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Franklin Covey Co.
FranklinCovey sells training, consulting, and books that help organizations and schools improve how their people perform.
FranklinCovey is a training and consulting company. It teaches people at big organizations — and in schools — how to manage their time, lead teams, sell better, and build stronger habits, then sells them the books, workbooks, and courses that go with those lessons.
The company's roots go back to two names that merged: Franklin Quest, which sold time-management planners and seminars, and the Covey Leadership Center, built around Stephen Covey's 1989 bestseller *The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People*. The 1997 merger created FranklinCovey, and that book remains its flagship product — it has sold tens of millions of copies and anchors a whole curriculum the company still sells to this day. FranklinCovey makes money in a few ways. It runs in-person and live-online training sessions, sells "memberships" that give organizations ongoing access to its courses and coaching, delivers consulting engagements, and licenses content. Its biggest customers are large companies and government agencies, but it also sells heavily to schools through its education division, which trains teachers and principals on leadership and classroom culture. Clients pay for the content and the credibility: the brand is built on decades of research-backed methods, and the courses are designed to be repeated across an entire workforce rather than taught once.
The tricky part of this business is that training budgets are easy for companies to cut when money gets tight, and much of what FranklinCovey teaches can increasingly be found in cheaper online courses or delivered by internal teams. Its bet is that a proven, structured program with measurable behavior change is worth paying for over a patchwork of free videos. The company has been pushing to grow its recurring membership revenue and its education business to smooth out the lumpiness of one-off training sales.
Saved answer · last researched 11 Nov 2026
BIG PICTURE
Workers want honesty about AI from bosses. Only 36% say they get it
- 36% Employees who say their leader is honest about how AI will change their work
- 64% Employees who do not get that honesty from their leader
FranklinCovey asked workers around the world what they most want from leaders during AI changes, and honesty about how the technology will affect their jobs came first. Only 36% said they actually get it. The company sells leadership and training programs, so this gap is its pitch: it can sell courses and coaching that teach managers to explain change clearly. Source: FranklinCovey Institute global survey, data from 2026
Timeline
Franklin Institute Starts in Salt Lake City
Hyrum W. Smith faced a simple problem: people set big goals but had no real way to reach them. He found his answer in Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, where Franklin tracked his own virtues in a notebook to improve himself a little every day. Smith turned that old idea into a modern time-management system and taught it through live seminars. That was the small start of everything that followed.
The Franklin Day Planner Arrives
Soon the company produced its first Franklin Day Planner, paired with a popular time-management workshop. The paper planner became a cultural symbol of discipline and achievement, and the planning system went on to be used by more than 15 million people worldwide.
Stephen Covey Publishes The 7 Habits
Stephen R. Covey published The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which became one of the best-selling business books of all time. Training and consulting based on its ideas were built around it, giving the future combined company its intellectual core.
Franklin Quest Goes Public
Franklin Institute went public on the New York Stock Exchange and renamed itself Franklin Quest, a sign it wanted to be more than a seminar business. The offering raised $23 million to buy training, business communication and consulting companies, and the shares nearly doubled within about a year.
Franklin Quest Merges with Covey
Franklin Quest and Covey's leadership center announced a merger valued at $160 million, and FranklinCovey was finalized that spring. The combined company had 117 retail stores in 37 states plus international locations, pairing the planner system with the 7 Habits courses. The hope was that planners and leadership training would sell each other. The reality would be messier.
The Stock Falls Below a Dollar
The promised synergies never showed up. Instead came bloated bureaucracy, poor planning and internal bickering, and the stock fell from around $20 a share to under a dollar by early 2003. The company was left greatly diminished in market value.
Bob Whitman Sells the Paper Business
CEO Bob Whitman changed direction by selling off the paper products business and pushing the company toward in-person and live-online training. The planner business was spun off as FC Organizational Products, which stayed an authorized licensee of the brand name. FranklinCovey was now a training and consulting company, not a retailer of paper.
Franklin Covey Buys NinetyFive 5
The company acquired NinetyFive 5, a sales transformation firm and long-time licensee, doubling the size of its Sales Performance Practice. The deal added a technology-based subscription service and brought in a Fortune 1000 client base.
Franklin Covey Buys Jhana
Franklin Covey acquired Jhana, a San Francisco company making bite-sized leadership and management content and tools, to strengthen its All Access Pass subscription. It was the second acquisition in three months, after executive coaching firm Robert Gregory Partners, both aimed at growing that same subscription solution.
A Revenue Miss and a Securities Investigation
In fiscal 2026 the company reported quarterly revenue of about $68 million, just short of what analysts expected, and lowered its full-year guidance. Management blamed geopolitical tensions affecting international and China operations and the timing of contracted services. The stock fell about 13% to roughly $22 a share, and law firm Pomerantz LLP launched a securities fraud investigation.