How I Went From Bankrupt to Millionaire Crypto Investor at 26 (My Story)

My name is Ben and this is the story of how I went from nearly bankrupt to growing over a seven figure crypto portfolio by the age of 26. I've worked with thousands of clients around the world. My company, Collective Shiv, does over seven figures every single month. And being able to be very fortunate enough to help a lot of people, including now buying my parents a house, which is absolutely epic work. Likes of Coinbase is one of our clients and now we do research and help people around the world help themselves with their crypto and, you know, maybe follow some of my journey where I've just literally started out with a bunk feed with my brother in a small town in Australia. Now I get to fly across the world and today I thought, why not we do this little vlog video for the first time ever. I've not sure if you've seen that flying on a private jet, which is insane. And I thought, well, let's do a little video to take a bit a story of how I got here and how you can follow the journey. My hope is that by the end of this video you think, hey, my blueprint on how I went from literally no money to where I am today to help you follow along and generally I'm on a bit of a mission to try and help other people build their own world, escape the rat race and enjoy their life. Today I'm going to share with you all those insights I've never really shared public before. When I was 16, living in Tasmania, small island in Australia, I literally had no idea really what I was going to do. My parents rented, they still do to this day, but they always instilled in me that if I ever wanted to go out and get after it and get anything, whether it be a mobile phone, whether it makes the credit to call people or whether it's to go out and buy a T shirt, I had to go work for that. And that was so good. When I was early on, not starting with anything and building up my life, essentially, Mum and dad instilled so many great valuable traits. I mean, I'm so grateful for them. When I was earlier on and everyone else in my family been so supportive along the journey, but it's been kind of crazy that entire time. When I first started, I had no direction. I was trying to figure out where to go, what to do. I hated school, I didn't really fit in too well. So many things just didn't really fit for me. Essentially I found the Internet and business. When I was 16, I started a sportswear business. As manufacturing uniforms. I was using Alibaba to find sports uniforms over in China and I built this like sports uniform business that was selling uniforms to sporting teams back in Tasmania. And the first sale I ever made, I had no idea what I was doing. I was searching online, got these uniforms and had no idea if they'd be any good. I had a business idea and I shared this with the sporting team in Tasmania. And I remember I got an invoice for $3000 and the uniforms cost me for $2000. It changed my chain by wallet. I made $1000 cash in my bank. Honestly changed the direction life and that was the first step along the journey of starting with business. And literally I was doing anything to make any money I could. And I was trying to figure it out. By the way that business, you know, was very, very difficult. I had no idea what I was doing. Made so many mistakes. But you know, being able to earn additional income and realizing that to get ahead you have to find new income. It's all and good to save a cup of coffee a day. But saving a cup of coffee is not going to make you wealthy. It's not going to get you out of the right race. You've got to be able to find a way to get new income and build your assets. Now when I started that business we obviously sending a lot of money over to China every month. And I was trying to find a different way to send money because it kept getting blocked by banks and I was losing so much money on the conversion. That's when I discovered crypto. And that was back in 2017. An old friend of mine introduced me to Bitcoin and it blew my mind. Was sitting over at a desk, he transferred me some bitcoin at the time, back in 2017 I was 17 years old back then. It was, it was insane. I had no idea how he could just send me money peer to peer without the use of the bank. And I went on this six month journey trying to figure it out because there was so much awful information online. I couldn't figure out how Bitcoin was different to Ethereum and all these people online creating all these different bits of content, telling you different things. It was the wild west. I remember ICOS back in the day. You know this is before NFTs. So the founder of Ethereum came down to Sydney and I remember when Ethos was $80 and he did a talk at a conference that I went to and remember just blowing my mind about decentralized finance, about the blockchain and bitcoin was just going to change the world. I started work with my friend who was a YouTube crypto influencer at the time. And I learned all about the game, I learned about crypto and honestly I went all in. I had no idea what I was doing. Everyone thought I was wild. I remember going home and told mom and dad that like, hey, I'm like getting rid of my business. They backed me and allowed me to quit school and continue it. If I didn't make enough money for a salary number, we're going to send me back to school. So I had one year, did my foursquare business for a bit and then started to go all in on crypto. I remember when I was telling mom and dad, but I'm going all in on bitcoin and they're like, what on earth are you talk about? What is Bitcoin? I was 18 at the time and none of my friends understood it. To this day, probably not all of them still do. But you know, I remember buying Ethereum at $80, you know, bought a lot back then. Wish I bought more. Was buying