Meet Dani Klein Modisett

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dani Klein Modisett a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Dani, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
My resilience is directly related to maintaining a sense of humor. The only way to persevere through adversity is gain perspective that whatever you are going through is not the end of the story. Once I am able to take a deep breath – or five – and pull the camera back to see a bigger picture, I can almost always find the humor in it. Once we laugh, we find hope. We not only experience the healing hormones of endorphins, serotonin and dopamine, we also calm our nervous system and particularly if we laugh with another person, we feel less alone. This is the key to resilience. Accepting vulnerability and then connecting with other trustworthy people and sharing laughter. Ideally with affiliative humor, the kind that makes us all feel more connected.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I was a comic for twenty years and taught stand up at UCLA for ten. But when my mother became depressed facing Alzheimer’s I couldn’t make her laugh. I had the idea to hire a comedian to cheer her up. It worked, she started eating again and joining her community. I knew this had to be everywhere. I launched Laughter On Call to provide elders and caregivers with interactive laughter workshops and training that break through feelings of isolation.

Then COVID hit. We were shut out of our seniors. I started “Lunchtime Laughter” -daily virtual interactive sessions for seniors. Within weeks, perfectly lucid people were showing up to feel less alone in a pandemic. And I was reading articles everywhere about HR’s dire need to help employees stay connected. I thought, wait, feelings of isolation? We know all about solving this problem.

We designed highly interactive laughter workshops – grounded in Improv – and launched them in the corporate space supporting mental wellness and team-building. Meta, Capital One, Bristol Myers and over 500 others have worked with us.

Our services run on two tracks: sessions for healthcare workers in need of comic relief and tools for self-care, and corporate workshops to create thriving cultures where there is trust and people want to come to work.

When I had the idea to hire a comedian to help my mother feel less alone facing Alzheimer’s, I didn’t know the Surgeon General would declare loneliness an epidemic. I didn’t know that every 65 seconds someone in the U.S. would be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s – kicking off potentially years of isolation.

But I know this now. I also know that any business that wants to flourish today – from healthcare to tech – needs to make human connection a priority.

My mother used to say, “Dani’s very intense.” And I am.

Right now I’m intense about helping to create the shortest distance between people with shared laughter.

I’m super excited about launching our executive coaching to address pain points right now to support conflict resolution, innovation and creating cultures where people want to come to work. In the senior space, our caregiver training that supports self-care and creating connection at stages of cognitive decline has real momentum. As the number of people facing Alzheimer’s and other dementias grows exponentially, I really want to not only mitigate the stigma around it, but give people real tools that give them and their loved ones the courage to show up!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
THE PIVOT : I feel like I’ve spent the last 25 years assessing and then pivoting. Starting out as an actor – back when we were still called actresses – doing whatever I needed to support myself was necessary. This meant waiting tables, being a rep for a dating company and working as a paralegal. At a certain point I became frustrated with the powerlessness of being an actor and started doing stand up. From there I began writing long-form, eventually to book writing. When I had the idea for Laughter on Call, even though it was never in my life plan, I leaned in to it. The most recent pivot was from in- person working with seniors to creating virtual programming during the pandemic. That was a big one because it launched us in the corporate space. Now we do it all. Just as we teach in our workshops, saying “yes….and” to whatever life presents has been the key to all of this growth.

PERSEVERANCE : Boy do you need this one. No matter what you are selling you are going to hear a lot of no’s. Being able to keep the faith and keep putting one foot in front of the other, one phone call, one social. media post, one e-mail, just to keep going is the key.

SELF-CARE : Yep, I said it. Essential for any entrepreneur. There is a lot of stress in pursuing a dream – whether it’s business or art – so you have to take care of yourself. Limit drugs and alcohol, stay away from sugar if you can and get exercise. I’m pretty hard line about this. I could not do all that do in a day if I were hungover in any way. Find activities you love to do that don’t involve substances. Get outside in nature. Go dance. Get your face out of your devices whenever possible. Connect with people. And of course, seek out joy and laughter where ever you can.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?
The number one challenge I’m facing right now is how to do everything and do it well! We launched a webinar series that is going great. We launch it once a month and rotate from caregiving to HR support. Three guests engage in lively a discussion with live Q & A for 50 minutes. I’m also eager to launch a podcast for people on the go who don’t have an hour with tips on supporting mental wellness through shared laughter and human connection. I also write a weekly blog I and am working on a TED talk: Find Laughter Where You Least Expect It: Lessons I Learned From My Mother and Her Alzheimer’s. Then there’s the day to day of the business! Taking calls, strategizing for 2024, and customizing workshops for clients. It’s a lot, never a dull moment as they say.. I also still have one son at home and I know how fleeting time with kids really is since the older one is at college. So the obstacle is time, not enough of it. Or maybe the real obstacle is wanting to do it all “perfectly.” Letting go of that seems like a good place to start.

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Dani Klein Modisett

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