Your Personal Style Is a Brand Building Tool Not a Last Minute Detail
- emsteinbrink
- Nov 10
- 10 min read
Style isn’t just what you wear. It is visual presence that also serves as a strategic tool because it tells a story long before any words ever do. So is your style conveying the story about you that you intend to tell?
In this episode of The Visibility Shift, you’ll learn why so many high-achieving women treat style as a last-minute detail (rather than the brand-building tool it truly is) and what shifts when you begin to dress with intention instead of reaction. I’ll reveal how aligning your wardrobe with your brand vision transforms the way others perceive you (and how you perceive yourself).
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1:01 – Two icons who demonstrate the unseen power of storytelling through style
2:30 – How easy it is for style to become an afterthought
3:52 – The hidden cost of letting others define your visual brand
6:06 – The danger of letting outside factors make decisions for your brand
8:44 – How photo shoots can expose the gap between your true brand and everyone else’s opinions
10:23 – The incongruency of your outfit telling a different story than your message
12:11 – What to ask yourself the next time you’re wardrobe-prepping for something big
Mentioned In Your Personal Style Is a Brand Building Tool Not a Last Minute Detail
Full Transcript
Welcome to The Visibility Shift, the podcast where style becomes your most powerful strategy for being seen, standing out, and leading boldly. I'm Ellie Steinbrink, stylist and personal brand coach, and if you've ever thought, "My style just isn't working anymore," take this as your sign. You're ready for your next level. And instead of launching into a panicked shopping spree, what you really need is a strategy. A style strategy that reflects where you're headed, not who you used to be or who you think you need to be to fit in.
Because when your style aligns with your brand and your vision, everything shifts. You lead with more presence, you attract the right opportunities and clients, and you fully step into the woman you're becoming. Because showing up as yourself, that's the most strategic thing you can do. Now let's get visible.
Welcome to another episode of The Visibility Shift. Let's go back like 40 years. I was a 1980s child, and I am a huge fan of Michael Jackson. Imagine in that time me listening to his music. Maybe I had never seen much of him, and I finally get a chance to go to his concert.
When I go to his concert, he walks on stage, and he's wearing a really basic, polished three-piece suit. No gloves, no sparkle, no tailored military jackets. Would that feel off? What if you went to a Taylor Swift concert, and she showed up just wearing something totally normal? You'd feel it. Something would be missing, right?
These two icons that I'm talking about—their style wasn't just a decoration. It was the message. It helped tell their story. It made who they are and what they are all about believable. Think about Michael Jackson. His music was known to be eclectic. It was mixing different elements of different types of music, so it made complete sense. Beyond that, it was pushing boundaries, so it made sense when he showed up with a completely eclectic style—a sequined glove, a military jacket, random things—but it made sense. It told his story.
When you think about Taylor Swift, every album she has released, there is a different story that then is supported in the outfits that she shows up with. Why am I talking about this? I'm talking about this because I think it's all too easy for us to treat style as an afterthought. It's the least important decision of all the decisions we have to make in our business, the last detail that we just want to barrel through.
We want to look "nice" by the time we show up at whatever the event is that we're going to. But what if it's actually one of the first building blocks of your brand? I really do think it's easy for style to be an afterthought.
Because now, being a business owner, I understand the time and the effort that goes into securing that spot for the keynote you've been going for, or that big stage that you really want to be on, or the energy that went into writing your book, or the energy and time and resources that went into creating your course content that now you're going to go sell online. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that how we show up visually is another clue that others use to determine what we're all about.
They use that to determine if we're believable, if we're authentic. In the background, our audience and clients are deciding, “Does the message I'm hearing from this person align with who I'm actually seeing in front of me right now?” And this is why I want you to consider today, in this short episode, style isn't the cherry on top. It's actually part of your foundation—your brand, who you are—because how you show up visually tells people who you are before you ever say a word.
I talk about that a lot. They're making judgments about who you are before you even speak. But then once you do speak, they are deciding if the glove fits. I was reminded of this concept. I was listening to a business podcast recently, and the host was talking about hiring people into your business. She was saying, if you don't know who you are, if you don't have a solid vision for your business or your services, when you go to hire a team to help you, you may be wondering why the investment falls flat or you're not getting the results you desired.
The reason is because without you having a clear direction or a clear vision that you are then unable to share with the team, the team of experts are just going to go do their thing. It makes me think about hiring a PR strategist. If you don't have a clear direction about, “This is the person I'm talking to. This is not the person I'm talking to,” if they're a little bit wishy-washy on that, what are they going to do? They're just going to go find you a great placement.
But maybe that placement that they go secure for you, or the podcast they secure for you, or the event they secure for you, doesn’t align with your vision. Or maybe it's a social or marketing strategist where, without your clear vision of what you're trying to do that will actually move the needle forward, they might be able to drive likes on your social—but is it actually driving sales calls?
It's like this with your style. If you haven't defined your foundation, if you haven't defined your vision that aligns with your brand, that brand energy, you'll end up letting other people define it for you. They might do a fantastic job of defining it for you. But the problem is, it's not aligned. It's like one part doesn't speak to the other.
Another way you could think about it is when your style is an afterthought, you're in reaction mode. When you think of your style as foundational, it's you leading, you driving. I want to share a couple of examples that I think will really drive this concept home. I'm going to share one example that you may have heard me talk about here on the podcast before. It's a very innocent mistake I think many of us make.
