Chief Change Officer - Collin Plume: Navigating Life Transitions with People-First Financial Planning – Part One

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

Part One. Once upon a time in LA, I worked at TCW Asset Management, managing billion-dollar bond funds with Jeffrey Gundlach, the “Bond King.” Today, I’m talking with someone who takes a different investment route—Collin Plume, an expert in precious metals. This conversation isn’t about selling gold; it’s about tackling real-life challenges like family finance, retirement planning, and raising financially savvy kids. If you’re navigating any of these areas, Collin’s insights and inspiring journey will give you plenty to think about. Part 1 of a 2-part series on Collin’s people-first approach to building financial security. Key Highlights of Our Interview: From Childhood Coin Collector to Precious Metals Expert: How Silver Sparked a Lifelong Passion “I received silver coins as a child, and even though they were worth just 25 cents on the surface, I learned they were actually worth much more. That stuck with me and led me to see gold and silver as overlooked assets.” Noble Gold: The Three Careers That Made It Happen “Insurance taught me customer service. Real estate taught me employee loyalty. And precious metals? That taught me marketing. Together, those experiences became the foundation for Noble Gold.” It’s All About the People: Why Noble Gold Invests in Human, Not Just AI “I realized early on that it’s not about what you’re selling—it’s about the people. Everything we do at Noble Gold is focused on creating the best possible human experience. While other companies are going all-in on AI, we’ve hired actual people to build relationships.” Gold Bars Under the Mattress: Why Some Investors Want to Feel Their Wealth “As funny as it sounds, some people might still stash their gold under the bed. It’s all about having control—physical, tangible control over your investments.” Gold to the Rescue: Beating Inflation and Outpacing Bank Returns “In a time of soaring inflation, 4% returns in the bank aren’t enough. Gold, up 27%, is proving to be a more reliable way to keep up with the rising cost of living.” Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Collin Plume ______________________ Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. Experiential Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives Global Top 3% Podcast on Listen Notes World's #1 Career Podcast on Apple Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI, JP 2.5+ Millions Downloads 80+ Countries

Hi everyone, welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. I'll show it is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. I used to work in Los Angeles for TCW Asset Management, where I managed billion-dollar funds for institutions alongside the bond king Jeffrey Gunlock, focusing on bond and credit portfolios. Today, I'm meeting someone else from LA but with a different angle on investment. Precious metals like gold and silver. Our guest Colin Plume is here to talk about something often overlooked and undervalued.

But don't worry, this isn't a sales pitch on buying gold or sulfur. Colin and I will dive into more personal topics. Family, parenting, retirement, and the sense of control over personal finance, as well as financial education for future generations. So if you have kids, care about your financial future, are looking after elderly family members, or are simply concerned about financial and family planning in general. Join us and get inspired by Colin's journey in building wealth from scratch. This is part one of our two-part series on Colin and his golden rules of people-focused finance. Let's get started.

Welcome to our show, Colin. Good morning. Thanks, Vince. Excited to be here. Today, we are diving into a topic that's really important, not just in business, but also in every family. Finance. And it's also right at the core of what you do. But before we get into that, let's start with you. Could you share a bit about your background, your career journey, and the story behind

how you got to where you are today? Yeah, so in one form or another Vince, I've been in the sales side of pretty much every business which I do believe allowed me to try different careers, learn from people, high-level people. I was in the insurance business, selling insurance, property and casualty insurance. I learned very significant things from my bosses early in my career and my first boss in the insurance business was I would say the most beguiling the most lovable person on the phone in an industry where people dislike you most people don't love their insurance agent because Your rates go up every year and and you don't typically see much coming out of it, but this

and you don't typically see much coming out of it. But this gentleman had a way with people on the phone, even when they were upset. He could turn a conversation into a likable conversation. And I watched him do this and learned from him for many years and really learned the art of customer service. Interestingly enough, off the phone or not on clients, he was a kind of a difficult person to be with and he could into the person that he needed to be on the phone. I learned that, yes, you were selling something, but really what was important was that was the customer service aspects, especially in that business and treating people with respect

and really listening to them. And so I learned from them for many years in that business and then transitioned over into commercial real estate and again selling commercial real estate. We were selling apartments, shopping centers, triple net properties. In that business, I learned from my mentor, the owner of the business, he was an incredible gatherer of talent. He would interview people in a very in-depth way. He spent time with people.

