We Investigated the Christian "Scam" Fronted by Tim Tebow

Tim Tebow is one of the most trusted voices in America. But the former star quarterback is also the face of a Christian roadshow that is accused of preying upon their followers' faith and financial insecurity. Kiera Butler of Mother Jones joins PTFO to investigate Life Surge and its celebrity-athlete "bait" — going inside the room, listening to victims of the "hard sell" and unearthing complaints to the government — to discover the hidden cost of doing business with a higher power. (Additional reporting from Byard Duncan and Thomas Darro) • Read the full article at Mother Jones https://www.motherjones.com/?p=1226433&preview=true • Read the full statement from Life Surge https://www.pablo.show/p/tim-tebows-kingdom-impact (Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and Mother Jones and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  My conscience is getting the best of me, and I just don't know how much longer I can do what I do.

• 0:13Pablo Torre?

  Right after this.

• 0:16Speaker 02

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• 1:13Pablo Torre?

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• 1:58Pablo Torre?

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• 2:21Pablo Torre?

  Kira Butler, thank you for being here.

• 2:22Speaker 04

  Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

• 2:25Pablo Torre?

  To what extent are you familiar with Tim Tebow outside of the last how many months you've spent on this?

• 2:31Speaker 04

  Like, zero.

• 2:33Pablo Torre?

  Oh, I love this. I love this. I love it because Tim Tebow is so central to my experience as a sports fan and as a talking head. He was like this avatar for not just, whoa, what a gritty, plucky, American hero. He was an avatar of Jesus Christ.

• 2:56Speaker 05

  It's sort of the essence of Christianity. So I thought, when people say, hey, what's that verse? They look at this one. Go ahead and quote it verbatim right now. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever bleeds on him will not perish but have everlasting life.

• 3:11Speaker 04

  I had to have my husband explain this to me. My husband is a big sports fan. And so he told me all about Tim Tebow and kind of the lore of Tim Tebow.

• 3:20Speaker 05

  You would never seen any player in the entire country play as hard as I will play the rest of the season. And you never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of the season. You never see a team play harder than we will the rest of the season. God bless.

• 3:35Pablo Torre?

  It's extensive. He was argued about. Is he really as good as he was in college? Could he be that good in the pros? He seems clutch. You wanna talk about clutch gene? Let's talk about huge clutch gene. He's also Tebow-ing, which was like a thing, this meme.

• 3:52Speaker 06

  Even before Sunday, we knew Tebow was big, with fans making customized Jesus jerseys and posting pictures of themselves online Tebow-ing, imitating Tebow's signature on-field prayer position.

• 4:07Pablo Torre?

  At the Tim Tebow Foundation, we believe together, with you, our partners in law enforcement, we can defend the vulnerable. In his post-playing life, he's been a public figure who is not just really comfortable behind a microphone on television, and he works for ESPN and is all over their programming. He has become something of an American hero in terms of how he talks about his desire to protect the most vulnerable people among us.

• 4:36Speaker 05

  Disrupt the demand.

• 4:38Speaker 07

  Our strategy? Build a nationwide ecosystem that attacks trafficking state by state from every angle.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  He's done a ton of work on anti-trafficking in the past few years. He has this wife who is also involved in his charitable work, beautiful family, you know, the whole package.

• 4:56Pablo Torre?

  But the place where I really started to marvel at his powers of persuasion and his capacity for empathy was when he was testifying, quite literally, before Congress.

• 5:09Speaker 05

  There's a red dot map right over there over my right shoulder. And that's just a six-month screenshot of the US. And every red dot that is on there is someone that is downloading, sharing, or distributing images, almost all under the age of 12. And there's over 330 of them just in that six-month screenshot. The scale of harm right here in America is, to a certain extent, hard to comprehend. But that's why we're here.

• 5:40Pablo Torre?

  I just gotta say, like, even if you don't have a religious bone in your body, and I happen to be a guy who is ancestrally and quite empirically Catholic.

• 5:55Pablo Torre?

  All the sacraments, all that stuff, altar server grown up, et cetera, et cetera. Even if you have none of that religiosity, Tim Tebow presents as arguably, I don't know, the most trusted figure in sports right now? Based on what he's willing to say and do in front of audiences like Congress?

• 6:12Speaker 04

  And it's not just what he's saying. It's that he's so clearly genuine about it. I mean, he sounds like he's getting choked up.

• 6:21Pablo Torre?

  But that religiosity, I should be clear, this is where it enters your wheelhouse.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  That's right, yeah. I have been, for the last few years, reporting a lot on Christian nationalism, which is separate from what we're talking about today. But I'm not a religious person. And it has given me quite an education in the influence of Christianity on politics.

• 6:42Pablo Torre?

  And so I don't know if you expected to spend as much time as you have delving into the, let's call it fanaticism of sports. But in this entity that we're here to examine, that you've been immersing yourself in for the last several months, that I have been curious about for even longer than that somehow, you discover that there is an entity that is as central to Tim Tebow's public life as any of the stuff that we've mentioned if you actually take a second to examining what and how he's talking in his free time.

• 7:16Speaker 05

  You know, I looked up the definition for surge. A sudden and great increase. And actually, it comes from the 16th century Latin word, to rise up or to spring up. You know, I get so excited when I think about a group of thousands of people that are ready to rise up, to spring up, to have a great increase. Because when you increase, God will increase.

• 7:37Speaker 04

  So this is Life Surge. It is a motivational speaker series. And its distinguishing characteristic is that it is Christian.

• 7:46Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Sean Morcel, president of Life Surge. This is not just a conference. It is an experience.

• 7:51Speaker 04

  Speakers that are celebrity athletes and other kinds of celebrities too, comedians, musicians, other kinds of entertainers. And all of them are imparting a message of Christianity, of faith.

• 8:04Speaker 06

  A full day of powerful worship, real-world wisdom, and transformational breakthroughs that can ignite something inside of you. You'll laugh, you'll be inspired, you may even shed a tear. This is the day that could change the trajectory of your future. Be here, be ready, be ready for God to move. I can't wait to see you at Life Surge. God bless you.

• 8:28Pablo Torre?

  Surge Your Life: God's Way is the sort of subhead of that final frame.

• 8:34Speaker 04

  That's right, yeah.

• 8:35Pablo Torre?

  There's a lot of surging. I mean, this is a thing that travels around the country doing one-day events.

• 8:40Speaker 04

  That's how most people encounter Life Surge, is through these one-day events. And it's actually a really good deal. For $30, you get a jam-packed day of motivational speakers.

• 8:51Pablo Torre?

  I'm imagining a mixture of like a conference, but also a comedy show, but also a music festival in which, like, the main act is apparently Tim Tebow.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  I guess in addition to all of that, I'd also throw in like Pentecostal charismatic kind of church service. You know, imagine before you see Tim Tebow, and maybe even while you see Tim Tebow, you're like, you know, standing up and shouting amen.

• 9:18Pablo Torre?

  And it sounds like Tim Tebow is echoing that call.

• 9:22Speaker 05

  Because I believe God wants to use our lives.

• 9:26Speaker 06

  That's why we're here, to know him, to know his plan, and to live out the purpose he has for our lives.

• 9:34Pablo Torre?

  And this is where I am a little embarrassed to admit how much time I've now spent watching Tim Tebow preach. And I'm not embarrassed because the theme is godliness and salvation. I'm embarrassed because there is so much of it, and he's really fucking good at it.

• 9:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, he is such a talented speaker just in general. But then, when you add in this very kind of heartfelt, and again, very genuine faith to the mix, you just have this incredibly dynamic speaker who is able to kind of capture that revival church energy and just really run with it.

• 10:17Pablo Torre?

  If you haven't seen Tim Tebow, he looks like a drawing, a child drawing of a superhero, like jacked, barrel-chested, almost aerodynamic in his haircut. And he's out there with tight clothes. And he is perhaps understanding that conception, talking about how, you know what? Football actually isn't that important.

• 10:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, not only is his message that football isn't that important, it's also a message of humility about himself.

• 10:49Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 10:50Speaker 06

  And maybe when we leave here, you won't just have heard some different speakers and some great speakers and then one random guy that got cut a bunch of times from the NFL. It's not that funny.

• 11:03Speaker 04

  And he tells these hilarious, self-deprecating stories. And he just, you have to love him.

