Reflections from the movie Joy

#1
The 2015 true-story film “Joy'', is about a serial entrepreneur's story that epitomizes the true meaning of “the american dream”. Her name being the title of the movie, Joy Mangano was once a poverty stricken, divorced mother of three with a rather complicated family situation. Joy not only struggled to provide a stable life for her children and chaotic family, she was desperate to find room for her own entrepreneurial passions. An entrepreneur is someone who sees potential in an idea or product. However, in making these innovations a reality, an entrepreneur undertakes the greatest chances of risks in order to reap the highest rewards from that said enterprise. Joy inarguably faced many terrifying risks while pursuing her innovation of the Miracle Mop, including but not limited to: taking a second mortgage on her house, threats of being sued, immense debt, being arrested, and encouraged to file for bankruptcy, and overall failing multiple times. Despite all of her setbacks, Joy learned from them and became even more determined to accomplish her dreams as an entrepreneur.Even after her immense success, Joy remained humble by investing in the ideas of women with entrepreneurial minds that once, like her, showed blinding potential. The story of Joy did not only represent the american dream, it showed hows Joys mindset –perhaps unintentionally– embodied Ayn Rand's writing, from Francisco D Anconias speech, “All your life, you have heard yourself denounced, not for your faults, but for your greatest virtues. [...] You have been called ruthless for the strength and self-discipline of your drive to your purpose. You have been called greedy for the magnificence of your power to create wealth.” . This mindset has not only been inspiring to old and new entrepreneurs in the business world, it has motivated many men and women to not give up on what they believe in.

#2
This inspiring movie shared a personal interest, as it told the story of an ambitious woman who was willing to stop at nothing to pursue her passions not only for herself but for a better future for her children. With being an entrepreneur major, it was insightful to see how mistakes can be easy and unintentionally made, but it doesn’t always cause utter failure. What ultimately decided between the failure or success of Joy’s business, came down to her willingness. A moment of awakening for Joy and perhaps the audience was when her investor said “You are in a room and there is a gun on the table, and the only other person in the room is an adversary in commerce. Only one of you can prevail. [...] Do you pick up the gun, Joy?” This could be considered the turning point in Joy’s personality. When someone risks everything, there is no room for selflessness, so in response she says “I pick up the gun.”

  Focusing on Joy’s Mop innovation, though the price and value wasn’t directly discussed, I noticed the connection between chapter 3 of “The Seen, The Unseen, and The Unrealized” and how the value and success of a product is ultimately determined by the consumer. This plays into the importance of how an entrepreneur markets their product as well as themselves. When joy was finally granted the opportunity to present her product, she realized she wasn’t only advertising her product to the world, she was advertising herself. This was shown more literally when Bradley Cooper's character explained to Joy the importance of talking with her hands, as it was “all about the hands and what you do with them when the camera is rolling”. The QVC advertising company also suggested Joy dress in a professional manner to build trust between her and the audience. However, despite her lack of experience in the marketing world– and the entirety of business for that matter, Joy understood and related to her target audience. Showing that relating to potential customers on a seemingly personal level can create the strongest level of trust, in turn purchases and profit. 

#3
This movie showed societal interactions from both a personal and business perspective. In terms of personal issues regarding social interactions, Joy’s friends and family were a great influence upon her moments of failure and success. The dysfunctional family is what initially kept Joy from attending college, which could arguably be a reason for her delayed success.
However, without the support of her dear friend and the investments from her fathers rich girlfriend, Joy’s business potential had a high probability of being overseen– as it did when she was younger. On a larger scale of social interaction, the success of Joy’s product solely depended on whether the consumers deemed it to be valuable– as does every innovation. An indirect lesson from the film was that the majority of people don’t want, or don’t care, if an entrepreneur succeeds– whether it be fellow business minded people, friends, or even family. It is the entrepreneur who has to convince their audience why their idea has value, it doesn't magically happen, “the world owes you nothing.”

 This aspect of entrepreneurship can be easily considered to be social, innovative, and a scalable start-up. Joy applied these aspects into society – or her target market– by finding an initial problem that was easily relatable amongst a majority of people, and capitalizing on it– otherwise known as a small-scale transformational social entrepreneur's intentions for the business wasn’t to remain a small- scale product. This mentality is what allowed her to eventually become a successful serial entrepreneur. From “The Seen, The Unseen, and The Unrealized”, Professor Bylund also stated that all entrepreneurs –regardless of their aspects– produce in order to consume. Joy produces these mops, not only because she deems them to be valuable for herself and others around the country, but mostly because she has a family and children to support. As for the transaction of production and consumption for her business, Joy’s product(s) creates a cleaner and more efficient lifestyle which causes a consumer to deem that product to hold more value than the money Joy’s business is asking for.![]

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