He did a lot of events outside of work. He even did an event that I copied, which is we do a sales trip every year for my current business. The reason he did is he wanted to spend time with people and really get them to learn about him, his philosophy, and also create loyalty to him and his business. And that was something that he did, and I use it currently in my company, Noble Gold. But in that business, I learned a lot from him on how to have loyal employees and how to treat people with respect, which he always did. But I also learned something really interesting, which is what not to do. Because as much as he had loyalty and he created this environment where everybody had these great employees, he was a terrible marketer.

He did absolutely no marketing. He didn't see the sense of it. He didn't want to spend the money. And he didn't realize that sales and marketing are so intertwined that you have to do both. And every industry and every business is different, but he did it. And at the time before I left, I didn't really know what mistake he made in that business. But later on I learned as I went into the precious metals business, which was the career before I started my own business. I learned that the marketing actually was even more important than the sales in some

ways. I watched my boss before I started my own business struggle with marketing, learn how to do marketing. He even was the first one to create affiliate marketing online, which was something that nobody had ever done before. And he actually created some success for himself by diving into internet marketing in a much different way. And basically, the precious metals business was a brick and mortar sort of old school

business and he created a new digital marketing way and had some early success in that business. So I think all of the careers early on led me to starting Noble Gold and the experience that I had was perfect in that I learned that early customer service and client relations are your most important asset. And I learned that in the insurance business when I got to real estate. I learned about employees and hiring the right employees and having employee loyalty and creating a good environment. And then with my third boss, I realized the importance of marketing.

And I basically took all of those lessons and put them into my first very successful company, which was Noble Gold, and I wouldn't have gotten there without those three separate experiences that I had. They really were perfect to start the business Noble Gold that we started in 2016. Noble Gold, just a name, sounds like it's all about investing in gold and precious metals. I'll let you do the pitch, why is now the right time? What is the opportunity in gold investing? But before we get into that, I want to ask you about your leadership style. While you're running an investment firm focused on financial products, I've heard that you're

really a people-first leader. Whether it's your clients, customers, or employees, would you say that's an accurate way to describe your approach? I always realized that very early on that actually it does not matter what you're actually selling, what product you're in. It is all about the customer. Everything is about the customer and everything we do at Noble Gold is to create the best possible customer experience. And that's why we've gone the opposite way with a lot of companies where we've actually just hired more people, actual people. Whereas a lot of people are going towards AI, we really focus on that customer experience because I do think that there's so many financial products, there's so many things out there where they don't want to talk to you. And I believe that people want to build a relationship and they want people to talk

to. So it is absolutely the most important thing for us to make sure that when they buy the metal from us, that we help them through the whole process and get it to their doorstep safely. And they feel that it's a special experience. It's a white glove experience. So yes, on the consumer side, it is absolutely our number one focus. On the employee side, I think I was already very employee friendly, but I learned so much through COVID. I think that employees really at Noble Gold bonded together through COVID because I had a very distinct policy, which was, if somebody's sick or if you have an issue, you go and we figure out, we'll cover you.

