Speaker Style Rules That Make You Forgettable (and What to Do Instead)

Have you ever opened an email before a speaking engagement and immediately spiraled into panic—not about your talk, but about your outfit? Perhaps the event planner listed a dozen dress code rules in it, like avoiding bright colors and patterns or coordinating with a brand palette. So then you find yourself standing in front of your closet, wondering if your signature look is “too much.”

But true visibility doesn’t come from blending in. It’s built on standing out with intention, clarity, and confidence. So let’s flip the script on the unspoken rules that can quietly dilute your personal brand.

In this episode of The Visibility Shift, you’ll be challenged to stop dressing for approval and start dressing for alignment instead. Through relatable client stories and impactful mindset shifts, I’ll reveal four speaker rules, explain why they don’t work, and redefine what it means to show up with presence, reclaim your visual identity, and lead with your brand first (not the rulebook). 

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2:57 – How even seasoned speakers can fall into the trap of dimming their presence without realizing it

4:39 – Why dressing to match your audience doesn’t pass the sniff test

6:42 – How your brand color is just the beginning of something much more dynamic

9:10 – Why dressing for the background is an impossible limitation

11:03 – The weird rule that makes sense but always gets followed blindly when it shouldn’t

14:43 – Three things to take away from this episode (even if you remember nothing else)

18:10 – Brand as the feeling you leave people with

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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 Podcast. I'm so glad you're here.

All right, I want you to go to that moment after you've booked a speaking engagement. Maybe it's a really big conference that you've been hoping for, and you get that email with all the confirmations of what to do, how long your speech needs to be, fonts, all the details, and you get to the section about what to wear.

You see things like, avoid bright colors that might be too saturated or too bright for the screens, or no patterns as it might create a moray pattern on the screen—you know, that thing where the lines are too little and it blurs and makes it look really fuzzy. Or, "Here are our conference colors, and make sure that anything you wear is coordinating with this particular palette."

Have you been there? I bet you have. If you're a speaker, I know you've gotten these. Instantly, not only are you thinking about delivering a great talk and nailing it from that standpoint, but you're already starting to feel a panic about, "Great, now I need to be thinking about my outfit." This is the very moment where I see so many women accidentally start to dilute their personal brand without even realizing it.

I want to talk about, first of all, some common dress code rules that I pulled from some speakers in my world. I wanted them to tell me what are some of the rules that you hear that are either just assumed for speakers or that you've received. I want to talk about why blindly following these rules is a bit of a danger zone for your personal brand. Now, what I'm not trying to do here is totally disregard all the rules. That would not be the right guidance to give you.

But what I want you to recognize is that when we prioritize following all the rules or fitting in over standing out, we risk putting our brand second. That's the opposite of what makes a really memorable presence. If you're like me, you've been conditioned to be a really good student. We follow the instructions, we people-please, we bend to fit the rooms that we enter. That feels like the right thing. It feels like the responsible thing.

But here again, where I want to flip the script is when you're building a personal brand, especially as a speaker, safety isn't the goal. Audiences don't need you to blend in with them. They need to feel your leadership. They need to feel your authenticity. They need to feel your presence the second you walk onto that stage. You can absolutely honor the environment and your brand at the same time. But if you start with the event's rules instead of your brand's strategy, you'll end up performing instead of leading.

This is where I see so many women unintentionally going off course. Maybe this is you. Maybe you've felt yourself falling down this road, or maybe you're thinking, "No, this isn't me," so I want you to hang on, because I think you might be able to identify yourself in some of these examples. You start thinking about what's appropriate, or what's polished, or the colors of the conference, or all these little details. Before you know it, you've edited yourself down right out of your brand.

So let's get into it. I want to talk about four common rules that, when I polled my group of speakers, these came out on top. These rules are driving how we dress, but in my mind, they don't pass the sniff test. So I'm going to tell you why I don't think it passes the sniff test, then I'm going to give you a helpful mindset shift that can get you back in the right direction.

Rule number one: Dress to match your audience. Oh boy, this is the big one. In fact, this is the one that came up with every single person I polled. Where this doesn't pass the sniff test for me is when did you ever, as an audience member, expect that a speaker was going to dress just like you? Did you ever sit there thinking, "I'm here in my jeans and they're wearing a sheath dress. What's up with them?"

I understand why this rule exists. I really do. I think we don't want to walk into a room and be tone-deaf. I've heard examples of this from one of my clients—a speaker consistently booked in the spring and the fall. She's a heavy-hitter speaker, and one of the audiences she speaks most with is the construction industry. I remember her telling me in one of our intro sessions, "Listen, I'm sometimes in front of a group full of men wearing their work boots and overalls. How am I supposed to stand up on stage wearing this big sparkly dress? It just feels like I'm tone-deaf. I'm not considering my audience."

I understand where you're coming from, but I think what can easily happen when our focus is “dress for the audience” is that we forget about our brand. So the mindset shift I would give you here is brand first. We establish our brand first. What is our brand? What does our brand look like, feel like? What are our brand values and brand words? How does that parlay into an outfit? Then we dress to the appropriate level.

