Chief Change Officer
#327 Collin Plume: Golden Rules for People-First Wealth Building
Sun, 27 Apr 2025
Collin Plume didn’t build Noble Gold to chase hype—he built it to restore trust in a system Gen X knows can break. In this first of a two-part series, Collin shares how early lessons from insurance sales, real estate, and recession-era survival shaped his people-first approach to wealth building. He explains why real assets like gold and silver aren’t just investments—they’re anchors of ownership in a world increasingly built on debt and paper. For Gen Xers who value resilience over rhetoric, and control over hype, this episode delivers the human side of financial security.Learning the Hard Way“Customer service wasn’t a department—it was survival.”Collin reflects on early lessons selling insurance and real estate, where trust and loyalty mattered more than shiny marketing.Why People Stay—and Why They Leave“Employees don’t stay because of ping-pong tables. They stay because they’re seen.”He shares how mentorship and genuine relationship-building shaped his leadership style at Noble Gold.Selling Without the Sleaze“I don’t care what you’re selling—if you don’t care about people, you lose.”Collin talks about why prioritizing people over products isn’t soft—it’s the only strategy that survives downturns.Precious Metals: The Ownership Play“When everything else feels intangible, gold and silver are still yours.”He explains why real assets like precious metals offer Gen Xers a hedge—not just against inflation, but against an unstable system.Family, Fear, and Financial Freedom“You’re not just buying an asset—you’re buying options.”Collin connects gold ownership to a deeper human need: protecting family, future, and dignity through real, controllable wealth.______________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Collin Plume --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.14 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>140,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts and the guest in this episode?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist humility 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 Gundlach, 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 silver. 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.
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Chapter 2: What is Collin Plume’s professional background and career journey?
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.
Chapter 3: What early lessons shaped Collin’s people-first approach to wealth building?
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, 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. 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 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 learn from him for many years and really learn 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 gets 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 aspect, especially in that business and treating people with respect and really listening to them. And so I learned from him for many years. in that business and then transitioned over into commercial real estate.
And again, selling commercial real estate, I was 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 it 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, he had these great employees, he was a terrible marketer. He did absolutely no marketing. He didn't see the sense in 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.
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Chapter 4: How does Collin apply people-first leadership at Noble Gold?
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 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.
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 are 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% 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 $5 or $6. 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 and that I realized that my clients in commercial real estate were business owners.
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Chapter 5: Why did Collin choose precious metals as an investment focus?
The biggest issue that we've 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
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
Chapter 6: What personal experiences influenced Collin’s interest in gold and silver?
are perfect in today's environment because it goes against the idea of debt because you actually own the assets by yourself and their assets that are needed in today's environment. Gold is used in so many industries. Silver, the list goes on and on.
Platinum and palladium 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, 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.
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Chapter 7: How do precious metals serve as real assets for wealth and family protection?
The problem is that a lot of them that you could buy, They may not be liquid because they 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 we have two one in texas and one in delaware we actually take a picture of the actual bullion coins and bars of the client acquire 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.
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.
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