bitcoin in the low thousands. And it was a different world and no one really believed it. It wasn't an asset. You couldn't really find it anywhere online. The fact that I went all in, everyone just thought I was absolutely insane. It was tough. Like as an 18 year old growing up, 19, 20, I left school, didn't have a lot of friends. No one really understood what the hell I was doing. But I was just like driven. I knew that bitcoin was going to be massive. I knew the opportunity and I started working with my old friend in this YouTube influence game and about YouTube influencers, learn about the business, learn about the good and the bad of that model. And that was, yeah, eight or nine years ago, made a lot of money on paper. Round trip. My first cycle, I had no exit strategy and no real idea what I was doing. I understood, I knew the opportunity was there, but I had no accountability, no research, no insights. And it was, it was a wild time back then. So after I round tripped that all that money, I was literally like 19, 20 years old. I made hundreds of thousands of dollars on paper. I round trip the entire thing. And when it went back to down like 80, 90%, it was the worst feeling ever. I remember like sitting there like thinking, you know, no one's going to save me, no one's going to like help me out. I had to kind of rebuild it, scratch again. Which was sickening. Only 20 year old, you're already spending that money when you've got it. Maybe some of you have been in the same position where you made a lot of money in crypto. You already know when you unspend it. And then, yeah, I round trip the entire thing. And that was so painful. And I had no roadmap back then. I had no real mentor, no strategy, no insights, no accountability, no coaching. And that's when I knew things had to change. And that's when I got in and dialed in for the next cycle, which was the 2021 bull market. So after doing that and round tripping that a couple of years later, I was still doing the same thing by following influences. I actually got caught up with this guy, a YouTuber. Maybe some of you have been in the same boat where essentially like I was just listening to this guy, had this theory about the market and when bitcoin was in maybe like 15,000, 20,000 and he was talking about this theory, it was hyperwave theory for those of you that have been around for nine years, that Bitcoin was going to crash down to $100 and making this mistake and at the time trying to still figure it out, made this money. I had no education, I was still living at home. And I was listening to what I thought were gurus online trying to tell me how to trade, how to invest. I was making those mistakes and it turned out to be completely wrong. And I lost a lot of money because I sold out trying to time the markets, thinking there was some theory, some technical analysis way that can predict the markets. And that's when I realized that whole game was backwards. You know, YouTubers are there, they're not, right? This guy who I was following is gone now. And the YouTube influence I used to work for don't work with anymore. And you know, obviously there's some good crypto with YouTube influence, don't get me wrong. But like so many people online are not there to give you the best interest at all. You know, they've got these crazy theories, they're there to get used through some affiliate links. And when I realized that all that was the one way, and I actually started working with Matt, our now director of research here at Flexorshift, everything changed. And I remember my portfolio shooting up, you know, above six figures and everything started to change. And for someone that, you know, basically started out with nothing and, you know, living back at home, I was able to move over to main Australia and Melbourne and everything was different. You know, life was an absolute dream. I wasn't sharing my punk bed with my brother anymore. I had my own apartment in Melbourne and I was working, I was grinding and realized that, you know, getting the right insights from someone that you can trust just changed the game for me. And my vision of, like, where things were going were the future of money and talking about, like, how money can kind of change you, it was. It was a long way out of reach, to be honest. The first, like, big check I had and making that was taking mum and dad out for lunch, or we had a family lunch and I paid for it. I felt, like, so motivated and so excited to be able to take them out for lunch. And it was insane time because I still had no idea what I was doing. It was still so early on. But being able to provide for my family, look after them for when they helped me out so much when I was younger and gave me the confidence and, you know, the ability to go out and get after it, just train to game. But again, by doing that, I had this money in my crypto portfolio, but I still had no idea what I was doing, right. I had a guy that was helping me out. Having that kind of money at, like, 21, 22 was just insane. And I had no sell plan. I had, like, no risk management. It was literally just, like, vibes and hope. So, you know, as my portfolio climbed in the hundreds of thousands just as quickly, from the highest level to everything literally crashing overnight was absolutely sickening. And, you know, there was the business I used to work for. Like, I put so much money into that and it just all came tumbling down. And it was hardest two years of my life. Like, we were doing a crypto education business. It was his business I was working for. And unfortunately, like, yeah, it just went south so quickly. I basically lost the business. I was trying to build collective shift at the time to, you know, educate others. And that's how I was kind of getting in the game. It all basically went to zero overnight. My portfolio got wiped out. And I was trying to keep this business alive with my own money. And yeah, essentially when we went bankrupt multiple times, it was the worst time of my life. That was a nightmare. For two years, I was too scared to kind of leave the house. I was, like, socially so shot to pieces. I was so stressed. I wasn't sleeping well because I was building this business with him. And as it all went south, it was nuts. We were trying to raise money to keep it alive. I put all my money. I had. I sold a lot of cryptos. I had this huge tax debt and we were literally losing hundreds of thousand dollars a month. It was a nightmare, absolute nightmare. For two years it was like no money. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't figure it out and just was really questioning everything. And if I failed, I was going to essentially be bankrupt. I had no crypto and I would have had to start basically from zero again, which was, yeah, so, so scary. But then I vividly remember this one moment after, you know, grinding, bring it back over the next couple of years. And that was when I took profits on a couple of investments or one in particular I made in the metaverse. And this is where I got in early in the metaverse, you know, with my now director of research, Matt, you know, we'll work on some of the investments. The time this before Facebook renamed the meta is like the decentraland times. It was a huge narrative and I was early in a couple of investments that went like absolutely crazy. When Facebook renamed to Meta, we thought the narrative was going to be big. It turned out to be true and we got out like 30, 40x returns. Literally hundreds of thousands of dollars arrived in my bank account. When that arrived, it was absolutely wild. And that was the turning point. That was like, o cool if I can make it through what I went through and still know the investment side of crypto. And I have dialed in the strategy side. So I was able to avoid round tripping again, having the research to find the narratives and find the process and build myself back up from literally having nothing to doing it again. I was like, okay, we're back. And that's what I was like, you know, let's fucking go. And that's, you know, exactly what I did. And that's where I had my director of research, Matt. I had some good help and support from my sort of friends at the time. And together we created this structure and we dived deep into research. We studied the fundamentals, we studied to build the on chain analysis, build the real systems, the seven step process, and knew what was possible, following and avoiding what everyone else was doing in the space. All these influencers, all they do is they create these crazy thumbnails, give you crazy hype, crazy dreams, sell the dream to get you in, watch their views and then essentially like, you know, get you on their affiliate link. That's how they made money. And I wanted to change the game because I saw what happened with my previous business that I was in and I wanted to be new. I want to be fresh, I want to be independent. And I thought with the process that we have that I found so much easier to understand a simple process, the seven step strategy process, using on trend analysis fundamentals and not technicals, because everyone uses technicals. The real edge we had was fundamentals. Finding good projects and narratives before they came. That's what's made us so much money. Could take that process and help other people do the same. But then if we win, then our clients win and we get paid. And with the profits we make, we can buy more crypto. That's the only way we make money in this business, which was completely different than anyone else. And it was so hard at the time because crypto was down. It's after Metaverse, right? So after Metaverse, this is maybe 22, 23, trying to build this thing up. People were throwing us all sorts of money. Exchanges, sponsorships, affiliates, advertisers. And we said no to all of it. We turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars from advertisers wanting us to promote their crappy product to our audience, because that's what all the other influencers did. But I really wanted to make it clear that we were not like that and we were independent and we only get paid for our research and our subscription fees because that way it's based on results. Because if we're bad at what we do and we're not good at investing, then our clients don't make money. We went all in. And this time I brought in a team. I started hiring people doubled down with the data and the precision that I knew of that process, every hour, every day, literally for the last, like we were about to turn five years old, this business in October, we went all. And you know, ever since then I've been obsessed with trying to build this business because I know we can help so many people. And the stories we hear from our clients when they are able to actually build a portfolio and take profits. Like some of the biggest, you know, stories I remember, like whether it be people paying off their mortgage with a bitcoin, you know, elderly people investing under retirement, going on trips, you know, people just changing their life. A doctor came in and we, you know, doubled her portfolio in a year. Like, we don't sell the dream. We help people through the process and systems that we worked on. And I'm obsessed with the gang because there's so many awful, awful companies out there that sell the dreams, sell these part dreams get you stuck in all these bad investments. And I know because they go to them, then they come to us. And I'm just so obsessed in wanting to be Collective shift to be like the number one crypto research company, but also having that community aspect as well. The community's been amazing from doing in