The boy who grew up to be Billy Procida.

Once dubbed 'The boy who would be Trump,' Billy Procida is one of those rare individuals who seem born to be in real estate.

Son of New Jersey developer, Joseph Procida, Billy barely scraped his way through high school, but excelled in the business.

Starting out by mixing cement on his dad's building sites at age 13, he proved his talent for real estate in an early deal in which he turned a derelict three-and-a-half acre piece of land in the South Bronx his father had paid just $2.5 million for, into a $39 million condo complex called White Beach.

By the age of 23, Procida was running his own multi-million dollar development firm, which he went on to merge with his father's Procida Construction Corporation. Together with brother, Mario, an architect who Procida calls 'the genius' of the family, the pair built the firm into a $40 million operation.

Procida took a year out of the family business in 1990 when Donald Trump, a man he idolized as a youngster, finally answered one of the 100 letters he wrote asking for a chance to work for the Trump Organization.

"I never had a job, except when I worked from Trump. He's a great guy who taught me an awful lot.

"He was having a year of repositioning his assets and realized he needed a big mouth to go to Hong Kong, Paris--it was a great experience for me. I went from talking about $5-10 million deals to $200 million deals--that's billion dollar deals in today's market. It gave me great experience in a high profile market."

Before he reached his 30th year, Procida had completed $300 million of construction and development work throughout the tri-state and was employing over 100 people.

Today, at 42, Procida is at the helm of Palisades Financial, an investment banking and advisory firm based in Fort Lee, NJ, that he founded with friend and former school mate, Mark Zurlin, in 1995.

Specializing in stabilized and distressed real estate investments and small and middle market companies, Palisades Financial has successfully completed over $2 billion in transactions over the past 10 years. It is the exclusive Fund Manager for the Palisades Regional Investment Fund (PRIF), which has become a leading provider of opportunistic capital. Since its inception in 2002, PRIF has provided equity, bridge, mezzanine and first mortgages in over 36 transactions valued at over $500 Million.

It's a long way from his days wearing overalls and operating from cramped offices where his sister answered the phones, his mother did the books and his dad ruled the roost.

But with Zurlin, another former schoolmate, Ira Bergstein, and longtime pal, David McLain among the ranks, Procida likens his office environment to that of the big, happy family he's always felt most comfortable operating in. "I have the greatest team of real estate investors who enjoy coming to work and enjoy helping clients," he said. "It's like a family business, even though we're not related."

"If we were a basketball team, I would put us up against anyone in the NBA."

Indeed, it is a team that's done him proud. As Procida likes to point out, "We haven't had a bad deal in 10 years."

The team is preparing to move from its comfortable corner in the cozy Englewood Cliffs section of town into 5,000 s/f of new office space in Fort Lee proper. There are also plans in the pipeline to purchase a bank and the company is launching another Fund. "Our Fund has been so successful--our dividends are the highest in the business, with a three year average of over 30%," reports Procida, as he offers up a box of Flax crisps, quiche and chocolate cake.

They were given to him by a baker he's been working with on a financing deal. Procida explains, "We do real estate in a way a lot of folks don't--we believe in people more than we believe in property. We are in the business of listening to stories. So when a guy comes in with cupcakes, we have 150 investors in our fund and, if I can't help him, I have 150 investors who might be able to.

"The beauty of the way our company operates is that our 150 shareholders are all active entrepreneurs in different industries. We have a lot of real estate people, someone in every industry imaginable. One is the biggest food broker in the eastern US.

"So this guy comes in with these cup cakes and flax crisps and, after listening to his story, we set up a meeting with the biggest food broker on the east coast. If that meeting results in a Shoprite, or Pathmark, or Whole Foods saying 'We want this in our store,' the next thing our client will need is a larger warehouse, a larger manufacturing plant. Now, that requires two things, someone to find locations and someone to provide capital, both of which we do." Procida sees his firm's future in continuing to develop strategic partnerships. Just last month, he inked his third deal with Kent Swig, buying a piece of his 44 Wall Street. He is financing Jim Kennelly's development on South William Street and the firm is looking at another deal in Tribeca.

Procida predicts that this partnership strategy will pay off when market prices stall and become what he calls, "a little more realistic."

"I think there will be a 9-18 month period where the market will freeze. There is so much capital chasing everything and that's what's causing it to stay afloat. But we have strategic partners throughout the eastern US so, when prices do stall, or when there becomes a crisis, we will have people on the ground in markets where we are strategically aligned."

But more than that, he sees his firm's unique approach to the industry as the way forward. "Help and care are two words we use to define our firm, which is not how anyone defines investing. Creativity and connections are also important. If you combine those with our care and help, plus we have a large capital source that gets involved, a capital source that's built buildings, sold them, leased them. Collectively, we put all of these together and that's the reason we haven't had a bad deal in 10 years," said the boy who grew up to be Billy Procida.