Some people simply present themselves as businessmen. Mendy Gorodetsky is one of them. As soon as you begin speaking to him, you understand that he is someone who understands how to run a business.
As he says, “The proof is in the pudding.” Mendy and his company, Asbestways Service Corp., have been in the environmental remediation business for over 30 years. It started with asbestos removal, and although it’s still a large part of the business, it also has divisions for mold and lead removal, as well as a demolition department.
Interestingly, Mendy’s first job was starting his business!
We spoke about his industry, his advice for homeowners who might have to deal with environmental issues, and his philosophy on tackling to-do lists. He is someone I would speak to about my business.
—Nesanel
I was born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I am the middle of five children. My mother was born in the Bronx; my father was born in Russia, in a town called Voronezh. He is fifth-generation Chabad Lubavitch. My father’s maternal grandfather was Rav Shmuel Levitin, who came to America with the Frierdiker Rebbe in 1940.
“My grandfather, Rabbi Binyomin Gorodetsky, studied in Lubavitch from when he was a child in Russia. My father came to America when he was eight years old. His family escaped through Poland, spent six months in France, and then came on a boat to Ellis Island in 1947. He ended up in New York because his father was already there, working for the Frierdiker Rebbe. He had opened an office in Paris to help with all of the displaced Jewish refugees who were leaving Russia after the war.
“My father had a knitting mill, Global Knitting for many years on Hall Street in Brooklyn. He manufactured sweaters.
“Interestingly, from when the Lubavitcher Rebbe became the Rebbe in 1951, he only attended one bar mitzvah, and that was my father’s. He spoke at the bar mitzvah. My grandfather was traveling most of the year, but he came back to New York for my father’s bar mitzvah.
“A week before the bar mitzvah, the Rebbe had called him into yechidus and said, ‘I need you to travel somewhere overseas.’ Obviously, my grandfather went home and told my grandmother and his children that he was leaving. My grandmother went to the Rebbe for yechidus before the bar mitzvah, and he said, ‘If you don’t publicize it, I will attend the bar mitzvah.’ In the middle of the bar mitzvah, the Rebbe walked in and gave a sichah. That was in 1951.
“We were middle-class when I was growing up. Until a year ago, my mother worked as a second-grade English teacher in Chaim Berlin. She worked on and off for 30 years, stopping to raise our family.
“I went to Lubavitcher Yeshiva on Ocean Parkway from first grade until high school. After high school, I went to a mesivta that opened in Troy, New York. I was there for a year and a half. Lubavitch bachurim are sent on shlichus around the world, so I was sent to Miami for two years. Afterward, I came back to New York at 21 years old and started my business.
“My wife is also from Crown Heights. We got married when I was 25 years old.
“My first job was starting my own company. It’s the first job I ever had. I had a good friend named Shalom Rabkin whom I knew from childhood, and our fathers davened next to each other in shul. We were both looking for jobs, and at one point we had discussed getting into environmental remediation. To us that meant asbestos removal, but it eventually led to lead paint removal, mold removal and demolition. This was in the early ’90s, so environmental concerns other than asbestos weren’t that big yet. But we could see that there was a future in this industry.
“I had no experience in the industry and no shaychus to it. I simply saw it as a good business to get into. I took a course to get a license in asbestos removal, and then we got a company license. We also needed a supervisor’s license and a worker who had a license from the state and the city, which is why I took the course. When we got the application for the company license, we realized we needed workers’ compensation insurance, so we had to apply for that, too. Keep in mind that this was in 1992, before you could google how everything works. It was a long process.
“We formed the corporation in August of 1992, but we weren’t up and running until the end of the year, around December time. We called it Asbestways Service Corp. We opened up in my parents’ basement and stored things in their garage. We did some research and wrote down our business plan on a sheet of paper, which obviously didn’t turn out too well as far as calculating how much money we would need. We both had a little bit of money saved because my partner had worked in the summer for a few years, and I had worked for a summer or two.
“At the end of our first year, we were deep into credit cards, which funded the business.”
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