Gloucester native Samantha Smith sees her business, Split Enz Salon on Gloucester Main Street, as a team effort providing hair and nail services as well as facials, massages, waxing, and complete spa packages.

Balance and staffing are the most challenging aspects of her business, said Smith, but she was blessed to have been introduced to a coaching platform that helped her structure the business and acquire team-building skills and the ability to recognize her own leadership qualities. She learned to delegate and to develop a better balance between work and home.

Smith said her husband became ill not long after she purchased the business and that the ability to delegate allowed her to be closer to home while her husband was in treatment and their daughter was in school. “I was blown away by the support of the association, clients, friends, and family,” she said. Without those elements, as well as her faith, she said the business still would have succeeded, “but not to the place ...