Nobody Gives Their Life Savings to a No-Name Brand | Allen Awali, Cedar Gold Group

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?

**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.

His frame for all of it: **it's tuition.**

Borzou and Amanda get into:

- Why dedicated email publishers beat Meta ads for gold and silver leads
- Why sales has to carry the business until there's real marketing budget
- How a pro sports sponsorship becomes a credibility cosign, and how much tougher the vetting got after FTX
- The CRM saga: HubSpot, Kixie, Five9, a Salesforce rebuild, and what never to do with licenses
- Why Allen pulled his sales floor back into the office
- Core values as a filter for hires *and* clients, including the mentor advice that changed how Borzou picks clients
- 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)

### About our guest

**Allen Awali** — CEO, Cedar Gold Group

- LinkedIn: [Allen Awali](https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-awali/)
- Company: [Cedar Gold Group on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/cedargoldgroup/)
- Website: [cedargoldgroup.com](https://cedargoldgroup.com/)
- Instagram: [@cedargoldgroup](https://www.instagram.com/cedargoldgroup/)

### Connect with us

- Borzou: [@bronxzou](https://www.instagram.com/bronxzou/) · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/borzou/)
- Amanda: [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/akfischer/)
- Show page: [nickelbronx.com/where-brands-get-their-edge](https://www.nickelbronx.com/where-brands-get-their-edge)

This episode is brought to you by **NickelBronx**.

---

**Thanks for tuning in to *Where Brands Get Their Edge*, brought to you by NickelBronx.**

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Creators and Guests

Host

Amanda Fischer

Host

Borzou Azabdaftari

Alabama-born, Virginia-raised, and Iranian-made, Borzou isn't just another CEO; he's a college dropout turned serial entrepreneur, speaker, and the brains behind the award-winning digital agency NickelBronx. Known for his prowess in branding and digital marketing, Borzou's work has garnered Hermes Creative, Clutch, and Marcom Awards. Beyond the boardroom, he's a connoisseur of design and anything aesthetically driven, embodying style with substance. Borzou's philosophy? Embrace what makes you unique; that's how you find your tribe.  When priorities with his family, health, business, and community are satisfied - you can find Borzou chasing once-in-a-lifetime experiences. His favorite things are amazing people and making memories, and he’s always adding to his collection of both.

What is Where Brands Get Their Edge?

Cutting-edge marketing news and advice for (and from) brands, founders, and marketing executives.

Borzou (00:20)
What is up, everyone? Welcome to Where Brands Get Their Edge. If you're a marketer, we've got the tools. If you're a founder, we've got the truth. Today we are joined by Alan Awali with Cedar Gold. If you have ever marketed in the financial space, you know that obviously all marketing requires building trust. but it's a lot harder when you're trying to get someone to give you your life savings.

and he is in Florida with Amanda, my co host and partner. What's up, Amanda?

Amanda (00:43)
my gosh,

I didn't know you were in Florida.

Allen A. (00:45)
Yeah, yeah, in Miami, Florida.

Amanda (00:46)
I'm in Boca. Yeah, so it's really hot. Yeah.

Allen A. (00:47)
nice, not too far. Yeah, that's so hot.

Borzou (00:51)
Yeah.

But everyone in Florida's favorite thing to do is like tell us how much better the weather is all the time, except except for that little summer window where it gets too hot and nobody wants to stay.

Allen A. (01:01)
Yeah.

Borzou (01:01)
All well Alan, tell us a little about Cedar and how you got it started.

Allen A. (01:04)
Yeah, so Cedar Gold Group is a precious metals firm. we do retail gold sales, coins, bars, gold silver. we know we ship direct to people's houses, but one of our main focuses is our retirement accounts, self-directed gold and silver IRAs. how I got started was I worked at a couple of firms in the past. you know, now they're s pretty big names. And at the time I just wasn't really thrilled with the leadership.

there. I mean back then there wasn't really a structure at that at those companies. So me and one well who's now my business partner decided to leave you know that company and start our own thing. we've been in business for about two and a half, three years now doing the same thing. But really you know our main focus was doing it better than

our previous experience, being more transparent with our clients and customers, because unfortunately in this industry there is a lot of lack of transparency. So that's where we we're shooting to be a little bit different.

Borzou (01:58)
So

that was gonna be one of the first things I asked you about because I feel like tacitly people understand that you can buy precious metals and hang on to them and that's like a safety hedge for a variety of reasons.

Allen A. (02:06)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Borzou (02:08)
but I feel like not everyone knows a lot about that. But also I didn't know anything about rolling over an IRA to it.

Allen A. (02:14)
Yeah.

Borzou (02:15)
So tell tell us about how you explain that to people, especially if they don't know a ton about the industry.

Allen A. (02:19)
Yeah, I mean we try to simplify it as much as possible. We we have what's called our three step process. You know, the first thing we do is we create an account with our clients, with a Cedar Gold Group and B, our self directed IRA custodian. our main custodian that we use is Gold Star Trust. they're one of the best in the business. They've been doing it for, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 years now. so we create establish those accounts. After that comes the rollover part. So our team and someone

from our client's custodian. For example, we'll we'll call them up and we'll be like, hey, our client wants to move over X amount of funds from let's say Goldman Sachs over to Gold Star Trust. we'll facilitate the rollover. And then step three is the fun part is where we go over our clients goals, wants, needs, timelines, things of that nature, we develop a plan with them. we talk to them about different types of assets and then we place a trade for them.

You know, whether that be gold, silver, platinum or palladium in their account.

Borzou (03:14)
And

do you feel like most people kind of know what this is or wanted or is there a lot of education in explaining like the value and what's going on?