We'll figure it out later. And we did that. And we did that no matter what. And anyone in any position, no matter if they worked in the vaults, shipping metals, or they were on the phone, or any position, if somebody had an issue where they were sick, or they had a family member that was sick,

the philosophy was, there you go. And that, I think think safety that people felt they weren't going to lose their job. They felt like we were around. And on top of that, we would do monthly zoom parties. We do some kind of, we did scatagories and we did all these fun events through zoom to keep everybody together because there was a lot of people that were either living alone or living far from family and they were going through it. through Zoom to keep everybody together because there was a lot of people that were either living

alone or living far from family and they were going through it. They were going through the sadness. They were going through people dying. So we really tried to create a culture of family and I think COVID created that bond in a unique way for us and I think that's in a unique way for us. And I think that's a big part of the success we had is that people felt like we were there for them above and beyond them just working for us. And Sharon and I, my wife, have always had this philosophy. And if something was going on, we called people,

we checked in on people, and the clients had similar things going on. And so I think a lot of our growth in the 2020 and today was shaped by, you know, what was going on with COVID and us being able to create this family environment for our clients and also for our employees. And it also taught me a lot that I am responsible in so many ways to these people that work for us. And I have a big responsibility to make sure that they have the things that they need,

which is a retirement plan and health insurance and a safe environment for them to work and also a wage that's above the market. We pay above market wage in every position because we can, and I think it's the right thing to do if you can do it. Those are some of the things that I learned and the company learned over the last few years that I think shaped who we are today.

learned over the last few years that I think shapes who we are today. When we first met, I shared a bit about my own background in finance, which has been more on the traditional side. By that, I mean I've worked with mainstream investment products like bonds and credit, and my focus has mostly been on big institutions. I haven't had much experience dealing directly with individual investors or in the precious metals space. So I'm curious, why precious metals? I think this question has two parts. First, why did you choose to set up this firm focused on precious metals instead of other

investment products? And second, when you're talking to your customers, why do you recommend precious metals? Why gold? Why silver? As viable investment options for them? I think the reason that I got into precious metals is that I had some experiences as a child. My grandfather collected silver coins up until 1970, our U.S. coinage actually had silver in it.

So there's these coins before 1970, they call them junk silver bags and they're bags of silver coins that have some percentage of silver in it either 40 or 90 percent of the coin is silver depending on the age of the coin and I got some of these coins as a child and as a gift and learned a little bit about it that this quarter That I was receiving even though it's a quarter on the face, it shows 25 cents, it's actually worth, at the time it was worth 50 cents, let's say. Those quarters today, because of the price of silver, could be worth five or six dollars. They have a face value on the money,

but because there's silver in it, it's worth a lot more. And I learned that as a child. When I decided to go into precious metals later in my life, a lot of it had to do with what happened to me in commercial real estate in that I realized that my clients in commercial real estate were business owners, most of them were immigrants that had come to the United States with most,

I can't even tell you how many came to the United States with zero money in their pocket and had built wealth and all of them would build the wealth and buy assets. And the asset that they would buy would be real estate. And what I realized is as much as that had helped them build more wealth, I also realized that there were other assets that could do something very similar. And I think that the thing that I've learned over the last 16 years being in the precious metals industry is

that gold and silver and platinum and palladium have been seriously overlooked by mass media because it's the way that we sell gold and silver. It's not a derivative. It's not a stock. It's not a fund. It's not an ETF and really the big money and advertising and dollars all over the US. I mean, if you go to Fox News or any of those channels They're all pushing mutual funds or some kind of fund or stock Because there's so much money. There's so much wealth created in

derivatives of things where you don't own it all or you put it in a big pile and the thing that I Loved about precious metals when I started in it 16 years ago was that this is actually one of the few assets that you can own by yourself. And it was against the grain, this idea that you can own the physical gold and silver by yourself that we would help you get it, acquire it, but it's yours. And there's no middleman that was very appealing to me. What I learned from these very wealthy business owners when I was in commercial real estate is really the most important thing as you build wealth is to buy assets and I felt that gold and silver and platinum, plating was an overlooked

asset that people weren't really talking about it. It fascinated me as to why, and a lot of it has to do with people are used to the stock market or they're used to certain things that they've done. But I think that alternative investments have really made a push. You've seen cryptocurrencies obviously go wild and that's a big part of the market now, but gold and silver and platinum plating in a way are so simple and yet feel so foreign to people. And so that was my goal was to give as much education on precious metals as I could through

videos and emails and books and everything that I could possibly do is educate them on something that's simple but in a lot of ways is so present in what we need today. If you think about the problem with the world in terms of the economy, the biggest issue is debt. The biggest issue that we created is this debt cycle that we can't get out of, that everyone is living on. Every country in the world is living on tremendous debt, more debt than we've ever seen. And the numbers are staggering. If you go in terms of the debt that was created since 2000 to today, we've created

