Why You Keep Waiting Until the Last Minute to Shop
- emsteinbrink
- Dec 29, 2025
- 17 min read
You know the feeling of that panic cycle spiral that hits the moment a high-stakes event looms on your calendar? Your stomach drops, and suddenly nothing in your closet feels right. Before you know it, you’re speed-scrolling, overnight-shipping, and hoping that one of 10 random packages will magically feel like “you.” It’s exhausting, and more importantly, it’s disconnecting.
But there’s a deeper truth: your style hasn’t kept pace with your evolution. And when your identity shifts but your wardrobe doesn’t, those high-visibility moments shine a spotlight on the gap.
In this episode of The Visibility Shift, I break down why this cycle feels so inevitable, why it fails to work, and why it has nothing to do with not being “good at style.” I discuss the emotional triggers behind last-minute shopping, reveal the real cost of following hidden rules and letting your clothes be an afterthought, and offer an empowering alternative rooted in clarity and confidence.
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
2:29 - How the panic shopping cycle unfolds
5:06 - Three reasons why this pattern keeps happening
10:54 - Why last-minute shopping almost never works
12:46 - How a style strategy becomes your roadmap to break the cycle (and makes the styling process easier)
16:22 - A peek into what it means to have a style strategy
20:22 - Why you should prepare your strategy now (not put it off until later)
Mentioned In Why You Keep Waiting Until the Last Minute to Shop
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. Before we dive in today, I'd love for you to think back on your year. We are, after all, at the end of the year. Specifically, I want you to be thinking about your style in those big moments. How would you rate it on a scale of one to ten?
Maybe you're thinking, "Well, it went fine. I mean, there were a few stressful moments, but overall, it was okay." Or maybe you're thinking, "It was easy. I basically copy and pasted the same outfits over and over," but maybe there's a little hint in you that's saying that deep down, if you're honest, the results maybe felt a little flat, like you were phoning it in, or maybe like it could have been better.
Or maybe you're listening and feeling like you're the person who had a panic moment every time an event hit your calendar, which led to a really frantic experience, late-night shopping haul, expedited shipping, and the hope that maybe something would work out just on a hope and a prayer. Wherever you landed this year, here's the truth. I see patterns in the women I work with, and the panicked shopping cycle is one of the biggest patterns I see.
So today I'm going to dive into why this happens, how we get ourselves in this scenario time and time again, and how we can get ahead of it for next year so we don't have that same experience again. First of all, I'd like to walk you through what I call my panicked shopping cycle, because I promise you this cycle is more common than you think, and you might even see yourself in this experience.
So here's how it goes. You're just living life, not thinking much about your clothes, running your business, all the other responsibilities you have on the go. Life is just humming along fine. Then an important event pops on your calendar. Usually, it's a high-visibility, high-stakes event, like a speaking gig, a networking event, a mastermind experience, a photoshoot, some conference, or maybe it's a big presentation.
I know I had this exact same moment this past year. I had a couple of events pop up in Canada that I went to and I had the same experience of, "Oh, now this thing is happening," and what happens? Your stomach drops. And basically cue the existential style crisis, am I right? Because in that moment, nothing in your closet is going to work. At least that's what we convince ourselves is the truth.
We then start this frantic, mindless shopping. Spend a lot of money, grab up anything and everything that could potentially work, get the expedited shipping, hoping something is going to pan out. Hopefully, it all comes together and arrives in time for this moment that you need to arrive at. However, once it arrives, most of it doesn't fit, some of it gets lost in the mail, some of it just doesn't feel right.
Some of it you decide to return, the other half just sits on your pile on your floor or gets put back into your closet, mocking you, creating more clutter in an already cluttered space. After all this rigamarole, this time and money and energy spent, you end up wearing something you already had, but you really feel meh about it. It is not exciting to you. So then you end up going to this event, wearing what you already had, feeling frustrated, feeling exhausted, disconnected from your outfit, and maybe even shrinking yourself a little bit because your confidence took a hit.
Is any of this sounding familiar? Like I said, I went through this very same cycle, except about halfway through, I caught myself when I had these Canada events earlier this year. But there's a reason that if you find yourself in this pattern over and over again, there's a reason it keeps happening. It's not because you're, "I'm just not good at style," or "I don't know how to shop," or "I'm horrible at being a planner." It's not really about that.
