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Rewrite your practice growth playbook.
Hosted by Dan dal Degan—known to many as Triple D—this bi-monthly podcast pulls back the curtain on what it takes to thrive as a corporate retirement plan advisor in an increasingly tech-centric business world.
As a former powerhouse sales leader at Salesforce and Oracle, now sitting on the board of Great Gray Trust’s holding company, Dan’s sales experience and curiosity provoke compelling conversations with top advisors.
Each episode of ‘Gray to Great’ focuses on the crucial parts of the business that often get overlooked: prospecting, referral business, challenger selling, client service, tech adoption, and cutting-edge marketing tactics.
This is where the playbook is rewritten, offering listeners sharp, actionable insights that go beyond investing to fuel lasting growth and success.
Tune in to learn the strategies that separate the leaders from the pack—because in sales, there are no gray areas.
Dan Dal Degan (00:00)
Welcome to Gray to Great, the podcast where we will pull back the curtain on what it truly takes to thrive as a corporate retirement plan advisor in today's tech-powered business world. I'm Dan Dal Degan but all my friends call me Triple D. As a former sales leader and CEO and now board member of Great Gray Group I know that success in this field goes beyond the numbers. In each episode, I'm going to team up with one of your peer.
retirement plan advisors to bring you the strategies that separate the best from the rest. From prospecting and referral business to challenger selling and tech adoption, we're diving deep into the parts of the business that too many of us overlook. Whether you're here to sharpen your skills or if you're looking for the next big idea, this is where the playbook gets rewritten. So get ready for sharp, actionable insights that'll take your practice to the next level. Because in sales, there's no gray area.
Dan Dal Degan (00:51)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Great to Great. I'm Dan DelDegan, and we are joined today by our guest, Doug Bermudez, who is a managing director with Strategic Retirement Partners in Southern California. Welcome, Doug.
Douglas Bermudez (01:06)
Thanks Dan, thanks for having me. Full disclosure, I'm having some dental work then, so I have a retainer in my mouth. So if I sound like I'm 13, I don't mean to. I'll try to enunciate every time we speak.
Dan Dal Degan (01:07)
Great to have you.
I it. It'll slow us down a little bit, right? I love it. All right.
Douglas Bermudez (01:23)
Yeah, absolutely, because I have to make sure
that my words get out clearly.
Dan Dal Degan (01:27)
What I thought you were going to
say is the drugs are still taking effect from the drugs, which should also be kind of trippy. Why not? I love it. So let's, let's start on the origin story, Doug. I'd love in these conversations, think our viewers really get a lot of value out of hearing what's been your professional journey. What brought you to the world of retirement planning, advising, that brought you to where you are now.
Douglas Bermudez (01:30)
Yeah, yeah.
The real answer is I needed a job to pay back my student loans. That's the real answer. ⁓ Necessity. I think all of us have that sometimes in our life, But yeah, part of it was the fact that I'm originally from Nicaragua. I was born there and I immigrated to the United States back in 1980. I was roughly eight years old. And obviously being bilingual was an asset.
Dan Dal Degan (01:55)
I love it. Necessity.
Douglas Bermudez (02:16)
especially in the 90s when you're talking about being able to speak both languages. So out of that necessity came opportunity. And I was hired by Great West Life and Annuity to go do some employee education because I was bilingual. So my first job out of college, I was a service rep. And I took that job because I needed that job and I started that career.
professional goal was to get back to school and become an immigration attorney, which gosh, what a interesting time we're having, right? Think about that. But nevertheless, that's what I wanted to do. So that's where I started my career. I was a service rep for a few years and then out of opportunity and necessity because we had a rep.
Dan Dal Degan (02:47)
Yeah.
Douglas Bermudez (03:00)
a sales rep leave in a territory where I supported him, I got an opportunity to do both. And I put myself in the position to say if I didn't do them well, I would become the best service rep they ever had. But I took that opportunity and I guess the rest is history.
Dan Dal Degan (03:18)
That's great. And I would imagine your bilingual skills still come in handy today as you look at the way you engage with your base of plan participants as well as sponsors.
Douglas Bermudez (03:28)
Yeah, absolutely. You know, very, very, very opportunistic in that way because a lot of times we win with win business because we have a bilingual team that can really educate, communicate and add value to what the employer is trying to do, which is really highlight the benefits that they offer their employee population and try to make good corporate citizens of that employee population. So absolutely.
