The Style Audit That Reveals Who You've Been This Year
- emsteinbrink
- Dec 1, 2025
- 20 min read
Most of us end the year by setting new goals, mapping out revenue targets, and planning what's next for our business in the new year. But before you rush into writing your new goals for the year, I invite you to pause and reflect on this year. Not through your to-do list or your revenue numbers, but through your clothes.
Your closet is a record of how you really showed up this year. The outfits you chose for speaking events, client meetings, and networking lunches reveal whether you were leading with energy or playing it safe, showing up aligned or just checking boxes, and making strategic choices or scrambling at the last minute.
In this episode of The Visibility Shift, I'm walking you through the same reflection exercise I do with my clients and just did for myself. We're looking at your style through three lenses of energy, alignment, and strategy. You'll see where your wardrobe supported who you're becoming and where it held you back. Grab your phone and get ready to look at some photos.
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3:28 – Energy check to discover how your outfits affected your mood, your behavior, your performance, and ultimately, your results
8:01 – How color, silhouettes, and pieces of clothing can subtly shift your energy and mood
12:09 – Alignment check to identify where practicality, rules, consensus, and outside influence pull you away from your style
18:46 – Strategy check to discover whether or not you’re treating your style like a visual element of your brand
20:06 – How my own ChatGPT experiment exposed the tension between creativity and perceived authority
22:13 – A deeper dive into emotional purchasing patterns that can lead you off course
25:43 – Three action questions that turn this reflection into real momentum for the year ahead
Mentioned In The Style Audit That Reveals Who You've Been This Year
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 back to another episode of The Visibility Shift. I'm so glad you're here today. If you're someone who at this time of year gets extra reflective, just like I do, I get really reflective this time of year, this episode is for you.
So before you rush into writing your new goals for the year, setting your plans, getting your services and your business in order for the New Year, I want you to pause and think back on this year, not through your to-do list or your revenue goals or how you performed or your metrics, but through your closet. How did you really show up? Were your outfits reflecting who you're becoming? Did they reflect your brand? Or are you still living in a version of yourself that you used to be, even though you find yourself growing and advancing?
This episode that you're going to hear today is essentially an exercise. So if you're a person that likes to take notes, definitely get a notepad or your notes on your phone handy. This is actually an exercise that I took myself through recently to evaluate just how I showed up in alignment with my brand or not visually. I want to invite you to do it with me now too.
The other thing that might be helpful is to either call to mind outfits that you wore in your bigger visibility moments this year. So think about your keynotes, think about your networking events, think about your big presentations, think about big client meetings, maybe a guest appearance on a podcast or even big conferences that you attended or masterminds that you were a part of. I want you to call those outfits to mind, and if you want, you can start scrolling through your phone, and if you had photos of you at these events or these appearances, even better, because that'll help you just really bring yourself back to those moments.
So let's dive in. What we're going to do is there are really three big lenses that we're going to evaluate our style through. These three big lenses are: number one, an energy check. Number two, an alignment check. Number three, a strategy check. Let's go ahead and start with an energy check.
You guys know, one of the things that's core to my philosophy that shapes everything I do and the way I approach my work with my clients is that I have a belief that's rooted in science that what you wear changes you. It changes your mood, your energy, your performance, your behavior. Ultimately, what you wear changes your results on any given day.
So this is a huge aspect of my work because to me it's not just about following trends or wearing what's popular or what a style influencer says we need to be wearing. This is really bringing it back to what is your experience with the clothes that you're wearing? Do your clothes give you energy or do they drain you?
I think we intuitively know this because often I'll talk about this concept as the closet effect. We know that when we go into our closet on any given morning and we put on something that makes us not feel that great, whether it doesn't fit or we didn't have enough time to figure something out, we grabbed it at the last minute, or we've got kids around our ankles and it makes it really hard to make any decision, or something's not clean that we thought was and we wanted to wear, or maybe it doesn't zip up, those mornings put you on a trajectory for your day.
Maybe you don't know that. Maybe this is an aha moment for the first time. But I think we know that those are our icky, yucky days, and it did start in your closet. Then conversely, we know that when we put something on great, that we really love or that is a color that we love or a silhouette that just makes us feel really good in our body, that is a totally different trajectory that we get put on.