Allen A. (03:20)
It's hit or miss. I mean, some people that have been seeing the ads on to Fox T V for you know, years on end, like, you know, let's say the market dips five percent, they hit a certain breaking point. They're just like, you know, Alan, you just just do it for me, right? That's like twenty percent of the time and then eighty percent of the time is more so education.

Borzou (03:41)
And and for are are you for everyone like actually sending them the files?

Allen A. (03:47)
The metals?

Borzou (03:48)
Yeah.

Allen A. (03:48)
So it depends. So now if it's a cash transaction, yeah, I can ship it straight to their doorstep, like fully insured. They're not liable for anything until they sign it. With an IRA, it's a little bit tricky. because it's a tax deferred account, to maintain the tax deferred integrity of the account, the metals have to be stored and shipped and stored at a depository. we work with the Delaware depository and the Texas Precious Metals depository.

that way the IRS, the government knows you don't take the gold and silver that you just bought and go sell it, right? 'Cause that would essentially once you sell anything out of an IRA, there's a there's a tax liability. So the way the way we maintain the tax deferred integrity is by using a third party depository.

Borzou (04:27)
I feel like this would be the most Persian thing ever if my entire retirement account was just like sitting on mold.

Allen A. (04:32)
Yeah.

Amanda (04:33)
Like under your couch or something too, like in like

Allen A. (04:35)
Yeah.

Amanda (04:36)
hiding places or shit.

Borzou (04:38)
I I

my parents I trusted very little about this country when they moved and they made a bunch of money in the stock market and then it like cropped out in the nineties. They they took that hit and then it was all real estate that like

Allen A. (04:48)
Yeah.

Borzou (04:50)
they're just like dipping their toe in it again, like maybe it's real.

Allen A. (04:53)
Yeah.

Borzou (04:55)
and financial services in general does have a lot of skepticism, right? So in any sense

Allen A. (04:58)
Absolutely.

Borzou (04:59)
and and we've done I think a disproportionate amount of

Financial

s like all the way from like the wealth manager side to like the SaaS side selling the family offices.

Amanda (05:08)
There are a lot of things there are a lot of things

you can't do when you're marketing financial services. Yeah.

Borzou (05:12)
the compliance.

Allen A. (05:14)
man,

it's you get yeah, it's like one of the most heavily scrutinized industries, if not the most heavily scrutinized industry, for marketing.

Borzou (05:20)
So tell tell us that you've

done to crack the code, right? 'Cause I I didn't even realize you were advertising on Fox until right now.

Allen A. (05:25)
We we we don't well it depends. Like we're not on Fox T V. We're we've done some advertising on the their website and we've done some advertising through like press releases and whatnot. but right now like our main source of advertising, like that has really been successful so far, has but just been with dedicated email publishers, you know, outlets like Market Watch, Market Beat, so on and so forth, you know.

That's proved like to us the highest know, qualification rates and qu lead quality.

Amanda (05:53)
Can you explain what that looks like? what exactly like kind of placement that you get and then how you hear from people and then w you know, where they are, where they stand at like what the questions that they ask you right away.

Allen A. (06:02)
Yeah, so I mean, really simply, like essentially, let's use Market Watch for an example, right? We'll run a campaign through them. my team we have we have a a small marketing team here, it's a couple guys, and we'll essentially provide Market Beat with the the copy and we'll have all that copy funnel down to just a landing page, a simple landing page. And our offer and it's pretty s industry standard in the whole industry, like the offer is a free gold guide, right?

or a learn learn how to roll over your retirement account with gold. So I'm I'm a big believer in if it ain't broke, don't fix it. If the whole industry is like, you know, doing billions and billions of dollars a year with this simple landing page, like, well, I'm not a genius, I'm not gonna go and try to fix, you know what I mean? So we're we're just following suit the majority of our spend. then it funnels them to a landing page and then all they do is submit their, you know, first name, last name, email, phone number. we send them the guy, then our team calls them up.

but where a lot of the the magic happens really isn't on those first initial calls with those with those clients or or prospects. you know, it comes in the internal remarketing, things like webinars, internal text blasts, news articles, updates. That's that's when we start to see the actual conversions.

Borzou (07:07)
And

then what was cause we you know we we talk a lot about like the experimentation that goes into finding the thing that works. Like how much stuff did you do before that that like just didn't pan out or you felt like was the juice wasn't worth

Allen A. (07:19)
man. I've probably I've

probably blown like a couple hundred grand on just like testing things that didn't work. I mean for okay, a lot of people like they think like meta is the end all be all. And I w and I wanted to do that. I was like so for meta for for our industry. I can only speak on gold and silver. I can't speak on any other industry 'cause I don't know. so for

maybe just my company, maybe other in maybe other gold and silver companies are crushing it on meta and I just haven't cracked it yet. But I mean I've probably cycled through a handful of agencies, like four or five, and maybe like a hundred grand to spend on meta. And we just were never able to crack it. I don't know why.

Amanda (07:53)
And you're trying

specifically ads, right?

Allen A. (07:55)
Yeah, you meta ads, meta ads, exactly. Yeah, all paid. Nothing organo or organic. Organica doesn't so far like you have to really do something viral, like to get some real like lead giant from organic for our industry.

Borzou (08:07)
Yeah. Organ organic's a long play. I do think it's it's

Allen A. (08:11)
Yeah.

Borzou (08:11)
It's worth it, but it does take a while, right? Like we we we

Allen A. (08:14)
Yeah, for sure.

Borzou (08:14)
mostly run ads and do stuff like that to kind of like fill the top of the funnel while everything else gets going.

Allen A. (08:20)
Yeah.

Borzou (08:20)
but but nothing works for everyone, right? you know, I was talking to a prospect and and she was like, she was like, no, no, this person told me Google Ads is a hundred percent or meta ads is a hundred percent gonna da-da-da. And I'm like, anyone who says that is like full of shit. You know what I mean? Like you just you never know.

