American Dream

As a struggling rookie broker, Earl worried that he'd fail to build a book of business.

"I was extraordinarily shy, and that made it harder," he recalls. He hated telephone cold-calling and instead knocked on doors, delivering prospectuses to sales leads supplied by mutual fund companies. He specifically targeted African-Americans.

"I thought they, in particular — and minorities in general — were poorly represented as shareholders," Feldhorn says.

The break he needed came when one lead, in the predominantly black, downscale L.A. neighborhood of Watts, gave him "a modest order," he says, and then promptly provided him with 15 referrrals, all of whom became clients and referral generators too. In total, Feldhorn picked up more than 100 new customers.

He then began holding monthly seminars at meetings of an African-American club in L.A.'s Inglewood community. The talks brought him numerous referrals, including many business professionals.

At the office, he soon became a producing manager but ultimately found greater stimulation in working full-time with clients.

"As in sports, the real fun is being the player, not managing the team," Feldhorn says. "What I really enjoy is the interaction with [clients] and trying to make them money."

His research is meticulous. "The more I can learn about the product, the better," says the advisor, who visits CEOs "to understand their companies' potentials. I read a tremendous amount of annual reports — from the back page forward. P.R. is in the front; the back has numbers and who the directors are."

Notable for his philanthropy, Feldhorn has been honored with chairs in his name at the University of Southern California; University of California, Los Angeles; and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

He has been most active in the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Los Angeles, serving as both past-president and treasurer. He became involved when a friend developed epilepsy after being struck by a car.

"Because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're about to see an explosion of epilepsy — the veterans' hospitals are loaded. And it's going to get worse," the FA says.

When Feldhorn turned 40, his parents gave him a celebratory, first-time trip to his Vienna birthplace. They stopped also in Germany to see the Dachau concentration camp, which had been turned into a museum.

In Dachau, Julius got all dressed up in suit and tie. As he explained: "There's always a chance one of the Nazis that imprisoned me is living here. I want them to see that Julius Feldhorn is alive and well and prosperous."

But on their visit, Earl was deeply saddened when he saw the camp, his father's barrack, "the ovens and maybe even worse, the hooks they put [the Jews] on before they put them in the ovens. A group of German nuns were there with us and started to cry uncontrollably. Everyone is shown a film; and," Feldhorn says, "there are pictures, which are very gruesome and horrible."