Joy Magnet Media on Finding Joy in Real Life, 8,000 Miles at a Time

Tell us about your organization. How big is your team? Where are you based? What is your organization’s specialty in the film and video space?

Joy Magnet Media is a Los Angeles-based media and storytelling company built around my love of people, conversation and what I like to call feel-good media. I’m a TV host, producer, speaker, and author, and the company encompasses the different ways I create and share stories, from television and film to speaking, writing, and other media projects.

For this side of the business, our focus is TV, film and video, with an emphasis on stories that leave people feeling something. Sometimes that’s a television talk show like Good Morning Joy. Sometimes it’s a documentary series like Joy Drive. And now we’re taking what we’ve learned from producing those projects and creating story-driven films and mini-documentaries for brands, businesses, entrepreneurs, and families.

My production team is intentionally small and nimble, and I bring together talented producers, directors, cinematographers, editors, and other creative professionals depending on the project. I’m very hands-on throughout the process, particularly when it comes to the interview.

That piece is important to me because I bring more than two decades of experience as a television host and interviewer. I don’t want someone to sit in front of a camera and simply give polished answers to a list of questions. I want to have a real conversation with them. I want to listen, follow the unexpected thread, ask the question underneath the question and create enough trust for something genuine to emerge. Then our production team takes that conversation and turns it into a beautiful, cinematic story.

So in a way, we bring together two things I love: the intimacy and depth of a great interview and the visual storytelling of film.

Ultimately, we’re interested in feel-good media that is also real. Stories that can make you laugh, make you think, move you, inspire you, or simply remind you of the goodness in people.

Why do you do what you do? Was there a transformative moment that solidified your career choice, your org’s success, or your commitment to storytelling?

I was 12 years old when I first understood the power of storytelling. I was watching Oprah when she shared that she had been sexually abused. I had experienced sexual abuse too, and hearing her tell the truth about something I had kept so private was the first time I remember feeling truly seen. I felt normal. I realized I wasn’t the only one. She had no idea I was sitting there watching her, but by sharing her story, she made me feel less alone. I remember thinking, “I want to do that for other people.”

That became my North Star.

I didn’t just want to be on television. I wanted to create the kind of conversations and stories that make people feel seen, understood and connected. I’ve carried that with me throughout my career, whether I’m sitting across from someone on my talk show, Good Morning Joy, traveling across the country for Joy Drive, or creating a story for someone through Joy Magnet Media. I believe there is tremendous power in telling the truth about our lives, and I’m still chasing that feeling I had at 12 when someone else’s story made me think, “Maybe I’m not so alone after all.”

Tell us about your Telly Award winning piece. What’s the story behind it?

I was honored to receive Telly Awards for both Good Morning Joy and Joy Drive, two very different projects connected by the same belief that stories can make us feel more connected, hopeful and inspired.

Good Morning Joy is my television talk show, where we share stories of people who have found joy, purpose and meaning on the other side of challenges. The show is built around three things: Good News, Good Conversations and Good Fun. That might be my weekly Joy Report, a man-on-the-street segment, advice, or a deeper conversation with a guest about how they found their way through something difficult. We want people to start their day feeling inspired, uplifted and entertained.

Joy Drive took that mission out of the studio and onto the road. I traveled 8,000 miles across America in an RV, meeting people in their own communities and asking a simple but surprisingly complicated question: How do we find joy in real life?

At the heart of the series was something very personal. I had recently lost my dad to ALS, and while I was on a mission to discover how other people found joy through their own challenges, I was also trying to rediscover my own. The series became an exploration of whether joy and grief can coexist, and what joy can look like when life is far from perfect.

We met people who had experienced loss, illness, heartbreak, adversity and major life changes, but who were still finding reasons to laugh, connect, create and keep moving forward.

Ultimately, Joy Drive became less about finding some perfect definition of joy and more about discovering the many ways people keep finding their way back to it.

Can you share a behind the scenes story or fun fact about the making of your piece?

One of my favorite behind-the-scenes stories is that I learned very quickly that I was not nearly as adventurous or spontaneous as I thought I was.

Joy Drive was my first time traveling for an extended period with a brand-new production team. I had only met these guys on Zoom, and they were two young men in their 20s. I was 51, living in an RV with people I’d just met, and apparently I also had a much bigger cleaning problem than I realized.