• 11:09Speaker 06

  Some of you may know me from sports, but honestly, more of you probably know me from getting cut from a bunch of sports teams, as Miss Dean mentioned earlier. So, thanks, Miss Dean. We can talk about that later. It's all good.

• 11:22Pablo Torre?

  And by the way, it's just really rare to get a diehard football person to put the insignificance of sports in perspective. It almost felt radical when you watch the game film, and it's Tim Tebow onstage in Columbus, Ohio, at a LifeSearch event. This is May 2025. And he says this.

• 11:45Speaker 06

  Guess what? You play silly games, you win silly prizes.

• 11:51Speaker 06

  And then how much of my life has that been me? I just wanted to play a silly game. And guess what? I'm also referring to football a little bit as well. And by the way, it's just literally taking a fake pigskin and putting inside a rectangle, inside another rectangle, while dudes chase you.

• 12:12Pablo Torre?

  I mean, he's speaking to you. He's saying, I know you don't care about football, Kiera Butler, but you don't need to, to listen to the message that I have to say.

• 12:19Speaker 04

  He is simultaneously reaching people who only know him for football and telling them, hey, there's more to life than just, you know, this game that I'm really good at.

• 12:29Pablo Torre?

  He sounds like a leftist commenter.

• 12:35Pablo Torre?

  Fake pigskin inside a rectangle, inside another rectangle while dudes chase you is Tim Tebow basically saying sports ball.

• 12:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:41Pablo Torre?

  It's jarring. It's jarring to see him be so seemingly self-aware.

• 12:47Speaker 04

  Very self-aware and very willing to kind of step outside his own realm of experience and give you the big picture view.

• 12:57Pablo Torre?

  And so I want to actually take Tim Tebow at his word. Let's move the football aside for a second. I want to know about his stats with LifeSearch, this entity that he's speaking at. How long has he been doing this?

• 13:07Speaker 04

  So, the company started in 2020, and he has been speaking at events at least since July 2021. By our count, 10 events in 2024, another 10 events in 2025. This year, he is on track to have spoken at 23 events by the end of the year.

• 13:30Pablo Torre?

  In other words, way more than the number of NFL games in a given season. And this is why I think of him as the face of LifeSearch.

• 13:41Speaker 06

  When we really want to take that next step in surging life God's way, it has to start by saying, we serve a God that's in control. We serve a God that is sovereign. We serve a God that is loving. We serve a God that is all-knowing. We serve a God that is wise. And we can trust him. Why? Because his character is trustworthy.

• 14:00Pablo Torre?

  And I should be clear that Tim Tebow, the face, the quarterback of this team, perhaps, he's not alone. And I mean that even beyond the Willie Robertsons of the world, the Duck Dynasty guy. He pops up. There are a lot of other bold-faced names which we'll encounter in our tour of this organization. It's so many athletes, Kira.

• 14:22Speaker 04

  So many, and they're so famous. There's Joe Montana.

• 14:25Pablo Torre?

  Magic Johnson.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  Derek Carr.

• 14:27Pablo Torre?

  Marcus Mariota.

• 14:29Speaker 04

  And so many Philadelphia Eagles.

• 14:31Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, in this one event, it's Saquon Barkley. It's Cooper Dejean. It's Brandon Graham. It's Nick Sirianni.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  Michael Strahan.

• 14:37Pablo Torre?

  Nick Foles.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  David Ortiz.

• 14:39Pablo Torre?

  Russell Wilson is there.

• 14:41Speaker 04

  Former Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes.

• 14:44Pablo Torre?

  Jerome Bettis.

• 14:45Speaker 04

  Daryl Strawberry.

• 14:46Pablo Torre?

  And by the way, that is just since the beginning of 2025. By the way, it includes former ESPN commentator Sage Steele, who, in 2026 alone, did at least 10 of these events.

• 14:59Speaker 06

  Hi, everybody. It's Sage Steele, and I am so excited to be heading to Atlanta for LifeSearch on Saturday, May 30. It's a one-day event. It is going to be life-changing. Thousands of believers come together to grow in faith, to learn how to multiply their God-given resources and to make a lasting impact for the kingdom. I cannot wait to be there with so many of you.

• 15:22Pablo Torre?

  But this is where we should disclose that a big part of the fascination that both of us have had around LifeSearch, once we start wondering, what is this national roadshow? The thing that stuck out to us, that did not take that long to locate on the internet, are the complaints.

• 15:42Speaker 04

  There is an entire Facebook page that is called LifeSearch Complaints. It has, I think, 1,300 followers, Better Business Bureau complaints.

• 15:53Pablo Torre?

  Reddit, of course, has a whole thread about this titled, "Is LifeSearch Christian Conference a scam?", question mark, with dozens of comments.

• 16:01Speaker 04

  There are YouTube videos. And it is hard to dismiss something like this when there are so many people saying the same thing.

• 16:09Pablo Torre?

  And this does not mean that case closed. Kira, we've done our work. We Googled it, and we're done.

• 16:18Speaker 04

  Wouldn't that be nice?

• 16:19Pablo Torre?

  What we did instead was not only locate the positive reviews, because LifeSearch, as an entity on Google, also has 4.8 stars with over 3,000 reviews. But what I wanted to find out was mostly what you would find out if you agreed to actually go to one of these things.

• 16:41Speaker 04

  And go I did.

• 17:00Pablo Torre?

  If you're into the kind of deep-dive investigations that we happen to do on this show, I have another podcast that I think you'll really like, and it is called Paper Trail. It's from the newsroom at ProPublica, which is the nonprofit investigative journalism organization that, just like me, tries to be there when people in power abuse your money, your time, your trust. The reporters dig deep into stories that have real consequences. And on this podcast, you get to follow along as they uncover some truly unbelievable things. For instance, they investigated the companies that make generic medications, talking about the off-brand pills and prescriptions that so many of us buy to save a little money. And what their reporting found is that some of those drugs were being manufactured

• 17:44Pablo Torre?

  in dangerous, dirty conditions that the FDA knew about serious problems and did not stop them. These are medications that millions of people rely on every day. And so the stories on Paper Trail aren't just fascinating. They matter. The show focuses on things that affect you and your family and people you know. But if you're concerned that you'll walk away sad and angry, I assure you, do not worry. It isn't all doom and gloom. Just like on PTFO, they report on a lot of topics. And a lot of the time, things change as a result. Their investigations have led to new laws, to innocent people being freed from prison, and powerful institutions being held accountable. So again, if you want more deep-dive investigations,

• 18:29Pablo Torre?

  I cannot recommend this enough. Check out Paper Trail on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and start listening today. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases, like groceries, or merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop, Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 19:10Speaker 02

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• 19:40Speaker 03

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• 20:10Pablo Torre?

  What was it like to go to a Life Surge event? Could you paint the picture of what it is and what you walked into?

• 20:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I mean, I had to get up reasonably early in the morning because Life Surge started bright and early before 8:00 AM.

• 20:24Pablo Torre?

  Whoa.

• 20:25Speaker 04

  I got in my car and I drove to an arena in a suburb of Atlanta.

• 20:31Pablo Torre?

  Where you live?

• 20:32Speaker 04

  Where I live, and it was an enormous crowd. I mean, I don't have the exact statistics, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of, I would say, 3,000 to 5,000. Everybody kind of took their seat, and the program actually began with worship music. And in that way, it felt a lot like church. People were standing up on their feet, they were swaying back and forth. There were some amen, some hallelujahs, some thank you gods.

• 20:59Pablo Torre?

  I should say that the, uh, the big face in the center of this poster is Tim Tebow. On the right, I mean, pun intended, is Sage Steele.

• 21:10Speaker 04

  This was a 10-hour event. We were there until the evening. There were comedians like Jeff Foxworthy, and it was really one speaker after another.

• 21:21Pablo Torre?

  And so just to explain how Life Surge was born and what it is that they do from the moment of conception, as it were, how do you explain this?

• 21:34Speaker 04

  So Life Surge is founded in 2020 by a guy named Joe Johnson.

• 21:39Speaker 05

  I think people are very hungry for truth. You know, we're a faith-based event, and we are very clear about it. People just really want to know more about God. They want to see how does that connect with their life, with purpose?

