In this keynote, strategist and entrepreneur Jacqueline Snyder argues that a business’s growth is limited by the entrepreneur’s own internal beliefs rather than external strategy alone. She introduces the metaphor of an "internal glass ceiling," explaining how self‑imposed limits—rooted in fear of failure or fear of success—create a low growth ceiling. Snyder cites stark statistics showing that only 12 % of women‑owned businesses reach $100 K in revenue and 2 % reach $1 M, suggesting that both external factors and internal mindsets contribute to this gap. She shares her own experience of a post‑partner‑split slump that mirrored her self‑doubt, and then presents a practical exercise: recalling a past personal triumph, extracting five descriptive words, narrowing them to three, and crafting a "power choice statement" (e.g., "I choose to be relentless, courageous, and brave") to re‑program the brain for future growth. A client case study—Lauren—illustrates the impact of this mindset shift, as her revenue jumped from $150 K to $2.2 M after adopting the no‑cap belief. Snyder concludes with a rallying call, urging listeners to repeat "Why not me?" and internalize the belief that removing personal ceilings will allow their businesses to scale.
Chapters
What if I told you that your business would only grow as much as you do? Let me explain. I've been a consultant and a strategist to entrepreneurs for over 20 years, and oftentimes, actually almost all the time, they come to me and they ask me these questions like, how do I grow my business? How do I get it to the next level? Can I just have more strategy? More strategy about sales, marketing, growing their teams. But what I know to be true is while strategy will get you to a level, it's not going to be the thing that breaks you out to that next level. In fact, it might be keeping you stuck because what you don't realize is that there's actually a ceiling and a limitation to the belief of what's possible for you, so you have a ceiling to your growth. So have you heard about the glass ceiling? Because I want to put this into context. Has anyone here heard about the glass ceiling? Yeah, I mean, if you're a woman and you live in this world, you've probably heard of it. I do believe in that, but I actually believe that the glass ceiling exists when it's in somebody else's building. But what about our own buildings? If you're an entrepreneur, you're building your own building, your name is on the door, so how high is your ceiling? And that's what we're going to get into today, because it's not about the ceiling that's out there, but it's the ceiling that's in here. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Snyder. I am a strategist and entrepreneur, and I've helped over 100,000 product-based business owners around the world grow their businesses. And just a few years ago, we were named one of Inc. 5000's top growing companies, like one of the fastest growing companies in the world. In fact, it was like number 466. In that same year, I was buying my business from my business partner. I was like, let's go. We were separating, and I was like, I'm gonna make this business grow. And we had all of the fanfare of growing as fast as we did. But in that same year, something started to shift. A lot of self-doubt started to creep in. I thought to myself, Can I even do this? Can I do this without her? Will they like me? Will they want to hear me on this podcast without her? And so things started to happen in my business that were not normal. Sales started to go down, attendance started to go down. Things just started to shift in not a positive way. And I thought, hold on, I'm doing the exact same strategy that we've done for years. So what's changed? And what changed was me. What I realized is that our businesses are actually mirrors. They are reflecting our limiting beliefs. They are reflecting the thoughts and the beliefs that we have about ourselves for that level up, for that next step. So while I had one of the best years of my life, the business was also starting to go down because of me, because of my beliefs. I want to ask you a question because I've worked with thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs, and a lot of times when we're talking about that next level in their business, two things come up, and it's a fear. It's a fear of failure or it's a fear of success. So I'd love to ask all of you out there, are you afraid of failing? Right? Take a second and think, are you afraid of failing? Like if this business does well, or if you were to grow this business to the next level, are you afraid that it's going to fail? And why? Yeah, a lot of people are afraid of failure. Now, how about those of you out there that want to grow your business to that next level, but you're actually afraid it's going to work? You have a fear of success. You have a fear of what if this thing does work? What I know and what I've seen and what I've heard is that the people that are afraid of failure, they're afraid because they think it's going to mean something about themselves. They fall on their face, if it doesn't work out, what are people going to think about them? What is it going to mean for them? And then those of you that are afraid of success, the other side of that is, well, what if it does happen? What if I can't hold it? What if I can't keep up? Right? So you've probably all had some version of a thought about that, but here's the craziest part. Okay? You're here, you're an entrepreneur, and you have big goals for yourself. Yes? Yes. You have really big ideas, really big goals, but if you're afraid of failure, and you're afraid of success, where are you? You're stuck in the middle. You're stuck. You've created this really, really, really low ceiling. You've created this murder basement ceiling. And when that's happening, where do you go from that? And you're not alone in this because my friend Mel Abraham once said that a lot of these things that we bring with us, they're caught and not taught. Many of us may have had parents that said, you know, don't think too big, don't fail. Like maybe you were afraid of disappointing them or of judgment, but other times we may have caught caught that, right? We might've just seen it happening around us. Parents keeping themselves stuck, um, the local community never kind of stretching out, right? As women, what have you been exposed to to