Allen A. (08:32)
Yeah. They don't they don't they don't know what they're just talking about, yeah.

Borzou (08:36)
until you really get in there and do the legwork.

Amanda (08:38)
when people approach things like that it's really convincing and then people buy even though it's very obvious to people like us that they are lying like

Borzou (08:48)
Yeah, when we

say like we don't know, we're gonna figure it out and make it work, that that feels like a whole add to that.

Amanda (08:51)
I know and then it makes us look

w bad. Like it makes us that we're like we because we're honest about, hey, you know, i i we're not it's not a hundred percent but maybe

Allen A. (09:00)
Yeah.

Amanda (09:00)
we should just do in that and see happens.

Borzou (09:01)
Well, I say something's definitely gonna work.

We just won't know what until we roll the dice and and see.

Allen A. (09:06)
That that's all marketing is at the end of the day. It's like testing a million things and like hoping, you know, ten of them land and like are like, you know, knock out of the ballpark.

Borzou (09:15)
Yeah. And are you so are you completely off like

Allen A. (09:19)
Meta?

Borzou (09:20)
completely off meta in terms of ads at least?

Allen A. (09:21)
Right now, yeah. I mean I we're probably like we we're we have a few like third party affiliates that essentially like they just sell us leads on a fixed CPL basis. I'm sure they're running on meta. So like we have some exposure to Meta, but they're what is it called? Their pixel is like probably seasoned, you know what I mean? Like they they

Borzou (09:37)
yeah.

Allen A. (09:37)
probably have like you know what I mean? Because they're they're taking spend from like ten different gold companies and like really just like you know what I mean, like sending all the

the w the conversions back to the ad account. So they're really targeted.

Borzou (09:48)
that's the other reason we we warn people about going to someone who's specializing in your niche, right?

Allen A. (09:52)
Yeah.

Borzou (09:53)
You're getting the same thing they're gonna give everyone else and and everyone's competing for their kind of best keywords targeted, right? Like it's all gonna be spread among the same kind of people.

Amanda (10:01)
Really

just mailing it in because they're replicating everything they do for all of their clients and people think, but they specialize in it, but it's equally horrible for everybody. So

Allen A. (10:11)
Yeah.

Yeah. I that's why I tried to build like I I I spent so much money trying to build essentially our own version of that third party affiliate company in in house and like it just wasn't hitting. I don't know. It wasn't hitting at all like compared to maybe I maybe we I did it wrong. I I'm not like a marketing genius by any means. I'm like a like a more of like a sales operations guy, but

yeah.

Borzou (10:34)
I know, man. It sounds like

Amanda (10:36)
No

Borzou (10:36)
we're

doing all right.

Allen A. (10:37)
I would hope so. I'd like to hope so. I think so.

Amanda (10:40)
That's how I started too. I started out in sales too, you know, and realizing what I needed to do to market in order to sell. So what did I need to be armed with in order to close a sale? And that's exactly how I started marketing.

what about you? Because you you're coming from a sales perspective as well.

Allen A. (10:55)
Yeah, so I mean f so like I'm I'm of the belief like in the beginning like sales has to do most of the heavy lifting until market until you have enough money to to just fund the shit out of out of your marketing team and like really plaster yourself everywhere. so like it's still like I'm we're still I'm still like two and a half three years into this. So I every day like I'm learning new things about what either different companies are doing

in our industry and or and not in our industry. I'm like s I know that nowadays I'm I'm on LinkedIn like a hundred times more than I ever was in my life because like there are so many little gems and tricks and tips people give out on LinkedIn specifically for marketing.

Borzou (11:33)
We I I don't know if you're doing this yet. H are you posting yourself a lot?

Allen A. (11:37)
no I'm not I'm not like as as good as I should be with it. I sh I should

be better.

Borzou (11:41)
I I think like The easiest cheat code, like low hanging fruit for founders, is is the personal brand work. in the same way you're going over there and like taking the tips from everyone.

Allen A. (11:49)
Yeah.

Borzou (11:50)
And so much of it is like the just the timing and being top of mind when someone's ready to make a jump.

Allen A. (11:55)
Yeah.

Borzou (11:56)
and and you know, that's It's a big trust builder too when they see and know you. and I think founders

Allen A. (12:00)
For sure. Absolutely.

Borzou (12:02)
overthink it. You know, they think

Allen A. (12:03)
Yeah.

Borzou (12:03)
it's gonna be like goal to fucking post something.

Allen A. (12:05)
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean that's the thing, yeah. I I I'm totally a victim to that. Like just like way overthinking it, like, am I gonna look dumb or whatever. Like 'cause sometimes like you know, let's I'm f I'm I'm a younger guy, right? I'm not as old as most of these other founders, right? On LinkedIn. And yeah, right. And

Amanda (12:19)
This is

Allen A. (12:22)
you know, it's especially like having this holding a a a high title at a at this company, right? You don't wanna look stupid.

Borzou (12:28)
I mean I get that and I I was there and now I like almost look stupid on purpose because it gets more attention.

Allen A. (12:33)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's a good point. It's a great point.

Amanda (12:36)
It's a

it's one of the biggest things that holds people back, I think. But it is something it's a fear and it's so if the fear is what's holding you back, you really I would advise you to try pushing past that because it is worth

Allen A. (12:49)
Yeah.

Amanda (12:49)
it. And you don't and you can start in a way that's small, you know, like once a week. You don't need to try to take on everything and just blow up your brand right away. Like just start posting once a week for at first and see how

Allen A. (13:01)
Yeah.

Amanda (13:02)
it goes, you know.