I use my bilingual skills and I have for my entire career. And actually it's one of the things I extremely enjoy in this industry is that I get to go out and talk to people and make that difference and make them understand. know, again, being an immigrant kid, you know, I grew up in a home where my parents' English was good, but it wasn't great, right? They came as adults. And so that was always a challenge for them to understand.
and especially about money and when we were being talked about money. And so to be able to kind of, you know, be able to articulate that, simplify that, understand their, you know, cultural biases that they may have about money, about government, about savings accounts, about banks, all the above are things that are really helpful. And I've also been very blessed to have an incredible partner, my wife.
whose parents are very, very hardworking and they had some reservations as well. And then just always being able to kind of run by things by them as I was putting things together to help educate people and simplify this idea. I would always run it by them and say, hey, what do you think? How do you understand what I'm trying to articulate? And is this going to offend somebody? Not or.
or ultimately making sure that what I was trying to do, the education part and the empowerment part and being seen and heard were all the things that I was actually accomplishing.
Dan Dal Degan (05:32)
That's great. It sounds like that gives you a laboratory to test the messaging and the positioning of these concepts and see how that's going to play out. I love that. And to that extent, Doug, how do you, in your position, perhaps for all plan advisors, or really anybody in the financial advice industry, but in particular for retirement plan advisors, serving the audience that you do and with your bilingual skills.
Have you had experience with how to package up what can be for everybody, regardless of what language they speak, some very complex and arcane concepts, if you don't come from this world, right? And we throw around a lot of acronyms and lot of phrases that we sometimes assume the audience is getting in it might be right over their head. And it is for me, oftentimes. So how do you bridge that gap in a way that makes these concepts and the options in front of the plan participant more approachable and less intimidating?
Douglas Bermudez (06:23)
Yeah, I always try to always include the people that serve them, you know, the employer, their HR department, the people that are in the trenches with that employee population day to day. So I ask a lot of questions, maybe too many questions sometimes. But I asked a lot of questions. I want to get to know what their employees are like, what they feel about the employer, what are the things that come up all the time.
so that I can frame the right conversation with the folks in the room. For standards, a lot of our clients, because of my bilingual skills, happen to be in the manufacturing space. We also have a number of clients in the not-for-profit space. And then we have a number of clients in the health space. And those folks always don't have a lot of time to talk to you because they're taking care of people or animals.
And, you know, that requires their attention. So I try to be, as my business partner always says, be brief, be brilliant, be gone. And, you know, that's a skill set that I've had to really, really work on over the years because I can be pretty verbose as people may know that about me, that know me. So I try to really kind of just, you know, follow the keep it simple.
the kiss rule. And I had a great comment from my little brother who's in the tech industry. He says, make sure that every time you give somebody instructions, it's as easy as putting together a Fisher Price toy. So Fisher Price it, right? Make it very easy for people to understand it. ⁓ So I really tried to live those things every day and make sure that I do that. But I think getting engagement from the employer
Dan Dal Degan (07:50)
Fisher.
Yes.
Douglas Bermudez (08:02)
population, the employers themselves that are serving these people, that's, think, your first start. And then obviously working with the people around them, the record keepers, the TPAs, how do we make things really easy, really digestible, and really simple?
Dan Dal Degan (08:17)
Yes, love it. And the Fisher Price litmus test is a great one. Although I do seem to remember a few Christmas Eves, I was up late putting that stuff together. I wanted it to be even easier.
Douglas Bermudez (08:25)
Yes, 100%. I've
had doll houses there that I put together in my year that definitely were not Fisher-Prized.
Dan Dal Degan (08:31)
Yeah.
Indeed.
So let's explore that a little bit further. I love that you laid out that framework within which you're working with the plan sponsors as well as the plan participants and finding the right optionality to bring to them, but also the messaging for making that feel approachable. But also the concept you described, Doug, of brevity, which is in many ways a lost art is interestingly
smashing against another trend, is human beings have usually shorter attention spans these days, it seems, for a lot of reasons, right? So how do you package your messaging in a way that drives both plan sponsors and participants to conclusions or to destinations you think are the right ones for them, given time sensitivity, being respectful of, you know, that they've got day jobs, they've got to get back to running their businesses. How do you pull that off?
