Tim Tebow, Sage Steele and Cancel Culture: We Followed the Money Inside Life Surge

Its Hall-of-Fame speakers may be vanishing, but this alleged "scam" defiantly continues to pitch financial salvation for vulnerable Christians — with a former SportsCenter anchor and house-flipping HGTV twins in tow. Kiera Butler of Mother Jones returns to investigate the trail of upsell transactions, Google reviews and financial documents, uncovering how Life Surge might outlast its disrupted funnel. • Read the latest article from Mother Jones https://www.motherjones.com/?p=1233924&preview=true • Read the September 18 statement from Life Surge https://www.pablo.show/ • Previously on PTFO: We Investigated the Christian "Scam" Fronted by Tim Tebow https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmFiNDY0NmJmYmE4MTcxM2E0MmEzZWE2 • Plus: Submit your confidential tips to Pablo https://www.pablo.show/tips (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.) (Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Apple Card.) 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, brought to you by Apple Card. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Dude, I've got your tax returns. I've got your, your corporate financial statement. You've got money pouring out your ears. You have to pay your bills.

• 0:20Pablo Torre?

  Right after this.

• 0:24Speaker 02

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• 0:54Speaker 03

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• 1:27Pablo Torre?

  I just heard something that completely shocked me, which is that 45% of girls and 32% of boys feel overwhelming stress from just being on social media. And together, 25% of both feel worse about their own lives. Researchers found teens who spend more than five hours a day on their phones are at double the risk for suicidal thoughts. Bottom line, teens and phones, don't mix. And with a daughter myself, I am constantly worried about when she reaches an age where we'll have to have the phone talk. But here's the good news. There is a solution, a company called Gab, which has solved the problem by doing something that no one else is doing. Their approach is tech in steps. Tech in steps works by providing safer phones and watches for kids

• 2:10Pablo Torre?

  with no social media, tailored to every age, offering the right device at the right time. From GPS tracking-enabled watches for younger kids to phones with parent-enabled apps for tweens and teens, each device allows kids to more safely grow their independence. You don't have to give your kid a device that was made for an adult. Get them Gab, which keeps them socially connected without social media. And right now, you can use our code to get 60% off a kid's phone that will make parenting easier and give you more peace of mind. That's why I am recommending Gab. Visit Gab.com/PTFO and use code PTFO for an exclusive offer. That's Gab, G-A-B-B.

• 2:55Pablo Torre?

  I love that there's more incoming than we can track.

• 3:00Speaker 04

  I know, I know. It honestly was so, I guess, I don't know. Like, I'm used to sort of a little bit toiling in obscurity.

• 3:12Speaker 04

  And like, just having people come out of the woodwork to give us tips was like, oh, my God, this can be fun.

• 3:20Pablo Torre?

  Kira Butler, by the way, thank you for coming back in studio with us.

• 3:23Speaker 04

  Thank you so much for having me back.

• 3:25Pablo Torre?

  It is fun to have new documents as part of our ongoing investigation with you and Mother Jones into Life Surge and Tim Tebow and everything else. But before we get into this and the new stuff, I was hoping you could quickly describe what happened the day after part one of our series dropped, back on September 24th.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  Right, so on September 25th, Tim Tebow paused his relationship with Life Surge. And he also said that his team was planning on launching an investigation of its own.

• 3:55Pablo Torre?

  The more the merrier.

• 3:56Speaker 05

  You know, for us, we're having our team do an investigation, but also pausing our relationship till we can learn more about the facts, to be able to understand more.

• 4:05Speaker 06

  Was this something you knew, was this something you knew about prior to the investigation, to Pablo's investigation?

• 4:12Speaker 05

  Honestly, I was at an anti-human trafficking conference yesterday, and team shared with me when we were leaving as we were flying to Alabama for an event, and, you know, kind of caught off guard with some of it. And I think that's why they're really trying to understand more of the facts to really learn it.

• 4:27Speaker 07

  Just what is your message to those people who are just trying to get answers for potentially the scams that they're?

• 4:33Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, I think honestly, it's really important to get answers to understand every bit of that.

• 4:40Pablo Torre?

  So I just want to first thank the reporters who asked him about any of this?

• 4:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I actually spoke with a student journalist with WRUF. Her name is Caroline Walsh. And she asked him some really tough questions, and he answered.

• 4:56Pablo Torre?

  And when you hear Tebow answer those questions, the thing that I was caught off guard by was how caught off guard Tim Tebow was, apparently, because we not only texted his personal cellphone an interview request, but we'd actually exchanged emails with Tebow's camp and then sent them a list of 18 questions a week before, of course, we published.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, we included questions like this one. This was number six in our email. Quote, "On social media and in other consumer review forums, customer complaints about Life Surge abound, including many stories of attendees being pressured to take out loans to pay for impact classes and losing tens of thousands of dollars in savings. Some of the FTC complaints about Life Surge allege that the company uses high-profile sports figures and Christianity to essentially lure customers into a sales funnel. Are you aware of the negative reviews of Life Surge? Can you comment on these customers' complaints?"