Borzou (13:03)
Well

and one of one of the cooler things that you've done, which you know, I I have tons of friends who've gotten like, you know, boxes and stadiums to write off. but you're actually sponsoring the Marlins, which is nuts to me.

Allen A. (13:13)
Yeah. Yeah, it's

it's so cool. yeah, one of the companies I worked at when I first got into this industry actually did a similar deal with the Texas Rangers. that was like twenty twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, something like that. And that's where I got the inspiration from to go for a sports team because typically in our industry, we see a lot of companies throw money at like political influencers or something more like

like politically adjacent, right? And w and I was like trying to get away from that because a lot of those other companies try pushing like fear mongering, the the the Dems are gonna ruin your life, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. you know, to each their own, whatever they want whoever that whatever anyone wants to believe, they could go ahead and believe it. But our idea was like let's do a more take a more enterprise approach to our our sponsorships and partnerships.

so yeah, the Miami Marlins was a big one. It happened on a random Saturday actually. I was sitting in the office with my business partner Brett and we were just like shooting the shit in the office and I was like, Yeah, you know what? Like let me email this guy and it was the president of partnerships for the Miami Marlins and he on a Saturday

he hit me back instantly. He was like, Yep, let's talk. Monday we had the phone call. we molded over for a few months and then

a few months before the season we locked it in with the Marlins. And it's been great. I mean, since we since we locked in that partnership, our revenue has we we haven't hit any all time highs, but we've been more consistent than ever. we had a a really big crazy month last year, that was like a record month. But now our our numbers have been more consistent than they were in the last eighteen months, which is great. You know, consistency is what you want in this industry.

Amanda (14:47)
has it paid itself off, first of all? Like okay.

Allen A. (14:50)
my gosh, yeah. It's yeah, yeah, yeah. So much.

Amanda (14:54)
Yeah, so the first like when you said you started about two and a half years ago, how quickly did you jump into that sponsorship and how quickly did it prove the ROI?

Allen A. (15:01)
So I think we like we we signed the deal and by the end of the year, d like so December going into January. so up until that point we didn't have any big sponsorships or partnerships. so it was those first eighteen months was or two years, I guess it would be. was it wasn't h like super hard, like because the the market conditions were really in our favor. Gold went from like two thousand dollars an ounce to forty five hundred.

So it people were on a buying frenzy. but once once we solidified that, it was just like, okay, we're off to the races. I think within we signed the deal in December. In March it went public, like everyone, like we did the press release. and then as soon as the press release came out, like our numbers were just, you know, it was like boom, like two million, two million, two million dollar months, back to back to back.

Amanda (15:46)
Nice.

Allen A. (15:47)
yeah. So it's it's been it's been great. Now, I mean, yeah.

We we're for sure gonna end up renewing with them and we're actually talking to the heat now. So we'll see what's we'll Yeah,

Amanda (15:57)
no, you're you're adding more sports.

Allen A. (15:59)
yeah. We're gonna go we're I wanna I I I have like they're like little like like Thanos's what what are they called? Like the in the Avengers. Yeah. It's yeah, yeah. I'm getting I'm gonna get

Borzou (16:06)
night as well infinity domain rings. Stones, there's the stones.

Allen A. (16:11)
I'm the st if any stones. I'm gonna get the I wanna get the the Marlins, the Panthers, the Heat, the Dolphins, and then

I don't know, whatever other team there is in Florida. I wanna like just I wanna be so like in embodied in Florida. Like I want us to be the gold and silver company of Florida and then take over the entire US.

Borzou (16:27)
Well and you were saying that like one of the upsides is you get a lot of

Trust from that, right? Like credibility.

Allen A. (16:32)
That's the biggest thing in our in in in any financial services industry, right? Like you gotta think you're you're competing with Chase Bank, Wells Fargo, I could go down the list, right? all these you these are all names everyone's heard before. and nobody wants to give their money, let alone their life savings, to a company that has no credibility whatsoever. So getting the cosign from someone like the Marlins, you know, we're on the MLB's website.

It it does lower people's guard substantially.

Amanda (16:57)
Well also it

doesn't have a vetting process, right? So they have to in order for you to even be able to be in the position of a partner with them or sponsor with them, you have to go through some, you know, due diligence.

Allen A. (17:08)
Exactly.

I mean, especially what happened after the whole FTX thing. I mean, w yeah, it's you know, companies aren't going to take on these sponsorship deals lately lately anymore. because I mean the the heat arena, right? The the the

Borzou (17:22)
Yeah.

Allen A. (17:22)
that that was that was FTX arena and then like that whole debacle went down and you know what I mean, every company ever since then has like, you know, their due diligence is, you know, they're they're ex inspecting you with microscope at this point.

Borzou (17:35)
man, I forgot about all the sport rela like I didn't forget about the entire thing, but I forgot about all

Amanda (17:40)
Yeah.

Borzou (17:41)
the sport related like drama that fell out of that.

Allen A. (17:44)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's it's crazy. I mean, there is like I I don't know what athletes exactly, but there is even like pro athletes that were like endorsing endorsing FTX that Tom Brady, right? That's what that's what was on my mind. Yeah.

Borzou (17:52)
dude, Tom Brady was wrong. Yeah, Tom Brady got

like 60 million. So like something insane.

Allen A. (17:58)
Crazy. That's a lot of money.

Borzou (18:00)
I forget the exact number, but it was it was nuts.

Allen A. (18:02)
Yeah. Yeah.

Borzou (18:03)
right, so you you were saying earlier, get good at sales first, right? And I assume

Allen A. (18:07)
Get good at sales first, yeah.

Borzou (18:08)
I assume you're really good at sales.

Allen A. (18:10)
I'm I'm not I'm not like the world's greatest salesperson. I'm not Jordan Belfort by any means necessary. no, no, no, no,

Borzou (18:15)
Yeah. Well that didn't work out great for him.

