{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Where Brands Get Their Edge","title":"Nobody Gives Their Life Savings to a No-Name Brand | Allen Awali, Cedar Gold Group","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2306,"description":"Nobody hands their life savings to a company they've never heard of. So how do you market gold IRAs when you're competing with Chase and Wells Fargo for trust?\n**Allen Awali**, CEO of **Cedar Gold Group**, left the big precious-metals shops to build one that's more transparent with its clients. Two and a half years in, he's sunk about $100K into Meta ads that never cracked, eaten a $15K lesson when leads never reached the CRM, and paid for 25 Salesforce licenses nobody used for six months. He also turned a cold email on a random Saturday into a **Miami Marlins** sponsorship, followed by back-to-back $2M months.\nHis frame for all of it: **it's tuition.**\nBorzou and Amanda get into:\n- Why dedicated email publishers beat Meta ads for gold and silver leads\n- Why sales has to carry the business until there's real marketing budget\n- How a pro sports sponsorship becomes a credibility cosign, and how much tougher the vetting got after FTX\n- The CRM saga: HubSpot, Kixie, Five9, a Salesforce rebuild, and what never to do with licenses\n- Why Allen pulled his sales floor back into the office\n- Core values as a filter for hires *and* clients, including the mentor advice that changed how Borzou picks clients\n- Borzou's closing questions: what Allen stopped believing (it's okay to hurt people's feelings) and what he's still working on (paying someone $100K to do the job 75% as well as he would)\n### About our guest\n**Allen Awali** — CEO, Cedar Gold Group\n- LinkedIn: [Allen Awali](https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-awali/)\n- Company: [Cedar Gold Group on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/cedargoldgroup/)\n- Website: [cedargoldgroup.com](https://cedargoldgroup.com/)\n- Instagram: [@cedargoldgroup](https://www.instagram.com/cedargoldgroup/)\n### Connect with us\n- Borzou: [@bronxzou](https://www.instagram.com/bronxzou/) · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/borzou/)\n- Amanda: [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/akfischer/)\n- Show page:...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/q0YDzYhdl1Dr8BMlHpRqCxtl1XYWWQsueYkd9mlnxUM/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS82NDU2/OWZiNTFiZTY0MDM3/NjYyYTlhNTFhNWRj/NzM4MC5qcGVn.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}