person events, masterminds, et cetera. And that's where I want to be number one. As time scaled on after the metaverse we took down and I realized that as an investors that the real results is in being in early, getting the right investments and having a process and having a strategy to get out at the right time. Because without an exit strategy you've got no hope. And that's what I've seen with everyone. And you've been relentlessly consistent in building, you know, from being sloppy and just like buying anything and hoping to actually building a proper system, proper process from running my investments like a business. And I realized that is the key to success for busy investors. Of course if you're a trader, if you're full time looked into markets, different story. We help everyday people grow their portfolio down. Having a system, not trying to be a trader. And yeah, the vision for the company when we first started we, you know, our product was like $49 a month. We were just helping people. There's sort of like a Facebook group. But the vision was to be a company to change the game for what crypto research is and from a private little system to help us invest in our full style research process where we take the same process that we've used ourselves to make large amounts of money to help others. Five years later has been absolutely insane. To see the scale that we're at now, like when we're just doing $250,000 a month, over seven figures a month and we've got thousands of clients around the world. We've got 200 high net worth clients in our platinum program. And the impact we have like over hundreds of thousands of followers. I mean fuck, I'm doing this vlog on a fucking and or private plane. Like this is just insane. And by the way, I lead with education. I want everyone to see that we're not just putting out crap information. Like the end of the day you can follow all that free information to get so far ahead. It was tough and the difficulties of like, of trying to grow this business was so hard. Like trying to hire team members, you know, then you're in a bear market and then you're trying to scale and you're trying to help different people. And like I work one on one with all that clients. Up until the first few years, like I was doing one on one calls with everyone trying to get through and realizing, you know, it's so hard to grow a business and you've got to pay a lot of people and you're going to pay tax and you get, you know, all this hate online for people to think you're just like showboating all the time. It's relentless. You can never have a day off. You know, even when we're on holiday now, I never really holiday. I'm waking up at 3am thinking about new things, thinking about things that are going on. Things are burning. You know, I've hired poor people, people have tried to steal money from me. It's the wild west trying to grow a business and I trust a lot of people and that's probably been a downfall of me, like trusting people too early. Yeah, it's been, it's been so tough. And trying to rebuild all that money I put at the start and the investors, money we raised to pay them back, like, it's been a journey. And I remember at the bottom, like I was literally living above a 711 in Bali as a nomad for a year because I couldn't afford to live anywhere. Living in this like one bed. It wasn't even a bedroom, it was just a bed with a toilet. Trying to keep his business alive. Like, you know, to think where I was then to now, like, insight. And to think back, like from everything I've been through, like, you know, the sleepless nights, the moments we nearly went bankrupt. I remember speaking to my bookkeeper, going like, we're actually got like weeks left before we run out of money and we are going to go all belly up. We have full time employees, we're going to lose everything. All that weight on my back to stress, to like where we are now, it's completely changed my life forever. And they're scaling the business again. Going from where we, where we were only two years ago. We get six figures in a month for the first time. And now to do multiple seven figures a month, consistently scaling across the world, building our US office now, doing a 10x talk, speaking in, you know, universities across the country, speaking different events around the world, you know, consulting on major, major projects. I mean, Coinbase is a client of ours that's absolutely wild and helped thousands of thousands of people. And to get those messages of people like Ben, like, you've helped me so much. The best ones though, like, not even when they're clients of ours, they just follow me on social media. They just made a bunch of money from following me online. Like, that's the best. And that's when the end of the day, like, from everything I built, to be able to help other people, like, I absolutely love, because I know that I'm doing a good job. And authenticity is so important to me. And that's why it's hard when, like, doing, like, this is just insane today. Obviously, like, this isn't, like, normal by any stretch of the imagination, but I want to show the real authenticity behind it. The journey, it's never been an overnight success. And, you know, taking my team on the plane today, like, you know, we've got my girlfriend Laura, these guys, Josh, my marketing guy, and Zen, like, taking these guys with me is epic pick because this is so exciting for me, but also for everyone else in my company to bring everyone on the journey to absolutely love. So crypto's been able to give me the freedom, building a team. That's what's really created an impact on being able to make at a global level. And this has all led to the moment I've dreamed of, honestly, ever since being broke, you know, not that long ago. So one of the biggest goals I had, if you've been following me