Allen A. (18:18)
but you know, in the beginning, when there is no marketing budget, sales has to do all the heavy lifting until there is marketing budget. So yeah, if you're gonna get good at anything in the beginning, try to get good at sales. sales will give you the capital to then get good at marketing. That's what happened to me. Like, you know.

You can't really get super good at least paid, in my opinion, at paid marketing without having budget for it. You know, you have to have some sort of budget to test and break things and fix things, that kind of thing.

Borzou (18:45)
What's the, because this is this is something, this is an inflection point I know a lot of founders get stuck on, right? So like you get good at sales, you get enough, a little bit of money coming in, leads coming in, right? What does the process look like for you guys from flipping to both automating the leads, but then also getting the engine off your plate?

Allen A. (19:02)
man, that was like one of the biggest like the hardest things I had to go through.

Borzou (19:06)
That that in my

in my experience, largely from watching people go through it, is the hardest, but it's also the flip where like all of a sudden you have time to do whatever you want and and kind of wanting

Allen A. (19:16)
Yeah.

Borzou (19:17)
to make stuff happen.

Allen A. (19:17)
Yeah, that's that's kind now finally after you know where I'm at now, I'm I'm at that point. But in the beginning I remember that it was like our our first big spend, like I think it was like ten or fifteen thousand dollars that we were like, Okay, we're gonna go, we're gonna buy some leads with with this money. and I didn't have like the lead the leads weren't flowing into the CRM properly. So like as I'm getting this live data flow into our CRM

Like our salespeople, like all three of them, they're like, Where where are the leads? Like they're not popping in, blah, blah, blah. So we're like burning all this money on marketing and no one no prospects are getting called at all. So that was like a big fifteen thousand dollar lesson that I learned right there. like I don't think I think some leads like didn't get hit for like a week or two after, like they didn't even get called.

Amanda (20:01)
And I mean that's actually a scenario where the marketing comes first and you have the marketing working and then the sales the sales is actually a fault. Yeah. Yeah.

Allen A. (20:07)
Yeah. Yeah, you're you're right. Yeah, no,

I mean it was it was the s the sales was at fault and also I was at fault because I I didn't I didn't like connect like unbounds to my CRM properly. We use unbounds for our landing pages and unbound stuff, so I guess the fields were off or whatever, so like it wasn't like sending over the phone number. So it was a whole mess. But it's tuition.

You

know, I call all that like, you know, you you pay to learn, you just gotta you know what I mean? It's an ex Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Amanda (20:35)
As long as you learn from the mistake, you know, not do it again. So

Borzou (20:40)
I'm gonna start using that actually to things.

Allen A. (20:44)
Yeah,

yeah. It's I look at everything as tuition, right? I've spent maybe a hundred grand on three different CRM implementations. Tuition. It's tuition. Now hey, now you know what? Put me into any gold company, into any financial services company, really, and I'll tell you what's the best tech stack to run if you want to get like speed to lead, that kind of thing.

Amanda (21:02)
would you mind sharing a little bit about that? Because I'm you know, I've I've worked with a lot of CRMs in my lifetime and I'm curious as to what you landed on and also what other softwares you're

Allen A. (21:12)
Yeah.

Yeah. so right. Okay, so I mean we started with a CRM called Set Shape. It was for the mortgage it's it's

Amanda (21:20)
No, I thought it.

Allen A. (21:22)
a really it's for like the mortgage and solar industry and I tried breaking it so it could work for our industry. I threw that away really quick. Then we landed on HubSpot. HubSpot used that with Kixie for a while. Kixie ended up breaking like so much. and it just wasn't

Like

it it wasn't good for us. So after like six months of Kixie, I moved to Five9 and HubSpot. Five9 and HubSpot, so to my knowledge, I was told that there was a a native integration between Five9 and HubSpot. Come to find out that Five9 and HubSpot is not a native integration whatsoever. They're transferring everything through API call and webhook.

Yeah, it's it it was it's horrible. We were we're actually still on that tech stack. I've I have Salesforce now being built out with yeah, yeah. Now with now but I've been working on this Salesforce build for the last six months and we're using Salesforce and a dialer called call tracking metrics, ctm.com. and I've I've tested like I've I've tested it and used it now for the last two months, just making sure everything works. And having

kinda HubSpot as like our marketing hub, talking to Salesforce and CTM as a dialer is like bulletproof.

Borzou (22:29)
Are you gonna keep HubSpot as you have sales force?

Allen A. (22:32)
Yeah, we'll probably use it as like a middleware just because all of our we have like ten different marketing channels, like all flowing into HubSpot right now. and then we'll probably just push all the data from HubSpot directly into Salesforce. And it's a bi directional sync, so whatever gets updated on Salesforce will auto update onto HubSpot. So it's it's pretty easy.

I have I pay for the license till the end of the year, so why not? Yeah.

Borzou (22:54)
Well it's well until the end of the year is one thing, right? But like

I know a lot of people that have done their transition and don't I don't think there's any question Salesforce is is the best, right? But it's it's the is the juice worth the squeeze. You know what I mean? Because

Allen A. (23:06)
Yeah, it's it's a

lot. I mean it's an enterprise solution, like and it's that for a reason. but be believe it or not, Salesforce my Salesforce bill is cheaper than my Hub Spot bill.

Borzou (23:14)
I am actually shocked to hear that.

Amanda (23:15)
Yeah, did did you have to do a custom build out for Salesforce or are you just are you just using the enterprise as the way it is?