• 21:52Speaker 04

  He's a real estate entrepreneur. He's from Florida, and he's been involved in a bunch of other companies before.

• 21:58Pablo Torre?

  And I'm here on Twitter, and his Twitter bio gives a clue as to what is distinguishing about this program.

• 22:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, the Life Surge Twitter account, the bio says, "One-day events to equip you in business, investing, and purpose. God's way."

• 22:16Pablo Torre?

  And so 30 events a year on average, 5,000 people on average per event. The website clarifies that this is a one-day, life-changing event where thousands of local Christians gather to learn why and how to create and multiply financial resources for Kingdom Impact. Is Kingdom Impact a phrase you had heard before?

• 22:39Speaker 04

  I'd probably heard variations on it, but I heard it so many times during my 10 hours at Life Surge.

• 22:46Pablo Torre?

  How do they define what Kingdom Impact is?

• 22:50Speaker 04

  So when they're talking about Kingdom Impact, they like to call it the four Ws: worship, wisdom, work, and wealth.

• 22:58Pablo Torre?

  And when you listen, it turns out to the president of Life Surge, who works for Joe Johnson, this is a guy named Sean Marcel, he is very proud of this premise.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  So worship, you know, is connected to the heart of God. So having people there that can really speak to that subject matter. Work, um, marketplace, and people who are great business people in that space and understand leadership and how to grow and scale businesses and the, the, the investment markets and all these different types of things. But how do I live out my faith in that space? And of course, uh, the subject of wealth, because we believe that many times a church is skittish about talking about resources. I don't know why that is when, when so much of the mission of the church requires resources, but many times Christians don't want to have a conversation about money and, and, and worship in the same context. We completely disagree with that. We believe it is.

• 23:53Pablo Torre?

  And I should point out that prosperity gospel preachers are a well-worn archetype in American life, Kira. Um, I've seen the righteous gemstones.

• 24:04Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 24:04Pablo Torre?

  This is a thing, but this is not quite that, is what I'm learning.

• 24:09Speaker 04

  Well, and it's interesting because many times during the day that I spent at Life Surge, the speakers explicitly said, "This is not prosperity gospel." And they went on to say, like, "There's no easy button," right? That if you want to make your kingdom impact, you really have to put in the work and you have to do it, do it God's way.

• 24:30Pablo Torre?

  And that way is financial training. That's the part that begins to blow my mind already, which is this is not a matter of, like, "You give us money, we send you to heaven." This is, "We need you to learn the tools of capitalism."

• 24:46Speaker 04

  And Joe Johnson, the guy who founded Life Surge, makes that point.

• 24:51Speaker 05

  Most people think of Life Surge as this one-day event, but really, that's just the beginning of the journey for many people, because we show people why you should live what we call "How to Surge Your Life God's Way," right? People are launching businesses, people are getting out of debt, people are learning how to become investors so they can buy more time.

• 25:11Pablo Torre?

  This is seemingly designed for people who are not just seeking salvation in the afterlife, but freedom from debt in the present. Like, these are vulnerable Americans who are being told, "This is the way that you can get yourself out of your financial problems right now."

• 25:28Speaker 04

  For example, I talked to one guy who attended one of these events in St. Louis in 2023. His name is John Simmons.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  So my name's John Simmons. I am the founder of a ministry called Testimony House out of St. Louis, Missouri.

• 25:41Speaker 04

  He is actually a minister himself. He runs a Christian Learning Center on YouTube, and he was really open about why he wanted to learn more about managing finances.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  I have a history of sports betting addiction. Lost half a million dollars playing poker and betting on sports before I got saved and born again. And so I went to this conference with the hopes of, like, learning how to manage money better than I have in the past. But when I was there, when they started to introduce speakers who were not part of the advertisements, uh, is when a sinking feeling in my stomach started to stir up.

• 26:16Pablo Torre?

  Who are these other speakers that John Simmons there in particular is referring to, and what are they talking about?

• 26:22Speaker 04

  They're basically there to make a sales pitch, and what they're selling is a three-day class that's going to happen a few weeks after the event, and it's called the Impact Class or the Impact Course.

• 26:38Pablo Torre?

  And who's the guy trying to get these people like John Simmons to buy the Impact Class?

• 26:44Speaker 04

  It's a guy named Steve Champa. Steve Champa is at virtually every event, and John Simmons remembers him well.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  Champ came out and, uh, spoke on, uh, stock markets, I believe. We're like, "Why has this guy been talking for an hour? Who is this guy?"

• 27:00Speaker 06

  And then we made the decision, we were going to honor God first. We decided, you know what? We'd rather have 90% of our income have God mixed in with our finances than 100% of our income without Him mixed in.

• 27:12Speaker 04

  His job is to show you how easy it's going to be to use their patented method of stock market investments. And then he's getting people, getting volunteers from the audience to come up on stage, and he's saying, "This is going to be so easy for these folks to make money." You know, when the arrow goes up, they're going to say, "Buy." When the arrow goes down, they're going to say, "Sell."

• 27:34Speaker 06

  So the guests are at the van zone, we're not going to buy, no guests here, ready? We're going to, uh, buy right there. Buy at your land. Now, price should go up, there should be more buyers and sellers here, ready? Let's watch, we're going to sell supply, and... So, boom, we made our money.

• 27:49Speaker 04

  He picks three volunteers from the audience. You know, the whole audience is like invested in the success of these people in this demonstration. We're all yelling "Buy" when the arrow says the right thing, we're all yelling "Sell." And then at the end, he says, "Wow, these, these people made like more than $60,000, or they would have made it if this were a real thing." And he says, "Because they did such a good job, we're going to give them these three days of Impact Classes for free." And then comes the next part of the pitch, right? Which is, "For the rest of you guys in the audience, if you sign up right now, we've got a special deal for you. You get three days of Impact Classes for the low, low price of $97."

• 28:27Speaker 03

  Look on your screen right now, and they've got like a screen on fire, and it's like their price says 200, and he goes, "Now, we're going to offer you this class for $100." And poof, the fire blows up, and now it says 99. He's like, "You got to sign up, but you got to do it right now. You got to do it right now, because God wants you to go out there and build kingdom wealth." Now, we're going to get our...

• 28:45Speaker 04

  And John's memory of Steve Champa, or Champ, um, is very similar to what I witnessed Steve Champa doing when I was at the Atlanta event.

• 28:55Speaker 06

  Oh, but Joe Johnson, the founder of Life Surge, said, "We have to make this accessible and affordable to everybody." Says, "If we really want to look at Kingdom Impact here in Atlanta, which is why I'm here, this is my hometown. I'm going to help you. We have to, we have to, like, tuition for cost, be a varied event here, okay?"

• 29:15Speaker 04

  The other thing is that you're encouraged to sign up right then and there, because you're told the venue that they do these classes at is small.

• 29:22Speaker 06

  But because it's such a limited venue size, no take advantage of it, you need to do it now. We need to do it, wait in Atlanta, when? Right now.

• 29:30Pablo Torre?

  The call-in response urgency is palpable.

• 29:33Speaker 04

  They've got tables set up, guys with clipboards coming around. If you sign up now, you'll get this special deal, and it'll all be great.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  Our volunteers are here right now, and you just see along the side of this sanctuary, everybody's got black shirts on, black t-shirts, they all got the square readers, and they say, "All right, we're up in front, so all you have to do to sign up for this special class is just get out of your seat, take a step of faith and walk towards the front, and sign up for this class. And this class is going to change your life and the life of everybody that you believe in." And it's just all of their heartstrings, energy is put into this one moment. So the people start to pull out their credit cards. There's a line, they have to form a line in the aisles and walk down like...

• 30:20Pablo Torre?

  This is where we should probably point out that the stock market class is just one type of coursework.

• 30:25Speaker 04

  That's right. There's also a real estate class. And I think the deal is that they ended up making that for the $97, you get to attend both the stock market investment impact classes and the real estate ones. And as I was looking around at my seatmates, I could see people kind of like looking at the people who they came with and, you know, kind of saying, should we do this? Like, are we gonna go up there?

• 30:51Pablo Torre?

  The urgency, the deal that they're being presented? This isn't that expensive if you're interested in changing your whole life.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, it's all leading up to this point of, am I going to give my $97 and get these classes?

• 31:08Pablo Torre?