Let's talk about why it really happens. Okay, so the first reason when I think about this cycle happening to myself and when I see it happening with my clients, the number one reason is that clothing decisions just aren't a daily priority. I get it. We make 35,000 decisions in a day. Your outfit is nowhere near the top of that list. I get it.
When you look at all the really important decisions we have to make every day around our families, about our health, about our businesses, I can see why it falls to the bottom of the list. Our natural inclination is to wait to shop until there's a need. That's totally normal. That's human. But the problem is that when you only think about your style in these high-stakes moments, you instantly go into fight or flight mode.
That's actually how it feels. Your emotions start making the decisions. You're not making those decisions from a clear, grounded, strategic place. Based on my experience and pretty much every woman I've talked to, emotional shopping rarely gets you the results you want. I can't tell you how many women come to me in a panic saying, "I have this big event coming up and I want to nail it and guess what, it's next week," only for me to tell them, "Well, actually, my process takes about three months," then they feel really nervous.
But it really is true. It's not a priority until it's a priority. The second reason I see why this is all happening is that shopping is really emotional, and for many women, it's triggering and it's complicated. It's never just about the clothes. It's about your identity. It's about your body changing.
Hello, I work with a lot of women in their midlife, so perimenopausal or menopausal changes are absolutely at play. There are a lot of questions. It's not just about what now works with my body. It's what now fits with my changing identity. Where am I going to shop? Where can I find the right things? Which brand should I choose? It's completely overwhelming and it's exhausting.
For women like my client Kelly, this process of shopping and finding the right things is so overwhelming and mind-numbing she genuinely would have adopted a Steve Jobs daily uniform just to not have to deal with shopping ever again. Thank God we found each other. Or for others like my client Erin, her identity was shifting so quickly that her old style formula, which was basically fitting into a mold that would fit her conservative financial services environment, that didn't align with her anymore and she knew it.
She knew who she was didn't align with how everyone showed up in her industry. But she just kept defaulting back to that, even though she felt something wanting to shift, wanting to change. When you know that shift is happening, sometimes it's hard to be clear about what exactly is the next thing. If it's not this, what is the next thing? I don't know.
So I can see why it's easier just to avoid this altogether on most days. When you are called to shop then in these high-stakes moments, it feels easier just to do what you see around you or do what you've always done. But that really only leads you to looking more like everyone around you.
So another reason I think is really at play here, the third reason, is that we think what we have in our closet is "fine" until it absolutely isn't. If you're a person whose closet is very full and you often find yourself saying, "I have nothing to wear," it's probably because your closet is full of old versions of you.
A corporate version in the clothes that you as a corporate woman used to wear. A version of you that was like, "I'm going to play it safe and stay relatively hidden and wear colors that keep me hidden in the background or styles that keep me in the background." Or a version of you that, "I know how to rock it and I know how to play the game and I know how to show up," but even that becomes almost like a costume, a performance, and it doesn't quite feel right or aligned.
Then when you get a big opportunity, like the time I got invited to these Canada events, suddenly you're looking at a closet where nothing feels right. Nothing feels big enough to fill the space you're expanding into. What's really happening in this moment is that your closet hasn't caught up yet with your growth.
Take my client Natalee. She had her first big brand photoshoot after starting her business, and she immediately panicked because she knew she had been carrying on a style that came from corporate. She was trying to expand that in a way that would align with her personality, but she knew it wasn't quite right. This high-stakes moment really sent her into a panic. She really needed to nail this.
That was the moment where she had been sensing that the way she was dressing in her new entrepreneurial world, in her new entrepreneurial life, wasn't fitting. But now this event landed and then it made it clear that, okay, actually, this isn't right and I need to figure this out right now. We really do put so much pressure on ourselves in these moments, don't we?
I know I did. I absolutely did. When I got invited to those Canada events, you can hear me talk about more of those experiences in depth in previous conversations if you want to go back and listen. But I found for myself that pressure really becomes the enemy of clarity.
When I had my two events in Canada, one was a networking event and one was a mastermind situation, I let the emotional part of my brain take over and it did not allow me to think clearly. It did not allow me to think strategically or intentionally. Luckily, I caught myself. But a lot of us succumb to that pressure.