Allen A. (23:22)
Yeah,

no, I this is a this is this is more of my tuition that I paid. so so so I I did do a custom build out. Now I I I hired one team initially. here, let me this is a good story actually. This is like for any young entrepreneurs watching this, don't do what I did. so I got my Salesforce licenses. First thing I did that was wrong was I bought all twenty five licenses at once before the Salesforce implementation was complete. So now I've I've been on the hook for

like 18 grand a quarter for the last six months without anyone using Salesforce. So that's let's call that 35 grand down the drain. All right. First thing and then what I did was I went to my Salesforce rep and I said I need an implementation team to help me implement Salesforce. Connected me with two people, two different companies. The first company I didn't go with, the second company I was going to sign with. And then one of their reps calls me on the side.

Said he's worked with XYZ Gold Company in the past. This is his specialty. He's been doing this for God knows how long. He wants me to hire him to do the job for us for cheaper. so I vetted him. like he's I mean his knowledge seemed like he knew what he was talking about, hired him. 35 grand, another thirty-five grand, down the drain. Boom. Yeah, he did not get the job done. He ended up

outsourcing

Amanda (24:35)
Did it take what was the also what was the time investment there too? Cause there's also that, right?

Allen A. (24:40)
Yeah,

so we started in September with we started in September no, yeah, October or September twenty twenty five. And then like by the time like January rolled around, February, I was like, dude, like you all you did was at at the time we were gonna run five nine with Salesforce, I was like, all you did was connect five nine to Salesforce in a few months, like are you kidding me? Like and then I fired him and then now the new team I have finally

is like we're on like the last like 10%. We're we're we're ready to launch hopefully by July first. but

Borzou (25:10)
Yeah.

Allen A. (25:10)
yeah, a a lot of learning.

Borzou (25:12)
This is not exactly the same, but it it took me a while to really appreciate and understand the value of project management. both both internally for our stuff, but also for that kind of project. I really thought like, psych just do your job. You know what I mean? Like I felt like it was, a wasted effort, but you need someone like on it.

Allen A. (25:30)
Yeah, for sure. And not bec because of that, but in general, like though because I'm not the gr the greatest project manager, especially with remote people. Like with

Borzou (25:37)
Mm. Sang.

Allen A. (25:41)
remote people, I like n we've pretty much ended the remote program at the company because yeah, yeah. We're we just got a like a a six thirty five hundred square foot office in the financial district in Brickle. So we're growing, we have room to grow.

or room to put people in office. So and like my ADHD like like is not gonna be good at managing projects like with the remote people. So now with everyone in office, like it's made my life a whole lot easier. You know what I mean? Just going from office to office, talking to people, say, okay, this is done, great, boom, next.

Amanda (26:10)
We just on our side have put somebody in charge of the project management of every project that we have internally like that. So we always have a project manager on if we're doing an implementation or a build out like that, then we've got a project manager internally also on that. which has been a lot better.

Allen A. (26:24)
Yeah. Yeah, we we we

we we had we had we we had someone actually working on the project management side here. but just wasn't wasn't the best fit.

Amanda (26:34)
Yeah.

Well hey, if you can do the, you know, in office thing, that's great

Borzou (26:39)
Yeah, I w our team is too remote at the moment, but if I could

Allen A. (26:42)
I I noticed for

most for most marketing, I feel like for most you guys are mainly a marketing agency, right? Yeah. I just just

Borzou (26:48)
Correct.

Allen A. (26:50)
making sure like I I don't like misclassify

Amanda (26:52)
Hmm.

Allen A. (26:53)
you guys or something. yeah, I think for for your guys' industry it's like pretty normal, right? Compared to for me the the the the main reasons I I brought Ivan back to the office was it's we're a sales floor, right? So like having to manage a sales floor remotely when you're not in the room listening to like all the guys' phone calls is like

It's it's it's really hard. We ch we did it remote for the first year and like the minute we brought everything back into office that with the Marlins thing our revenue like exploded. Yeah. Yeah.

Borzou (27:18)
All

right, let's let's hear, let's do a little bit on founder and leadership kind of lessons and journey. 'cause

Allen A. (27:23)
Yeah.

Borzou (27:24)
I do I always think that's the gold, right? and I don't know if you've done this yet, but I've joined like a bunch of different like entrepreneur groups to like get this kind of feedback

Allen A. (27:30)
Yeah, for sure. I have.

Borzou (27:32)
one on one. but what did you believe early on that you no longer believe?

Allen A. (27:35)
this is a good one.

Borzou (27:36)
Yeah.

Allen A. (27:37)
caring, this is gonna sound messed up, but like like it's

Amanda (27:40)
Love it. Let's go.

Allen A. (27:41)
o it's it's okay to hurt people's feelings. Like in the beginning I was like I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, like blah blah blah. But then I realize that like I care about their feelings more than my bottom line, like that something's not adding up. So I not that I'm rude by any means. I'm not rude to anyone, but like if someone's messing up and they keep on making the same mistake over and over and over, like I'm at that point like

you're you're affecting me and my family and you know, not just my family, but twenty five other families that, you know, that work here. So like let's, you know, let's be real with them.

Amanda (28:12)
You're actually doing them more favors by being up front with them than by trying to just spare their feelings and not being upfront with them. Yeah.

Borzou (28:20)
I'll give you

Allen A. (28:19)
A hundred percent.

Borzou (28:21)
two other frames on that. one, someone told me one time that like some that person knows it's not working out, right? Like that that person doesn't think they're doing a great job and like everyone's ha like they can feel it. They know you're not doing them any favors by like in the can down the road.

Allen A. (28:32)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Borzou (28:35)
and then two, like if they do want to get better, they need the feedback.

Amanda (28:37)
We have had delusional people though, where we're like, Yeah, where

Borzou (28:40)
It's true. Sometimes.

Amanda (28:42)
we've had these conversations. Yeah. And and they're like, What do you mean? I'm doing an amazing job. And we we were like, Well, we just told you all of the very concrete reasons you are not doing an amazing job. So it's very weird that you see it that way. but yeah, so that's that was also interesting.

