Landmark in the News

TIME Magazine Excerpt

The following is a series of excerpts from an article that appeared in Time Magazine in March 1998.

“Landmark appears to be thriving. At its core is a four-part ‘Curriculum for Living,' which starts with a 3 1/2-day seminar called The Landmark Forum and proceeds to courses that expand upon its brand of enlightenment. Since 1991, over 2.4 million mostly professional and well-educated seekers have taken the introductory Forum … Landmark is becoming a global brand name, with 53 offices in 21 countries, including a well-appointed San Francisco headquarters.*

Says Rosenberg : ‘If we were doing a bad job, we wouldn't have the growth that we have.'”

“The Forum started promptly at 9 on a Friday morning, when a svelte, spiky-haired woman named Beth Handel walked in and introduced herself as The Forum leader. The Forum, she said, is a game called transformation. Like every other game, it calls for good sportsmanship. One should be ‘coachable,' or open-minded about The Forum's concepts, and committed to ‘forwarding the action.' The name of the game is participation or, more specifically, ‘sharing,' which was to take place at three microphones. The weekend, Handel warned, will be ‘an emotional roller-coaster ride.'”

“Handel, 39, then drew diagrams on a blackboard as she held forth on a series of concepts: facts have no meaning; it is the stories we concoct out of those facts that give them meaning. She explained that "our rackets," that is, ongoing complaints, are ‘killing our lives' and our ‘winning formulas' are really losing formulas.”

“Indeed, the transformation has been such a success that it was the subject of a recent case study by the Harvard Business School . According to the study's co-author, Karen Wruck, the product that Landmark sells is ‘an abrupt or jarring change, like an 'aha' - a ‘peculiar' one, certainly, but patently marketable. But Landmark, the study notes, has challenges ahead. It will have to gauge the effectiveness of its volunteers in expanding the business and weigh the need to raise outside capital. Perhaps, Wruck says, it will need to go public.”

* Updated to reflect 2017 numbers.