  Will I open my heart and my wallet?

• 31:13Speaker 04

  Right, exactly. So one person I spoke to was this current Life Surge employee, who's a member of the road crew, which means that their role was to travel around the country to all the different venues and events and help with the setup.

• 31:27Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  That's the goal of Life Surge, is to get people signed up for these classes, to get them to the impact classes, so they can upsell them down the road. There's no sincerity behind it. It's like a Broadway musical, Broadway play, because everything is so staged and scheduled. They sprinkle a little bit of Jesus in there to get people thinking, yeah, maybe this is a good thing to sign up to these classes, you know, for the benefit of God's kingdom. I can make money in the stock market and flipping houses in the real estate market. And I can sponsor people to go on mission trips and dig wells in Africa. They really pull on your heartstrings.

• 32:13Pablo Torre?

  So my question here is, what kind of warning, what kind of labeling around the risks involved is Life Surge applying to what is increasingly sounding like a thing that raises a thousand questions?

• 32:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, so there are disclaimers. They're kind of flashed on to the big screens behind the speakers periodically.

• 32:37Pablo Torre?

  Yes, we're showing a photograph. This is thanks to The Rooster, the excellent independent news outlet. This is a big ass paragraph.

• 32:45Speaker 04

  I should say they cycle through these pretty quickly. So like, I was trying to take pictures with my phone.

• 32:51Pablo Torre?

  "Any income or earnings shared examples are not intended to represent typical or guaranteed results for the average customer. These figures are estimates of potential earnings and may not reflect your actual experience. There is no assurance that your income or earnings will match the examples presented. Results vary widely, and you should assume that the average person may earn little to no money or could potentially lose money, as all business ventures involve inherent work and risk. The individuals featured have participated in training programs such as Life Surge Impact Workshops or third-party fulfillment at their own expense. They were not compensated for sharing their beliefs, period." Which is certainly easy to track and not at all intended to do anything, but make very clear what the risks are.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  They have signs up about, "Results may vary." You know, just informing people that what you see on stage is not typical. They're warning the people. But I think if you have to warn somebody and he's religion, it just doesn't go in my eyes.

• 33:45Pablo Torre?

  It is notable that we've spent a lot of time talking about Champ, Steve Champa. When does Tim Tebow show up?

• 33:52Speaker 04

  So he-

• 33:53Pablo Torre?

  Among hour one to 10, when does he appear?

• 33:55Speaker 04

  I mean, hour nine and a half? Like, you had to sit there for the whole day.

• 34:02Pablo Torre?

  It is like going to Coachella and being like, is Arcade Fire coming out?

• 34:07Speaker 04

  It very much felt like that. And actually, you can tell who signed up for the impact classes, because they're given like a little freebie packet. And by the time Tim Tebow strode out onto that stage, I would say most of the, like, the vast majority of people in my section had the little freebie packets.

• 34:28Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, these are apparently the people who are all in on kingdom wealth.

• 34:32Speaker 04

  I was sitting next to a very sweet woman who was like, "I really want to see Tim Tebow, but I don't think I can handle this."

• 34:41Speaker 04

  And she even, like, she signed up for the impact classes. I think she ended up sticking around, but she was considering leaving.

• 34:47Pablo Torre?

  And that feels like the point. Let's leave Tim Tebow for the very end. You'll need to sit through all of this. And when he comes out in all of his glory, the payoff, as it were, is now kind of familiar.

• 35:02Speaker 05

  When I think about a group of thousands of people that are ready to rise up, to spring up, to have a great increase, because when you increase, God will increase. Because hopefully, the reason you're here is not just about the examples of all the ways to make money, but it's how to use that money, it's how to use that platform, it's how to make an impact. So one day, we're not successful in all the wrong things. Because I believe one of the greatest forms of tragedy is to be successful in everything that doesn't matter.

• 35:31Pablo Torre?

  I am curious now about the holdouts, though. About the people who don't sign up for the impact classes despite all this?

• 35:37Speaker 04

  Like myself.

• 35:38Pablo Torre?

  And it sounds like they knew that.

• 35:40Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, they clocked it. They were sending me emails for weeks afterwards, offering me an opportunity to change my mind.

• 35:48Pablo Torre?

  This is an email from Life Surge. The big headline is, "Impact Classes Sent to You in June of This Year." "Hi, Kira. Faith without action is just an idea, but faith in action changes lives." There's a countdown clock until our last in-person class that was leading up to July. It offers that you can bring a guest for free. A transformative journey is available for you." It sounds like they really wanted to have you, quote, "step into your calling."

• 36:19Speaker 04

  Right, despite the fact that the venue allegedly was very small and everybody else had to rush to the tables to sign up at the event.

• 36:27Pablo Torre?

  So just when you sign up for this stuff, and the price, you had mentioned before, we're talking $97 or so for a three-day course in stock market stuff and real estate strategy. How do they make money off of this if that's the price point? That sounds like not a great business model if you're Life Surge.

• 36:48Speaker 04

  Right, I mean, that's the big question. I did talk to someone who paid the $97 for herself and her husband to attend one of these training courses. And she actually did the real estate one. She didn't do the stock market one. So her name's Karen Neal. Why don't you say your name, say where you live? Okay, it's Karen Neal, and I live in Indianapolis, Indiana. She's 61 years old. She lives in Indianapolis, and her husband is a firefighter. You know, we went to the classes, and they were just really, they were kind of a hard sell. We were approached by a mentor, as they call them, that came up, and he started talking to us.

• 37:31Speaker 04

  And, you know, they get to kind of know you, they started want to know your backstory. Why are you here? They really, really pushed the whole aspect of, oh, you know, you want to get into this. This is really important. And we were really interested, but then they threw out the brochure that showed that in order to get the classes, you had to pay a pretty expensive fee. I've been told that at the impact classes, they will give you literature, like a brochure, and they will explain that there are different tiers of financial training courses that you can sign up for. I've been told that the lowest tier ranges from like maybe $10,000 to $13,000.

• 38:16Speaker 04

  There's a middle tier that's like maybe $20,000, $25,000.

• 38:19Pablo Torre?

  Wait, wait, just to pause here for a second. We've gone from $97 to now retirement funds.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  And the highest tier is like $40,000 to even $50,000 for like one-on-one mentorship. I was pretty hesitant. I was like, we don't, you know, we don't have the money to do this. They brought in an outside, like, I guess, a loan company or a company that would find credit cards for you to use a credit card with 0% interest for a certain period of time.

• 38:54Speaker 06

  So they told us, why don't we get you a credit card for more than the $13,000? So that that way you've got some extra money on the credit card that you can use that for business stuff. Okay, that sounds like a great idea. So they got us approved for like $25,000 on an American Express card.

• 39:14Pablo Torre?

  I'm sorry, I'm gonna either get a loan or get a new credit card to pay for this?

• 39:20Speaker 04

  Or several new credit cards to pay for it.

• 39:23Pablo Torre?

  What is happening here?

• 39:24Speaker 04

  So there's a third-party company that has a close relationship with LifeSurge. It's called Copper Rock Financial, and they basically do something called credit card stacking.

• 39:34Pablo Torre?

  I'm just adding this to Kingdom Wealth along the list of terms that I gotta really understand here.

• 39:39Speaker 04

  We should have a glossary.

• 39:40Pablo Torre?

  What is credit card stacking then?

• 39:42Speaker 04

  So the company applies for a bunch of credit cards simultaneously, all at the special 0% interest rate.

• 39:51Pablo Torre?

  So far, it sounds great, Kira.

• 39:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, who doesn't love 0%? But then Copper Rock uses these cards to pay LifeSurge for the courses upfront. The catch is that with companies like Copper Rock, there's often like a brokerage fee of up to 12%. But the bigger issue is that when that 0% promotion expires, the interest rate can get really high, like 30%.

• 40:17Pablo Torre?

  This has all escalated quite quickly within the framework that LifeSurge has encouraged.

• 40:23Speaker 04

  Right, and I think that's actually how some of these former customers feel too, is that it all has escalated very quickly.

• 40:29Speaker 06

  For example, they said at the three-day event, you have your own house. Don't you have equity in your own house? Go use some of the equity in your own house.