Allen A. (28:59)
Yeah.

No, I've I have had

it where we we like you know, we did someone a service. We actually we c we caught a guy that wasn't doing anything for two months and he's actually went to a different company. He's my neighbor now. I see him all the time. And he's like, Yeah, dude, like ever since I left Cedar, you guys taught me so much. I'm doing mortgages now and I'm crushing it, I'm making twenty five grand a month, I'm doing mortgages. I'm like, Great, like that's amazing. I'm so happy for you. Like this is amazing news. So

Borzou (29:23)
Yeah.

Allen A. (29:23)
sometimes it is as you do you're you're really doing someone a service by like

Letting them know like, hey, it's just not working.

Borzou (29:28)
Yeah, it's like it for anyone.

Allen A. (29:29)
Yeah.

Borzou (29:30)
and then I know these things are related, but what do you think was harder? Growing the client base or growing the team?

Allen A. (29:35)
the the team for sure. The team. like the sales floor in general is a really fragile environment. One one bad apple can make the whole bunch go bad. So and we've had bad apples, we've had negative energy. Like I'm I'm a really big like I I think your attitude is is everything in life. Like people that have a consistently positive attitude, even if they're going through the hardest time, like we'll figure out a made a way to make it happen. You know what I mean?

And we've had those negative people on the floor and it's like literally a dark cloud of energy that just is in the office. And it's so funny. Every time we get rid of that dark energy, our company just doubles its revenue or like 1.5 X of its revenue.

Borzou (30:10)
Ha ha ha.

Allen A. (30:11)
It's insane. It really is crazy. But yeah, growing the team for sure. Like because you don't wanna like in the beginning, we were desperate for people. So we weren't particular in who we brought into the company. Right. Now we let's it's a privilege to work here at Cedar. Like people people don't quit.

like anymore, now that we're like established. because we're we're we treat everyone really cool. Everyone makes money here, like for the most part. you know, people that aren't like the the the new guys are still like getting their footing. But yeah, it's like building the team and building a good culture has been the hardest part.

Borzou (30:39)
Any feedback or advice on that and how you did it? Cause I do feel like that is it's harder in the remote world, right? and so so we try really hard too. And we try to get p as many of us together once a quarter as we can, which is like usually

Allen A. (30:51)
Yeah.

Borzou (30:51)
many of us. but any advice in that lane for founders if you feel like you've cracked that code?

Allen A. (30:55)
Yeah,

I mean f so like I I obviously everything comes from the top down, right? So like everyone looks at leadership for company culture and and whatnot. Now like I'm very much so like like I'm not I I I don't think I'm all high and mighty and cool and superior to everyone, right? I really do give everyone like the even level playing field of respect. and we also like

or or an office of that likes to have fun. Like we have like five Nerf guns, a basketball court, and you know what I mean, we're getting a pool table for our new office. So I don't know. Like just being cool, friendly, nice, respectful, playful. Like granted we do have like the majority of people in this kind of sales are all guys in general. so there is like that locker room esque vibe, you know what I mean?

Which is fun, it's camaraderie, right? One guy gets a sale, high fives, you know, five other guys and everyone's excited for him. we

Amanda (31:45)
Do you have a bell?

Allen A. (31:47)
we we do have a bell. Yeah. Yeah,

Amanda (31:48)
Aí s

Allen A. (31:50)
we do have a bell. You can't you can't not have the bell. Or a gonk. Yeah.

Amanda (31:52)
I agree. Yeah.

Borzou (31:55)
I guess it doesn't work if you're remote, right?

Amanda (31:57)
we're not

all yeah, I mean we would. We would have one. mean maybe we could do a virtual bell. We we could

Allen A. (32:02)
That's we

we had that we actually had that w as soon as a deal hit the deal close deal one or closed one status in Hobspot, there would be a slack it was called the Slack gong. Yeah, yeah.

Amanda (32:12)
It's not the same, but it's something I mean, yeah.

Allen A. (32:13)
No, it's not the same. It's still it's

still something. It's still the team team celebrates, yeah.

Amanda (32:17)
Do you guys have core values?

Allen A. (32:18)
in terms

of in terms of like the our our our training staff, like our our our I'm sorry, not training like like our our staff or like for like essentially for our clientele. Because we do like our what we do tell our clients is our company is based off honesty, transparency and integrity, which is which is true. Like I've worked at shops where they won't they don't even disclose to the clients like

what they're getting and why they're getting. They're just saying you're getting XYZ. That's it. Right. for us, where we take through like an education process, we figure out their goals, wants, needs, timelines, and then explain to them what product they're getting and why they're getting it.

Amanda (32:54)
Yeah, I mean you're I I I I would like Borzou to explain the core values thing. I mean, it's really it's part of your brand and it's kind of his thing. So

Borzou (33:02)
Yeah. When When we

And you know, in in the same way that it like ours in particular repel certain people, right? It attracts the right people. And that's true both of clients and employees. You know, I

Allen A. (33:36)
Yeah.

Borzou (33:36)
I was interviewing somebody one time, and and I cuss on purpose in interviews now, like you're just not gonna be able to work here if that's a problem for you.

Allen A. (33:42)
Yeah, for sure.

Borzou (33:43)
And

and she like she gave me a little like this was back when we were in person too. She gave me like wince a little bit. And I was like, and someone a friend referred her too. Like I had to like call him and yell at him after. And I was like, I like, are you not o okay with cussing? Like, doesn't so and so cuss in the office? And she's like, not anymore. She goes, We got a swear jar and this and that, that and in my mind I'm like, this interview's fucking over. Right.

Amanda (34:03)
No sure.

Allen A. (34:03)
Ha ha ha.