On those days, you know that how you walk and how you stand change. We know that how we interact with others changes. We often have more bravery to put ourselves out there. We have the courage to introduce ourselves to someone that you might want to meet at a networking event or the courage to put yourself in a room with women at a higher level than you and feel like, “Hey, I'm meant to be here.”
If we're thinking about the opposite day—that not-so-good day—some cues might be that we find ourselves fidgeting, adjusting things. It's just we feel really fussy, we feel off, and we end up hiding. Another way to ask this question or to get reflective about how my clothes or my outfits this year affected my energy is: were you putting on outfits that made you feel expansive or outfits that made you feel safe?
Now, a couple of examples I can speak to from my own experiences: there was one time where I had a speaking event and I decided to wear denim to that event, which to me felt very on brand for me but also somewhat risky, right? Because where have you ever heard anyone say, “Wear jeans to a big keynote”? Nowhere. I mean, it's a little bit more common these days, but still, I think there's an MO that we dress up beyond jeans. So that felt a little expansive for me and aligned.
I had another event this year that was a color-themed event. Everyone was supposed to wear pink, and I didn't have anything in my closet at the time that felt me or felt on brand that happened to be pink. I would have had to go shop for something, and so I ended up not wearing pink. That felt really scary, but it also felt very aligned. That gave me energy to show up in something that did make me feel good versus show up in a color that honored the event but made me not feel my best self because it would have been a last-minute decision and just forcing something to work.
The other thing I know for me personally is when I'm feeling expansive versus safe is when I'm pushing and leaning into my creativity in an outfit, pushing the boundaries of what is expected. So I might put on an outfit and say, “Yeah, that's how I wore it the last time, but how could I change it up and make it different and make it feel even more creative and more me?”
Now, I know most of you are thinking, “Okay, Ellie, that's not how I work. I'm not creative like that.” But I'm just giving you some examples of how I know when my energy is in alignment versus when I'm feeling like, “Oh, I'm just checking a box.”
A few other ways to help you start thinking about how did my outfits change my energy—either push it forward into an expansive zone or take it back into a draining zone—is think about color. When you look at these photos of you at these events or these performances or these speaking engagements, or if you're cataloging them in your mind right now, what did you notice gave you energy and confidence or even a feeling of empowerment?
What were those colors? Is there a pattern there? Are there certain colors you always go to that just give you that instant energy? Then the opposite of that is: were there colors that ultimately made you feel like you were fading into the background? Or maybe it made it easier for you to hide?
I've actually heard clients say that to me before. As we evaluate their style as it is versus where we want to take it forward, they'll even say, “I tended to wear black or grays because I knew then I wouldn't be seen.” It was this subconscious thing holding themselves back.
I know for me when it comes to colors, when I did this exercise myself and I looked at all the photos of myself this year, I noticed a pattern of wearing deep, saturated colors like reds, burgundies, camels, and cobalt blues—these really rich, deep colors. But then I also noticed a pattern of really joyful, playful colors like lighter pinks, yellow, and punchier reds. Let color be a part of your story as well in terms of what gave you energy and what didn’t.
Here's another frame you can think about in terms of energy, and that's silhouette. I can probably speak for every woman listening right now that there are certain silhouettes of clothes that when you look at yourself in the mirror, you become hypercritical of your body. Or even if you decide to wear it outside of the house to an event, you find yourself so self-conscious and so consumed by like, “Oh my gosh, is my stomach sticking out? Is my belly emphasized? Are my arms showing?” All these things.
I know you've been in these moments. I've been in these moments. However, there are certain silhouettes—and I know this is true for you too—there are certain silhouettes and pieces that are in my closet that it doesn't matter if I'm feeling bloated or had too much eating and drinking over a weekend and now I'm feeling gross at the beginning of a week, it doesn't matter. I can still put those silhouettes on and I'm like, “I feel pretty good.”
So think about for you, which of the pieces that you wore, the outfits you wore this year, which ones are always like, "They always make me feel great because of a silhouette that maybe just works with my body? Or maybe it's a silhouette that I feel like I have to wear your Spanx in order for me to look good in it." Catalog that.