30 times more debt in the last 24 years than we did in the 100 years before that in the United States, which is quite shocking considering we went through multiple world wars. We went through Vietnam, we went through the Cold War, and yet in the last 24 years, we've created much more debt than what we did in the 100 years before that. And so I think gold and silver and platinum and palladium are perfect in today's environment because it goes against the idea of debt because you actually own the assets by yourself and they're assets that are needed in today's environment.

The gold is used in so many industries, silver is the list goes on and on, platinum and platinum is also, but it's nice to know as an investor that you have something in your portfolio that is not tied to any debt instrument. I think it's the number one thing that make what we do very interesting is that you have this ability to acquire an asset that gives you some freedom from the traditional markets that you're not tied to any companies that could have like an Enron situation or you're not tied so heavy into tech stocks and it gives you a little hedge and I would say some type of insurance against some of

the things that can happen with some of the other traditional investments. And so that's what made me get into it and fall in love with it and it's become my number one thing of learning is continuing to learn about these assets and also educate people about what they can do for them in today's financial environment. So let's say I come to you with a chunk of money come to you with a chunk of money. And I'm considering buying gold or silver. Can you walk me through the process? You've mentioned things like acquisition. So I suppose after that comes storage.

Because obviously, I can't just keep it in my basement. Then, is there some kind of monitoring? Like do you send reports on prices every month or so? And at some point, I'll probably be concerned about liquidity. How easy, how cost-effective it is to sell when I'm ready to cash out? First, in terms of liquidity and the risk of liquidity, gold and silver, what we sell are bullion coins and bars, which these are the highest purity,

best condition products. These are what the banks buy. These are what the large institutions buy. This is what ComEx buys. So the items you buy from us are liquid anywhere in the world. That being said, we will buy back anything that we've sold to you at any day at any time. But we have focused on items that have

liquidity regardless of you selling back to us. That was one of the differentiators when I started the business was that many of people in this space they sell many products. I've seen companies sell 5,000 different coins and bars. The problem is that a lot of them that you could buy, they may not be liquid because there may not have the desirability at the time you want to sell it. The items we sell all have the highest desirability on the market. And that's something that's really important

is that people have liquidity. And that is something that we really focus on. And we do have people that are retiring or need money and it's important for them to have that liquidity at any moment of the day. In terms of how it works, there's two ways you can acquire it. One would be in an IRA.

And so if you do an IRA in gold or silver, you're actually buying the physical bars and coins and we help you through that process. But we do in the IRA, we do have to store it until you retire. So once you retire and you're above the age of 59 and a half, you can actually take possession of the items that you acquired. So it's only in storage and it's in segregated storage until that time. And all the paperwork and everything we do, we walk you through that process. You have an online system to actually see the price of your inventory and what you own any day. You can log in there and do that.

And those metals would be liquid at any time for you. The other way that you can do it, and the IRA is very popular because a lot of people have a lot of their retirement funds and IRAs, and they may want to change some of it. So maybe they have some of it in the stock market and they want to diversify. They don't want to have all of it in the stock market. They can diversify with us and put some of their holdings in precious metals and it's actual physical precious metals. When it arrives at the depository, we have two, one in Texas and one in Delaware, we

actually take a picture of the actual bullion coins and bars that the client acquired. We send the client that photo so they can see the actual metal that they own, but it is theirs, it is segregated, and they will be able to get access to it at retirement. The other way you can do it is we actually can shift the metal directly to your doorstep and that is a very popular option also. People love getting it at home and as funny as it sounds there are people that probably have some of our gold under their mattress. Now I don't know if I'd recommend that location but we do have thousands and thousands of clients that have acquired precious metals and we've shipped it to their doorstep.

