Commentary / Opinion

When you start digging, you find out all sorts of interesting things, both good and bad. I’ve been researching the success factors that unite highly successful women entrepreneurs. Along the way, I’ve learned about ways in which small businesses can help themselves move up the ladder of success, how focusing on work/life fit can help a company grow and, yes, the factors that help women entrepreneurs succeed as well as pitfalls to beware of.

Just a reminder -- well, maybe I’m nagging a bit; I have been saying it for a long time -- it’s not a sign of weakness to ask for help. Too often entrepreneurs -- especially women -- think they have to do it all. But that’s not true, according to the very successful women I’ve been interviewing.

When you sign up for a box of Thin Mints or Samoas, do you realize that you just helped an entrepreneur-in-training? And that she and the 100-year-old Girl Scout organization may have some ideas that could help your business?

There’s a shortage of women leaders. One organization thinks it has the formula for fixing that.

Girl Scouts: They already have an impressive track record. More than two thirds of U.S. Congress women and an incredible 80% of women business owners were Girl Scouts.

Read all of Want Women Leaders? Start with Girls on Forbes.

Impact investment suffered a blow to its credibility last week with the news about SKS, the Indian company that took micro-credit from the realm of nonprofits to the stock exchange, has been linked by its own investigations to the suicides of over-extended clients who were allegedly bullied to death by debt collectors.

Read all of Social Enterprises and Solving the World's Problems: How Impact Investing Needs to Change on Huffington Post.

by Bruce Arbit

I have spent the majority of my professional career helping organizations of all shapes, sizes, and structures (for-profit, nonprofit and newer hybrids) raise money. That’s why I am particularly interested in the ongoing conversation about growing the sources of financial capital that support initiatives with a social/environmental benefit.

Jorge Calderon was a venture capitalist who wanted to invest where others weren’t. He found his under-served market: women- and minority-owned businesses.

Only problem was, he couldn’t find entrepreneurs in that niche. He was sure they were there; he just couldn’t find them. So four years ago, he started Springworks to show women and minority innovators how to catch the eye of venture capitalists.

Read all of 3 Ways Women Can Push Through the Glass Ceiling  on Forbes.

This Valentine's day (and for that matter every other day of the year), indulge yourself and your lover, the right way.