• 40:44Speaker 06

  So we did do that. We did take out a line of credit on our house, and we are having to use it right now, you know, to pay back the freaking credit card that we got with them. So, you know, we've got like, I don't know, I think it's like $8,000 now or $9,000 that we owe back to our HELOC. But they push you on to, they tell you to do that, go, go.

• 41:07Pablo Torre?

  Taking out money against your own house to pay for a stack of credit cards that allows you to pay LifeSurge to teach you to make money and make good investment decisions is a lot.

• 41:23Speaker 04

  Other folks that I've talked to have said that they will encourage you to cash out your 401K. So it's not just taking out a line of credit, you know, against your house. It's, you know, other assets as well.

• 41:35Pablo Torre?

  Which is to say that God, that faith is the vector with which to do these deals. I can imagine how that might leave a God-fearing person fearing a lot more.

• 41:50Speaker 06

  I just remembered they, they would just talk about, you know, God's kingdom. And instead of like some of these companies that are coming in and buying up rental properties, they would rather see Christian families or Christian people coming in and purchasing these companies. Because we're coming in, and maybe their house is foreclosing, and by us coming in and not using a real estate agent or whatnot, that we're coming in and we're helping these people. We're helping them to get out of a bad situation.

• 42:19Speaker 04

  One online commenter told me that when she expressed doubt during this Impact class, someone told her something along the lines of, that's the devil putting doubts in your mind.

• 42:30Pablo Torre?

  Well, as James217 reminds us, and in this case, Kira, I am of course, reading from the email from LifeSurge, pressuring you to take an Impact class, quote, "In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. The footnoting of the Bible is perpetual."

• 42:53Speaker 06

  If you are a Christ-centered company, you don't put your followers or other Christian people that are in your group in debt. That's not what you do. That's not, I don't think Jesus would come in and say, that's okay. We should have been given an opportunity to go home, really pray about this, and seek God's wisdom on, should we have done this? And we just, they don't give you that.

• 43:22Pablo Torre?

  So we should say here, Kira, that Karen did spend months trying to get a refund from LifeSurge, according to the reporting you've done. Eventually, she got $5,000 back, making this, in her view, quote, "about a $15,000 mistake."

• 43:39Speaker 04

  I also spoke to a former LifeSurge employee who told me that they would actually, in that demonstration that they do for the stock market session, they would focus on single moms. They would have all the single moms raise their hands, and they would say like, I have a heart for single moms, or something like that. And then they would choose a couple of them to come on stage, and then they would give them the free Impact classes.

• 44:03Pablo Torre?

  And it's something that, as you talk to all of these people, you talk to John Simmons, the sports betting addict that we heard from before that you interviewed, whether they realize it or not, this is the cost of doing business.

• 44:15Speaker 03

  They gave away two courses when I was in my event, one to a widow and one to a single mother. When that widow and that single mother got into that room, who was gifted the $99 class? Do you think they were gifted the $50,000 course? Because Tim Tebow's not in that room, but at the end of the day, they're there to sell you on an idea that going into debt is okay as long as it's kingdom-driven. And let me tell you, I got plenty of Bible verses that say the opposite.

• 44:50Pablo Torre?

  So this is where I should say that we here at PTFO repeatedly requested interviews with LifeSurge leadership to talk about any of this, but founder Joe Johnson and president Sean Marcel, through a representative, declined. And so what we did was send an extremely detailed list of questions to that representative, which eventually led to us instead receiving a 3,000-word statement from LifeSurge, kind of an essay, really, that we are publishing in full over on PTFO's Substack at www.pablo.show. You'll find the link in the show notes. But on the specific topic of LifeSurge's sales practices, the thing we just discussed here,

• 45:31Pablo Torre?

  what the company said in part was, quote, "LifeSurge takes its responsibility to market and sell its programs ethically very seriously. LifeSurge does not condone using a person's religious faith, fear, or spiritual beliefs to pressure that individual into purchasing a product. Similarly, LifeSurge does not train its representatives to pressure customers into borrowing or taking on debt they cannot afford. Financing is available to qualified customers who choose to use it through third-party financing organizations. That decision rests with the customer and the third-party organization, not LifeSurge. Enrollment in its educational programs is entirely voluntary." End quote. But what you should also know, I think, is that the topic of debt

• 46:16Pablo Torre?

  did seem to come up quite frequently at LifeSurge events, according to our reporting, as heard in this onstage conversation from June 2025, between founder Joe Johnson and president Sean Marcel, the two leaders at LifeSurge who declined to be interviewed. Marcel is asking his boss, Joe Johnson, about the $1 million of debt that Johnson once signed up for before LifeSurge in order to build his own personal real estate business.

• 46:45Speaker 06

  When you think about $1,24,628,

• 46:50Speaker 06

  and when you're gonna pay that off, how long is it gonna take you now? I thought it was gonna take me 30 years. But this is what's amazing. When God calls you to do something, I promise you, He will provide a way. And I was able to somehow pay that whole thing off with interest in three years. Can you believe it?

• 47:12Pablo Torre?

  LifeSurge's social accounts, by the way, promoted this clip with the caption, quote, "Where God Calls, He Provides." End quote. Now, in their statement, LifeSurge also claims that they offer refunds for those who attend but don't enjoy the three-day class. But why, we then wondered, do so many people keep claiming that they got scammed by LifeSurge? Not just in online forums and interviews with us, but also, it turns out, well beyond.

• 47:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, we actually FOIA'd the Federal Trade Commission to gain access to all of the customer complaints that were filed against LifeSurge. We got 49 complaints on the record.

• 47:58Pablo Torre?

  Since January 2016, yeah, 49 responsive complaints that consumers have made to the FTC. 49, with a lot of the complaints referring to this feeling of abated switch. So one of them, quote, "We purchased tickets to LifeSurge in Huntsville, Alabama. We believed that it would be a Christian-based day of like-minded business people. We did not expect abated switch and the pressure to purchase investing classes. We are very disappointed, but also concerned by the amount of people bought into this." End quote.

• 48:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, here's another one. "I'm so devastated that Christians like Tim Tebow made me trust in something that has taken so much money from me. This is evil, especially because I'm disabled on a limited income."

• 48:42Pablo Torre?

  Another one here, quote, "They lure Christians in with names like Tebow and a famous worship band. You think it's going to be a worship-type event, and it turns into a six-hour business pitch of you can get rich too."

• 48:56Speaker 06

  Everything just put a horrible taste in my mouth. I struggle with, and I see, again, John Maxwell, Tim Tebow.

• 49:04Speaker 04

  See Patricia Shriver. And it's like, do they know what's happening to some of these people that are getting into this? And this question of how much of this are the celebrity speakers like Tim Tebow actually aware of? Right. That's the question that everybody that I talk to keeps asking.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  I mean, I would love to ask them, you know, maybe someday when I'm no longer with Life Surge, why, why would you do this? You know, you heard all about the people that are losing thousands and thousands of dollars and just being asked to cash in their 401ks and taking back debit cards and credit cards in order to pay for these classes. It just, it just doesn't seem like something a good Christian motivational speaker or pastor would want to be a part of.

• 49:50Speaker 03

  I think the number one question people who are outside of this world want to know is, do they know? Does Tim Tebow know what's happening? The people who are really upset the most are offended that their favorite Christian speaker has possibly gotten them into this trouble.

• 50:13Pablo Torre?

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• 50:54Pablo Torre?

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• 52:35Pablo Torre?

  So Kira, I feel like there is a whole episode we just did already about what Life Surge is and all the questions and all of the allegations and the disturbing ways in which they preyed upon some of the most vulnerable people in America who happen to believe in the God that Life Surge says they're all here to worship. But if I'm gonna paraphrase the book of Genesis, I suppose, if in the beginning, we understand that Joe Johnson created Life Surge, what else do we need to understand about how this all came to be?

• 53:08Speaker 04

  Well, before there was Life Surge, there was another motivational seminars company called, fittingly, Get Motivated, that hosted events across the country. It focused on business and investment. Sound familiar?

• 53:23Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  The dictionary defines motivation as inspiring someone to action, giving purpose and direction, force and influence.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Since the beginning of time, motivation has empowered people, communities, and nations to achieve greatness. From the time Moses led his people from the land of Egypt to Alexander the Great, the birth of America, the Civil Rights Movement, and more, motivation was the fire that stirred the hearts of men and women to act.