Also, just a hint: if there are pieces that always make you feel hypercritical or self-conscious, it might be time to let that one go or give it away. Help yourself out this year.
Really, as I'm talking about all of these different examples of how you can evaluate how your outfits gave you energy or not, treat these answers like data—like red threads that will ultimately lead you to your best self.
Remember, I said at the beginning of this section: what you wear changes your daily results. This information that you're collecting is going to lead you to better daily results. Lean more into what made you feel good, made you feel courageous, made you feel empowered, made you feel brave to take that next step or to do the darn thing, and avoid or just discard or donate anything that made you feel less than, that made you self-doubt, that made you feel like an imposter, that made you feel not the greatest in your body. Let those things go. So energy is your first check.
How are we doing so far? Let's go into the second lens through which you can evaluate your outfit this year. That's an alignment check. Sometimes it's like the question of "What do you want?" It's like, well, I don't know. But if you ask me what I don't want, oh man, can I answer that really easily? So let's take that approach in this section. We're going to say, what are ways that can derail you from being in alignment in terms of your style?
Okay, how about this one? I'm going to give you some examples of ways you can get derailed from being in alignment. Number one, it was easy or practical. Hello, anybody who travels—my speakers, women who just find themselves going to a lot of conferences—did your style reflect your brand and your message? Or did you default to what was easy and practical?
Okay, so I've heard women tell me so many times that when they travel, they'll just always pack neutral colors because everything will match everything in there and they don't have to think about it. So is that you? I'm going to say I don't throw practicality out the window when I'm working with my clients on style, but I do think there's a fine line between leaning too far into practicality easy versus abandoning yourself.
How about another way that you can get derailed from alignment, being all these rules and expectations? Now, I know you guys have heard me talk about how following rules and expectations is such a way to lose ourselves. But basically, you want to ask yourself, whose rules were you following this year? Your own or someone else's?
It could be everything from like, I find myself grounding all of my outfits in black because that was something I was taught from my time in corporate. Or I always feel like I have to put on a blazer to be taken seriously. Or maybe I don't want my outfit to stand out too much because then I wouldn't be humble. Then I wouldn't be a person that I was taught from a very young age to not be too out there. Or maybe for speakers, a rule is like, I'm always just going to focus on matching my background. Or another common one I talked about in a previous episode was only wearing one color ever. That becomes your brand, your visual brand element.
Okay, those are all rules that sometimes we adopt thinking it's actually helping us, but it actually can get us further and further away from this inner alignment. When I'm working with clients on style, I'm always working from an alignment on the inside, and then it matches on the outside. But these are examples of following rules that are external and letting it influence us internally.
How about another way that we can get derailed from alignment? That is consensus. I've told the story, I think a couple of times here, about how before a big keynote, I went on Instagram and showed five outfits I was considering and let everybody vote on my outfit. It was a fun engagement tactic that I used to bring everybody along with me as I was preparing for this keynote and showing behind the scenes. However, I almost let myself follow everyone's choice for me. Thank God at the last minute I said, "You know what, that's actually not the outfit that I want to wear. That's not the outfit that's going to make me feel most me."
But how many times do we let consensus—whether it's you put your outfits out there on an IG poll, or you're just consensus with your friend group, or even with, I've heard this a lot, my teenage daughter. Here's another way that we can get out of alignment, and that is being influenced.
I just talked about this in a previous episode where I had found this woman whose style I was just totally enamored with, and I was so inspired. But I found quickly this inspiration turning into obsession, and I was almost willing to throw away my whole style aesthetic to match hers instead of me taking from her what inspired me and finding a way to incorporate that into my own style that felt aligned.
Another way you can easily get out of alignment is appeasing—wearing an outfit that you know will be approved versus what you know you like. Finally, another way you can tell if you're out of alignment is if you get into a performative zone. This one is probably the hardest to detect because we're like, oh, we look good. This outfit's checking all the boxes. "I'm playing the part as a boss babe. I'm playing the part as a keynote speaker. I'm a seven or eight-figure entrepreneur. This is what we look like."