Douglas Bermudez (09:25)
Well, I think, you know, technology has been a huge factor in trying and doing all of that. Certainly, you know, the big term today is AI, artificial intelligence. So, you know, for me, it's working towards those mediums. And we here at SRP are very lucky that we have a very, you know, forward thinking leadership team. The technology has been a place where we've spent our resources, both human
capital as well as financial capital to try to improve things for everybody. for me, it's just getting the people in different ways, right? I find short videos, you know, very, very effective. You know, if someone can get a video about their program and how it works in less than five minutes, I think people take a lot away from that. At the end, obviously providing all the resources of
how to, right, how to set up your account, how to access your account, how to get in touch with the record keeper that happens to handle your plan, how to get ahold of us. So again, making all those things simple in forms of like QR codes, for example, that'll send you right to a link where then someone can see where my live calendar and say, here's a date and time that I can talk to Doug and he's available. So I try.
to really use the technology that's out there to really try to help those things out. I am a little old fashioned, know, I will say it took me a few years to stop using my Franklin Covey, you know, planner. But that was something that, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was it was something that was taught to me 30 years ago when I started my career at Great Westlife and Annuity. We actually took a
Dan Dal Degan (10:52)
experience is it's searching is right yes
Douglas Bermudez (11:03)
Franklin Covey class and had to get certified to use it so that we were efficient with our time. 100%. And so transforming that over to technology, moving away from the paper, the volumes of planners I had in my office to going virtual, I mean, that was a big challenge as well. So being able to really embrace the technology and then also being
Dan Dal Degan (11:06)
Yes.
I remember this having great habits, right?
Douglas Bermudez (11:28)
you know, open to asking for help. You know, and then building teams when you know around us that can help those things out and digest those things very quickly. One of our plan consultants is barely 30 years old. So, you know, he's our guy on the team, right? When it's a new technology, we're like, it's your job to go learn it, know it, and then you can teach the rest of us how to use it.
so that we can fish for ourselves. So those are things I think are really important. Building competencies or complementing competencies in your team structure, I think also helped that very much because then everybody has their lane and that's the lane they're in that creates efficiencies and allows people to do what they enjoy first and foremost, because no one wants to do stuff that they don't like to do.
And again, also to have a cohesive team. And ultimately, I think it also empowers that individual on your team. I it's important to make them feel like, hey, they matter on this team. You're important. And your job and what you do has an impact, not just you, us, but eventually our clients that matter the most. So I think those are important things to build out.
Dan Dal Degan (12:43)
Absolutely.
Yeah, and that helps you get the best effort out of everyone when you understand the connection between your daily activities and the outcomes that you're seeking on behalf of your plan participants. ⁓
Douglas Bermudez (12:52)
Yeah, we tried to
have everybody kind of join a meeting, even if it's their support person, you know, so they can see, you know, the so what of what we're doing. I say that a lot on our team. So what, what does that mean? So I try to make sure that they see that their work has an impact on how we deliver stuff to folks.
Dan Dal Degan (13:06)
rep.
And isn't that simple question so powerful? So what? It forces you down the logical line of drawing to an impact that people care about, to an outcome that we're seeking. That's great.
Douglas Bermudez (13:18)
Mm-hmm.
100%.
And that's not my tagline, by the way, another one that I stole along the way. But it made a lot of sense. I'll give this some love to an old business partner, Dennis Raney, who's now retired. So good for him. But yeah, he, you know, he would say that all the time and just it sunk into me that, yeah, that's right. Why are we doing this? Why are we talking about this? What's the, what are we trying to accomplish so that we can get to the right answer?
Dan Dal Degan (13:49)
All the best principles are borrowed and learned and taught, right? Pass them down. So let's explore that a little bit more deeply. We touched a bit Doug on the increasing variety of optionality in front of plan participants and plan sponsors.
which could come across as very complex. And our job in many cases is to simplify that and demystify it. When we talk about traditional mutual funds and the emergence of CITs and to confuse the audience sometimes even more if they're not from this world, the notion of what 403(b access means for CITs as an example. I'd love to hear your point of view on those things and how you package those concepts up for your constituents.
in a way that it makes sense to them.
Douglas Bermudez (14:32)
Yeah, again, trying to be, you know, be brief, be brilliant, be gone concept, right, or Fisher price it. I talk about, you know, a retail mutual fund versus an institutional investment. And that's exactly what a CIT is. It's an institutional investment that is typically only allowed to institutions. And because you're an institution, you get to have access to this, which creates lower costs, more efficiency, and ultimately, hopefully,
better returns and better outcomes for your employee population. And again, I didn't shut up and let people react to that and ask questions. So I really do try to keep it simple. Then if they asked a lot more questions, we get into it, right? I think a lot of people miss on the collective investment trust, the fact that CITs use those institutions serve as 338 investment manager for new sharees.
