Valuable, inspiring arguments for a more thoughtful approach to building a successful company.
A former “ruthless” commercial real estate broker makes the case for selfless business models in this debut book.
As the child of Christian missionaries living in Papua New Guinea, Keyser grew up helping those with even less than his parents had. After the family’s eventual return to the United States, his parents struggled financially, trying to survive on his mother’s meager salary as a teacher, but they still managed to give back to the community. The author soon left this benevolent world behind for UCLA, where he set his sights on making money. He eventually learned to lie “with sincerity” as a commercial real estate broker and achieved great success by misleading clients and stealing opportunities from co-workers—the norm in that business. But at a conference in Miami, Keyser was introduced to a radical idea that merged the triumphs he expected with the teachings of his childhood: a model for developing long-term relationships that could be based on selfless service to others. He soon began helping people with no expectation of reward or compensation and ultimately built a client base more robust and loyal than any that could be forged with back-stabbing tactics and traditional sales strategies. He has since taken this idea into his own firm and established himself as a “thought leader” in the industry, hoping to motivate others to take on his methods of service, “flat structure” (without traditional hierarchy), and an inclusive, caring company culture. The author wisely divides his book into two sections, the first being autobiographical and the second more of a guide to implementing his model. His personal anecdotes are succinct and revealing—such as the humiliating childhood moment when his principal realized he only owned one pair of jeans—and they all play into his larger argument for assisting others in order to help one’s business. The lengthier how-to section’s main arguments and buzzwords, like “being present” and “being disruptive,” become slightly repetitive, but Keyser complements his writing with extensive further reading lists and short, useful summaries. The tactics he has used in his own firm also go far beyond the world of real estate, touching on how gratitude, honesty, and service can improve just about any team dynamic.
Valuable, inspiring arguments for a more thoughtful approach to building a successful company.Pub Date: July 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5445-0424-7
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An extraordinary true tale of torment, retribution, and loyalty that's irresistibly readable in spite of its intrusively melodramatic prose. Starting out with calculated, movie-ready anecdotes about his boyhood gang, Carcaterra's memoir takes a hairpin turn into horror and then changes tack once more to relate grippingly what must be one of the most outrageous confidence schemes ever perpetrated. Growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s, former New York Daily News reporter Carcaterra (A Safe Place, 1993) had three close friends with whom he played stickball, bedeviled nuns, and ran errands for the neighborhood Mob boss. All this is recalled through a dripping mist of nostalgia; the streetcorner banter is as stilted and coy as a late Bowery Boys film. But a third of the way in, the story suddenly takes off: In 1967 the four friends seriously injured a man when they more or less unintentionally rolled a hot-dog cart down the steps of a subway entrance. The boys, aged 11 to 14, were packed off to an upstate New York reformatory so brutal it makes Sing Sing sound like Sunnybrook Farm. The guards continually raped and beat them, at one point tossing all of them into solitary confinement, where rats gnawed at their wounds and the menu consisted of oatmeal soaked in urine. Two of Carcaterra's friends were dehumanized by their year upstate, eventually becoming prominent gangsters. In 1980, they happened upon the former guard who had been their principal torturer and shot him dead. The book's stunning denouement concerns the successful plot devised by the author and his third friend, now a Manhattan assistant DA, to free the two killers and to exact revenge against the remaining ex-guards who had scarred their lives so irrevocably. Carcaterra has run a moral and emotional gauntlet, and the resulting book, despite its flaws, is disturbing and hard to forget. (Film rights to Propaganda; author tour)
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-39606-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50396-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
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