Yes, maybe if they're all coming very dressed down, maybe it's appropriate to wear a pair of jeans, but it always has to be in a way that aligns with your brand. Just because you're talking to the tech industry doesn't mean you wear a pair of ripped jeans if that really doesn't align with your personal brand strategy. This is a yes-and. Yes, it's okay to be cognizant, but again, the brand is always coming first.

Second rule: Dress only in your one brand color. This was another that came up unanimously, which is, "I consistently wear my brand." This is one of those more unspoken rules. You're not going to see this necessarily in the rules or the guidelines coming from an event telling you to wear your brand colors. However, this is a rule I've seen that has been developed by personal brands and speakers themselves.

It's that, "Whatever the colors of my brand are, then I must only wear that color." I'm over here helping women do this very thing. But I think the caveat that I want you to think about—where this doesn't pass the sniff test for me with all of my training in branding—is your brand is more than just one color.

Let's say your brand color is pink. "Okay, so I always wear pink because that's how people know me." Yes, wearing pink—okay, think about wearing a pink tutu versus wearing a pink blazer versus wearing a pink sheath dress versus wearing pink Converse shoes. This isn't just a conversation about color. It's about color being part of the conversation. It is not the only factor that makes up your brand.

So yes, while color is important, it doesn't mean that every single time you step onto stage, you have to only be wearing one color or one set of colors. Because I believe when you're building the visual part of your brand, it's not just color that is an element we want to consider. There's a storyline there, but this is also personality. There's a tone of your visual elements that makes it you. It's not just the color; it's that and other things.

So again, the mindset shift I want you to have is, yes, while color is important, it is not the end-all be-all. It's the overall feeling that your style—your visual brand—gives to people. Plus, side note, isn't it a little exhausting to only be wearing one color? I know some women will say, "Well, I feel like I've had so many times photographed in this dress, and then I need some more photographs in another dress, and it just feels like there's a lot of sameness." While consistency is good, we don't want to lean too heavily on that one aspect of our brand.

Rule number three: Dress to match your background. Gosh, I hear this one a lot. When I was working with a client earlier this year—she’s someone who is in a corporate environment but she finds herself on stage a lot speaking at conferences and often on videos giving presentations virtually—we were doing a visioning exercise for her style. I said, "I want you to imagine the most perfect outfit. I want you to explain it in detail." These are often clues into what their style vision is.

She started to describe her outfit and she made the side note that she chose the color, I think it was navy, because that would be a color that would go with any background at any conference she would attend. I said, "Hold up here. This is not how we choose our colors." Where this doesn't pass the sniff test for me is that there are a lot of limitations in what colors we can wear if we're always dressing to match the background. Really, neutrals are your only option.

So where I want to shift your mindset is that picking a color to match the background maybe is a consideration, but it is definitely not the first thing we need to think about. Would Target do this? If Target were a person who spoke on a stage and the conference gave them a whole color palette to follow, would they be like, "Oh, okay, we're going to wear orange"? No. They would do something within their color palette that makes sense for them.

I want to challenge you in your thinking that we always have to match the background. I think, again, this conversation keeps coming back to what aligns with my brand first. Then can we make that line up with the background as best we can?

Here's a weird rule that came up as I was speaking to women. This was also an unspoken rule. I did see it in some guidelines that came from a conference. But this rule number four is don't wear anything too short. Because, hey, the cameras might be at stage level. Or if you're sitting down, the cameras might be shooting right at your skirt level and everyone's going to see your undergarments.

In general, I would say this is a good rule because obviously no one wants to be baring their knickers to the whole audience. However, where I don't think this passes the sniff test is that we take this rule really blindly. So we think that short skirts are inappropriate or short things are inappropriate, and that's just not always true. One of the things I think about when I'm styling women is that appropriateness—when I think about wearing a short skirt—there's a conversation that needs to be had about proportion and balance.

So even if I'm wearing a mini skirt and I decide to wear that with a crop top and a sky-high pair of heels, you can imagine that is one look. Maybe that might feel inappropriate. However, if you take that same mini skirt and pair it with a cozy turtleneck and some smart flats, that's a totally different read, right? There's a professionalism there. There's a polish there.

So I think we automatically just write off anything that is too short on the thigh. This came up in one of my clients. I had this idea that was very aligned with her personal brand—to wear a short suit. It was this adorable tweed orange—orange is one of her brand colors—so her because it fits her brand personality, orange short suit. We put it on, and it was hitting about mid-thigh, and she’s like, "Gosh, I don’t know. I’ve always been told don’t wear short skirts, don’t wear short anything."

I said, "What’s the real issue here? Do you feel like you look inappropriate?" She said, "Well, no, I don’t feel inappropriate. I feel very polished." She did. She looked polished as hell. She’s like, "I just need to think about this." So a week went by and I said, "What are you thinking?" I gave her the space to feel into it because I know this was a really big shift for her. She’s like, "I don’t know. I still have my doubts, but I’m going to do this."

