December
10, 2018

1 min read

How do you want to shape your company culture in the coming year?

From November 2017 to November 2018, careers site Comparably surveyed nearly 10 million employee ratings across 50,000 U.S. companies, asking workers more than 50 questions about how their company stacked up when it came to compensation, leadership, opportunities for professional development, work-life balance and perks and benefits.

The top five large company cultures this year are Costco, Google, T-Mobile, HubSpot and Aflac, with a couple of changes occurring from this time last year. Costco went to #1 from being #35 in 2017, unseating Google, which was #1 last year.

T-Mobile rose from its #14 position in 2017, toppling Facebook which fell to #16 — perhaps unsurprising considering its scandal-plagued year.

Check out the full list below.

December
7, 2018

6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Editor’s note: Entrepreneur‘s Builders series interviews female leaders in different industries, offering insight into what successful women do to push through feeling stuck, frustrated and noncreative as they build incredible brands and businesses.

I’ve always admired companies with a “giving-back” component, so when I started Entrepreneur‘s Builders Series, I knew I had to interview Shannon Keith, founder of Sudara. Sudara is a thriving benefit corporation that creates training and jobs for women who are at the highest risk of sex trafficking.

On Keith’s second trip to India, in 2005, she heard story after story of women there being sold into the hopeless, horrible world of trafficking. These are women and girls at high risk of suffering that fate because some are orphans picked up off the streets by local pimps. Others are daughters turned over to traffickers by their families — because they lack the education or resources or skills to have a choice.

Shannon Keith

Image credit: Paula Watts Photography

Back in the United States, Keith formed a team of family and friends to look for on-the-ground groups in India that could help women seeking a way out of the red light districts. Partnerships were set up with sewing and skills centers in Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai. Keith’s fashion line, Sudara, was subsequently founded to offer living-wage jobs to women in those cities who today create the line’s beautiful Punjabi-style loungewar and robes. 

Sudara moves beyond “simply giving back,” giving these women freedom-filled choices and fresh starts. I know you’ll learn just as much about creating a mission-backed business and derive as much inspiration from Shannon as I did.

What have you built? What inspired you to build it?

Sudara Inc. is a certified benefit corporation [B-corp] and ecommerce-based lifestyle brand of pajamas and loungewear that have an authentically relaxed and beautiful Indian flare.  Sudara’s products and mission help women and children remain free from the brothels through dignified job training, placement, and creation in India. I was inspired out of a trip that I took to India with my husband.

Were you born a builder or did you have to learn to be one?  

My mother says I was a born leader, but I must admit that building has been a learned process and continues to be a process of iteration: testing, failing, learning and trying again.

Who was the first woman you looked up to? Why did you want to be like her?   

My grandma June.  She was so strong, loving, kind and opinionated … and knew how to get shit done! … With seven children and twenty-plus grandchildren that was not always an easy task! She taught me that life throws many curve balls, but the journey and family are worth the hard work it takes to make something great.

What’s the greatest risk you’ve taken?   

Quitting my corporate job and becoming an entrepreneur. It’s an exciting a wild ride because there are no safety nets to catch you when you take the leap.

When have you broken down, personally or professionally? How did you break through?    

I’ve broken down and felt wrecked by people who said they were loyal to me personally and the mission of Sudara, so I put my trust in them as teammates and friends; but they were really out to make a name for themselves at the expense of the mission and personal relationships. Pulling those knives out of my back and healing has been painful, but possible with a few trusted teammates and friends.

Related: Craiglist Blocks Personal Ads to Protest Anti Sex-Trafficking Law

What makes you doubt yourself? How do you manage it?   

I doubt myself when I take my focus off of my God-given mission and purpose and start listening to the distracting — and often untruthful — voices and “noise” in our overstimulated world.

How do you know when to leave someone or something?  

[I know to do that] when the basis of trust, if it’s a person, or a value if it’s a thing, has gone beyond rebuilding or repair. Toxic people and situations will spread like cancer if not dealt with honestly and swiftly.

When was your bravest moment? How do you practice being brave?  

I think my bravest moment was taking the first step in starting Sudara. So many times we have good ideas, passions and vision that die without any action being taken to get them off the ground.  I practice being brave by saying yes and taking action around things I believe in, especially when I don’t feel adequate or up for the task.

Knowing what you know now, was it worth it?