It was many years ago when I was preparing for a keynote opportunity that I was really excited about. I was struggling to figure out what to wear. If you're listening and you're a keynote speaker, I'm sure you've struggled in deciding what to wear. Well, I thought it would be fun to do an Instagram poll—not only to create engagement with my audience but also then for them to help me decide what to wear.
Long story short, you can go back to a previous episode to hear the whole story, I was about to let the Instagram poll results—my followers—tell me which outfit I should wear. It wasn't until the day of the keynote that I made a last-minute switch because I thought, “This just doesn’t feel right. This doesn’t feel like me.” Thank goodness I did, because if I had worn what Instagram told me, would I have been looking nice? Would I have been looking polished? Would I have been looking appropriate? Yes. But would I be looking like my most magnetic self? Probably not.
Think about the times when you've had to get up on a big stage. Did your outfit become an afterthought? Or did you let others decide or define what you should wear? That might come in the form of all the restrictions that come around—what to wear for a keynote or what to be on stage—given that you're going to be on camera, that there are going to be lights on you. You might let other factors decide what you're going to wear instead of the other way around.
Or did you think about how your message could be further amplified by what you're wearing so that your message could be even more believable, so that you could be even more believable? Another example this makes me think about is I was prepping to be a guest on a podcast recently, and sometimes the host will send me questions that I can prep in advance.
In this instance, even though it wasn't in any of my pitch materials, they had a question in there about, “What do you think about capsule wardrobes? What’s good about them, what’s bad about them? If you wanted to start one, what would you recommend?” Part of me wanted to just go ahead and appease the podcast host and let them talk about it. It is their podcast after all.
But in that moment, I decided to say, “You know what, I actually don't create capsule wardrobes, so let's go ahead and skip that question.” It's another way in which I wasn't going to let that investment of my time and energy on that podcast be used on something that didn't align.
Let me give you one more example that maybe you could really relate to, and that is if you have a photo shoot coming up. I find that photo shoots, especially when they're done for your brand, are an event that cause some of the most panic for women entrepreneurs and women leaders. You really do.
I have been in this position myself when I did my brand photos. You find yourself in a position where you're just scrambling. You can so easily be swayed by the Pinterest search you start—I know that's what I did: “What to wear to a photo shoot”—and you start getting ideas. You might easily be swayed after you have a conversation with your photographer, who will definitely have opinions about what colors to wear or not to wear, what patterns to wear or to avoid.
After all, they are the experts. So then after taking all of this into consideration, you maybe even will talk to some friends or get some other opinions in the mix. Your outfit then ends up being a mishmash of everybody else's opinions of what you should wear. Then you find yourself thinking, “Where am I in this outfit? And how have I gotten so far away from what the original vision was?”
Now, just imagine if you had a clear vision in mind of, “This is my brand. This is who I am. These are ways in which my clothes could amplify who I am all about when I'm in front of this camera,” then you share that clear vision with your photographer—or your stylist, I have done this before—who can only then further enhance your results, imagine how magnetic that would be.
I want to give you one final example here to think about. I want you to imagine maybe there are some people out there that haven't been on my socials. I don't know. Maybe you don't know how I dress. I mean, most people in this day and age have probably seen me before, but let's imagine you hadn't. Let's imagine you had only heard me on this podcast, perhaps.
You know I talk about authenticity. You know I talk about boldness. You know I have a mantra of coloring outside the lines, which my mom shared with me and has become my own personal mantra. Now, imagine you finally get to see me in person, and I show up looking as bland as ever—nothing interesting, nothing special, nothing bold about my outfit. Would you feel like there was an incongruence there? Would my message land? Would I be believable, credible even, where I'm saying you should go be bold and authentic and color outside the lines, but then I'm actually not doing that for myself?
As we wrap up here, I want you to remember that it feels like style is just the last thing we will tack on after everything else is done. The real hard work is getting the keynote. The real hard work is writing the book. The real hard work is creating the content for your course. The real hard work is getting that dream client meeting. The real hard work is getting your spot in this mastermind.
But style is really a piece of what you're all about. It is a part of your leadership. It's part of your brand. It's core to your foundation, because when your outer expression matches that inner part of you, your audience will feel it. They will be deciding, “Is she believable? Is she someone that I can buy into? Is she someone that I can trust?”
So the next time you're prepping for something big—a keynote, photo shoot, client event, any of the things—instead of asking, “What should I wear?” maybe switch the question to say, “What message do I want this outfit to send?” Or maybe another way to phrase it would be, “How can what I wear be an extension of who I am and what I'm all about?”
If any of this is hitting home, this is exactly the work that I do inside the Standout Style Kickstarter program, which is where you and I would work one-to-one to align your message, your brand, your mindset, and your style so that you can show up wherever it is you have to go and have the impact you desire and get the results you desire.
If that's something that sounds of interest to you, there's a link in the show notes you can go to and check out. Set up a discovery call with me. We can chat more about if it's a fit. But in the meantime, I want you to remember—style is not an afterthought. Style is and should be, as a personal brand, one of the core elements that is just as important as your message and who you’re all about. With that, I will look forward to seeing you in the next episode.
Thanks for joining me on The Visibility Shift. If something in today's episode made you pause, rethink, or gave you permission to stop playing small, it would mean so much to me if you'd leave a review at ratethispodcast.com/visibilityshift.
If you're ready to stop second-guessing and start showing up as the leader you are from the inside out, The Visibility Edit is where that shift begins. Head to elliesteinbrink.com to learn more and join the next round. Because the next version of you, she's not waiting for permission. She's waiting for you. Let's make it visible.
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