Before an agent runs a single illustration for you, answer one question in your own words: what is this policy for? Not the brochure answer. Yours. A policy is a tool that gets its shape in the design phase, and design decisions made without a purpose behind them get made by default, which usually means shaped for the sale instead of for the job.
Different jobs point at different designs. If the job is a family lending pool, cars and roofs and opportunities funded through policy loans, you want maximum early cash value, a heavy paid-up additions rider, and a carrier whose loan provisions are friendly. If the job is a retirement income supplement thirty years out, early access matters less and long-run compounding matters more, which shifts the base-and-PUA balance. If the job is a head start for a child, the design leans on locked-in insurability and decades of runway. Same product line, three different machines.
Purpose also sets the funding number. A lending-pool policy needs funding aggressive enough to be useful within a few years. A legacy-leaning policy can build on a gentler schedule. Skipping the purpose question is how people end up with a premium that doesn't match any actual plan, and a policy with no clear job is the kind that gets surrendered in year six when budgets tighten. A policy with a named job survives budget season, because you know exactly what you'd be giving up.
Can one policy do more than one job? Sure, and most eventually do. But pick the primary job before you build, the same way you'd decide truck or commuter before walking into a dealership, and let the secondary uses be bonuses. Then write the job down in one sentence and hand that sentence to whoever designs the policy. It's the single best instruction you can give them.
The design levers themselves are laid out on the Design page, the kids' version of this thinking is on the For Your Kids page, and if you want the fuller education before committing to anything, spend an evening at Lifetime LOC. Then come back and write your sentence.