• 5:57Pablo Torre?

  And then question number seven was, quote, "Several of the customers we spoke to said that impact counselors had encouraged them to go into debt to afford the courses, that they had never made enough money with the strategies to get out of that debt. Do you believe this kind of financial pressure would be ethical?" End quote. And so, you know, not exactly hiding the ball on what our area of interest was, but I suppose in fairness, Tim Tebow, as he said, is a very busy guy. He's busy selling a new book as we speak. He's busy doing television. He was in Gainesville, Florida for ESPN. He's busy speaking at anti-human trafficking events, which we also said in part one, by the way, seems not just praiseworthy,

• 6:39Pablo Torre?

  but also exactly the reason why we thought that our reporting about Life Surge would be of urgent concern to Tim Tebow specifically, particularly, Kira, as you will remember, since we also told him that we had acquired tape of Tebow discussing these allegedly predatory impact classes at one of his more than 40 Life Surge appearances onstage. I know that many of you today have probably signed up for classes and probably signed up to take your next step. And I want to encourage you

• 7:15Pablo Torre?

  to finish that, to follow through, to follow through on that commitment, to finish strong. But this is where we should also know that there was something that we have not mentioned yet, Kira, about another journalistic entity that was looking into this story.

• 7:30Speaker 04

  Right, so that was a report from a Christian outlet called The Roy's Report. And they published their own investigation about Life Surge last year in 2025. And three months before their investigation published, they had actually sent Tebow a list of questions that were very similar to the questions that we sent.

• 7:51Pablo Torre?

  Yes, and I'll just read the headline of their article here, which they posted after our investigation dropped, which was, quote, "Tebow's PR team knew of Life Surge allegations since at least 2025." And the article goes on to reference how they exchanged messages with Tebow's PR team. And then, yes, sent them this email that they quote from on July 29th, 2025.

• 8:12Speaker 04

  So their outreach actually included questions like, what is Tebow's response to attendees who felt drawn to the event by the speaker lineup, only to later find themselves in great financial difficulty because of programs they felt spiritually pressured to sign up for?

• 8:27Pablo Torre?

  And so, one of the things I love about journalism is that it can become a group project. Our collaboration is just one example of this. The other, perhaps, is apparently taking place with Tebow himself. And so, we welcome the status of their investigation, but I should also note that they did not respond to our request for comment, and they did not give us an update on what they are finding. And so, we continue our investigation, which relied in part on first-person testimony like this from a minister and former Life Surge attendee named John Simmons here today. They gave away two courses when I was in my

• 9:04Speaker 05

  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.

• 9:31Pablo Torre?

  But LifeSearch, for the record, quote, "strongly disagrees with the characterization of our company presented in recent reporting," end quote. And they went on to say further, Kira, amid their 3,000-word statement, which is published on motherjones.com, as well as our website, which are both linked in the show notes. This particular quote.

• 9:51Speaker 04

  They said, "We will not apologize for who we are, what we believe, or the work we do. The reporting presented serious allegations about LifeSearch. What it did not present with equal force was the full story, the thousands of students whose experiences stand in stark contrast to that narrative, the extensive compliance, infrastructure, and safeguards we have built, and the facts and context we provided directly to the reporters before publication. We stand behind our people, we stand behind our mission, and we stand behind the work we have done alongside Tim Tebow for years."

• 10:26Pablo Torre?

  But by September 27th, the most prominent celebrity face across LifeSearch's event promos, the same guy who had spoken at the very first one-day event in July 2021 and has since spoken at more than 40 of these events since, he got removed from all of the upcoming event advertising.

• 10:47Speaker 04

  So we have these two different versions of the Charlotte event poster. And in the first one, that was the original one. He is like front and center, clearly like the keynote speaker. Whereas in the second one, he has disappeared.

• 11:01Pablo Torre?

  Yes, and so have others.

• 11:03Speaker 04

  So have others.

• 11:04Pablo Torre?

  Celtics head coach Joe Missoula backed out of the Hartford event that took place last Saturday, talking to Boston Globe. Quote, "Once these allegations came out, I just completely backed out of it. I'm not showing up there and obviously don't support any of the allegations or things that they're accused of," end quote.

• 11:20Speaker 04

  By September 29th, Magic Johnson's face had also been removed from the promo materials for a November 14th event in San Jose that he had been scheduled to attend.

• 11:31Pablo Torre?

  And then former NFL head coach Tony Dungy disappeared from the lineup for the Tampa event scheduled for December 5th.

• 11:38Speaker 04

  Red Sox Hall of Famer David Ortiz is no longer on the lineup for the November 7th event in Fort Myers.

• 11:44Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, and that's just some of the names, right? There are plenty more non-sports celebrities who've also pulled out. Candace Cameron Burey of Full House and My Childhood fame, uh, she's gone. Nick Vujacic, a motivational speaker who has no arms, no legs, he's out. And I should point out also that none of these folks have responded to our request for comment. But all of this made me that much more curious what it would be like inside these LifeSearch events in the weeks after our reporting came out. And luckily, Lauren Windsor, who was in attendance in Charlotte on October 10th, shared this audio with us of a familiar name,

• 12:28Pablo Torre?

  this being the president of LifeSearch, Sean Marcel.