Yes! Absolutely!  I believe everything happens for a reason, and God uses it all [to advance] lifelong learning and to refine [our] characters to become more wise, kind and loving human beings. Life will help us mature our souls if we are willing and intentional participants in the process.

What can you see yourself building next?  

A life of intentional adventure with my husband for our family. I want my children to see the world and cultivate hearts of empathy, compassion and action around the most important issues of our time … and also experience the wonder and majesty of our incredible planet and all of it’s diverse landscapes and cultures.

Biography

A trip to India in 2005 inspired Shannon Keith to found her nonprofit to combat sex trafficking in India. Her drive to disrupt the social enterprise space and create a lasting impact for female survivors of, and those at risk for, sex trafficking, led her to found Sudara, a thriving benefit corporation. Sudara products support training and jobs in four Indian cities. More than a give-back model, Keith’s organization enables women to make freedom-filled choices for themselves and their families.

Related: 5 Reasons to Become a Benefit Corporation

Keith has been recognized for her work multiple times: She is a 2016 Bend Venture Conference (BVC) Social Impact winner, an Economic Development for Central Oregon (EDCO) member and TedX speaker. She was selected as a Top 25 SheEO World Venture finalist. She was the recipient of the 2017 Bend Chamber of Commerce Female Entrepreneur of the Year award and has been featured in the publications The Good Trade,Conscious magazine, Real Simple and Forbes.

December
7, 2018

2 min read

Georgia and the Carolinas favored Gremlins, New York and Alaska went with The Apartment and Home Alone came out on top in Illinois — where much of the movie was shot — as well as in neighboring Indiana. Interestingly, Christmas in Connecticut reigned supreme in Montana, while Connecticut was partial to Trading Places. As far as methodology, the site used the top 50 Christmas movies on ratings site Rotten Tomatoes as its base (including nontraditional choices such as Batman Returns), then used Google Trends statewide search frequencies to determine the holiday movies that people in one state searched for more than any other state. 

Check out the infographic below for your state’s favorite film. 

December
6, 2018

9 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

With billionaire drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera’s U.S. trial currently snorting up line after line of cable news screen time, it got us wondering about who really is the most cash-heavy criminal of all time?

The following list contains many net-worth guestimates (surprise, crooks don’t keep the most accurate tax returns!) and their ill-gotten gains have been adjusted for inflation. We’ve also excluded all of the other billionaires within the infamous Medellin Cartel besides Pablo Escobar (otherwise it’d be a very repetitive roll call). 

Final note: we omitted past and present evil despots like Saddam Hussein and Vladimir Putin (the latter is rumored to be the richest man in the world) because grabbing gobs of money when you have armies and nuclear weapons at your disposal seems a little too easy.

Related: The 9 Weirdest and Craziest Crimes and Heists of 2018

Anthony Salerno, $600 million

Image credit:

claude Urraca | Getty Images

Salerno’s nickname was as unoriginal (“Fat Tony”) as his signature look was stereotypical (fedora hat, omnipresent cigar). But there was nothing run-of-the-mill regarding this Genovese crime family boss’s ability to gamble on gambling fraud and impose his infamous “Mafia Tax” on New York City construction. Fortune magazine rated Anthony “most powerful and wealthiest gangster in America” in 1986 whereas the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri deemed the crook “dead via stroke” in 1992.

Hollywood Bona Fides: At least Fat Tony lived long enough to see himself immortalized as a Simpsons regular thanks to the vocal styling of actor, Joe Mantegna.

Meyer Lansky, $600 million

Image credit:

Bettmann | Getty Images

Mommas don’t let your babies grow up to be mobsters. Let them grow up to be accountants of mobsters, instead! Lansky’s 50-year career as the money manager/boss of childhood pals Bugsy Siegel and Charles “Lucky” Luciano, among other Mafioso, ended with him dying semi-peacefully (lung cancer) and very much not-in-jail, at the age of 80, in 1983.

Big Screen Bona Fides: Ben Kingsley played Lansky in 1991’s Bugsy, as did Patrick Dempsy in the less memorable Young Guns-knockoff titled Mobsters within the very same year.

