A laughter session is only a part of a program that you could offer a client, and not the program itself. A program should focus on the wants of the client and not the needs, and you should have a suite of programs to offer. Would you believe that by following this next formula you can have more than 3000 of them? Read on to see how…

When a potential client contacts me I ask them five questions. What type of business are you? What type of person will be there? How many will there be? What is the big message that you would like me to deliver and focus on? And how long do I have? If you have five segments in each category then you have the permutation and combination of 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 = 3125 programs. Keep with me here.





Let’s go with an example. The client answers that they are a hospital, and they want it for their nursing staff, around 20 of them, focusing on stress management, for an hour. That’s one program that I can offer. Change any one of these parameters, say to three hours instead of one, and I have another program. And on and on it goes. I then match the many concepts and templates that I have created and bingo, I have a specific and tailored program ready to go in a matter of minutes.





Here are some different types of offers you could consider.

  1. Different types of businesses. You should do your own market segmentation but here is mine. My categories are 1. Professional 2. Sales 3. Service 4. Government 5. Not for profit. The reason that I have chosen these is because this is how the customers identify themself to me when they call. Other types that you may come across are Aged Care facilities, schools kids, and people with a disability.
  2. Different types of people. My categories here are 1. Senior executives 2. Management or team leaders 3. Sales representatives 4. Service staff or 5. General staff. The reason that I have selected these (and yours may be different) is because they have a different business want. Eg 1. Mindfulness and Focus 2. Team Building 3. Improved Performance 4. Customer Service and 5. Stress Management. Other terms like resilience, positivity, and work life balance can be used here depending on the type of business.
  3. Different numbers of people. I work with the following group sizes. 1. One to One 2. Small groups of less that 10 (a team). 3 Medium groups of up to 20. (a department) 4. Big groups up to 100 (a whole company) and 5. More than 100. (usually a Conference). This criteria is particularly important from a pricing and fee perspective for me.
  4. Different messages. The messages have to resonate with providing a solution to the problems that they are facing. 1. Building Resilience. 2. Stress Management 3. Mindfulness 4. Team Building and 5. Work Life Balance are the hot topics for me and my business types that I work with at present. This is because their problems are things such as burnout, sick leave, confusion, isolation, and feeling overwhelmed. The trick is to link your laughter program to these.
  5. Different time lengths. 1. A 15 minute ice breaker. This is ideal to start or end a day and is usually about energizing people. 2. One hour. This is an optimum time frame for people who hold sessions in their own premises. It is ideal for over lunchtime or to finish the day from say 4pm to 5pm. 3. 1.5 hours. This is perfect for offsite gigs such as professional development or planning days. The agenda for these days is (usually) broken into 1.5 hour segments. 4. Half day. This is what I refer to as an interactive workshop. It can be at their premises or not and involves lots of discussion and exercises. 5. Ongoing program. This is usually for one hour and will run for eight weeks.

If you have any further questions regarding creating different programs then please feel free to email me at mervneal@laughteryoga.org at anytime. Any recommendations for future topics are also appreciated.