• 12:32Speaker 05

  I don't know if you noticed, but recently there's been a lot of conversation about our desire to be. Anybody notice over the last two weeks, there's been a little bit more conversation about it? Raise your hand if you know what I'm talking about? Okay, several. And listen, here's what I want us to all just acknowledge, that the media never lies.

• 12:52Speaker 05

  They're always, that narrative is always true. No, I say that just, but I'm so glad that you're here today because I believe it's now more important than ever that believers understand that we are not required to check our faith on the pew on Sunday and then go on up to the week without the hope that we have in Jesus. How many of you know God's call us to be a light in a dark world? Amen.

• 13:15Speaker 04

  So they're, you know, clearly doubling down. They're unapologetic about, you know, their, their free mixing of Christianity and financial advice.

• 13:25Pablo Torre?

  And how perhaps the media. It sounds like the problem is, is you.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  It's me, I'm the problem, it's me.

• 13:33Pablo Torre?

  It's us media types. But then the question was, okay, so which other celebrities would cosign the LifeSearch of the present that's saying such things? Which brings us to another piece of tape, shared by Lauren Windsor.

• 13:54Pablo Torre?

  And I just got to disclose here, Kira, that I worked with Sage Steele at ESPN, I suppose, technically speaking. She was doing extremely high-profile NBA studio show hosting gigs. I don't know her personally. We follow each other on Twitter, I guess. We have some mutual friends and colleagues. But the thing that brings her to this story is that in 2021, for those unfamiliar, she was pulled off the air by the network after criticizing the company's COVID policy, their vaccine policy. And this made her this kind of anti-vax champion, this victim of cancel culture. And so she sued ESPN in 2022, eventually left the network after the lawsuit settled in 2023. And now she's an unapologetic pro-Trump supporter and also, yeah,

• 14:36Pablo Torre?

  does a bunch of Fox News appearances, as well as apparently stuff for LifeSearch. So I understand when we hesitate. I understand why people just stay quiet. It is real. Cancellation is real. Losing paychecks is real. Losing friendships and relationships is real. But I can tell you through personal experience

• 14:59Speaker 04

  that what can come on the other side is beautiful. I had no idea when I left my head on the table that day, on August 14th, 2023, when my lawsuit was settled, I won. I won.

• 15:18Speaker 04

  So the theme is now defiance.

• 15:20Pablo Torre?

  And for the record, PTFO also exchanged messages with Sage Steele's reps before publication of Part One, in fact, and then again since then. And she has received questions related to our reporting about LifeSearch's alleged scam. But Sage Steele has not responded to our request for comment.

• 15:38Speaker 04

  But what LifeSearch has said is that, 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. LifeSearch is proud of that record while continuing to look for ways to improve. Anyone can attend a LifeSearch event, often for as little as $20, hear multiple speakers live and in person for a full day, and receive lunch."

• 16:07Pablo Torre?

  How was that lunch?

• 16:09Speaker 04

  I mean, it was solid, I thought.

• 16:12Pablo Torre?

  A good deal.

• 16:13Speaker 04

  A sandwich.

• 16:15Pablo Torre?

  But who else is sandwiching these faces on these posters now? Right? There is Sage Steele. There is also the real-life Auntie Anne of the Pretzel Empire. She is refusing to cut ties as well.

• 16:27Speaker 04

  There's also TV business guru Marcus Lamonas of The Prophet.

• 16:32Pablo Torre?

  And we do know this because last Saturday in Hartford, Connecticut, we assigned PTFO producer Neely Lohman the same assignment that Mother Jones gave you, Kira, which is to say, will you please spend your day at a LifeSearch event?

• 16:48Speaker 05

  Right now, there is an agenda that demands silence from people that want freedom in this country and freedom of speech. And there's especially, they demand silence from Christians. And they said, "We're not about to back down now." And the next thing you know, we were on 200 one-on-one interviews, all the CNNs and the Foxes and Good Morning America was in our living room. Charlie Kirk called us and wanted us on his show. What a great guy.

• 17:11Pablo Torre?

  Kira, I want to introduce you to the Benham Brothers, the identical twins, Jason and David. The Benham Brothers themselves were baseball players at Liberty University, and they were pretty good. Jason, an infielder, got drafted by the Orioles in the 37th round in the '98 amateur draft. David, a catcher, got drafted in the 12th round by the Red Sox.

• 17:30Speaker 05

  You know, there's an agenda today to make you and your children perpetually, generationally dependent on the government. Why might that be, Hunter? Control.

• 17:40Speaker 05

  God doesn't. People controlled by any government. When we create our own income, we're not beholden to anyone. We're also not a burden to anyone. We have the opportunity to be a blessing to everyone. That's what God wants for his people.

• 17:53Pablo Torre?