Related: Even The Mafia Can Teach Us Something

Bernie Madoff, $820 million

Image credit:

Bloomberg | Getty Images

The former NASDAQ chairman has plenty of years in prison (150 to be precise) to mull over all the gullible lives he’s ruined. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme racked up $65 billion from unsuspecting clients, but readers should spare some added sympathy for lowly Mets fans, because of course team owner Fred Wilpon was a client.

Hollywood Bona Fides: Since Robert De Niro appears elsewhere on this list, we’ll go with Richard Dreyfuss’s 2016 ABC miniseries titled Madoff over Bob’s HBO venture, The Wizard Of Lies.

Patrick Thomas, $882 million

Image credit:

Aleksej Kuznecov/EyeEm | Getty Images

In 1990 a messenger was robbed of his suitcase via this knife-wielding burglar in what, on the surface, seemed to be your average, everyday mugging. Less average: The contents in question were £292 in bearer bonds treasury bills meant to be delivered to the Bank Of England. Patrick was never charged for the robbery (he died of a gunshot wound to the head a year after the heist), although co-conspirator, Keith Cheeseman, who helped sell the loot, was jailed for 6-and-a-half years. All but two of the bonds ended up being recovered.

Hollywood Bona Fides: None to really speak of, so just rent a Guy Ritchie film, hire a cockney translator, and you’ll get the basic gist.

Al Capone, $1.3 billion

Image credit:

PhotoQuest | Getty Images

Traveling Chicagoans can thank Michael Jordan for finally replacing this gangster as the one man the world associated with the Windy City. At Capone’s brain-bashing, bootlegging, mid-twenties zenith, he quite literally owned Cook County. Alas it was income tax evasion that ended the crime spree and cardiac arrest (thanks to late-stage syphilis which reduced Al’s mentality to that of a child) that ended his life in 1947.

Hollywood Bona Fides: Too many to count, but we’ll always go back to Robert De Niro’s weight-gain-to-Oscar-Lane portrayal of Capone in 1988’s super-historically-inaccurate The Untouchables because that’s the Chicago way!

Related: Audi CEO, Rupert Stadler, Arrested in Germany for Potential Evidence Tampering

Allen Stanford, $2 billion

Image credit:

Bloomberg | Getty Images

This fifth-generation Texan’s Ponzi scheme was as big as the state that spawned him. The moment the SEC charged Stanford Financial, in 2009,^{with massive ongoing fraud in 2009, centering on an eight-billion-dollar investment scheme and left most of Allen’s clients destitute, was also the moment he tried to escape via a private jet. Sadly for Stanford, he was better at fleecing clients than fleeing the country and is currently serving a 110-year federal prison sentence.}

Hollywood Bona Fides: None to really speak of apart from being the focus of a very special episode of CNBC’s American Greed.

Griselda Blanco, $2 billion

This Miami-based drug lord committed her first murder at the age of 11, is believed to be responsible for at least 200 other homicides, named her third son Michael Corleone (Griselda was called “The Godmother”) and developed her own line of underwear resplendent in secret coke smuggling pockets. Blanco was murdered in 2012, at the age of 69, via a method she’d pretty much invented: A peel in, peel out, motorcycle shooting.

Hollywood Bona Fides: HBO is currently developing a Griselda project with Jennifer Lopez set to play “The Black Widow” (another well-earned nickname.) Even more impressive? Maya Rudolph portrayed Blanco on an episode of Comedy Central’s Drunk History.

Related: Nearly Half of All Cell Phone Calls Will Be Scam Calls in 2019

Leona Helmsley, $2 billion

Image credit:

Images Press | Getty Images

When this real estate maven and hotel owner wasn’t refusing to pay vendors, dodging extortion charges and leaving her Maltese dog, Trouble, a $12-million trust fund, in her will? The hotel owner was being convicted of federal income tax evasion, along with her ailing husband, to the tune of nineteen months in prison and two months under house arrest in 1989. Helmsley’s off the cuff quote “We don’t pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes” haunted this Joker lookalike to her dying day…which, as it turns out, was August 20, 2007, at the age of 87. 

Hollywood Bona Fides: The 1990 TV movie Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean is worth noting. Worth watching? Not so much. But, yeah, feel free to note it.

Susumu Ishii, $3.5 BILLION

Image credit:

mbbirdy | Getty Images

This Japanese WWII vet began his life of crime as the second-generation leader of Japan’s infamous Inagawa-kai yakuza crew and graduated to real estate scams after marinating in prison from 1978 to 1984, while still basically being Godfather of the gang (and even hiring George H.W. Bush’s brother, in 1989, as an advisor). Susumu died peacefully, albeit far less solvent (thanks for nothing, bursting economic bubble) in 1991.

