I'm a typical guy. If the main character in a movie doesn't have the ability to dodge the bullets of a thousand bad guys while single-handedly killing half of them with a quick twist of their necks, its not my kind of movie. With that in mind, my wife invited me to watch the movie "Joy" with her last night.
My typical complaint about 'chick flicks' is that they're too close to real life. It stresses me out to get wrapped up in other people's emotional problems, especially if there's no cathartic blood-spilling at some point in the movie.
"Joy" starts out in typical fashion: Every. Single. Character. Has all their varied emotional problems on full display. The crazed dad, a mom that does nothing but watch TV, an encouraging grandma that later dies, an ex that lives in her basement...are all enough to drive the average guy crazy. My wife ate all this up.
45 minutes into the movie, though, my wife got up and walked out. She said, 'this is way too close to our actual lives.' By this point in the movie, Joy had gotten the harebrained idea to invent a new mop and sell it to local stores. About this point, my interest got piqued. Joy had found an investor that was willing to front her some money, and off she went to get the thing developed.
I won't spoil the rest of the movie, but it does a great job of showing the depths of despair we all get to, and then the end result of all that effort. There are actually some key business lessons to be learned in it, too.
What really connected me, though, was that my first business was on ebay, 10 years ago. I sold about 800 orders per month of Joy's products. It didn't dawn on me until part way through that this was a true story. I kept thinking, 'that mop sure does seem familiar. Why would they show a popular mop like that in a movie like this?' It wasn't until an hour into it that I realized that this was Joy Mangano, owner of 100+ patents on all sorts of incredibly successful products she'd sold on QVC and HSN.
My typical complaint about 'chick flicks' is that they're too close to real life. It stresses me out to get wrapped up in other people's emotional problems, especially if there's no cathartic blood-spilling at some point in the movie.
"Joy" starts out in typical fashion: Every. Single. Character. Has all their varied emotional problems on full display. The crazed dad, a mom that does nothing but watch TV, an encouraging grandma that later dies, an ex that lives in her basement...are all enough to drive the average guy crazy. My wife ate all this up.
45 minutes into the movie, though, my wife got up and walked out. She said, 'this is way too close to our actual lives.' By this point in the movie, Joy had gotten the harebrained idea to invent a new mop and sell it to local stores. About this point, my interest got piqued. Joy had found an investor that was willing to front her some money, and off she went to get the thing developed.
I won't spoil the rest of the movie, but it does a great job of showing the depths of despair we all get to, and then the end result of all that effort. There are actually some key business lessons to be learned in it, too.
What really connected me, though, was that my first business was on ebay, 10 years ago. I sold about 800 orders per month of Joy's products. It didn't dawn on me until part way through that this was a true story. I kept thinking, 'that mop sure does seem familiar. Why would they show a popular mop like that in a movie like this?' It wasn't until an hour into it that I realized that this was Joy Mangano, owner of 100+ patents on all sorts of incredibly successful products she'd sold on QVC and HSN.
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