  But they are probably best known for the HGTV reality show Flip It Forward, or perhaps more specifically, the fact that it got canceled in 2014 after people realized that the Benham brothers organized rallies where they said stuff about how hurricanes are God punishing our society for homosexuality.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  When we say that sexuality, there is no boundary. When we say that marriage can be whatever you want it to be, we are breaching the boundaries of God. And we, as a country, on the anniversary of 9/11, 16 years after that horrific terrorist act took place in our country, God is speaking, repent. Yes, you've rebuilt, but it's time to repent.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  And in Hartford, they talked about exactly what Sage Steele talked about, cancellation.

• 18:40Speaker 05

  Do you know how good that felt to be financially bulletproof in today's cancel culture? But what felt so much better and still feels amazing to this day is that we are spiritually bulletproof and so are you.

• 18:52Speaker 04

  And so we were curious how many people are attending LifeSearch events after our reporting and after Tebow paused his relationship with them.

• 19:02Pablo Torre?

  So what we can now say, according to our sources inside of LifeSearch, this is in Charlotte and in Hartford, roughly 1,400 people still showed up to these events. You heard some of their applause there. And I think even more useful to observe here specifically is how successful in the room, the sales pitch that you saw in Atlanta and Neely saw in Hartford, proved to be when it came to signing up for these impact classes, which is still like the center of the story to us.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  You pay your $97 at the main one day event, and you sign up for these impact classes where in turn you are then offered the opportunity to buy these very pricey packages of financial education that can cost tens of thousands of dollars. And so at least in the Atlanta event, people were like rushing down to these tables. They were told that the venue size was going to be limited for the impact classes, that the deal was only good for today. You had to, you know, rush down there to get the best deal. And people were taking out their credit cards and just shelling out $97 and signing up.

• 20:14Pablo Torre?

  That video, these photos, which you saw in Atlanta and Neely saw in Hartford, what was witnessed in Charlotte and all around the United States, apparently, according to our sources, that's the thing that has been haunting me. Here you have a credit card coming out of a pocket and being brought close to what?

• 20:32Speaker 04

  To a portable credit card machine.

• 20:35Pablo Torre?

  Yes, with one tap, you can buy your financial freedom. That is what that little miraculous white device that this gentleman is holding is suggesting, according to all of our reporting. And it turns out that if you follow where the money goes, once it hits that device, you find another rabbit hole. Kira, the rabbit hole where we both have been living for a couple of weeks now. And inside of it also happens to be a guy who had a lot to tell us about what is really going on inside of LifeSearch.

• 21:27Pablo Torre?

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• 22:44Speaker 03

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• 23:16Pablo Torre?

  So we were just talking about this crucial point of sale, this crucial point in the show when workers break out this fleet of handheld credit card readers, as you saw yourself, and people sign up. These are the attendees, the Christians, who have felt something enough that they wanted to pay more money to attend the thing that they've been told can provide them with the next step, whatever that next step is towards financial salvation in their lives. And what LifeSearch says, what they've said this whole time, is that these events are not bait and switches that only exist to generate leads where you lure such seemingly vulnerable Christians in with cheap tickets

• 24:01Pablo Torre?

  and lunch and Tim Tebow or Sage Steele, and then funnel them into these allegedly predatory impact classes. They say this is not what's going on here.

• 24:11Speaker 04

  Right. And in Hartford on Saturday, in the aftermath of our reporting, Sean Marcel, who is the president of LifeSearch, said something that our inside sources say is new.

• 24:23Speaker 07

  So we are led by the foundation of our faith, but we step out informed by our faith, and we still have to make practical life decisions. So today, we also lean in the very practical nature. So when we go from worship into sometimes very practical, I don't want you to know, what just happened? Are you with me? Say if you're with me, say I am. So I want you to know today is going to be a day of inspiration. How do you need a little encouragement today? How do you need God to reignite something in your heart? Come on, let me hear from you. If you want, and there's nothing wrong with being inspired, there's nothing wrong with getting your heart posture correct before God, but we also need practical next steps. So LifeSearch is more than just an inspirational day.

• 25:08Speaker 07

  We're also a powerful education platform where we teach and train people how to create multiple streams of income through stock trading and real estate and business development. And today, a portion of that day will be dedicated to that. And so what I want to encourage you is to lean in and learn.

• 25:23Pablo Torre?

  Which sounds a bit like a disclosure.

• 25:26Speaker 07

  Not everything is for everybody.

• 25:27Speaker 04

  Sure does.

• 25:28Pablo Torre?

  A disclosure that, according to our sources, was not present previously before our reporting. And I also want to point out that what LifeSearch has always worn as this shield against these allegations is also the online reviews, the thousands of positive Google reviews averaging 4.8 stars, more than 3,000 of them, as well as their TrustPilot score, which is 4.4 with 580 reviews, all of which is to say, look, the people here, they love this. They love these events, even if you media types have all of these unfair criticisms of it, which is why I think it is now especially important that we try to follow the money and we follow it to another lifelong Christian who has personally

• 26:13Pablo Torre?

  worked with LifeSearch by the name of Brad Logan.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  My name is Brad Logan. I am the owner of a company providing merchant services and chargeback protection called Court Compass.