Hollywood Bona Fides: Earlier this year Netflix released a post-WWII yakuza film titled The Outsider and focused on a fictional Japan-based gang member portrayed by…Jared Leto?

Related: 10 Instagram Branding Lessons From Mexican Drug Lords

Khun Sa, $5 billion

The Burmese warlord supplemented his income by way of being the undisputed “Opium King” within the infamous Golden Triangle heroin market. Khun survived all manner of assassination attempts and bungled captures to die of natural causes, in Myanmar, at the age of 73 in 2007 and his many children remain successful within the local business community.

Hollywood Bona Fides: Khun was played by Ric Young in 2007’s American Gangster.

Viktor Bout, $6 billion

Image credit:

NICOLAS ASFOURI | Getty Images

This prolific Russian arms dealer (who happens to look just like…a prolific Russian arms dealer) hated embargoes as much as he loved his airfreight companies that provided the perfect cover with which to smuggle artillery to all manner of Columbian, African and Middle Eastern baddies. The wings on the Merchant Of Death’s (his actual nickname) 20-year career were clipped for good in 2010 and he currently resides within the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois.

Hollywood Bona Fides: Nicholas Cage’s character in the 2005 film Lord of War was (very) loosely based on Bout.

Related: Walter White’s 5 Most Badass Business Moves in ‘Breaking Bad’

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, $14 billion

Image credit:

Bloomberg | Getty Images

Big on horrific crime and not much else, the 5′ 5″ Sinaloa Cartel leader garnered headline after headline regarding his murderous vendettas, mole-like narcotics tunnels and multiple prison escapes. It all ended with Chappy’s final (?) capture in 2016 thanks to the accidental snitch that is Sean Penn.

Hollywood Bona Fides: Just read Spicoli’s horribly-written Rolling Stone article on the inmate in question! Or don’t…

Thomas Blood, $32 billion

Image credit:

Bettmann | Getty Images

In 1671 this Irish-born officer — who’d previously befriended Tower Of London employees by posing as a parson — bum-rushed the Crown Jewels keeper, grabbed the haughty hat and, fleeing on horse, made it as far as the Iron Gate before being captured. He was one of the most cash heavy crooks that ever lived. King Charles II was so taken by the scamp’s chutzpah that he gave the guy a full pardon and gifted Blood property in Ireland, to boot! We love happy endings.

Hollywood Bona Fides: Just binge watch both seasons of The Crown. HRH’s headwear looks roughly the same now as it did in the 17th century.

Amado Carillo Fuentes, $39 billion

Image credit:

seksan Mongkhonkhamsao | Getty Images

After murdering his boss and taking over Mexico’s Juárez Cartel, “The Lord Of The Skies” amassed a mint thanks to his fleet of drug-filled airplanes. In the end, it was paranoia, rather than the federales, that got Amad. He died in 1997, due to botched, identity-changing plastic surgery. And, yes, the two physicians responsible for the procedure were, of course, discovered dead, within steel drums, and encased in concrete.

Hollywood Bona Fides The man who worked with both Escobar and El Chapo is portrayed by actor, José María Yazpik, in the Netflix series Narcos: Mexico.

Pablo Emilio Escobar, $122 billion

Image credit:

Eric VANDEVILLE | Getty Images

(Escobar’s stash took an estimated hit of $1.2 billion thanks to hungry rats in his many money hideouts.)

Measuring in at a not-so-whopping 5′ 6″, Pablo was almost as pequeño as El Chapo, but there was nothing itsy-bitsy about Escobar’s empire. At his zenith? The Columbian kingpin was responsible for nearly 80% of the cocaine smuggled into the United States. At his nadir? He was shot dead on a Los Olivos roof, while trying to escape the Colombian National Police, in 1993.

Hollywood Bona Fides: Yet another Netflix alert! Brazilian actor, Wagner Moura, recently portrayed Pablo in Narcos to rave reviews whereas Vinny Chase’s interpretation of Escobar, in season four of Entourage, received a frostier (snowier?) reception.

Related: The Marketing Lessons I Learned From Pablo Escobar