But there's something inside that's nagging at you that's like, this just isn't it. I'm trying to play this role, but it doesn't quite feel like me. I think sometimes as much as I think the dress for success rules sometimes can be helpful guides, they can also get us into this performative space. Or even when I read about what does it look like to have executive presence, it actually drives me absolutely bonkers because what it gives you is just a bunch of women looking all the same. That's not the goal here.
So the key thing here I'm talking about when we're thinking about alignment and as you're thinking about your outfits this year in those big visible moments, you really want to be aligned from the inside out because that's truthful, that's authentic, and people can feel it. You can feel it. Other people can too.
I'm just going to say it's really easy to find yourself get lost in this one, right? Because it's easy to let convenience or consensus lead us—like choosing outfits because they pack easily or because our most trusted friends or friend group told us that they looked good—instead of asking, "What feels in alignment for me? What feels like an embodiment of my personal brand?"
Okay, so we've made it through an energy check. We've made it through an alignment check. I hope you guys are finding some really interesting things and just letting yourself be honest, because honesty is really your first step here. Awareness is the first step. We'll talk about what steps you can take next, but let yourself be honest.
The third and final lens through which I want to evaluate your style this year is a strategy check. The alternate of leading with strategy is leading with emotion. So how can you know if you're leading with strategy or emotion?
The first thing I want to ask you is, are you treating your style like a visual element of your brand? I talk about this a lot that I think it's easy to think about visual elements of a brand when it's a big corporation, but then when it becomes us as the visual element of a brand, it feels much more vulnerable to think in the same way that a brand would, which is we're not working to fit in here. We're wanting to be distinct. We're wanting to stand out from our competitors. We want to stand out in our space.
But at the same time, we have this strong pull to want to belong. However, when we have this temptation to dress like everyone else that's going to be at the event or how we know women dress in this particular environment or this particular mastermind or this particular conference, when we feel pulled to dress in a way that belongs, that can make us abandon ourselves in the name of fitting in.
In this phase of my own exercise, I did a little experiment with ChatGPT. I uploaded all my outfits. If you want to do this, feel free, but I would say just do it with caution. I uploaded all my pictures of my outfits for this year and asked them to evaluate my brand in terms of its congruence with the visual element of my outfits. I was reading along. I'm like, oh, okay, check, check, check, check. You know, like I seemed like I was doing pretty good.
Then it told me that if I wanted to be in my current positioning, which my current positioning is that I'm a brand strategist for women leaders and women entrepreneurs, that some of my outfits, especially when they were more creative, might risk communicating me as a personal stylist energy versus a strategic advisor or a keynote expert. So they said maybe I should tone it down a little bit, keep my creativity toned down. So maybe just have one element that's really creative, but pair it with cleaner, more subtle, tailored, minimalist things.
That way—this is verbatim from ChatGPT—this is going to preserve your creative credibility while emphasizing your authority and clarity. You guys, I have to tell you, I was fuming when I read this because I was like, basically ChatGPT is asking me to become a version of myself that I am not so that I will look more authoritative and credible.
If you guys end up doing this exercise, please, please, please remember to keep yourself in the picture here because this is exactly how it can squirrel away from you. ChatGPT is really just looking at what it sees out there in the landscape that will make you fit in with other leaders and strategists and thought leaders out there. But that's not my goal here.
So always bring it back to what your goal is. That goal is to be a distinctive voice. Along with that distinctive voice, I am a distinct person just as you are. Think about again, are you working to fit in, or are you working to dress in a way that's going to be remembered or distinct?
Okay, so another way to know if you're leading with strategy or emotion, and I'm just going to raise my hand and say I found myself guilty with this this year. So when I got to this point of evaluating my year, if you find yourself frantically shopping or buying on impulse—like that last minute, oh my gosh, there's this event coming up, I got to get ready like I did. You guys have heard me talk about preparing for an event, two events I had in Canada this year. If you found yourself in that emotional stance as you were shopping, then you know you're maybe in danger of leading with emotion versus strategy.
I'm going to draw upon some questions that I used long ago. I had this guide a long time ago—I don't have it anymore, so don't ask me for it—but it was a way to determine how to know if you're buying with intention versus buying with emotion.