• 53:58Speaker 04

  So it was founded a long time ago, started in 2002 by a guy named Peter Lowe. He's the son of a missionary and his wife, Tamara Lowe. His Get Motivated events were said to draw as many as 400,000 attendees a year.

• 54:14Pablo Torre?

  And now we're looking at some of the posters that they advertise. And there is in fact, an exclamation point after the word motivated in Get Motivated. And you immediately notice that the formatting of all of the cutout headshots is quite familiar to anybody who's seen Life Surge's general aesthetic.

• 54:32Speaker 04

  Right. I mean, in addition to the company being structured like Life Surge, it's like their promotional materials even look like Life Surge.

• 54:40Pablo Torre?

  Except they're doing it not so much in sports, but politics.

• 54:46Speaker 04

  The roster, it was of its time.

• 54:49Pablo Torre?

  George W. Bush.

• 54:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, Laura Bush.

• 54:51Pablo Torre?

  Colin Powell.

• 54:52Speaker 04

  Steve Forbes.

• 54:53Pablo Torre?

  Rudy Giuliani.

• 54:54Speaker 04

  And there were some sports figures, too.

• 54:57Pablo Torre?

  Terry Bradshaw, former Steelers Hall of Fame quarterback, is right there in the middle. This is again, a familiar team photo. This from Memphis in 2011? Kira, I fear that we've buried the lead.

• 55:08Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah.

• 55:09Pablo Torre?

  Because it's taken us a while to get to May 2012 and Get Motivated is coming to Hartford. And guess who's on the squad? It's Bill Cosby, flanked by Bill O'Reilly, who is flanked. I don't know if you recognize this face. I hate to do this to you.

• 55:26Speaker 04

  I don't. I'm, I'm so bad at this stuff.

• 55:29Pablo Torre?

  That happens to be New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning.

• 55:33Speaker 04

  The focus was on business and investment, but there was some religion.

• 55:39Pablo Torre?

  How much religion are we talking?

• 55:41Speaker 04

  Well, so the co-founder, Tamara Lowe, was a staple of the Get Motivated lineup. And she is known for a very specific skill.

• 55:51Speaker 06

  To be a survivor in this amazing race with a need for speed, you need God's grace. And if you're desperate like housewives watching days of our lives, you can't cope without hope. And that's not on a soap. If you look into Oprah or Dr. Phil, you can shop nonstop or pop a pill. But the void won't fill and the pain won't kill till you love the one that hung on the hill.

• 56:07Pablo Torre?

  We collect strange artifacts on this show. That is hard to beat.

• 56:14Speaker 04

  It's really good.

• 56:15Pablo Torre?

  It's self a music festival under, under very different auspices.

• 56:21Speaker 07

  CNN's got no good news. Here's a headline you must choose. It's not a simple life, Paris Hilton. It's treading on thin ice, living in sin. You can be an apprentice for Donald Trump or eat Fear Factor fast food from a dump. You can be a heavy hitter, a Wheel of Fortune winner, a Fox News no spin spinner, a flat out sinner. But you better check this life that you're living and make sure your sins are forgiven. I bet you 50 Cent, Elvis Don came and went. And eventually every Black Eyed Pea, Gwen Stefani, P. Diddy, and Britney, every wannabe on MTV with the icy bling, every Dixie chick that sings, they all gonna see the King of Kings.

• 56:50Pablo Torre?

  The ticket's cheap. We're talking, it turns out, $1.95 a ticket.

• 56:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then, once they got people in the door, they pushed a three day investment course for $99.

• 57:04Pablo Torre?

  With an investment class as one option, a real estate class as another. And the real estate class here, I do wanna focus on, because we did the investment before, this real estate class with Get Motivated is offered, it turns out, by a company, a financial education and mentorship company called Wealth Rock, which was selling programs for as much as $25,000 to $30,000, according to reporting. And who is the owner of Wealth Rock? Kira?

• 57:38Speaker 04

  Well, it's Joe Johnson, the founder later of Life Surge.

• 57:43Pablo Torre?

  Which makes me realize that, oh, Get Motivated is a bit of a prequel.

• 57:49Speaker 04

  Prequel is exactly right. So they had this pretty sweet business relationship going on for a few years. Wealth Rock, Joe Johnson's business and Get Motivated. Joe and Peter Lowe were so close. And eventually Joe was named CFO of Get Motivated in addition to his role running Wealth Rock. Then, he saw an opportunity.

• 58:12Speaker 04

  In 2011 to 2012, there was trouble in Jesus Wrap paradise.

• 58:17Pablo Torre?

  The worst kind of trouble there is.

• 58:18Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Peter and Tamara were getting a divorce.

• 58:21Pablo Torre?

  I don't want to make light of sin, as divorce has been, I'm told, categorized over and over again. But this divorce leads to an investment opportunity of sorts.

• 58:34Speaker 04

  That's right. Joe Johnson was really turning lemons into lemonade. He was buying Get Motivated for $11.75 million.

• 58:42Pablo Torre?

  And so we do have to speedrun through some of this because there is so much here. But I will simply say that according to the reporting that you have done for us here, Joe Johnson borrows $12 million from a woman who he met as a trainee in one of his investment classes with Wealth Rock and Get Motivated. And he learns that this lady has millions of dollars, actually, from her family's stock investments. And Joe Johnson convinces her, hey, loan me some money. I'm gonna buy Get Motivated from the founder of Get Motivated. And spoiler alert, Joe Johnson wasn't paying this woman back, according to the woman,

• 59:24Pablo Torre?

  Amy Wolf in question, who sought judgments against companies that Joe Johnson controlled, alleging that he had reneged on the loan. And court records tell a story that is phenomenally messy, but takes us to 2014.

• 59:36Speaker 04

  So in 2014, a judge issued orders in Wolf's favor, freezing 10 bank accounts connected to Johnson's companies, and later demanding they turn over their contents to her as repayment. Receipts filed with the court show those accounts contained only $30,000.

• 59:55Pablo Torre?

  And while all of that is happening, which is, again, a lot, Get Motivated itself as an entity, this is also falling into disrepair.

• 1:00:06Speaker 04

  Right. So remember those speakers who were the headliners?

• 1:00:09Pablo Torre?

  Bill Cosby.

• 1:00:10Speaker 04

  Bill Cosby.

• 1:00:11Pablo Torre?

  Please tell me Bill Cosby was compensated for his labor.

• 1:00:14Speaker 04

  What I can tell you is that according to claims in the 2012 filing, the Washington Speakers Bureau was owed $1.7 million for speeches made between November 2011 and February 2012.

• 1:00:29Pablo Torre?

  Which takes us then to June 2012, months later, when there is an event poster for Get Motivated featuring Bill Cosby, which turns out to be the final Get Motivated event.

• 1:00:42Speaker 04

  Bloomberg described it like this. "At Get Motivated's last stop in Buffalo, June 12th, the 18,690-seat First Niagara Center was less than half full. Cosby, in a blue State University of New York at Buffalo sweatshirt and sweatpants, mixed one-liners with an appeal for seminar goers to listen to the speakers selling financial instruction. 'All these millionaires are coming up and telling you how to make it,' he said. 'Come on. Understand what they're saying. Get up.'"

• 1:01:15Pablo Torre?

  All of which feels like branding that you might not want to take with you into Get Motivated's afterlife as LifeSearch.

• 1:01:25Speaker 04

  You would want to rebrand, which is exactly what Joe Johnson did.

• 1:01:30Pablo Torre?

  But this, I think, is where we should also convey that what Joe Johnson did for his part was write us through his aforementioned representative. And that statement reads in part, quote, "Joe Johnson briefly owned Get Motivated seminars in 2012, and he has had no involvement with the company since. He therefore cannot speak to any issues regarding Get Motivated since 2012, including any debts it may owe. Outside of that six-month ownership period and the fact that he was a key figure in launching LifeSearch, LifeSearch has no connection to Get Motivated. LifeSearch was developed years later by a much broader team, built around a distinctly Christian mission from the outset, and was not an evolution or rebrand of Get Motivated's model," end quote.

• 1:02:13Pablo Torre?

