Neither did his manager, Borodinsky recalled. “My very first manager saw me as a young, fledgling newbie,” he said. “Let’s call it a rookie. He wasn’t very supportive; he didn’t give me a lot of opportunity in terms of finding new business. He basically told the regional manager and me that I wasn’t cut out for the business. Not only did that upset me, but it actually lit a fire under me. I told myself: Who is he to tell me I couldn’t make it? It ignited a fire in me to prove him wrong.”
What happened to real estate in the 1980s?
But the bank itself wasn’t too helpful either. “At the time, there was a traditional way of getting business, and I wasn’t getting a lot of business from the bank,” he said. “You were told ‘here’s a territory. Solicit the real estate agencies in the territory, and good luck with that.’ Obviously, those relationships were hard to crack as they are today. And why would real estate agents work with a 22-year-old rather than a seasoned professional?”
Given such obstacles, he decided to study the landscape for a different line of business. “I saw homebuilders really start to take off developing single-family homes, townhomes and condominiums,” he said. He learned the ins and outs of rate protection, the nature of condominium project approval and other vagaries. “It’s a different kind of lending,” he said. “I made myself an expert in the new construction field and was able to, early on, separate myself from the competition by focusing on that segment of the market.”
The condo craze of the ‘80s was particularly fruitful, he recalled. His reassessment of the market paid off handsomely, he added.
“Within two years, by 1985, I was the second top-producing originator in my company. At that point, the manager who I no longer worked for – and I’m talking about that manager who told me I wasn’t going to make it – came up to me, shook my hand and said ‘boy, was I ever wrong about you’. And then the following year, I became the top producer for the bank I was working for.”