• 26:26Speaker 04

  So Brad Logan is the co-founder and COO of a company called Court Compass. And what Court Compass actually does, the merchant services that they provide, has to do with those portable credit card machines that we mentioned before.

• 26:39Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 26:39Speaker 04

  They are actually the ones providing these machines. In this case, it is Clover Machines, and they started doing this in 2024. So in the one day event, when they were saying, hey, like, why don't you sign up for these impact classes? These were the machines that were running people's credit cards, correct?

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 26:59Pablo Torre?

  And so I'm delighted to now be able to share my knowledge of credit card transaction processing with everybody. But basically, to simplify it, Court Compass does a lot. But yeah, they approve the transactions. They coordinate the transfer of the money, the funds, from a customer and their credit card to LifeSearch itself.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  Right. And in order for Court Compass to make their money, they take 3% of every transaction that they do with LifeSearch.

• 27:25Pablo Torre?

  Which is apparently standard in the world of credit cards. But it takes us now to the spring of 2024 because Brad Logan says he is backstage in person in Dallas, working at what turned out to be a pair of events headlined by LifeSearch's biggest star, Tim Tebow, who helped them sell out Fellowship Church.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Already had met Tim Tebow in the past, but he was at that two day. A lot of the standard crew that you'll see on their website was there, and I witnessed a lot of things that made me start scratching my head. But with all the dollars that were on the table, and we were literally just providing a service, I didn't think too much of some of the things I saw. And then throughout the day, the temporary workers that are brought into these one day events.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  They have a usually a great big room with food.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  There are teams of LifeSearch employees that are there. And during the downtime, when transactions are not being taken,

• 28:32Speaker 01

  I'm watching these people have the temporary workers go to the website and fill out positive reviews for LifeSearch.

• 28:42Speaker 04

  The workers themselves were doing that?

• 28:45Speaker 01

  This was temporary workers in the break room. So that's not normal, but it's really weighting their TrustPilot scores.

• 28:59Pablo Torre?

  So just to be clear, Brad Logan is the first person who has come forward to say that they witnessed employees explicitly instructing the temporary workers working for LifeSearch to fill out positive reviews on the internet, like Google reviews and TrustPilot stuff themselves. Back in 2024, we are looking to further corroborate this. We have not yet. We've also gone to LifeSearch for comment and despite exchanging emails with us and Mother Jones over two days through their PR firm, they did not offer a response to any of our detailed list of questions in time to meet our deadline. What they did say amid complaints about said deadline, quote, "We have little confidence that our responses will be represented fairly or accurately," end quote.

• 29:44Speaker 04

  But what we have been told is how much LifeSearch relies on those reviews online. They've brought it up like three times in the statement that they sent to us about how their reviews show what a, an upstanding and popular company they are.

• 30:00Pablo Torre?

  Yes, and in fact, according to our reporting now, which you can see in this photo we're going to show on our YouTube channel, the staff lanyards worn by LifeSearch employees, they have a QR code on the back and they present these to attendees in person. Because when you scan that QR code, that takes you to a place where you can just do a review of LifeSearch in front of the employee on the spot, which is to say that the review as an instrument is a priority. And yet also, not the most suspicious thing that Brad Logan says he's experienced. Because what he goes on to say is that Court Compass, his company, they bought 170 of these Clover credit card machine terminal things, each of which cost 400 bucks, thereabouts.

• 30:46Pablo Torre?

  And all that was to be reimbursed by LifeSearch. When Brad apparently kept asking to be reimbursed, LifeSearch instead offered him and Court Compass the chance to make even more money with them. In fact, they offered him the chance apparently to do the same job of processing these transactions, but at the next phase of the LifeSearch pipeline.

• 31:09Speaker 04

  Which of course is those impact classes, those three day classes that you pay $97 and you attend, and then you are offered the opportunity to buy these packages of financial education for tens of thousands of dollars.

• 31:22Pablo Torre?

  Yes, where you can learn for that low price of your entire nest egg, in some cases, how to trade stocks or invest in real estate and all that stuff.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  It'd be 170 terminals at $400 a terminal. So it's not nothing. And it's, it's, it's a chunk of change. Coupled with the fact that we were promised on the trade account, the numbers that come to mind were $75,000 a month, and that would have been my profit.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  The real estate account was closer to $60,000 a month in profit.

• 31:56Pablo Torre?

  And so, look, that's just a lot of numbers, but just to break it down as simply as I can, Court Compass, originally, the whole deal was take 3% on the standard impact class signups for 97 bucks. But as Brad is now going back to LifeSearch and saying, but what about all the other money you owe me for like the terminals, they're saying, we have a better deal actually for you. This could be a percentage of millions of dollars a month.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  That was the, the hook for them on us was, look, the $97 ticket, we might make $3,000 or $4,000 a month on those $97 tickets. When you promised me the percentage on 8 million, $10 million a month, that's when, you know, 3% of that ballpark would, you know, I pay a little bit of fees out of that 3% and the rest goes to us.

• 32:50Pablo Torre?