So why am I having this conversation with you today at this very moment at the end of the year? The reason is that I can see so clearly what it's costing you. So let's call it for what it is. Last-minute shopping almost never works.
There were moments in my life where I was like, "This is going to work. I'm sure I'll find something. I'm going to manifest it." I honestly tried that one time. I honestly was like, "I'm going to find the perfect outfit." Sadly, it never worked for me. If it has worked for you, I would say consider yourself lucky. You are definitely the exception to the rule.
But here's why it fails. You're trying to make clear decisions in an emotional state. You end up forcing things that you don't even like. Hello, I've done that. Where it's like, well, this is the best of the worst. So let's just go with this because it's better than nothing. Or you settle for things that just fit because that alone can feel like a win. Like nothing else fit or I'm having struggles with finding fit with the way my body is changing. So like, hey, let's just go with whatever actually fits, not what I like.
But you end up with something that's definitely not aligned or it's not on brand. It fails because you waste precious time and energy that you could be using to prepare for the actual event or do any number of things other than stress and panic about your outfit.
I've said this before and I've felt this myself, that panic shopping does feel productive. It feels like, okay, if you just keep shopping and looking, something's going to click.
Something's going to eventually get worked out. But it's actually the fastest way to spend more money, add mental exhaustion, create more clutter in your closet, and ultimately water down your brand. None of that is great.
We've spent a lot of time today talking about all the ways in which panic shopping is going to fail you, and you might be now wondering, okay, great, but what actually works? This is what I have found works, and I've done it time and time again with my clients. I've done it on myself.
What I'm going to tell you is not necessarily the easiest route. It's not the sexy route. It's not that, "Oh, let's go have a shopping haul and it's fun and it's emotional and you come out a brand new self." No. I'm going to say the big dreaded S word, which is you need a strategy.
I know it's not sexy. It's not fun. But what a strategy does for you is it gives you clarity. These panic moments happen when you don't have a roadmap for your style. Especially if you're a personal brand. Your clothes are definitely not a nice-to-have. They're not, "Let's think about this as the last thing."
They are a part of your business strategy. They are what makes you believable. They need to be just as strong as your message, as your voice. Your presence is just as important.
When you approach your style the way you do with any other aspect of your brand, with thought and with intention, it will differentiate you. But when you don't have clarity on your style vision, which a lot of women I meet don't because it was really never taught to us to have a style strategy or to have a style vision, it's always been this fun, frivolous, on-a-whim, "let's not think about it too much, let's just have fun in the moment." It's never really been positioned as being a strategy.
But when you don't have clarity on your power colors, your silhouettes, what aligns with your brand and what doesn't, what rules are secretly holding you back from making aligned decisions, when you don't have this clarity, you're always going to default to those urgency moments or what has worked in the past. Or you'll just lapse into what you've always done instead of moving forward with intention.
But I can tell you with a lot of confidence because I've done it for myself and seen it with my clients that when you do have a clear strategy, everything really does change. The whole process becomes a lot easier. Shopping becomes easier. What you decide to keep in your closet or what you decide to toss out from your closet becomes a lot easier. You have more courage to stop settling for outfits that are just "fine." You know what's aligned and what's not.
Hence, just wearing one brand color isn't the only way to be aligned with your brand. Most definitely, if you have a style strategy, you will stop spiraling every time a big event pops up. This always reminds me of grocery shopping. I know it's a silly example, but it reminds me of going grocery shopping every week on a whim without a plan versus having a meal plan for the week.
When you're shopping on a whim at the grocery store, if you've ever done this, I've done this. I did this too before I started doing meal planning. You always end up with missing ingredients, don't you? Or you have extra ingredients that end up rotting and unusable. Or you got inspired by some shiny object in the store that was on sale or looked extra tantalizing. Or you're like, "Ooh, I feel like I could be the person that cooks that type of thing." But then you never end up using it. Or you don't know how to incorporate it into a daily meal, but it was just fun in the moment. You're like, "Great, what do I do with that now?" It's really not that much different with your style. There are so many similarities there.
If you're curious about what it means to have a style strategy, I'd love to give you a little sneak peek into what that looks like in my world. There are really three big components that I look at that make up a style strategy when I'm working with my clients. That's whether we're working on a one-to-one basis or we're in a group setting. We still cover these same three big components.
