Ideas in the Wild: Dana Roefer On How To Shop Social
In today’s world, a woman can be overwhelmed by the picture-perfect expectations put upon her by society and social media — people who don’t know her, what she wants, or who she wants to be. Where can women turn when they know they want more, but their “more” doesn’t look like everyone else’s?
Women can shop around for happiness and fulfillment, but the choices are many and the outcomes aren’t clear. They don’t know if anything they buy will do what they want it to do, and there are no guarantees. Consumerism is a costly, time-consuming, and ineffective solution for getting what they really want.
Instead, women need clarity around what they want and intentionality in how they get it. They need expert partners who have their best interests in mind — a circle — to support them in their transformation from consumer to investor in themselves, their homes, and their families.
Shop Social goes beyond the traditional understanding of buying from friends and shows how building a microcommunity of people who are personally invested in one’s well-being can be a life-changing experience that saves time and money. It takes the struggle out of “what to do next” and puts women on a clear path to their best lives. I recently caught up with Dana Reofer to learn more about why she wrote the book and the ideas she shares with readers.
Why did you write this book?
Women are tired. Tired of all the noise from the news media, from social media, from everyone who doesn’t know us, yet they all have an opinion about who we’re supposed to be. They tell us what we should look like, what we should want, and what we all need.
We’re surrounded by remarkable women who don’t recognize how amazing they are. How could they, when they — we — are constantly being told we should want something else, that we need something else, should be someone else?
We’re busy. We have enough on our plates without having to live up to all these expectations. Why should we? Still, that perfect woman in our heads, the one we’re supposed to be, reminds us every day: You are not doing enough.
It’s demoralizing. We and so many of our highly motivated, hard-driving friends are doing so much with our lives — as friends, moms, wives, and working professionals — yet we feel like failures. Not complete failures. But like we’re failing every day with the little things. The things that could make the difference between getting by and mastering our lives. Between being almost good enough and great.
We have unrealistic personal expectations, often driven by unrealistic societal expectations. We want to do more and do better, but we’re afraid that whatever we do will be the wrong next step. I witness women struggling with these challenges on a daily basis, and it hits so close to home. It is my story too.
When I wrote Shop Social, I wanted to help women let go of those expectations and get real about who they are and what they want. My book also helps them take the next step: pursuing what they want by being more intentional about their actions — specifically, about how they allocate their resources.
What’s an idea you share that really excites you?
Consider your resources — your time and money — and how you spend them. Yes, I’m talking about your buying habits. We spend a lot of energy deciding what to buy and where to buy it. And frankly, much of that time, money, and energy is wasted because so often we don’t get what we want or need. The traditional way of shopping is hard and often unsuccessful.
I’ll let you in on a little secret: I hate shopping. But I found a new way to shop, one that removes all the barriers, all the worry, and all the negatives around shopping and turns it into a completely different experience — social shopping. No more endless choices with no way to figure out which is the best choice. No more buying from people I don’t know and companies I don’t trust.
When I was young, my dad scoffed at the whole idea of shopping social. We didn’t call it shopping social back then — it was called direct selling, multi-level marketing, and a lot of other things. In some circles, it had a very bad reputation, and for good reason. There were sellers who didn’t take the time to understand their customers, or even the products they were selling. They focused so much on the business opportunity that they tended to forget the fact that they were dealing with people.
But I also saw my mother achieve her goals by working with the right people. These were women she knew and trusted. I learned from my mom’s experience and had an important realization: I could continue to accept life as a consumer, or I could choose to change direction and become an investor in my family, home, and self. Unlike traditional shopping, social shipping allows me to use my time efficiently to get exactly what I want. And I discovered armies of women out there willing to help me.
But here’s the thing, and this is critically important, so I want to be as clear as possible: This shift, at its core, had nothing to do with money, or buying, or shopping. The mental shift was deciding that my family, my home, and I deserved the best. We deserved to be healthy, joyful, and fulfilled. We deserved to have things that made our lives easier and better.
As I began intentionally deciding what I needed, I began looking for the right people to assist me in each area of my life. Who could I trust for advice on my health, on my home environment, and with specialized topics like skincare? In this way, I built a sort of micro-community of expert women — my social sellers or “circle” as I came to refer to them.
Once you know what you need and what you value, you can actively connect with the right people and products to get you there.
How will following your advice improve your readers’ lives?
Shifting my buying habits from being a traditional shopper to becoming a social shopper didn’t happen for me right away. It didn’t happen overnight either. For years, I was simply a consumer.
Wait, you’re thinking, Aren’t you still a consumer? Aren’t we all consumers?
Yes, in a way. Companies produce goods and services, and we consume them. I consume them. The shift I’m talking about is how I chose to allocate my resources to acquire those goods and services. I could consume whatever was out there, or I could make intentional investments in my family, my home, and myself — investments that improved our lives with goods and services that made the time, money, and effort I devoted to acquiring them worth the trade.
In simpler terms, I had to get clarity on the outcomes I was seeking. I had to acknowledge those outcomes were important to me — that the health and happiness of my family and me, and having a healthy, organized, peaceful home environment were top priorities. And I had to commit to achieving those outcomes with the best solutions. Often, those solutions came in the form of products.
But social shopping isn’t just about using better products. It isn’t really even about shopping. While those actions are a big part of the solution, the real goal I teach in Shop Social is self-acceptance and appreciation.
This book is about learning who you are and embracing yourself with all your beauty, your strengths, and your weaknesses too. It’s about giving yourself permission to shift your expectations from what you think they should be, ones you’ve been told they should be, to expectations and desired outcomes that actually matter — truly matter — to you and no one else. Because trying to make everyone happy is ridiculous and guaranteed to make you miserable. Learning to accept and appreciate yourself, on the other hand, is within your grasp. It’s within all of us.