for a long time, wasn't about, you know, buying a Rolex or, you know, buying a Lamborghini. It was honestly about buying my parents a house. I'm in that process right now. I'm so excited. And they're literally down looking for properties at the moment. That's been a big goal of mine ever since day one. It's never been about the flashy things. And it means so much for me because they gave me so much belief, belief and support when I first started. I did a podcast this morning and sharing about that, like, reflecting back, like, they gave me the mindset and they gave me the belief that I could do it. And Mum's a school teacher and she let me quit school when I was younger, which is insane. And, yeah, just thinking about them and what they gave up. And to me, like, as I've grown and realized, like, money to me isn't about flexing, it's actually being able to build, like, time, freedom, and experiences, like taking girlfriend on cool things, my family going on different holidays, but being able to generate time, like, you know, to think, like, we're doing seven figures a month in our business is absolutely wild for me. And money, at a certain point, I've realized, doesn't really change anything. The people you do it around and what you can do to save time. Like today, like, literally flying back from Brisbane to get back for a meeting before a big Event I'm hosted tomorrow. You know, this thing cost me $40,000 one way, which is insane. And I don't do that to showboat, but generally to showcase to you that it's buying back time for me to get back and do more things, help me grow the business and help more people. That's it. And the opportunities I had that I'm flying back for is that. And yeah, it's completely changed my life from like creating wealth, protecting it, risk, reward. Now I'm stressed about, you know, how I can maintain this and help other people. Main well, you know, honestly, I've got everything I could have asked for. I'm so grateful for the people around me. And it's a fascinating journey. Like, things are growing so fast, but that's, it's so much fun. And now we're at this level. Now it's about maintaining the crypto strategies. Not only growing my bitcoin stack, but using property to diversify investing for the long term. And more important than ever is my strategy. And I continually update my strategy based on what our analysts are saying. For me personally, you know, I'm growing my portfolio at such a rapid pace and I want to make sure I'm in the right assets. And as I'm realizing, like, you know, that exit strategy is so important, but time gaming is more important than ever. Like, no longer is it just a few thousand dollars or tens of thousands of dollars, like I'm investing hundreds of thousands of dollars, you know, seven figures. Frequently I need to make sure that strategy is right at the end of the day. I built Collective Shift for me more than anyone. And that's been a huge advantage to be able to change the game. And throughout my journey, I've learned so many lessons, like, you know, from growing my portfolio, being in crypto, you know, being busy trying to help other people in crypto. And I've seen everything in this space been scammed, lost money, been doing for nine, nine years. I've helped hundreds of clients, hundreds of thousands of people online by social media. But working one on one with people, like, the biggest lessons I've learned, another one is don't round trip it. So painful when you round trip and you're on the way down, like have a property as a strategy, have a sell plan, know when you're taking profits because making all that money and then watching it go down, absolutely sickening. Get the right people around you. Like, community is so big. That's why I'm trying to build the world's leading crypto and wealth driven community in the world. Like we do these amazing in person platinum days where we have our clients come in and you get those real life experience, you meet other amazing people. You have to have that accountability. Without my accountability, I wouldn't have sold anything. So that's so important. And money is great, but the freedom is the real goal. I want to travel the world. I want to be able to do different things. I want to help my family out, you know, I want to retire. I'm different a dad, you know, one day, probably retire myself in the next few years. But I love the game, love what you do and build on the things that you're really good at. That's for love. Well, I'm shit at so many different things, but that little part that I am good at, like doubling down on that has just made my life completely different at the end of the day, like money is great, but yeah, freedom is a real goal, you know, if you stay at the game long enough and you're patient and you get through it. Like it's taken me nine years to get to this point and it's been so, so difficult on so many levels. That's how I have gotten here, to get through the dark times and the painful past. So that's how I went from really bankrupt to being a multimillionaire at 26. And if you're serious about trying to build your crypto portfol, honestly, if you're serious and you've got more than $100,000 you're wanting to invest more than $100,000. Platinum program is what I wish I had when I first started. It's changing the game. We are growing at such a rapid pace and our clients have an amazing experience. You want to check it out? We do masterminds around the world in first events, coaching, our research platform. You get everything you need to grow your portfolio and not get stuck up with the crap and noise you get from influencers. So the link is in the bio. You do need to apply to join because we work with only a certain few people, but click the button below. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you on the next video.