Some of the questions that come to mind is did I just buy this because I felt impulsive in the moment and thought that it might be good for me, but then when it actually came, I didn't actually feel motivated to wear it or it didn't feel like me? Or did I buy it only because it was on sale and I got swept up in the emotion of it being on sale because dang, I love a good deal. Hello, yes, I do.
Or how about this one, do I actually have anything in my closet I can wear this with? That's one of the biggest mistakes women make. It's like, oh, I found this awesome new thing, but now I have nothing to wear with it. So now I need to go buy more. Now we're frantically scrambling to add all these pieces. This is how our closets get overwhelmed.
So my rule is always if I buy a piece, I have to know at least three ways I'm going to wear that with pieces I already have in my wardrobe. Or maybe you'll know if you're dealing with emotion versus strategy based on that you have a stuffed closet and still feel like you have nothing to wear.
The key here is being swept up in emotion can sometimes work in our favor. I'm not going to say that I've never bought something in the heat of emotion and it always didn't work out. In some of those cases, it really did work out for me, and it became a signature piece in my wardrobe. But often it's a big distraction and can lead us off course.
It reminds me of when I was in my role at the ad agency and I was consulting because I was the client service representative. I was leading my clients on their brands. Often, I'd be working with a marketing team, and then we'd hear from the CEO. He's like, “Hey, I heard about this opportunity, and can we do this X, Y, and Z marketing tactic?” We'd always find ourselves in this position of having to say, “Okay, here's the strategy we've put into place. This is how we see this strategy played out. Your tactic, although it looks shiny and awesome, doesn't really line up with what we're trying to do here.”
It feels that same way with our style, right? Without a strategy in place—meaning what's my vision for the woman I'm becoming, what's the vision for how I visualize this brand into outfits—you're going to be pulled into all sorts of directions that may or may not land, that may or may not have clarity, and that may not be telling a clear story.
So we've checked our energy, we've checked our alignment, and we've checked our strategy. I'm going to leave you with three questions. I'm leaving you with these three questions because I'm a big believer in taking action with something you've heard today. I'm someone who can be easily inspired, but then I forget, oh yeah, I can't just be inspired. I need to actually take action. So these questions are going to help you take what you've thought about or wrote down today and start taking some action.
So the first question is based off of all these things I learned just now in the last 20 minutes or so, what will I start doing? What did I learn through these answers that maybe I wasn't aware of? Maybe I was phoning it in. So you might say, "I'm actually going to start being more intentional. I'm going to start thinking about these colors because I know they make me feel at my best. So what will I start doing?"
Number two, what will I stop doing? I think this is important. Look back. What took away your energy? What felt out of alignment? What felt emotionally based versus intentionally based? What comes up for you in this category? Write it down.
Finally, what am I doing well that I want to continue doing? I love this question because it gives you credit that, hey, you're not doing so bad, right? Give yourself some credit. So, whether you’re like, "Hey, I did pretty great on that," give yourself a pat on the back.
If you're thinking, “Gosh, this has got me thinking about so many things and it feels like I want to go deeper into this. I want to learn how my style can support my overall brand and my strategy and my story even more,” I want to remind you there are opportunities for you to do that with my guidance as we come into this new year. You can either work with me in a group program, which I have called The Visibility Edit. You can get on the waitlist for that for 2026, or we can work one-to-one where I will actually build this strategy with you. Then we'll actually create five to seven high-impact outfits that beautifully translate your brand into a visual story.
So go ahead and scroll down to the show notes if you want to learn more about those. But one last thing before you go, I want to leave you with this thought. If this episode, because of what you discovered and what you reflected on, felt overwhelming in terms of, “Gosh, I feel like there are some changes and I don't really know what next steps to take,” I want to remind you that you don't have to overhaul your whole closet or figure it all out by January.
There is one small step you can start doing if all the rest of them seem really overwhelming, and you can just start noticing. Notice what feels like you and your brand. Notice what doesn't. Then choose more of that. Because ultimately, when you choose more of that alignment, that's where you're going to find your confidence. That's where your magnetism lives.
Look, you've already built this business. You've already built this incredible unique voice. You're already making an impact. Be so proud of that. Now it's time to let your style catch up to the woman you've become. I'm cheering you on over here. With that, I'm going to see you—I hope to 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.
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