  And so what does Brad Logan do? What he says is that he proceeded to attend himself a three day impact class in Atlanta. This is in the fall of 2024. And yeah, he wanted to make sure everything went smoothly on what seemed like this incredibly exciting and enormous new account. But what he saw, apparently, was kind of staggering.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  The pressure with which they apply to the individuals attending these to get the credit card with the ability to pay for the course, to get financing, pull equity out of their house. It makes used car salesmen look like beginners. These people are seasoned at what they do and they're very, very damn good at it.

• 33:42Speaker 04

  Basically, what he's talking about was the same thing that we heard from folks in our last episode who had been through these classes. These were folks that were offered deals like taking out multiple credit cards with a temporary 0% interest rate from this other third party vendor.

• 33:59Pablo Torre?

  Right, credit stacking.

• 34:01Speaker 04

  Credit stacking was the term that was used.

• 34:03Pablo Torre?

  And then also there's the ability to perhaps pull equity out of the home you have.

• 34:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, two of our guests talked about that very thing.

• 34:12Speaker 06

  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."

• 34:23Pablo Torre?

  Which is, for the record, [bleep] wild. But when it comes to just following all of this money, as Court Compass is concerned, at least, there is this other thing that we should understand about what Brad Logan provides in terms of services, which is that Court Compass, apparently, isn't the only entity with some skin in the game when it comes to these transactions. What Brad Logan also says is that he relies on the outside risk departments of the merchant processing companies that Court Compass itself partners with, who therefore might be also on the hook in case something goes wrong with this money. And what Brad says is that those risk departments also had questions.

• 35:04Pablo Torre?

  They had questions that only LifeSearch and its founder, Joe Johnson, could answer.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  The risk departments at our very dependable relationship merchant processors that we run through, the risk departments were flattening these accounts. So I literally got on the phone with the heads of risk at three different processors that we work with.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  And they were leery about the whole setup. And so I go back to them and tell them, I need financials, I need this, I need that, I need a tax return for Joe Johnson, I need information on who the signer on the account's going to be, and I get major, major pushback.

• 35:51Pablo Torre?

  And so this is where I just need to say that LifeSearch, once again, denies any allegations of wrongdoing.

• 35:58Speaker 04

  But that wasn't Brad's only concern. On top of that, it was getting harder and harder to get LifeSearch to actually pay him.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  The first time we tried to do the ACH pool for merchant processing costs and the first installment on the equipment, we got NSF'd.

• 36:17Speaker 04

  What does NSF mean?

• 36:18Speaker 01

  So NSF is a non-sufficient funds available in the account for the amount that we requested.

• 36:25Speaker 04

  So eventually, after months and months of complaints, Brad decided to just cut his losses.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  I said, "We're shutting the merchant IDs down.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  We're going to have access to the terminals shut down.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  You owe us thousands of dollars at this point. We haven't seen you pay those bills.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  We're going to turn everything off and we're going to walk away and we're going to call it even, Stephen. Well, what are we going to do with our events? What are we going to do? What are we going to do?" I said, "You're going to need to contact another processor." So I tried to stay calm. I didn't get upset. I was really, really upset. He and I had had some conversations over the phone over the past several months during 2025 before this call in August where I literally ripped him and he ripped me. And it had gotten very ugly. And at the end of the day, I would say we're roughly out 90 grand.

• 37:23Pablo Torre?

  So when we went to LifeSearch and we said, Brad Logan of Court Compass claims that you owe him 90 grand, LifeSearch, again, did not respond to our detailed list of questions in time for our deadline. And we should also note, I think, that when Brad was asked a question that you might be asking in the audience, like, why were you continuing to work with this company where red flags were now sticking out everywhere? He did have some things that he, in retrospect, admits don't look great.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  To have tried to work with them as long as I worked with them, I have regret for that, for trying to help them facilitate transactions, because I was looking to recover the revenue that we had lost. And it was a simple business decision. And at the end of the day, it was the wrong decision.

• 38:14Pablo Torre?

  And so this is where, Kira, I think it's worth saying, the thing that has been in my head as I've been listening to Brad, which is this third party vendor is now alleging a parallel version, it feels like, of what LifeSearch students, the customers whose payments Brad was processing, have described to you and me.

• 38:34Speaker 04

  Right down to Christianity actually being a key part of their pitch to him, to Brad.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  It's one of their pressure techniques when they're dealing with their merchant partners. They, they use, oh, give us a break, give us a better price, we're a Christian organization. You know, we, we don't have the, we don't have as much funds as other organizations. Dude, I've got your tax returns. I've got your, your corporate financial statement. You've got money pouring out your ears. You have to pay your bills.

• 39:10Pablo Torre?

  And when Brad Logan said, very casually, that last part near the end about how, uh, dude, I've got your tax returns.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  I've got your, your corporate financial statement.

• 39:22Pablo Torre?

  That's where I think both of us had the same thought.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  Can we see them?

• 39:38Speaker 04

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• 39:42Speaker 03

  Shh.

• 39:43Speaker 04

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• 39:47Speaker 03

  Shh, anything else?

• 39:48Speaker 04

  Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody, listen up.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  Shh.