  And as for that dispute between Joe Johnson and Amy Wolf, his former pupil, the one who loaned him the eight figures that allowed him to buy Get Motivated, the statement continued in part, quote, "Litigation followed and was ultimately settled. Mr. Johnson satisfied the approximately $1 million personal guarantee he had provided, and a lawsuit was dismissed," end quote. But by 2021, as you said before, LifeSearch is now operational. And it turns out that one of the first people he brings in, and there are a lot of characters here, but you'll remember this guy, Sean Marcel, and he helps explain how LifeSearch was born out of that mess.

• 1:02:55Speaker 03

  I spent over 22 years in full-time vocational ministry, pastoral, missions. And then I met the founder of LifeSearch, Joe Johnson, while we were serving on a nonprofit board together. And it was during that season that I felt a transition in my heart, you know, for the marketplace, and really to make a kingdom impact in the marketplace.

• 1:03:17Pablo Torre?

  And what he was doing, Kira, was in 2023, bringing in Champ.

• 1:03:24Speaker 04

  He brought Champ in. That's right.

• 1:03:25Pablo Torre?

  So Steve Champa, the dude with the Impact classes, has what sort of a resume?

• 1:03:32Speaker 04

  So for about 11 years before he was hired by Joe Johnson, Champa was the chief revenue officer at a place called Online Trading Academy. Online Trading Academy rang a bell for us. It has been mentioned in those FTC complaints we got from our FOIA request.

• 1:03:50Pablo Torre?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:51Speaker 04

  So several of those complaints alerted the FTC to striking similarities they noticed between LifeSearch training courses and Online Trading Academy. And a big reason why the FTC might have a problem with that is because...

• 1:04:07Pablo Torre?

  More paperwork.

• 1:04:08Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I'm reading from the complaint for permanent injunction here.

• 1:04:14Pablo Torre?

  This is from the FTC filed against OTA?

• 1:04:17Speaker 04

  Correct. It says, "Defendants target older consumers with visibility to retirement age, near retirement, or retired. To convince consumers to pay thousands and often tens of thousands of dollars for OTA's training and related services, defendants routinely represent directly or by implication that purchasers are likely to generate substantial income with OTA's trading strategy."

• 1:04:46Pablo Torre?

  Which, if you're gonna translate it, is to say that we at the FTC, whose job ostensibly is to protect consumer interests, are noticing that there is a pattern here, which leads us to want to shut your operation down.

• 1:05:01Speaker 04

  Correct. Another part of this complaint says, "Defendants have routinely claimed that consumers who purchase OTA training programs can quickly attain proficiency in OTA's strategy and deploy it to earn substantial income regardless of their background and prior experience," which, to me, sounds a lot like the Impact classes at LifeSearch.

• 1:05:25Pablo Torre?

  Yes. And so we can say then, as a very related matter, that by September 11th, 2020, there is a settlement that has been reached. OTA is required by the federal government to offer debt forgiveness to the thousands of consumers who purchased the training programs. In addition, the company's founder and other execs were forced to pay between $5 and $9.7 million. The settlement also included a monetary judgment of $362 million, which was partially suspended due to the defendant's inability to pay it. And then, come December 23, OTA has changed its name,

• 1:06:06Pablo Torre?

  as you might imagine, to simply Trading Academy, but they somehow continue to operate.

• 1:06:13Speaker 04

  So despite all of that, LifeSearch hires Steve Champa in August 2023. This guy who spent 11 years working for OTA to now run its stock trading courses. But it wasn't just Champa either. LifeSearch hires Jeremy Nosec to be the new LifeSearch CEO. His background: president of OTA/Trading Academy from 2021 to 2024.

• 1:06:42Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Speaker 04

  And then, in June 2025, LifeSearch hires Gene Longabardi to be a senior business coach. His background was as an exec at OTA for 17 years.

• 1:06:58Pablo Torre?

  The coaching tree.

• 1:07:00Speaker 04

  The coaching tree.

• 1:07:01Pablo Torre?

  Of OTA becomes LifeSearch. Although what LifeSearch wants you to know amid their 3,000-word statement was in part, quote, "None of those individuals were named in the FTC action involving Online Trading Academy," end quote. And that Steve Champa, for instance, was merely the chief revenue officer of OTA's Atlanta branch. LifeSearch also wrote us that the individuals they brought over from OTA have, quote, "led LifeSearch to significantly invest in compliance. Meeting applicable regulatory requirements is the baseline," end quote. But they did also note something interesting, which is that, quote, "There is some overlap between portions of LifeSearch's curriculum

• 1:07:46Pablo Torre?

  and concepts taught by other education providers, including Trading Academy," end quote. The content of which LifeSearch has a continuing right to use as part of its broader educational ecosystem. There is also this, and this is the thickest of all of the packets we have, but this is 2025, it's August, it's the Department of Justice filing suit against Joe Johnson, accusing him of abusive real estate practice. And I don't think we even have the time to give you the full breakdown of what this is, but according to the lawsuit, you should know that, quote, "From as early as 2013 to the present, Johnson has facilitated as many as 190

• 1:08:28Pablo Torre?

  abusive bargain sale transactions," end quote, "having to do with real estate." And the DOJ goes on to argue, Kira, that Joe Johnson's abusive bargain sale transactions used valuable government resources, estimating that the 99 total transactions that overstated the charitable deduction could have resulted in a tax loss of?

• 1:08:51Speaker 04

  Over $46 million.

• 1:08:54Pablo Torre?

  All of which ended with Joe Johnson reaching a settlement with the federal government, which, according to LifeSearch, quote, "offered Mr. Johnson a settlement with zero monetary damages or civil penalties and no admission of wrongdoing. Mr. Johnson accepted the settlement, and the matter is now fully resolved and closed. Most parties experienced in dealing with the IRS would likely consider these facts a significant victory for Mr. Johnson."

• 1:09:19Pablo Torre?

  End quote. And so I can think of a couple of other people, maybe, who need a couple of classes.

• 1:09:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, just all it is $97.

• 1:09:28Pablo Torre?

  I think there's a bargain. There's actually a bargain that's available to them, too.

• 1:09:31Speaker 04

  Go find the guy with the clipboard. Sign up.

• 1:09:34Pablo Torre?

  Well, one of my favorite parts about this whole investigation that we've been doing is that there have been people who are trying to blow the whistle on LifeSearch, who have been saying in online forums, which we cannot take at face value, but in retrospect, when you cross-check it against all of the government's complaints, as well as our reporting, seems to be worthwhile in terms of how it is that we need to understand the story of their alleged victimization.

• 1:10:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right. And also just the sheer volume of complaints, all of them basically saying the same thing.

• 1:10:13Pablo Torre?

  Right. And so we return to the, again, self-described sports betting addict, John Simmons, who has been trying to, it turns out, himself, get motivated to tell people about LifeSearch.

• 1:10:26Speaker 04

  That's right. After he went to that one-day event, he posted a video about it on YouTube. And the title of that video is "I Went to LifeSearch: A Christian Money Conference Review."

• 1:10:39Pablo Torre?

  With "Christian" in quotes.

• 1:10:41Speaker 03

  In the conference, I felt like it was more of a timeshare presentation than a good Christian representation of the gospel of Christ.

• 1:10:47Pablo Torre?

  And the thing that happens after John Simmons posts that YouTube video, shout out to a fellow YouTuber, is he receives a cease and desist letter, which we also have here, from a reputation management company. We deal with reputation management and crisis PR people quite a bit on this show, it turns out. This letter is dated August 15, 2024. And in so many words, it demands that John Simmons takes down his content.

• 1:11:17Speaker 03

  So they tried to strike down my channel. They tried to get this content taken off so that you can't see it. But we wanted to keep it out there for you to be able to see it. So we scrubbed the video of anything that they can say is copyright infringement.

• 1:11:28Speaker 04

  So he takes the video down, but then he talks to his lawyers and he makes some changes and posts it again.

• 1:11:36Pablo Torre?

  Which was no small thing, incidentally, insofar as LifeSearch cares deeply about online reputation management. As its written statement to PTFO also indicates, LifeSearch does use its own Google ratings as evidence of customer satisfaction. They do this at least three separate times in the letter to us. For instance, quote, "With more than 3,000 Google reviews, the company has an average rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars, with 97% of users giving a 5-star rating," end quote. And this is where we should note that it's not just external pressure from people like John Simmons and from other commenters. Inside LifeSearch, according to our reporting, there is now tumult in a way that raises

• 1:12:21Pablo Torre?

  even bigger questions.

