An often inspiring memoir of a PR agency founder.
Finn tells of what he learned after separating himself from his family’s public relations business and founding a new PR company.
When the author started New York City–based FINN Partners in 2011, he began with 150 employees; the company eventually grew to employ 1,300 people, with offices all over the world, including such corporate clients as Jack Daniel’s and Walgreens. The PR firm worked in partnership with the Catskill Mountain Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by Finn and his wife in 1998 that’s dedicated to supporting the arts in southeastern New York state. He traces the development of these two organizations, noting, for instance, how the Covid-19 pandemic brought out the best in CMF: “We immediately went into crisis mode, focused on the safety of our employees, our artists, and our audiences.” It’s a story of personalities and often serendipitous meetings, as when, in 2016, an unexpected phone call from Hong Kong’s Ying Communications resulted in FINN Partners establishing a tech-focused agency in a region that the author had long sought to move into. His for-profit company grew mainly by acquisition, with his long-term vision enabling it to post a tenfold profit in a little over a decade. He underscores the moral elements that undergirded the growth of his companies from their inception: “Taking care of our people and our clients,” he writes, “was more important than anything else.” The narrative provides equal focus on both the nonprofit and for-profit sides of Finn’s career.
The author occasionally lapses into truisms, such as “every acquisition comes with some risk” or “listen closely to your inner self,” and he sometimes seems to overestimate potential reader interest in details of the monthly and even daily doings of his two organizations. A congratulatory thread also runs through the book, with dozens of the author’s friends and relatives weighing in to offer praise, including employees stating, “I think Peter teaches you when you don’t even know you’re being taught” and “Peter leads by example and lives and breathes our values”; as the author writes at one point, “How did seemingly mild-mannered Peter Finn make a success of such ambitious ventures as the Catskill Mountain Foundation and FINN Partners?” But the book’s overriding message of championing the practice of companies acting in alignment with the best values of their people is genuinely restorative, as when Finn urges readers, including other businesspeople and entrepreneurs, to “make sure you are doing something that is meaningful and important to you and to the world you live in.” Finn’s account of the personal risk he took in leaving the family business is winningly heartfelt; readers contemplating similar moves will find much encouragement and abundant valuable practical advice: “If you dream of launching and building an organization—whether for-profit or not-for-profit—you may or may not have a substantial source of funds to start with,” he notes. “Sometimes there’s no option but to launch on a shoestring.”
An often inspiring memoir of a PR agency founder.Pub Date: June 16, 2026
ISBN: 9781953943651
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Rivertowns Books
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.
In this debut memoir, Bahamian millionaire Bastian offers insight into building a business.
The author was a millionaire by the time he was 19, an impressive feat considering he began his working life filling stockpots and rolling napkins in his father’s Nassau restaurant, a locals’ hole-in-the-wall far from the city’s tourist hotels. “In many ways, I started ten steps behind the starting line in a world where opportunities felt few and far between,” writes Bastian in his introduction. A poor student with a gambler’s risk tolerance and a salesman’s eye for an unserved market, the author dropped out of college to launch his own satellite installation business—the first of its kind in the Bahamas—eventually expanding into prepaid phones and other electronics. With this book, Bastian uses his personal experiences to illustrate the steps aspiring entrepreneurs should consider when building their own empires. “My goal isn’t just to tell my story,” he explains; “it’s to provide you with a starting point, a strategy, and the encouragement you need to take your first step toward something bigger.” The book alternates between memoiristic chapters describing the author’s youth and career and instructional chapters outlining the best practices to “become a lion” (his preferred metaphor for a brave, risk-taking captain of industry). From evaluating one’s skill set and choosing a suitable goal to the practicalities of regulation and taxes, Bastian walks the reader through the complicated processes of starting and maintaining a successful enterprise. While much of the advice is of the boilerplate variety, the author offers it with clarity and candor, devoting an entire chapter, for example, on how to fail productively. It is the biographical material that lends his advice unusual weight—Bastian’s stories of flying back and forth between the Bahamas and Miami to personally import satellite dishes are fascinating enough to stand on their own. Readers may be unable to replicate his success, but there is no denying that his tale is inspiring.
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798891882485
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Advantage Media Group
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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