• 39:53Speaker 04

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• 41:25Pablo Torre?

  And so finally, Kira, we get to the stack of internal LifeSearch documents that we have been chasing for a while, but finally have in our hands thanks to third-party credit processing vendor, Brad Logan, who had acquired them from LifeSearch itself, his client, amid all these concerns he had allegedly raised over these supposed red flags. And I just want to start, I think, with a particular document that I want to draw our attention to. And this is LifeSearch's consolidated financials from 2021 to 2023, because for those who are tracking the timeline here, the very first LifeSearch event was 2021 in Tampa, headlined by Tim Tebow. And their revenue in 2021, Kira, was what?

• 42:10Speaker 04

  $1.97 million.

• 42:13Pablo Torre?

  But by year two, 2022, the revenue becomes?

• 42:18Speaker 04

  $16.6 million.

• 42:20Pablo Torre?

  Which is a pretty significant leap, I would say. It takes us then to LifeSearch's revenue in 2023.

• 42:28Speaker 04

  $47.4 million.

• 42:31Pablo Torre?

  Which is more than I guessed in 2023, frankly. And it proceeds from there. Because let's go to the consolidated financial statement for the first quarter of 2024. This is when Brad Logan's relationship with LifeSearch started, why he has these documents. And by March of 2024, they had made, Kira, $18.2 million just in that first quarter.

• 42:59Speaker 04

  Which would put them on track for $72.8 million in revenue in 2024.

• 43:06Pablo Torre?

  And the thing that I think is even more interesting than that, as everyone, again, may be wondering, so, wait a minute, how much of this revenue then is from the tickets? The admittedly quite affordable tickets to hear these celebrities like Tim Tebow onstage? And the answer, it turns out with extraordinary clarity, is not a lot.

• 43:27Speaker 04

  No. In 2023, the LifeSearch ticket revenue was only 9.2% of the total. And it was only 8.4% of the total revenue in 2022.

• 43:39Pablo Torre?

  And so the question we ask ourselves at this point is, so what in the [bleep] is LifeSearch's actual business? If the whole speaker thing is less than 10% of what they're actually getting money from, how are they getting all of this revenue? And the answer, it turns out, lies a little further down this document, because this is where LifeSearch details its revenue from what it calls "base education", otherwise known as the allegedly predatory "impact class programs". And please read what it shows us.

• 44:14Speaker 04

  So over these three years, plus the first quarter of 2024, base education accounted for no less than 78% of LifeSearch's revenue. And so in 2023, base education accounted for 81.5% of LifeSearch revenue, $38.7 million, which sort of backs up what our sources have been telling us from the very beginning.

• 44:41Pablo Torre?

  Right. This is a business around these classes. This is not actually a business of motivational speaking. And so this is where I also need to remind everybody, for the nth time, that LifeSearch's disposition here has been that these one-day events are not simply lead generators for the company's actual businesses that we have been alleging in the media, these allegedly scammy impact classes, where the celebrity speakers serve as bait to generate leads, meaning people in the world of sales lingo, meaning really vulnerable Christians who will pay for your products and services. And I say that because it brings us to yet another part of this same internal document, Kira,

• 45:23Pablo Torre?

  where LifeSearch now will show us what it costs to pay these speakers and produce these one-day events under a line on the document that is internally labeled what?

• 45:34Speaker 04

  It's labeled "cost of lead gen (life surge)". And underneath in 2023, you see that they spent $6.8 million in marketing costs, $5.3 million on talent costs, and $4.4 million on event costs. That is a lot.

• 45:56Pablo Torre?

  That is a lot.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  But also notable is what you see when you scroll down, which is a line that reads "cost of sales (impact classes)".

• 46:05Pablo Torre?

  So just to recap, LifeSearch in parentheses is labeled "cost of lead gen", lead generation. The impact classes are labeled "cost of sales", which indicates that internally, LifeSearch perhaps sees this the way that we have been seeing it. The impact classes are the product. The other stuff is the funnel to get people to buy the product. A product, by the way, that LifeSearch has own signed merchant application and agreement from May 2024, a separate document that we have here, describes how?

• 46:38Speaker 04

  Under "credit card transaction profile", LifeSearch describes the average ticket size as $20,000 and the highest ticket size as $60,000.

• 46:51Pablo Torre?

  And we see that price range, again, over and over in the even more granular credit card transaction data from Brad Logan and Court Compass, which we have also obtained. And I've never been so excited to look at a spreadsheet full of numbers that seem totally indecipherable, except for the fact that what they show us in detail is what you and our producer, Neely, both saw in person with the rush to these tables, right? There's a point of sale and you go to the tables full of the dozens of Clover credit card readers in between the speakers.

• 47:27Speaker 04

  Right. So on May 18th, 2024, 72 Clover card readers took 567 successful charges, almost all for $197, which was at that time the price of the entry-level impact classes.

• 47:42Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 47:42Speaker 04

  And 78% of those charges took place between 1:30 minute period, 3:00 and 3:30 PM.

• 47:51Pablo Torre?