• 1:12:24Speaker 04

  Right. So the folks that I have spoken to have talked about rounds of layoffs. There have been allegations of nepotism. This whole thing has been weighing on one of my sources very heavily.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  I've really done some soul searching and dug into doing my research as far as what goes on at the LifeSearch events and then at the Impact classes, which that's where they make their money. And I just, I knew it was wrong when I see how it affects some people that are asked to go into debt to pay for these classes. It just, it just breaks my heart. So my conscience is getting the best of me and I just don't know how much longer I can, I can do what I do. But right now, it's, I try to push religion to the side. I just do this because this is what I have to do right now to survive. So it's just the job.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  I don't really look at it anymore as this great Christian opportunity.

• 1:13:25Pablo Torre?

  Which brings us back to this question that has been articulated over and over again by so many of the people that you've been interviewing. And it is, what do the athletes, the actual famous people who are the draws, the headliners, what do they know about what LifeSearch is doing with these very vulnerable people who are looking for, fundamentally, salvation?

• 1:13:50Speaker 04

  The cynic in me wants to say, of course, they know. They have to know. You can't do 20 of these events a year and not know what's going on. And it doesn't take very long to just Google this and find these complaints. I guess maybe if you're an optimist, you're just wanting to believe that he is not aware of what's going on.

• 1:14:08Pablo Torre?

  I want to measure my own skepticism and cynicism by assuming, perhaps on one hand, the best, which is to say maximum ignorance, and then on the other hand, the frequency, when textured with something, for instance, that Magic Johnson has said onstage in February 2025 in Anaheim, that makes it seem like actually, his whole point of being there is to vouch for the very thing that we have been reporting on.

• 1:14:38Speaker 06

  What a true, true blessing for me because I listened and then I acted. See, uh-oh, uh-oh. Come on, it's all yours. Let's go.

• 1:14:49Speaker 06

  Let me, let me say that again. I listened and then I did what?

• 1:14:56Pablo Torre?

  So the question I have for Magic Johnson, who we've been reporting on lately in a bunch of different ways, incidentally, and is scheduled to headline another LifeSearch event in November in San Jose, did you actually listen? Did Tim Tebow listen before he acted? Committing to, again, more than 20 events this year alone, saying things that make people want to spend all of this money.

• 1:15:20Speaker 04

  And I guess the other thing is that even if you assume the best intentions, maximum ignorance, right? It then gets into the question of due diligence. You know, shouldn't you be, or shouldn't your people be researching this thing that you are going to 20 times in a year?

• 1:15:35Pablo Torre?

  It's such a recurring through line as well in this show. Who is doing due diligence when it comes to famous, wealthy people saying, "We believe in this and you should too"?

• 1:15:48Speaker 04

  Right. Especially for somebody like Tim Tebow, whose whole reputation is so tightly wrapped up in his virtue.

• 1:15:55Pablo Torre?

  And his protection of the vulnerable among us from predators.

• 1:16:00Speaker 05

  And the question is, are we willing to give? Do we really believe in our Creator that when we take what is valuable to us and we put it in His hands, that He's going to do more than we could possibly ask, think, or imagine? Do we really believe that? And I don't mean the extras. I don't mean what's easy to give.

• 1:16:23Speaker 05

  I don't mean what's easy. Man, it's easy to sometimes be like, oh, I'll go volunteer for 30 minutes. That's easy to give. I'm talking about what's hard, what's really valuable to you, the thing that you really, God, I don't want to give you this.

• 1:16:36Pablo Torre?

  The thing we haven't gotten from Tim Tebow, unfortunately, is a comment in response to detailed questions that we hear at Pablo Torre Finds Out in collaboration with Mother Jones, has asked him and his representatives. We have texted him at his personal cell phone number. We have exchanged emails with his PR person. And that is a pattern that we have experienced across now 14 different athletes, some former, some current, as well as other sports figures associated, who spoke at LifeSearch events in 2025 or 2026. Kira, none of them agreed to speak to us for this story.

• 1:17:16Speaker 04

  It's disappointing.

• 1:17:18Pablo Torre?

  And if there is one thing that I do want to ask Tim Tebow about, that we have been diligently focusing on through the arc of this episode, it is the Impact classes. It's the classes that take you from, oh, the $99 thing, $97 thing, to tens of thousands, where LifeSearch and Get Motivated Before It really made its money. And what do we know about what Tim Tebow knows specifically about the Impact classes?

• 1:17:48Speaker 04

  Well, we don't have any comment from his team. What we do have is a recording of Tim Tebow that was handed to us, where he appears to be talking about the Impact classes.

• 1:18:00Speaker 05

  I know that many of you today have probably signed up for classes, have probably signed up to take the next step. And I want to encourage you to finish that, to follow through, to follow through on that commitment, to finish strong.

• 1:18:24Pablo Torre?

  And when you consider the passion that Tim Tebow has for LifeSearch, that familiar, signature passion, the same passion we heard when he testified in front of Congress and stood up for victims and talked about tracking down predators,

• 1:18:40Pablo Torre?

  I only have more questions.

• 1:18:43Speaker 04

  Right. Does he know that it doesn't end with the impact classes? That then people are going to these impact classes and being asked to shell out so much more money than the $97 or the $30 that they already were asked to pay?

• 1:18:57Pablo Torre?

  Does he know about credit card stacking? Does he know about borrowing? Does he know about what we have said in this story? And perhaps even more minimally, has he heard any of the complaints that you can find if you just go to google.com?

• 1:19:13Speaker 04

  Or have any of his team found out about those complaints? And do they have questions about compromising his reputation?

• 1:19:23Pablo Torre?

  Did anyone do any vetting on the way to getting paid an amount of money, which we are also quite curious about?

• 1:19:30Speaker 04

  You can look at speakers bureaus that have him registered as a speaker. And there's a range, of course, but you know, $50,000 to $100,000 per event is one range that I saw.

• 1:19:44Pablo Torre?

  But here, for the record, is what LifeSearch told us about Tebow's personal compensation in that 3,000-word statement. Quote, "Due to contractual obligations, LifeSearch does not disclose the financial terms of individual speaker agreements. It can confirm, however, that Tim Tebow's compensation is not tied to sales of classes or any of its educational products, and that Mr. Tebow is not asked to endorse those programs," end quote. Although, when we then followed up to ask if Mr. Tebow has been fully informed and educated about the impact classes and subsequent training being offered, and if Mr. Tebow was also aware that real estate and stock market classes are being sold to attendees

• 1:20:25Pablo Torre?

  during those one-day events, LifeSearch proceeded to offer an uncharacteristically short response. Quote, "All speakers are provided information about LifeSearch, including our services, prior to speaking at an event," end quote.

• 1:20:49Pablo Torre?

  And so I would like to have here a bit of a call to action directed at the celebrity sponsors like Tim Tebow to please speak, to please explain what you know and when you knew it, whether you're interested in knowing more about this investigation that we've been doing. These are, I think, all relevant questions to the alleged victims that keep on popping up whenever you do any amount of research.

• 1:21:19Speaker 04

  Because I think what somebody like Tim Tebow should realize is that this is about much more than money. This is about people's faith. So John Simmons, he really explained it much better than I think I could.

• 1:21:33Speaker 03

  And it's not about the money. Like, I mean, I am, I am pro people going out there and getting the bag. But when you're taking that money and at the end of the day, someone might be getting hurt, not necessarily physically, but emotionally or financially, you have a responsibility as a Christian to care about those things. And if you continue to go to 15 speeches a year and get paid all this money to speak, meanwhile, people who look up to you are going broke, you do not have the heart of Christ in this.

• 1:22:08Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, in other words, is anything sacred?

• 1:22:12Speaker 04

  Right. And are you kind of toying with people's faith? Are you using Christianity to, you know, manipulate people essentially?

• 1:22:23Pablo Torre?

  I don't think we're done, Kiera Butler, with our reporting.

• 1:22:27Speaker 04

  No, we're gonna keep on keeping on.

• 1:22:30Pablo Torre?

  Amen.

• 1:22:40Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.

• 1:22:46Pablo Torre?

  And I'll talk to you next time.

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