Borzou (34:04)
But we do it for we do it for our staff too. That's our employee review. We got five points you can earn, right? Five is perfect, negative five, you're done. and and it's only one, like you either give a fuck, you're neutral, or you don't give a fuck. It's like one, zero, or negative one. So that's the whole range, negative five to five.

Allen A. (34:19)
Yeah.

Borzou (34:20)
we do it for clients too. Like we we had a client and it was a it was a high ticket. It was a lot of money.

Amanda (34:25)
it was yeah, it was a well it was a big climate but we were not

Allen A. (34:28)
Yeah.

Amanda (34:29)
aligned. So

Borzou (34:30)
Yeah, she

Allen A. (34:31)
Yeah.

Borzou (34:31)
just didn't she just didn't treat our team well and we had to let her go. And yeah.

Allen A. (34:35)
Cli the client wasn't treating you guys well.

Borzou (34:37)
And I wasn't even on the account, right? So I'm I'm hearing about it like secondhand. but

Allen A. (34:42)
Yeah, yeah.

Borzou (34:43)
I but I really trust the people

Amanda (34:45)
Well, there was also a lot of written documentation that we could review.

Borzou (34:49)
yeah, no, it wasn't it wasn't yeah. But it's it it

it was but they were just like we just don't want to keep working on it.

Allen A. (34:55)
Just nightmare nightmare

to work with. Yeah, we've had our fair share of those too. Yeah. I mean it's gonna happen in any industry.

Borzou (34:59)
Yeah. Well, and especially when you're

like early on and hungry, right? Like you'll take anything, you know? And and

Allen A. (35:04)
You'll take anything, yeah, you need to.

Borzou (35:05)
one of my mentors was like, you know who it was, Amanda? The first person who schooled me on using this Marissa Levin. Yeah, she

Amanda (35:10)
No. no way I did it.

Borzou (35:13)
was like, You should use this on your vendors too. It's not just for or vendors and clients too, it's not just for employees.

And I was like, I was like, I'm not gonna take money from someone because they're a bad core values fit. And she goes, she goes, go back and look at every client you've lost money on. She goes, I guarantee you they were a bad core values fit. And you could have figured it out beforehand. And I went back and it wasn't like 100%, but it was pretty close.

Amanda (35:34)
Yeah. Yeah.

Allen A. (35:35)
Wow.

Borzou (35:35)
Yeah. And so we we we take it pretty seriously. we like start most of our like quarterlies with it. We like go over them, we get like awards based on that. Like that's it's it's everything

Allen A. (35:44)
wow.

Borzou (35:44)
comes back to that.

Allen A. (35:45)
Yeah.

Borzou (35:45)
And I

I tell the team too, I didn't mean to do an answer this long. that it's like it's like a decision-making matrix, right? If you can't get a hold of me and you're like, hey, I was giving a fuck, I was hustling and I was making cool shit, I won't get mad. Like maybe I'll tell you it was the wrong choice and like you can't do it again. But if you

Allen A. (36:00)
Yeah.

Borzou (36:00)
tell me you went through this like thought process that like you thought you're doing the best for like the client,

Amanda (36:05)
The client, you're

Borzou (36:06)
the company, whatever, then I I won't give you shit about it.

And so far I think it's mostly been working.

Allen A. (36:10)
Yeah. That's great.

Borzou (36:11)
Yeah. all right. So

I I have typically a couple closing questions, but we actually hit most of them. I'll give you this one

what are you still trying to get better at at this stage in the company?

Allen A. (36:22)
Everybody wants someone they hire to do the job as good as they could do it. So as a founder, you have to just accept that you're gonna pay someone a 100K a year to do the job seventy five percent as good as you can do it. And you just have to accept it. Like you can't fight it and always get angry that they're not getting it done the exact way you would have done it. But that's where you gotta be patient and just talk to them and keep on continuously training and teaching.

You know what I mean? And that's just like an internal battle that I have to fight with every day. And I'm sure maybe you guys have dealt with that too.

Amanda (36:54)
Well, I think low expectations are the key to happiness. So I think that's amazing. But I do

Borzou (36:59)
That's like the whole reason this relationship works.

Amanda (37:02)
I do think you

can find team members that will do things better than you can. And that is lovely. But yeah.

Allen A. (37:10)
Yes, for for sure.

Yeah. Like for example, like my marketing guy like that I have, Charlie, he he's really good at doing what he does for us. Like he's our paid media and affiliate manager. Like he's he's very much so like so good at it, right? But he's not the greatest when it comes to maybe like CRM stuff or integration. Very o overcomplicates it. And that's where I'm like, All right, spent four hours doing it, Charlie, could have done it in an hour. Like next time just let me know. Let me know and I would have helped you or whatever.

yeah.

Borzou (37:37)
I think that's tough. I think

It's it's funny 'cause on the one hand you want like a culture of people like stepping up and like volunteering for everything. On the other hand, you don't want them doing something they're not good at. Like we've we've we've hit that problem as well. But I'm sure

Allen A. (37:49)
Yeah.

Borzou (37:49)
we can figure it out. It's like I love the love the energy, but

Allen A. (37:52)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm a big I'm

a big believer in ask for help. Like if there is something that you can't do or you don't know how to do rather than breaking it, like just ask for help. not a big deal.

Amanda (38:01)
Yeah.

Allen A. (38:02)
To get help.

Amanda (38:03)
Right. That is a good thing to do, is ask for help.

Allen A. (38:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Borzou (38:06)
Well guys, I think this was awesome. I can rant on on prenatal nightmares all day. but I will split it out for the next podcast. Alan, thanks for joining us. Guys, we're gonna have links

Allen A. (38:15)
Thank you.

Borzou (38:16)
here here to find him everywhere. and we'll catch you guys next time.