(From the September 2025 Edition of eFORUM)

By Jaclyn Nemethy

You wake up early, coffee in hand, ready to tackle a meaningful project. You’ve blocked the time, cleared your calendar, and committed to deep focus. But then an email pings and it looks urgent. You respond. A few more follow. Teams lights up. A text comes in. You try to clear the clutter, but the moment is gone. Focus has dissolved into distraction.

This isn’t just a challenge for those of us in leadership roles — it is the reality our advisors face every single day. Constant communication, evolving tools, regulatory updates, and ever-changing market trends compete for an advisor’s attention. The pressure to stay on the cutting edge can feel relentless.

In my role, I don’t manage a team in the traditional sense. I coach wealth advisors across a region to integrate insurance more intentionally into their offering for both straightforward risk protection needs and more advanced estate planning strategies. That means helping advisors carve out time and mental bandwidth for something that, for many of them, feels adjacent to their core work. I have to do this in a world where everyone’s attention is already maxed out.

Cutting through the noise

Wealth advisors are dealing with more than just content overload. Market volatility, regulatory noise, and increasing client touchpoints can make it difficult to take a step back and think long term. Conversations about estate planning or tax strategies that look 30 years into the future can easily take a back seat to the demands of today.

This is where my job starts: helping advisors create clarity in a cluttered environment.

Rather than overwhelming them with product details or theoretical strategies, I start by simplifying the conversation. What would your client need to hear to understand this? What is actually relevant to their current state? We often strip away the solution entirely at first and focus on diagnosing the real planning gaps. Is there sufficient income protection? What happens if a health event disrupts the plan? What could enhance this client’s current situation through proactive planning?

Change the process, not just the pitch

Real adoption does not come from knowledge alone; it comes from process. You can learn all the insurance strategies in the world, but if they are not baked into your client review framework, you will only ever react to the rare client who asks. That is not scalable. That is coincidence.

My approach is to work with advisors to understand their client base, segment their book, and identify where insurance naturally fits. From there, we align around one of two pathways:

• Integrate it themselves if they have the interest and capacity
• Partner with a specialist if they would rather remain focused on investments and client relationships

Either way, we need to build a simple, repeatable process — one where insurance becomes second nature, not an occasional afterthought.

Practical strategies for focused execution

Helping advisors stay focused starts with meeting them where they are. If they are overwhelmed, we keep things narrow: identify a small group of clients for targeted conversations, book follow-ups immediately, and create accountability. I aim to remove barriers, whether that’s walking through tools live, building case studies together, or being the go-to person for support behind the scenes.

For managers and senior leaders, this is the heart of our work. Reduce friction. Make it easier to focus. Do not just introduce tools, but embed them into how your team works. The more we help advisors stay centred on what they do best — which is being in front of clients — the more consistent and impactful their planning becomes.

Lead with intention

Ultimately, coaching through distraction is about helping people lead with intention. It is about enabling advisors to cut through the noise, focus on what matters, and feel confident bringing forward meaningful recommendations, especially in the insurance space where the impact is long-lasting.

We do not need perfect implementation. We need progress. That starts with clarity, partnership, and a relentless focus on helping advisors serve their clients better, one focused conversation at a time.

Jaclyn Nemethy, BSc., CFP, CLU, CHS, CEA, is regional director, strategic relationships, at PPI, GAMA chapter representative for Advocis Toronto, and membership director for GAMA Global Canada.