And typically when we're offering a CIT, you know, we're acting as a 338 as well. So emphasizing the fiduciary process and protection that a CIT has for a plan sponsor, think is also big. So don't necessarily talk about the cost factor being the only driver, but the fiduciary protection that it creates for yourself, your plan sponsor, and your participants because, you know, they're protected as well.
So again, always the so what, right? The value of putting that together. From a 403(b) perspective, it breaks my heart that we can't offer those products to first responders, teachers, people that work in our communities helping in service, sometimes the not so fortunate folks.
of those that have been hurt by others, physically or mentally. So that really is a passion of mine. It's certainly a passion of how we created our book of business. My business partner and I, Erin Hall, I'll shout out to her, are very passionate about that industry and helping those folks. So I'm hoping that the recent bill that was passed in the House,
that eventually the Senate hears it, takes the time to think about it, and eventually passes it so that we do have access to the collectives in that industry. I think some of the political rhetoric that's gone on is that it's going to take away revenue from the SEC. And frankly, I disagree with that.
Investments have been in the industry for many, many, many years. There isn't a new market for them. They're already existing. It's just access to that market. And again, that fiduciary protection that I alluded to earlier would also be bestowed upon those organizations. So for me, I think it's a no brainer. It's one of those things where I hope it's a when, not an if.
for that industry and I think it would have a huge impact to that industry to make things better. And I'm looking forward to that day that our legislators and our leaders say, yeah, it's time to let those folks have access to it. Side note, governmental plans have access to collectives. The United States Thrift Plan has access to collectives. So why not?
the people that also serve those communities as well. So it makes a lot of sense for me to have this. I don't see any negative at all. I think it's a positive. And again, we're trying to drive outcomes, right? To help people retire, retire with dignity that have served the communities that we live in. You know, there's a lot of folks. I know I was at the doctor's office yesterday across the street from our hospital.
And they were getting phone calls about, you know, they were almost at capacity because of what's going on right now. Lots of flu, I guess, running around. You know, that's, I'm sure I can imagine what that ER looked like, right? So why can't those folks have access to collectives? You know, they're keeping us healthy. So again, I think overall we're heading in the right direction. I think the House got it right. I'm hoping the Senate will, and then we'll get to a place where
we can help those, those orientations improve their programs.
Dan Dal Degan (18:56)
Indeed. And you're coming at this issue from a direct, relevant, hands-on line of sight. So appreciate your perspective on that. So let's wrap this conversation with my favorite question when we have our guests from the retirement plan advising world. And that is imagine we have a time machine and we can go back in time, Doug, to talk with a young Doug Bermudez starting your career in this business. What advice would you have for your younger self?
Douglas Bermudez (19:24)
Well, that's a loaded question. I feel that I've done things the right way in my career. I've taken advantage of the opportunities that have come my way. To your point about learning from others, right, and taking from others, I've always made sure that the mentors that I had around me were people that I would want to have my children around or my
or me around, right? You know, I think those are important things. So people with character has always been important to me. So, you know, I had a mentor always say to me, you know, if you do the right thing, you'll never have to look behind you. You'll be able to look ahead. And then eventually the money will come. And, you know, wasn't wrong. He's been right about that. I've been very blessed. So I think
If I were to go back 30 years and to myself, I'm sorry, I'm getting a little emotional because I think about this.
We are sent.
Dan Dal Degan (20:20)
That's beautiful. That's very sincere, Doug. Thank you for sharing that. You clearly took that question to heart, literally, and I appreciate that. So this is going to be a great place to leave. That's a very poignant moment. Doug, thank you for so sincerely sharing with authenticity your journey and your point of view on this business and how you serve your constituents. This has been a great conversation. We'd love to double down on this and revisit this sometime with you.
Douglas Bermudez (20:48)
100 % thank you very much and appreciate the time today and I love your background by the way. I would love to spend another 20 minutes talking about your background, but I know we gotta go. Sounds good alright, take care bye bye now.
Dan Dal Degan (20:58)
We'll reconnect and talk music. love it. Tune in
soon for another episode of Great to Great. Thanks everybody.
Dan Dal Degan (21:05)
Thanks for tuning in to Gray to Great. I hope you're walking away with a few new ideas, a few bold strategies, and a bit more fuel to take your business further than ever. If you found today's conversation valuable, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a colleague. The best way to stay sharp is to keep learning together. So I'll see you next time right here where we will cut through the noise to bring you what really matters. Until then, keep pushing forward because there's no gray area in achieving success.