On the first day, I watched both of them take sandwich bread, slap it directly on the table with no plate, smear peanut butter and jelly on it, and then simply walk away. No cleaning, no plate, nothing.

Then, within minutes, they broke my coffee pot and accidentally ripped a luggage strap out of the ceiling of the RV. I was internally losing my mind while simultaneously thinking, “These wonderful people agreed to get into an RV with me for three and a half weeks, so I need to remain calm.”

And somehow, I did. Well… mostly.

By the end of the trip, I had become considerably more easygoing, the team had become family and I actually collaborate with them now on other projects.

What was your biggest challenge during production and how did you solve it?

The biggest challenge in making Joy Drive was making a very ambitious production schedule work in the real world. We were producing eight episodes across 15 cities in just three and a half weeks because we had a limited budget. Our first four interviews alone, spanning from the West Coast to the East Coast, had to happen within nine days. That meant there wasn’t much room for things to go sideways, and of course, things went sideways.

Weather could change our plans. A shoot could take longer than expected. We might need additional time to get the drone footage or other shots we needed to tell the story visually. And all the while, we had to get ourselves to the next city in time for the next scheduled interview. The solution was really a combination of detailed planning and learning to adapt quickly. We mapped out the route and production schedule as carefully as we could, but we also had to be willing to make decisions on the fly and keep moving. We also had some really long travel days.

There were definitely moments when I wondered if we were going to pull it off. But we did. We completed the entire 15-city, 8-episode shoot in three and a half weeks, and I think that experience taught me a lot about what our team is capable of when the plan inevitably meets reality.

What are you most proud of about this piece? What is the most memorable response you got from this work?

What I’m most proud of about Joy Drive is that I stopped waiting for someone else to make the dream happen. I’d had the idea for an RV show for about 20 years. I wanted to travel around America, meet people and tell stories that reminded us there is still so much goodness in the world. For years, I kept thinking I needed someone to fund it or give me permission to do it.

Then my dad got sick with ALS. About two weeks before he passed away, when he could no longer speak, he asked me about the RV show using his eyes. He had asked me about it on our weekly Zoom calls for years. I always told him I was still trying to figure out the money.

After he died, I realized I couldn’t keep waiting, so I figured it out, got in the RV and went. I traveled 8,000 miles across America and made Joy Drive. One year later, the series premiered. And then the Telly Award arrived on Father’s Day. That felt like one of those moments where life gives you a little wink. My dad had been one of the people who kept asking me when I was going to make this dream happen, and somehow the recognition for the finished project landed on Father’s Day.

The response that means the most to me has been hearing from people who saw themselves in the stories. People who were going through something hard and were reminded that joy was still possible. That’s exactly why I make this kind of work.

You won a Telly Award for this piece. Why is recognition important for you, your team or your work?

For many years, I was told that good news and feel-good content didn’t sell. That it wasn’t marketable enough. That people wanted drama, conflict and negativity. I’ve never really believed that.

I believe people will always need to be reminded of what’s good in the world, what’s good in each other and what’s good within themselves. That doesn’t mean ignoring the hard stuff. In fact, much of my work is about people who have walked through incredibly difficult experiences. It’s about finding the light without pretending the darkness isn’t there.

So receiving Telly recognition for both Good Morning Joy and Joy Drive means a lot to me because it feels like validation for something I’ve believed in for a very long time. There is an audience for stories that inspire, move us, make us laugh, and remind us that we’re not alone. And for me, that’s important because I don’t want to add more noise to a world that already has plenty of it. I want to create something people are genuinely glad they watched.

Tell us what you’re up to! If there’s a new project, launch, or milestone you’d like us to celebrate with you, let us know, and we might share it with our community.

There’s a lot happening! Good Morning Joy is heading into Season 4, and I’m in the early development and funding stages of Season 2 of Joy Drive. This season will be different from the first. We’re bringing together people who may seem very different on the surface, but who share something unexpected underneath it all. At the heart of the season is the question: What happens when we stop focusing on our differences long enough to discover each other? We’re currently looking for the right network, production and funding partners to bring that season to life.

I’m also expanding Joy Magnet Media beyond my own shows. The team behind Joy Drive and I are creating cinematic mini-documentaries and story-driven films for brands, businesses, entrepreneurs, leaders and families who have meaningful stories to tell.

It feels like a really exciting next chapter, bringing together what I love most: meaningful conversations, human connection and beautiful storytelling.