The story
Werner Erhard, creator of the Erhard Seminars Training (EST or est) changed the name of the organization to the Landmark Forum in 1985. He had been working on the idea for the Forum starting around 1983. Erhard also changed the content to be gentler and somewhat more business oriented. The first forum events cost $525 per person and were $50 more expensive than est. Erhard also created a "Young People's Forum" for children ages 6 to 12 with same cost as an adult event.
In 1991, Erhard sold the intellectual property rights associated with the Forum's concepts to some of his employees, (including his brother Harry Rosenberg who became CEO) who incorporated into "Landmark Education Corporation". Landmark paid Erhard $3 million as an initial licensing fee, with additional payments over the next 18 years not to exceed $15 million. The new company offered similar courses and employed many of the same staff. The Forum was reduced in length from four days to three, and its price is about 50% of the cost of the est courses. It was still considered very challenging, lasting 39 hours for each forum. In 2001, Rosenberg stated that Landmark had completely purchased the licenses to all of Erhard's concepts and all divisions of the company.
In 2003, Landmark Education Corporation was re-structured into Landmark Education LLC, and in 2013 it was renamed Landmark Worldwide LLC. Landmark Worldwide states that it operates as a for-profit company, whose employees own all the shares of the corporation. The company states that it invests its surpluses "into making its programs, initiatives, and services more widely available."
The company reported in 2019 that more than 2.4 million people had participated in its programs since 1991. Landmark holds seminars in approximately 125 locations in more than 21 countries. Landmark's revenue surpassed $100 million in 2018, with profits of about $5 million. The organization has 500 employees, and about 7,500 volunteers, an unusually large number of volunteers for a for-profit company. Their use of volunteers prompted three separate investigations by the United States Department of Labor, which concluded without requiring Landmark to make any changes to their practices.
Business consulting
In 1993, Landmark started a subsidiary named Landmark Education Business Development (LEBD), which uses the Landmark methodology to provide consulting services to businesses and other organizations. LEBD became the Vanto Group in 2008.
Controversial marketing practices
Landmark does not use advertising to reach potential customers, but instead repeatedly pressures participants during their courses to recruit relatives, friends, and acquaintances as new clients. This complete reliance on word-of-mouth advertising to market its programs has been described by reporters variously as: "evangelical", having "a Ponzi taste", "a quasi-pyramid scheme", and including a "hard, hard sell".
Accusations of being a cult
Landmark has faced accusations of being a cult. Several commentators unrelated to Landmark have stated that because it has no single central leader, is a secular (non-religious) organization, and tries to unite (and re-unite) participants with their family and friends (rather than isolate them) that it does not meet many of the characteristics of a cult.
Landmark has threatened and pursued lawsuits against people who have called or labeled it such, including individuals (clinical psychology professor Margaret Singer), magazines (Elle, Self, and Now) and organizations (Cult Awareness Network). After Singer wrote a book, Cults in Our Midst, in which she mentioned Landmark as a controversial New Age training course, Landmark sued Singer. The suit was resolved when Singer agreed to provide a sworn statement that Landmark is not a cult or sect. Singer stated that she would not recommend the group to anyone, and would not comment on whether Landmark used coercive persuasion for fear of legal recrimination from Landmark. In 1997, Landmark sued Cult Awareness Network (CAN) after they made statements alleging or implying that Landmark was a cult. That suit was resolved when CAN stated that it has no evidence that Landmark is a cult.
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In 2004, it was revealed that Landmark had paid French anti-cult expert Jean-Marie Abgrall to "audit" them. Landmark had been listed as a cult by the Parliamentary Commission on Cults in France 1995 list of cults; displeased by their designation, they contacted Abgrall to have them removed from the list. Abgrall wrote a report on the organization arguing that they were not a cult, arguing that they were a "harmless organization", though they did conclude by recognizing that the group may have had some warning signs. Following his report they were removed from the list, and Abgrall was paid €45,699.49 by Landmark from the period of 2001 to 2002. Abgrall complained in 2004 when interviewed by Le Parisien that this had only been revealed to block his involvement in the ongoing Order of the Solar Temple cult trial, and that he had no conflict of interest as he "wrote an unfavorable report and paid my taxes."
In June 2004, Landmark filed a 1 million dollar lawsuit against Rick Alan Ross's Cult Education Institute, alleging that postings on the institute's websites which characterized Landmark as a cultish organization that brainwashed their clients damaged Landmark's product. In December 2005, Landmark filed to dismiss its own lawsuit with prejudice, purportedly on the grounds of a material change in case law after the publication of an opinion in another case, Donato v. Moldow, regarding the Communications Decency Act of 1996, even though Ross wanted to continue the case in order to further investigate Landmark's educational materials and history of suing critics. Ross stated that he does not see Landmark as a cult because they have no individual leader, but he considers them harmful because subjects are harassed and intimidated, causing potentially unsafe levels of stress.
Other lawsuits
In 2004, a lawsuit was filed against Landmark, accusing the business of causing a psychotic episode in an individual after they attended a Landmark Seminar.
From Wikipedia’s article on Landmark Worldwide, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4