Debilitating Blood Disease Alters Top Advisor’s Career, Life Outlook

At age 18, Sahand Elmtalab was diagnosed with a rare blood disease that would change his life.

“I have to take prednisone daily to stay alive,” he said. “My antibodies kill my white blood cells.”

Given his medical condition, Elmtalab decided it might be a good idea to buy some life insurance.

“Nobody would insure me,” Elmtalab said. “This experience is what hooked me into deciding I wanted to sell insurance and become a financial advisor. I was going to go to law school, but I gave that idea up.”

Today, Elmtalab, 38, runs M&E Catalyst Group, a 31-person financial advisory practice in Minneapolis, Minn., with $3 billion in assets under management.

This sense of purpose vaulted Elmtalab to the top of the industry, including his ranking as a top Financial Security Professional since inception, ranked 5^th in the country in 2022, and as Best-in-State Financial Security Professional.

“What happened to me motivated me to share my story and get people to buy insurance so they don’t get into a situation where they are uninsurable,” Elmtalab said. “I wanted to spread the word.”

As a MassMutual agent, Elmtalab handles investment portfolio management and financial planning. Eighty percent of his clients are business owners and most buy some type of insurance coverage – life, health, disability, liability, property casualty.

Elmtalab said life insurance is a major piece of the wealth management puzzle. “It can be used for a lot of things beyond providing a death benefit,” he said. “We can use it to provide liquidity for the business, for partners, and it can be a tool to increase net worth.”

Some of the insurance coverage M&E Catalyst Group offers is provided by MassMutual, but Elmtalab also helps clients obtain coverage from other companies.

“Most of the people who hire us need someone who can size up the situation quickly and then offer advice,” Elmtalab said. “I am very good at understanding extremely complicated things quickly and then explaining them.”

Elmtalab said many financial advisors provide a full range of wealth management services. But what makes M&E Catalyst Group unique is its ability to also provide tax and legal planning. “This is something these clients are constantly looking for but can’t always find,” he said.

Elmtalab added: “I love working with family businesses because there always that dynamic of counseling and figuring out how to get the deal to the best place.”

In one instance, Elmtalab said he helped a local trucking company stay in family hands and save $4 million in taxes. It was a complicated deal that involved changes in the structure of the company. Relations between the son and father became a bit contentious at one point, but everything worked out in the end, Elmtalab said.

“They both thanked me. The son said now my dad can be my dad and I can be his son. They both said this. It made me feel very good,” Elmtalab said.

Elmtalab did a financial plan for another client and recommended he purchase disability insurance. The client at first refused. “He kept fighting me on it – saying I don’t want to do this,” Elmtalab said. “I said we can move on, but this is a potential problem. You need to do this.”

The client finally agreed and sent Elmtalab a check. Four months later, Elmtalab was on vacation in the Cayman Islands when he got a call from the client’s spouse. It turns out the client had been diagnosed with a rare form of ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease.

“I explained that the disability insurance her husband had purchased would provide the family with almost $30,000 a month tax free.”

That news gave the family a sense of relief, Elmtalab said.

“The client thanked me later. He apologized and said he was out of line and that he was glad I stuck to my ground,” Elmtalab said. “I felt very good about it.”

Elmtalab adds: “I like to help people and help them understand the importance of things that can happen to them. It is part of what I do.”