SHELF HELP
Already, this latest entrant in the growing self-help industry has had some 400 people attend its program at swanky "lounges" in San Diego and Chicago.
At Lifebook Lounge in San Diego, people wanting to jump-start their lives watch a multimedia presentation on an 8-foot-wide screen that quotes everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Jesus Christ to George Bernard Shaw. After each segment, participants type in their beliefs, goals and how they plan to achieve them in a specially equipped laptop decorated with the hip Lifebook logo.
By the end of the program, participants leave with their Lifebook encased in a leather binder that includes not only their written plans but personal pictures and inspiring quotes and, they hope, a new sense of purpose.
One participant, Peter Del Bene, 56, said the program was a revelation.
Out of work because of the stagnant construction industry, Del Bene was in the doldrums. His daughter thought sending him to Lifebook was the answer.
"You are able to see what's missing," he said. "I've gone through life with a zillion relationships and never really connected."
While participants like Del Bene sing the program's praises, some experts say the Lifebook script is by rote and costly to boot.
Micki McGee, a professor at Fordham University and author of "Self Help Inc.", which chronicles the industry, said writing down goals and beliefs is a pretty typical exercise for most self-help programs.
"The idea of keeping journals, daybooks and goals is as old as classical Greece," she said.
What is unique, she said, is that Lifebook has stretched that one exercise into a four-day program, delving deeper into the process as well as using a slick Web site (mylifebook.com) and a steep price tag to set it apart from other seminars.
"You've got to hand it to them," she said.
No doubt Lifebook is tapping into a robust market. The self-help business is estimated to be around $11 billion a year, increasing by around 11 percent a year.
This program is the brainchild of Jon Butcher, chairman of Precious Moments, the purveyor of iconic wide-eyed figurines, and a serial entrepreneur. Butcher is the son of the artist who founded Precious Moments.
Butcher said the origins of Lifebook came from his own experience as he began jotting down his goals in his day planner. Through the years, he fleshed out his goals, detailing why he wanted to achieve certain things and how he was going to do it. Finally, he added pictures to help motivate him as well as to visualize the future.
"Before I knew it, I had a pretty deep exploration," he said.
Butcher eventually came up with a process to help others create their own Lifebook.
David A. Jackson, co-founder of Lifebook, was among the first to go through Butcher's makeshift courses.
For Jackson, a former chiropractor and motivational speaker who has attended hundreds of self-help seminars, the Lifebook system is common sense.
"We ask you questions and you design your life," Jackson said. "I don't know anyone who would build their dream home without a set of blueprints. You'd be crazy to do that. It's the same thing with your life."
Still, not everyone knows what to make of the Lifebook when they first experience it.
Dana Stallings, owner of a local spa, said she was overwhelmed when she first walked into the Lifebook Lounge.
"When I first saw the place. I was like 'Wow, this is beautiful. This is groovy,'" Stallings said.
The space with its black, espresso and red motif is accented with a concrete walkway that is surrounded by polished river rocks, oversized vases with bamboo sticks and shell-encrusted lamps. The Lifebook Lounge even has its own proprietary aromatherapy scent. It could easily double as hip nightspot or a high-end spa, which is exactly the vibe Butcher wanted to create - one of upscale tranquillity.
"We decided a hotel ballroom isn't good enough for this program," he said.
While all meals are catered, the price doesn't include hotel accommodations or air travel for out-of-town attendees. Stallings, who said the program was an amazing experience, initially had her concerns.
"I honestly didn't know if this was a cult at first," she said.
Nothing could be further from the truth, Butcher said. He and Jackson are taking a decidedly laid-back approach to marketing Lifebook, using only word of mouth and search engine ads, because Butcher said he doesn't want to be anyone's guru.
People shouldn't come to the program thinking they'll get nine tips to be more effective or seven ways to make money, Butcher added. It's about people digging deep and figuring out what is really important to them in 12 critical parts of their lives, including love, family, career, financial security and health.
Butcher said the beauty of the programs is that the ideas have to come from the participant and not from him. Still, as part of the multimedia presentation, he shares goals such as his desire to live to be 100 years old and his belief that he is in control of "his biological clock."
The key to Lifebook is that it's an ongoing process, Butcher said, and participants are constantly adding to their books with wisdom they gain from other self-help programs or even from a movie like "Braveheart." To help people put their Lifebook into practice, the company has monthly mixers at its lounges so past participants can re-connect and encourage each other.
"Personal development programs are notorious for not sticking," Butcher said.
Lifebook tries to reach out to those already interested in such self-help programs as The Secret, even using terms like "personal development" or the "law of attraction" in its search engine marketing.
John LaRosa, research director of Marketdata Enterprises, a Tampa, Fla., firm that studies the self-help market, said 70 percent of all self-help consumers are women. Not surprisingly, self-help programs like Lifebook also attract affluent people who live on either coast.
Lifebook is planning to open a third location in either Orange County or Los Angeles.
McGee said the growing popularity of self-help books and programs has coincided with the rise of economic uncertainty and instability in the family unit, so people crave control.
"The key is the thought that we can change our fate or invent our lives - that we are, in fact, the author of our own lives," she said.
In addition, LaRosa said the decline of organized religions has made people look for meaning elsewhere.
"People are looking to other institutions or looking to themselves for that direction," he said.
And a cynic might question if someone has $4,000 to spend on a four-day program, how bad can their life really be?
Jackson and Butcher both push back strongly against that notion, saying money doesn't equate to happiness.
"We've had people who have gone into debt to be here because they felt they needed it," Jackson said. "People spend $4,000 on a leather couch. This is $4,000 to improve your life."
Tina Willamott, 38, of Solana Beach, Calif., said her financial planner suggested she go to Lifebook, telling the public relations executive they would find a way to pay for it. Willamott, who got a $1,000 discount, said Lifebook was well worth the expense.
"The one reason I like this and was willing to spend the money is because this is something where you leave with an actual book," she said. "I do better with something concrete that I can go back to."
But for attendees like Del Bene, however, Lifebook wasn't just about practicality. The program encourages greatness, they say, exhorting attendees not to accept mediocrity in any aspect of their lives.
"There was a lot of encouragement to think and to dream," Del Bene said. "I haven't been a dreamer. I've always just dealt with what's in front of me."
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