessons I Learned Back in 2018, 2019, I, I was an early investor in synthetics before synthetics was ever been a thing. It did nothing for a year. What did I do? I sold it. And it was actually called Haven before Synthetics. Haven then renamed to Synthetics and updated its tokenomics. And like pumps like you've never seen anything before would have probably retired me. Right. And I.

It was a $9 million mistake. Just call it out.

Multi million dollar mistake. Sold everything. Right. And that exacting same played out this time. Bergs, where I did for a year. It did absolutely nothing. Did I question it? Yes. I still held it because I had conviction. I knew the founders, I knew the token. There was a reason I bought it wasn't just because some influencer spoke about. I did the research, I did the work, I met with them. And I, and I, and I believe that it could be something one day. And it went from a $5 million market cap only just a few months ago. I think at the peak it hit 60 or 70 mil market cap. It's back down to 50. It's done at 10x. I've taken good amounts of profit and now we're riding the rest. Happy days. Right. And. But that's because I had an exit plan.

I was not trying to catch every pump. I don't try and buy a bunch of tokens. I'm very selective with what I have. And this actually builds into the third point is not having too many positions like we have spoken to and met with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. And the most common issue is having too many coins. When it comes to your sales strategy by holding so many coins, your level of conviction is low and your understanding of each project falls apart. And when the market's pumping you spread yourself way too thin. It makes it very, very hard to understand when and how to sell. So focus on a simple fewer stronger plays and that's going to give you a much bigger advantage when it comes time to take profits.

And that's right, with the meme coin you were talking about before, where you got the 10x, you weren't stressed because you had appropriate sizing. You had about 1% probably of your portfolio invested in it. So if it went to a billion dollars, great. If it goes to zero, great. You're not stressing every single day. Do I need to sell this? Do I need to look at it and you are able to hold it for a longer period of time. Not like when you had, you know, synthetics previously when it was haven and you had to sell it because your sizing was probably incorrect. And you're looking at it a lot of the time.

100. And also by taking just a third off, I was able to keep two thirds. So I'm not worried about oh if I've nailed the top, nailed the bottom because they're always trying to nail the top of the bottom is very, very, very, very, very hard. But to take chips off as you go up makes a far better experience to stack profits and still be exposed to the market. So just something we teach internally, which is really cool.

Absolutely.

Now hopefully people have not here anymore but honestly the people that lose the most are those that just don't have any bitcoin allocation. In my opinion they are all in altcoins. They're treating like bitcoin, like just another altcoin. They're very underweight on BTC and they just expose some unnecessary risk. And the reason is that altcoins may not be here the next cycle. Like what we're investing in now is not what we're investing in for the future cycles. Bitcoin is the beast. Bitcoin is the thing. And if you don't have the thing, I'd be very, very concerned. So make sure you have some exposure to bitcoin.

That's exactly right. So bitcoin is the one, it is the chosen one. Have some in your portfolio and the reason you choose other sectors areas and altcoins is well out of interest experimentation. But also it's further out on the risk curve. If you want further gains and further risk, that is where you go to. I don't think there is anything else on the planet that can kind of give you the risk and returns slash reward that altcoins can give you. So venture further out, if that is what you're after.

Yeah, perfect. And last but not least, mate is just not having enough time. The market is moving fast, narratives are shifting, coins are shifting. If you're only catching up, just trying to watch back YouTube videos, you don't know what's relevant to you. You know you're already behind. Like, staying informed is very, very difficult. Like, we got a whole team, we're hiring more people to try and stay on top of the market. Like, unless you've got that on your side, trying to do it alone is very, very difficult. So you need that group, you need that accountability. That's what clickshift here is for. Ben and Bergs is here for you as always. But you need to make sure that you know, you have some, some sort of oversight on the market or you're going to miss out. And, and most likely round trip again.

Absolutely. Even in 2021, when we're all in discords, we're spending, we're all quitting our jobs, we're all going to make it, we're all wag me, we're saying good morning to everyone and we're spending so much time in crypto, things were still flying, they were accelerating. You start can't stay across all of it. Don't convince yourself that you can. No one can. You don't really haven't solved the world. You know, like that meme with a guy, he's got like all the different threads and he's like aliens. Like, you're not that person. Just keep, keep it simple, realize where you're at, appreciate it and invest accordingly.

Totally. Well, good episode. There's a lot more than this list, by the way, Burgs. But we've, we've, we've kept to the top five. Hopefully that's helped you guys make sure you're spending a bit of time thinking about this. There's so many other great episodes on Bennett Bergs to go back and listen to. You can also check out my personal YouTube channel where I go a little bit more into detail into the market. You can check that out. Ben Simson on YouTube and also sign up to our newsletter if you want some more free content. We do a weekly shift every single Friday, giving you the insights you need to help you continue and push on and crush this cycle. So thank you so much again, Bergs. Good to see you. Thanks everyone. Make sure you share with a friend or family member if you think this will be helpful to them and we'll see you on the next episode.

Thanks, champions.