And the reason they want it is because they want control of it, which is the thing that I mentioned earlier is that the idea of control is the beauty behind this type of investment in that you actually can control the investment on your own. And it's not controlled by the government. It's not controlled by us. You actually control it and hold it. And that is very appealing for a lot of Americans to have an investment that they can hold and touch. And if they had to flee the country or go anywhere in the world, they would have access to that liquid wealth.

I can definitely see the appeal of control. If someone owns a gold bar and keeps it at hand, they obviously have to figure out security. Not just a regular safe, but maybe something really sophisticated. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if some people still do what they did back in the day. Like in China for example, keeping large amounts of cash, goo bars and other valuables at home, even in the bedroom.

Is that tangible feeling of having something you can physically hold onto? Is more tangible than even owning a house because a house, while you can see it, is tied to a bunch of paperwork, just like stocks, bonds, and funds. They are all backed by legal papers and financial systems. So I get why some people prefer to have something they can physically control right at their fingertips. Yeah, exactly. And I think also when things are not going well, for instance, like last year, there was multiple banks that were in trouble. And right now there's lots of banks that are in trouble because of what's going on in commercial real estate.

And I think that when you see any kind of banking situation where banks are going out of business or not doing well, it doesn't give a lot of confidence to people leaving money in the bank. And you saw three very large banks last year that went out of business and you saw videos of people waiting in line to get their cash out. And I think that is another reason that people have liked the idea of gold and silver because A, you don't want to have it controlled in an entity that could potentially go out of business and the Dodd-Frank Act had some language in there

that leads people to believe that if a bank really did go out of business, the FDIC had some problems that in essence they could potentially take your money. So the desire for control often comes from a lack of trust and confidence in the system. And I think when you look at the idea of the dollar itself the return is so low in the bank also, relative to what you could make out there. This year, gold is up 27%. Even though the banks are paying 4% in the bank right now, they're only paying that 4%

right now because they know that there's so many other investments out there that yields a much higher return. And so with inflation being something that everybody is talking about, everyone's talking about the price of energy and the price of food, and all of these things have gone up, they've skyrocketed over the last few years. People also are saying, I can't make 4% of the bank. And I think the returns of the banks in the U S are going to continue to go down. I would not be surprised that we see 3% savings returns by next year and even lower.

So the other idea too, is I just can't leave money in the bank because I need to keep up with my quality of life. And I think that's the thing about gold. If you go back over time, if you go back the last 150 years, gold has been able to keep up with inflation and the cost of living in a way that most other items have not. And that is also the big idea with investing for retirement is you want that same quality of life in retirement that you have while you're working. That's why you're working so hard is is you wanna be able to have the things in retirement.

And yes, you may have to downsize your living to afford to live as long as you may live. With that being said, the idea is you want items that are gonna keep up with the cost, the increasing costs of everything that's going up out there. And so that's another reason why a lot of people, if they were hitting very heavy in cash,

they've been looking at gold and silver as another way because they need to make better returns. And obviously nobody has a crystal ball of where things will go. But typically during heavy inflationary periods, gold has performed very well. You can see the late 70s, early 80s is a perfect example when inflation was in the 14 to 16% range and gold was keeping up with that and outperforming those numbers. Just now, Colin shared how he got into the gold business, and why investing in precious metals is timely, especially in this era of change and uncertainty.

In part 2, which will be released tomorrow, we'll dive deeper into the risks and opportunities in the precious metal market. Colin will also share his insights on financial influences, parenting, retirement, family wealth building, and financial education. Don't miss it! Come back and join us again tomorrow. See you! Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media.

I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.