Okay, so she went all in. She’s been wearing it now for this fall conference season rotation. Guess what? People are giving her compliments, loving it, saying things about, "Oh my gosh, you’re so brave to do this and you look amazing." Again, not that this is about compliments, but the thing we fear is that we’re going to get a shot of our underwear, we're going to have people say we look inappropriate or we don’t look polished enough or professional up there on stage. That’s exactly the opposite of what is happening.

My mindset shift for you here is short isn’t always bad. Don’t completely rule this out. I’m curious—for those of you listening who are speakers—are there other rules as you’re hearing me talk about this, and maybe some things are coming to mind for you about how you get dressed when you get ready for a speaking engagement? Are there other rules that you’re thinking about? Because I would love to have a part two of this if you have more ideas, because I think this is a goldmine here.

Message me on Instagram. I’m at style.decoded, or you can leave a comment on whatever platform you’re listening to. I’d love to hear from you. But let’s wrap this all back together, okay? There are some key things that just keep coming up as I’m talking that I want you to grab onto and take away if you remember nothing else from this episode.

The first thing I want you to remember is brand first, then consider the room you’re in. When I say brand first, I mean think of your brand identity. What are your brand values? What is the brand personality? Do you have brand words? How does that parlay into your style? That comes first. Then, after you have a clear vision on that, you calibrate to the room.

So I said calibrate. I did not say match. Because everyone in the audience is wearing athleisure or ripped jeans doesn’t mean you have to match. You can calibrate to the room. Remember, you’re the expert they came to learn from. They aren’t expecting you to look just like them.

The second thing is you don’t have to follow all the rules. They’re suggestions for a reason. Dress codes are essentially guidelines. We don’t have to follow everyone to a T. Even when I think outside of stage appearances, when women come to me, there’s always an exercise I take them through about all these rules we’ve created about how we should look, what we should wear, what we should not wear, I find that there are so many rules by the time we’ve gotten to this point in our midlife that it can be hard to actually define a style because there’s so much confinement.

It’s the same situation here. When we whittle down our options to such a small amount, it can be really hard to make something within that. Remember, some rules are great. You want to have something to clip your mic pack to, okay, great. Maybe you don’t want your earrings dangling against the earpiece so that all you hear is the clink clink clink. But beyond that, can we take some liberties and make sure that our brand is always aligned with the story we’re up there to tell, not an afterthought?

Okay, so the third thing—the third and final thing—I want you to remember from this is that without a true north for your style, you’re going to end up being a chameleon. This reminds me of a quote that actually came from Hamilton, another one of my good friends. Kelly—shout out to Kelly—talks about this all the time: "If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything."

It feels a little bit like that. If you don’t first have a solid foundation of how your brand, your message, your brand story parlays into a visual element, then you’re going to become a chameleon to whatever event you are attending. I mean, when you think about that—imagine you becoming a chameleon with your message—you wouldn’t do that. Now, I know sometimes conferences have themes, and maybe you massage your message a little bit to fit the theme of that conference, but still, the core of your message is not going to change.

It should be the same with your style. The core essence of your style, which is the visual expression of your brand, needs to be consistent. If that isn’t there, how are you going to always go back and have something to check against? Because it’ll just look like whatever colors all of these different conferences want you to be, whatever personality or visual effects they want you to have.

One final thing I’m going to say to wrap this up is I heard recently—I listen to a lot about branding, I listen to a lot of podcasts, and read things about personal brands—one of my favorite ways I just heard recently is that brand is the feeling that you leave people with. One way to think about this: imagining you’re on stage, people have seen you, they’ve heard your talk—how are people describing you?

Again, they’re not just describing you from your content. I get that that’s a big piece of it. They’re describing you from your whole presence. What do you think people are saying about you? Or maybe you have actual proof—what are people saying about you when you’re not there? Are they describing, would they describe you in the way that you want?

Remember, we write our stories. They don’t write us. If you’re having some aha moments today and you’re thinking, "Gosh, I’m not really sure how well my style is aligning with this personal brand that I’ve built for myself," I want you to consider looking into my program, the Standout Style Kickstarter program. This is the exact thing that would get you on the right track to make sure that you don’t become a chameleon in your style, that you have a true north.

This is a service where it’s just you and me working one-on-one, and we start by setting the foundation—getting really clear on what your style vision is that amplifies your brand. We learn about things that are getting in our way, keeping us from fully expressing that vision, then we actually create outfits that fully express that vision. It’s a really amazing service. I’d love for you to check it out. There’s a link to it in the show notes if you want to know more.

But if nothing else, I hope something in this episode struck a chord with you. I hope that the next time you get one of those emails from a conference with all of those rules, you’ll think of this episode and maybe make one tiny shift from what you’ve done before. If you have any thoughts and you want to share them with me, I wholeheartedly welcome all of those. With that, I want to say thanks for joining me, and I’ll see you on 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.