  That is the rush that we have been reporting. And again, it's haunting to imagine it. People are competing to make sure they get to pay LifeSearch for these classes.

• 48:03Speaker 04

  Limited venue size.

• 48:05Pablo Torre?

  Limited venue size. And it raises the inevitable question, then, of what the speakers themselves, right? The alleged bait, what they themselves knew about any of these classes?

• 48:20Speaker 04

  Right. And in the statement to us, LifeSearch CEO Jeremy Nossick told us that the company does not ask its headline speakers to promote or endorse impact classes.

• 48:32Pablo Torre?

  Which now takes us to yet another internal LifeSearch document that we've obtained, titled "Talent Engagement Agreement". And I should say, to be clear, that this appears to be an unsigned standard template from LifeSearch for such a document. And I just want to draw your attention to the very first numbered item in this agreement.

• 48:54Speaker 04

  1A, "Services and Term". The following services are to be provided by the talent to the producer.

• 49:02Pablo Torre?

  And in this section, it lists one item of particular interest, I think, to us.

• 49:07Speaker 04

  "Impact Class Student Reception". Talent agrees to participate in post-event Q&A and reception.

• 49:15Pablo Torre?

  And so again, look, we've heard of the VIP receptions before. This may well be that. And we don't know who signed a contract that had this exact language in them. This is just a template. But if we're gonna refer to "impact class student reception" in a contract and you're gonna enroll in those impact classes in part because there's a VIP being advertised to you, I can imagine how encouraging it might be to hear somebody like, you know, let's just say hypothetically, Tim Tebow, say something like this.

• 49:48Speaker 07

  See, I know that many of you today have probably signed up for classes and probably signed up to take your next step. And I want to encourage you.

• 50:01Speaker 07

  To finish that, to follow through, to follow through on that commitment, to finish strong.

• 50:08Pablo Torre?

  And we'll reiterate here again that Tim Tebow has not responded to our request for comment. But Kira, there is just another thing that I want to bring up that didn't quite add up when we were reviewing this, which is that, according to these financial documents, LifeSearch, as you put it, was on track for $72.8 million in revenue in 2024. That's as of the Q1 document. But their net profit, right? So their actual bottom line, once you take out those other costs and stuff, that was a lot smaller.

• 50:39Speaker 04

  As of Q1 2024, it was $919,042.

• 50:45Pablo Torre?

  Less than a million in bottom line net profit. Kind of wild in my, perhaps amateurish, financial analysis. But it brings us to the other portion of this document in which you learn that, oh, by the way, LifeSearch every single year is also taking millions of dollars in this unitemized line item just called overhead allocation.

• 51:08Speaker 04

  Right. In Q1 of 2024, they spent $2.5 million in overhead against $3.4 million in gross profit.

• 51:17Pablo Torre?

  And in 2023, that total annual sum, they spent $8.9 million in overhead. And we wanted to know, was that? Can we itemize that perhaps? And so when we asked LifeSearch for detail about whether those overhead line items may include executive salaries, executive bonuses, for instance, they did not provide such itemization. But what is inarguable according to these documents as we have them is that the margins of LifeSearch's business, Kira, are thin. They're almost shockingly thin. And while Sage Steel and the Benham

• 51:55Pablo Torre?

  Brothers, to their everlasting consistency, are defying apparent cancellation, they are holding on, refusing to get off the stage. LifeSearch's audiences, what we've seen in person, as well as from our sources, it's been shrinking. Since our reporting came out, the funnel has been disrupted. Lead generation. It's becoming harder. And it raises this question that we here at PTFO decided to ask Brad Logan at the end of this interview that we did about where he thinks the business of LifeSearch could maybe go from here.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  They're gonna end up shutting this, they're gonna milk this for everything it's worth. They're gonna shut it down. They're gonna rebrand it and come back as something else.

• 52:44Pablo Torre?

  And there is just sort of like this ominous sort of warning embedded in that quote from Brad of like, it's cute that you guys are doing all this reporting, and it's cute that you can disrupt the funnel, and the numbers can dwindle down, maybe even to zero one day in terms of people who are aware and want to still sign up for these impact classes. But there's almost like this, and you think that's gonna be the end of the story, kind of a warning.

• 53:10Speaker 04

  Right. There's so much more that LifeSearch has in store.

• 53:14Pablo Torre?

  I don't know if you're ready for the second coming.

• 53:17Speaker 04

  Oh, I'm ready.

• 53:18Pablo Torre?

  But the incoming, as we amassed documents, has been, it's been profound, frankly.

• 53:24Speaker 04

  It's been amazing. The number of people who have wanted to share with us has been really inspiring.

• 53:29Pablo Torre?

  And while neither of us, of course, can speak for Tim Tebow's investigation, and we await those results, Kira, I do think the good news is also the bad news for us, which is that I think there's probably another reporting trip in our future.

• 53:46Speaker 04

  Sounds like it.

• 53:56Pablo Torre?

  Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Max Walcarney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Laura Newcomb, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello. Studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bersik, digital strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern, theme song, as always, by John Bravo. And we'll talk to you next time.

• 54:31Speaker 03

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