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The Hidden Skill That Attracts COIs (and Big Cases)

The Hidden Skill That Attracts COIs (and Big Cases)

Andrew McKeown
November 29, 2025

I want to tell you a story about an advisor I recently recruited to PPI, because it captures something I think every serious advisor in Canada needs to grasp right now.

Not next year.

Not eventually.

Right now.

Because the discretionary asset-management window opening up for insurance advisors is going to change the entire industry and I’m hosting a call on December 15th to explain exactly what’s coming and how you can position your practice to grow massively from it.

If you want the link, just reply to this email and I’ll send it to you directly.

But let me start with the story.

“We Don’t Really Do Insurance”

This advisor and we’ll call him Brian, had built his career in a way most advisors secretly dream about.

Steady, consistent, wealthy families.

Not “good” clients.

I’m talking:

• second-generation wealth

• entrepreneurs who sold for eight figures

• legacy family businesses

• clients with cash-flow needs the size of the average advisor’s annual income

Brian had grown up with many of these families. He had proximity. He had history. He had trust.

And the depth of planning he did?

You know how most advisors say, “I do comprehensive planning” and hand clients a 12-page PDF?

Brian did something closer to a personal CFO / family-office model:

• line-by-line cash-flow analysis

• multi-entity tax planning

• intergenerational strategies

• detailed capital-allocation models

• investment policy frameworks

• deep oversight of all financial movement in the household

He knew these clients at a level that is honestly rare in our industry.

But insurance?

Almost nothing.

Not because he disliked it.

Not because he thought it was “inferior.”

He just… never had the structure, support, or questions to unlock it.

He was an asset-management guy who had spent 20 years staying in his lane.

Enter: the Right Questions

In our first conversation, I said something simple to him.

“Brian, you already know their entire financial architecture. You know their tax situation, their spending, their liquidity patterns, their freeze structures, their family dynamics. You have the raw material. You just haven’t been shown the insurance layer yet.”

He laughed but he knew instantly it was true.

Because this is something I see over and over:

When advisors don’t sell insurance, it’s rarely about ability.

It’s almost always about awareness.

No one has ever walked them through:

• how CDA creation works

• how retained-earnings tax exposure compounds

• why liquidity planning is non-negotiable for business families

• where insurance fits inside a freeze

• how to structure intergenerational capital transfers

• how to use corporate life insurance as a tax-minimization engine

Ten good questions later, it was like someone switched the lights on in a room he’d lived in for decades but never fully explored.

And Then It Happened

A few conversations.

A couple case reviews.

A whiteboard session or two.

And suddenly?

Business started flooding in.

Not small stuff.

Massive stuff.

Corporate permanent.

Estate-liquidity strategies.

Succession-planning strategies.

CDA-driven structures.

In just a matter of weeks, he submitted millions in premium, more than many advisors will submit in their entire careers.

Not because he changed who he was.

Not because he reinvented his value proposition.

Not because he became a “sales machine.”

But because:

• he already had deep trust

• he already had access to the right clients

• he already had the relationships

• he already had elite planning chops

• he simply needed the strategic lens to see what was right in front of him

And once he saw it?

He couldn’t unsee it.

But Here’s the REAL Lesson Advisors Need To Hear

Most advisors think they need to chase centers of influence.

• “I need to find a lawyer.”

• “I need an accountant partnership.”

• “I need a COI to give me high-end referrals.”

That’s the old model.

That’s the desperation model.

Brian didn’t chase COIs.

They came to him.

Because he had something most advisors never develop:

magnetism

gravity

That unspoken force where people want to pull you deeper into their world because they feel safer with you in it.

He didn’t use tactics.

He didn’t use manipulation.

He didn’t “network.”

He didn’t pretend to be someone he wasn’t.

He simply showed up with high-value presence, and people moved toward it.

Clients moved toward it.

COIs moved toward it.

Opportunities moved toward it.

This is what most advisors overlook:

You don’t need to chase COIs when you are the COI.

A Quick, Honest Analogy

This might sound a little crude, but it’s true:

A young man doesn’t attract the love of his life because of perfect lines or dating tactics.

He attracts her because he radiates:

• confidence

• clarity

• stability

• direction

• energy

• purpose

In other words: gravity.

And men without gravity?

They chase.

They beg.

They panic.

They over-explain.

They feel invisible.

Advisors do the exact same thing in their business.

If you don’t build gravity?

You chase COIs.

You chase clients.

You chase opportunities.

But when you do build gravity?

Everything moves toward you.

Brian has that naturally.

You feel his presence instantly.

He fills space without trying to.

He has authentic warmth and competence.

People trust him because they can feel who he is.

And once he layered strategy on top of that personal gravity?

The multimillion-dollar cases appeared almost overnight.

And Yes — This CAN Be Learned

Brian was born with it.

Most advisors aren’t.

But this is learnable.

There is a process for building magnetism and gravitational pull in your market.

There is a way to position yourself so that COIs pursue you, not the other way around.

And I’m building something right now that will teach exactly how to do that, the frameworks, the behaviors, the visibility strategy, the energy mechanics, the client-conversation structures…