show you that there is an unlimited potential? There is no cap. One stat that drives me crazy is that, did you know that only 12% of women-owned businesses make it to $100,000 a year? Yeah, $100,000, only 12%. And then that only 2% of women-owned businesses make it to $1 million a year. I think that's absolutely bonkers, and I'm on a mission to change it. But here's what I was thinking about. Okay, I've got a little hypothesis. I was thinking, okay, of course there's all the external factors as to why women's businesses are limited, are capped, have these ceilings, right? $100,000 or $1 million. But I think that there's also this internal belief that many women carry. Partially because we've never been exposed to as many women hitting these milestones, right? Hitting those, those growth ceilings of like $100,000, $1 million, $1 billion. And so the more that we're exposed to that, the more that we see the potential in, in, in that shift, in that change, I believe that's where we get to start to raise our own ceilings because now we've seen it happen. We've seen proof. All right, now we're going to talk about proof because the human mind, as you're afraid of moving forward, right? That fear of success or that fear of failure, it's because something maybe in in the past happened. Maybe you did do something and it failed and you were embarrassed and you were afraid of it, or something happened in your family that you thought, hmm, this thing didn't work out. Or another thing happened where maybe you weren't able to hold it. You weren't able to hold that growth. And so as we look to the past, our brains are more attached to the past. Like our brains connect to history and what's happened in the past versus the potential of the future that's still unknown. And so when you're thinking about the unknown, the future, that growth, that level up in your business, it's really honing in on the past, but not what's to happen. So I'd love to share a tool with you. When these feelings come up, when these thoughts come up, you can really break through in your next level up, right? When, right when you're on that growth edge, you've got a tool to take with you. Would that be okay? Amazing. So let's get into it. So since our brains love history, right? Our brains are like, what happened? Tell me about it. And that's what I'm going to make all my decisions from. I want you to go back to a time in your life where you made it through something difficult, hard, something you look back at now and you're like, wow, I did that. It could be that you trained and ran and completed a marathon. It could be that you made it through a divorce. You left a full-time job and went out on your own as an entrepreneur. It could be your birth story, something that you went through that was difficult at the time, but in reflection you realize how incredible you are. So find that, take a couple seconds to figure that out. And if you're writing notes, you can write this down in a journal. When you have that, the next step that I want you to take is I want you to reflect on who you were, who you got to be to make it through that journey, right? Were you resilient, relentless, courageous, brave, free, abundant, passionate, loving? Like what parts of you made it through that? And I want you to pick 5 words and write these down. 5 words of who you were to make it through that you look back at and like, wow, She did it. Okay, so write those down. Amazing. So now out of those 5 words, I want you to look at them and reflect and pick 3 of those words that you're going to circle that are the words that you feel like really could carry you forward. You're like, yes, I was her then. Can I still be her now? Maybe it's courageous, relentless, resilient. If I think about a story for myself and I think about, you know, making it through a 2-day marathon, right? When I did this 2-day marathon, it's like I had to be relentless and disciplined and courageous and brave. So pick 3 of those words that you can circle that you would like to take with you, like maybe like wearing it like a cape, the way that a superhero wears a cape. So now this is what I call a power choice statement. So what I want you to say and put before these 3 words is, I choose to be. I choose to be relentless, courageous, and brave. I choose to be resilient and loving and disciplined. So pick 3 words because this is going to be your power choice statement that you get to take with you that when you're on that growth edge, because remember our brains are looking to the past and they don't know the future, but if you can prove to your brain that you are her, that you've done the hard thing and you've made it through, then you can step forward into the future using the same thing. And that is your power choice statement. Now, just a few weeks ago, I received a message in a chat while I was live in front of a room of entrepreneurs, and it was this woman named Lauren. And Lauren left me a message and she said, you know, my business was at $150,000 a year in revenue. And while she was getting all the strategies she could get from me being her consultant and our education, she said that the thing that was the most impactful to her was this concept of that there was no cap. There was no limit to what was possible for her. And in that same message, she told me that she went from $150,000 a year ago to $2.2 million in her business. And while there was strategy, of course, there's always strategy involved, it was her mindset that she was reminded that there was no cap, there was no ceiling. And she realized if this could happen for other people, if we could share the stories and if we could model this, she said, if it's for them, then why not me? Why not me? So I want you to ask yourself the same question. Why not you? Of course this is possible for you. It's just when you decide to lift the ceiling— in fact, how about we just get rid of the ceiling, right? Let's blow the whole thing off. It's your own building. And so if there is no cap, if there is no ceiling, why not you? So as we wrap this up, I'd love for you to repeat after me, and let's just shout it to the rooftops. Why not me? Okay, one more time. Why not me? Now go out there, keep growing, because remember, your business will only grow as much as you do. And as you continue to level up and get rid of that ceiling, your business will grow as well. Thank you so much.
