The pressure to dress for impress when trying to sell your business is overwhelming – here’s how to shift your perspective back to personal style that makes you successful.

“I need to use my brainpower for absolutely everything besides what I need to wear,” a client recently lamented during a Fitting. We were creating new outfits for her upcoming busy spring calendar. Fundraising events with other women in venture capital, dinners out with fellow female founders, and a couple of last minute coffee chats before she started her conference swing and barely saw her apartment, let alone the inside of her closet.

There’s no dress code in entrepreneurship, and that’s part of the fun. But when in your head all of the time as a business owner, and put all of your creative ideas into your marketing, pitching or growth pursuits – your style mindset can suffer. 

Look, I’m not going to tell you that you should be wearing sequins everyday if you want to get more revenue in the door or that your t-shirt and leggings WFH looks don’t actually have any effect on your productivity. Personal style and personal brand are highly integrated – the most successful entrepreneurs know this. But when you’re so caught up in what everyone else is wearing, you’ll start to put the same few pieces that are investment styles into your weekly calendar of looks and elave the rest of your closet hanging (no pun intended). 

When you go to get dressed, you’ll find yourself a) bored with the clothes in your closet no matter how full or wonderfully minimal it is and b) questioning your outfit choices and spending your off-hours watching endless youtube videos, curating pinterest boards and not actually doing anything about what you own and wear. Save it for another day, right? Wrong. 

That’s where the ‘I have nothing to wear’ feelings and precarious camera angles hiding your sweats on Zoom meetings come in. The repetitive tasks that are involved in work from home days require your most comfortable sweat set (mine too!). But the on-the-go  life of most hustling female business owners means transitional looks need to be prioritized. 

And no matter where you are as an entrepreneur – recently left the 9-5 life, a few years in, or seasoned and shifting your brand – I can bet that your closet wasn’t keeping pace with where you ended to take your business. 

Somewhere along the line, you most likely experienced your daily outfit as a box to check off your to do list, instead of an intentional act of self care or a creative pursuit. But eventually, this leads to burnout. 

As entrepreneurs, your wardrobe shouldn’t feel like work. It should work for you.  But when you look in your closet, I can imagine that you’re wearing the same few pieces, the same tired looks because it works. You don’t settle for much in business, but in your wardrobe? Why fix what isn’t broken. You might just not notice the cracks in the seal on your handbag – or wardrobe, as it was. 

Regular burnout symptoms look like:

-feeling of energy depletion or exhausting 

-increased mental distance from one’s job 

-feelings of negativism or cynicism relating to one’s job 

-reduced professional efficacy 

When it comes to your closet, you might feel burnout in the tired chase of trying to keep up with the trend train. You want to look modern and current – but is every fast fashion trend that comes through an ever increasing trend cycle the right one for you and your personal style? Yo try and see, and wear and hang up. 

As entrepreneurs, there’s a pressure to overdeliver for your clients or customers. When it comes to what you wear, the over-delivery can become so burdensome that you start to not care at all. Figuring out what top to change into to stop the scroll on your next instagram story or videoed podcast guest interview can give you wardrobe burnout. 

In my experience, I’ve seen countless new female entrepreneurs suffer from a combination of wardrobe burnout and fashion imposter syndrome. The stress of having to stand out in your industry can often read to wardrobe burnout. Your business might not be making much when you’re first starting (let’s be VERY real about that one), so investing in your style is the last thing you’re looking to put on your newly minted business credit card. 

I get it, I’ve been there (even as a personal Stylist). But if you don’t have outfit formulas to go to routinely that mix and match your clothes, you’re going to experience wardrobe burnout in repeating the same outfits and struggle to remember if you already wore that pair of trousers to your last client meeting. (Not just me?) 

Shopping for clothes as a female entrepreneur is often the most exhausting part of it all. The long business hours you’re putting into growing that business of yours don’t leave much time for shopping ,even if you squeeze a few late night orders in. But when you’re shopping from a place of wardrobe burnout, you will inevitably end up ordering clothes just for the sake of having new clothes, that most likely don’t necessarily serve your style goals. It’s counterintuitive to getting off the burnout track.

Thats’ why outsourcing your personal shopping to style experts such as a stylist (Hi there 👋) is key to getting your style back in balance. 

You’ll experience wardrobe burnout that questions whether or not you’re showing up as a female entrepreneur. Your clothes talk before you do, and it’s important to remember the message that your outfit: the colors, the silhouettes are saying about you, your business and your brand. You don’t want to save up enough money for your next branding photoshoot as you pivot your marketing plan, or finally get a yes on a TV segment, just to realize that the clothes in your closet aren’t set up to support you for the business of style. Many of my female clients experience wardrobe burnout in wearing the same few looks over and over again and fearing that they can’t wear the same thing on camera. 

Worst case of wardrobe burnout? When it gets in the way of your professional and personal growth. Professionally, this looks like not going after the gigs that will get you somewhere. Whether that’s public book signings as an author, the in person masterminds you’ve always wanted to host for your dreamy clients at an equally dreamy location, or the Tedx talks on stage discussing your favorite topic that you know will resonate with your audience. 

Here’s how to get back into feeling more present in what you wear:

1. Stop getting dressed on autopilot. Whether you start integrating planning your outfits the night before into your routine, or let creativity and spontaneity guide you – take the time for yourself to get dressed. 
2. Get dressed for your the highest version of yourself as an entrepreneur – not for the client, the investor, the interviewer. What makes you feel your most powerful?
3. Get creative – What color seems fun but you haven’t tried yet? Is there a print that you know you get compliments on? Whats a new way that you can wear it?
4. Don’t ask for too many opinions – only from experts. 
5. Clean out the closet – you don’t need anything in your closet that doesn’t suit the life of an entrepreneur. Whether it’s from your corporate past or a few sizes and years ago, you want clothes in your closet that make you get excited to get dressed daily 
6. Make a list of all the clothes you’ve been repeating and why: is it their shape? The fabric? The way the whole outfit comes together? Get clear on why your go-to’s actually support you. 
7. Make another list of the clothes, shoes, and accessories you feel you’re missing from your wardrobe before you spend a dime on anything else. 
8. Reframe occasion outfits – stop saving your best for a special event and start integrating it into your weekly rotation. You never know, it might catch your next client’s eye!