The first one is naming your style vision. This is so key. This is about defining the woman you're becoming. A lot of women, they're coming to me when they've already started to make some shifts and transitions in themselves in terms of their identity. They're getting clear on who they are, and now it's a matter of bringing that vision to the exterior. This is about naming for yourself what you want, what makes you you. Instead of allowing the world to define it for you, you get to say, "This is me. This is what feels aligned. This is how I want to be perceived."
This vision is also where we name your three personal style words, and those really do become your north star, or think of it like a roadmap or a measuring stick, where any other outfit we create moving forward is going to have to be measured against these three personal style words and your vision for yourself.
The second piece we go through is what I call style guidelines. These are more practical guardrails for figuring out your style and it includes things like the best silhouettes for your body type. It includes getting a color analysis and understanding not only what colors work for you but which colors give you an extra jolt of energy or make you feel more confident or make you feel more powerful. I call those your power colors.
This is really about getting interested in the tactical part of style, which is what actually works for my body, and then I get to say, "Based on that, this is what feels aligned with my style vision." That's what makes it unique to you as opposed to just getting the colors done and then you just wear those colors because that's what someone told you you should wear. That's not a style strategy. It's taking that information and incorporating it into your own style vision.
The third piece, which I actually believe is the most transformative piece in the whole entire process, is your style mindset. This is where we're looking at the rules, the stories you've told yourself, the expectations that are all around us about what we can and should wear as women. Whether you're an entrepreneur, someone in what it means to be a woman in your particular industry, what it means to be a woman who's running your own business, a woman who has kids, that doesn't have kids, there are so many rules that have guided our decisions about what we wear or don't wear.
Once you can cross the bridge of awareness and into deciding which of these rules come with you and which ones stay behind, it is really the most transformative piece of this process in terms of your style strategy because now that vision you've set for yourself can actually be realized. You're not getting in your own way because you're still holding on to old rules.
With this style strategy in place, I've seen it over and over again with my clients. Everything really does get easier. In fact, I don't know if you know this about me, but I don't do closet edits, or some people call them closet detoxes, closet cleanouts. I don't do those with my clients, but I've found that after they go through this work of setting their style strategy, they can easily do it on their own because they're clear. They're clear on what's aligned and what's not.
That's what I think of when I think of a style strategy. When you have that at the ready, going shopping and picking things will be easier. It will reduce the panic. It will make you more grounded and intentional. I think that's all what we're craving, right? Moving into this new year.
So if you're thinking about how you want your 2026 experience to go style-wise, I would encourage you to not wait. I know it feels too early to be thinking about this year. Like, man, we're just wrapping up this year and I need a break. I know spring events and your heavy conference season or your heavy speaking season, I know that feels like it's a far distance away. But this is exactly when you want to start planning, before your calendar gets full and you're back in the cycle again. Back in the crazy, stressful, panic cycle.
I can assure you that your future self will thank you for getting ahead of this. If this episode has you thinking differently about your style, how it's gone this year versus how you want it to go moving forward, good. I'm glad. This is always my goal in our conversations here, is awareness. Awareness is always the first step.
The second is getting support. You don't have to keep doing all the heavy lifting by yourself. If you're thinking, yes, support is exactly what I need, I would love to invite you into my signature one-to-one program, which is called the Standout Style Kickstarter. I've opened up a waitlist that would be wanting to start in January. That waitlist, you can go get that in the show notes.
But with this program, what that's going to look like is all of that style strategy work I just described to you. That's included. You're going to walk into early spring with your strategy. You're going to have a clear roadmap moving forward. You're going to have a curated set of on-brand outfits that you can mix and match in different ways.
You're going to be able to fully walk into these rooms without that hunched-shoulder experience of knowing you could have done better. All of this scrambling, this panic, all of that goes away. Just confidence and alignment. If that sounds like the experience that you want for yourself this year, I'd love for you to join me. Get the link for the wait list in the show notes.
The last thing I'll say is that if you found yourself in more of these panic shopping moments than you would have wanted this year, it's okay. I even had one myself this year, and I do this for a living. It is a part of the process and it is often a sign that you're growing and evolving. So just know that.
But you can decide how you want to feel in the next year. I love that classic Maya Angelou quote that says, "Now that you know better, you can do better or you can plan better." And I hope you do. With that, I'll see 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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