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

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 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 Right after this I love That there's more incoming than we can track. 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 And like just having people come out of the woodwork to give us tips was like oh my god This can be fun here about later finally. Thank you for coming back in studio with us Thank you so much for having me back It is fun to have new documents as part of our ongoing investigation with you and mother Jones into life search 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 Right, so on September 25th Tim Tebow paused his relationship with life search and he also said that his team was planning on Launching an investigation of its own the more the barrier You know for us. We're you know I have an our team do an investigation and also pausing our relationship till we can learn more about the facts To be able to understand more was it something you do Who's a song you knew about prior to the investigation to pop those investigation or Honestly, I was at an anti-human trafficking conference yesterday and team shared with me when we were leaving as we're flying to Alabama for event And you know kind of called 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 Just what is your message to those people who are trying to get answers for Potentially the scams I mean, I think honestly it's really important to get answers to understand every bit of that So I just want to first Thank the reporters who asked him about any of this. Yeah, I actually spoke with the student journalist with WRUF Her name is Caroline Walsh and she asked him some really tough questions and he answered And when you hear Tibo answer those questions The thing that I was caught off guard by was how caught off guard Tim Tibo was apparently because We not only texted his personal cell phone and interview request But we'd actually exchanged emails with Tibo's cam and then sent them a list of 18 questions a week before of course We published Yeah, we included questions like this one. This was number six in our email Quote on social media and an 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 alleged that the company uses high profile sports figures and Geonody 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 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 and quote? And so You know, not exactly hiding the ball on what our area of interest was But I suppose in fairness Tim Tibo 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 traffic events Which we also said in part one by the way seems not just praiseworthy but also exactly the reason why we Thought that our reporting about life surge would be of urgent concern to Tim Tibo specifically particularly Here as you will remember since we also told him that we had acquired tape of Tibo Discussing these allegedly predatory impact classes at one of his more than 40 life surge appearances On stage To follow through 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 Right, so that was a report from a Christian outlet called the Royes 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 Tibo a list of questions that were very similar to the questions that we sent Yes, and I'll just read the headline of their article here which they posted after our investigation dropped which was quote Tibo's PR team new of life surge allegations since at least 2025 And the article goes on to reference how they exchange messages with Tibo's PR team And then yes sent them this email if they quote from on July 29th 2025 So their outreach actually included questions like what is Tibo's response to attendees who felt drawn to the event by the speaker line up Only to later find themselves in great financial difficulty because of programs They felt spiritually pressured to sign up for 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 I'm apparently taking place with Tibo 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 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 that we're gifted the $50,000 course? Because Tibo'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 Horses that say the opposite But life surge for the record quote strongly disagrees with the characterization of our company presented in recent reporting and quote And they went on to say further Kira amid their 3000 word statement which is published on motherjones.com as well as Our website which are both linked in the show notes This particular quote They said we will not apologize for who we are what we believe or the work we do The reporting presented serious allegations about life surge but 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 Tibo for years But by September 27th The most prominent celebrity face across life surges event promos The same guy would spoken at the very first one-day event in July 2021 And has been spoken at more than 40 of these events since You got removed from all of the upcoming event advertising 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. Yes, and so have others So have others Celtic's head coach Joe Missoula backed out of the Hartford event that took place last saturday talking the 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 And quote 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 And then former NFL head coach Tony Dungee disappeared from the lineup for the Tampa event scheduled for December 5th Red Sox Hall of Famer David Ortiz is no longer on the lineup for the November 7th event in Fort Myers Yeah, and that's just some of the names right there are plenty more non-sports celebrities who've also pulled out Candice Cameron Burey of full house and my childhood is fam She's gone Nick Vuyuchich of 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 life surge events In the weeks after our report and came out And luckily Lauren Windsor who was in attendance in Charlotte on October 10th shared this audio with us of a familiar name. This being the president of Life Surge, Sean Marcell. So they're you know clearly doubling down their unapologetic about, you know, they're they're free mixing of Christianity and financial advice and how perhaps the media Yeah, it sounds like the problem is is you. It's me. I'm the problem. It's me. It's us media types. But then the question was, okay, so which other celebrities would co-sign the Life Surge of the present that say in such things, which brings us to another piece of tape shared by Lauren Windsor. And I just got a disclose here here that I worked with sage deal 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 company's company. 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, does a bunch of Fox news appearances, as well as apparently stuff for Life Surge. So I understand when we hesitate, I understand my people just to take a while. It is real, cancellation is real, losing, he checks is real, losing friendships and relationships is real, but I can tell you, through personal experience that what can come on the other side is beautiful. So the theme is now defiance and for the record, PTFO also exchanged messages with sage deals wraps before publication of part one. In fact, and then again, since then, and she has received questions related to our reporting about Life Surge's alleged scam, but sage deal has not responded to our request for comment, but what Life Surge has said is that quote with more than 3000 Google reviews, the company has an average rating of 4.8 out of five stars with 97% of users giving a five star rating Life Surge is proud of that record while continuing to look for ways to improve anyone can attend a Life Surge event often for as little as $20. Here multiple speakers live and in person for a full day and receive lunch. How was that lunch? I mean, it was solid. I thought a good deal a sandwich, but who else is sandwiching these faces on these posters now, right? There is sage deal. There is also the real life auntie and of the pretzel empire. She is refusing to cut ties as well. There is also TV business guru Marcus lemonis of the prophet and we do know this because last Saturday in Hartford, Connecticut, we assigned PTFO producer, nearly Lohman, the same assignment that mother Jones gave you here, which is to say, will you please spend your day at a Life Surge event. Right now there is a agenda that demands silence for people that want freedom in this country, freedom of speech and there's especially they demand silence from Christians. And I said, we're not about to back down now. The next thing you know, we're on 201 on one interviews, all the CNNs and the boxes and the good morning America was in our living room, Charlie Kirkfold. This is one of us on his show. What a great guy. Here 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 and 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. You know, there's an agenda today to make you and your children, perpetually, generation independent on the government. Why might that be? Control. God doesn't let these people control by any government. When we create an 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. 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. 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. And in Hartford, they talked about exactly what Sage Steele talked about, cancellation. 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. And so we were curious how many people are attending life surge events after our reporting and after Tibo paused his relationship with them. So what we can now say according to our sources inside of life surge, this is in Charlotte and in Hartford, roughly 1400 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 nearly 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. 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. That video, these photos, which you saw in Atlanta and nearly saw in Hartford 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 to a portable credit card machine. 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 cure the rabbit hole or we both have been living for a couple 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 life search. 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 life surge says what they've said this whole time is that these events are not bait and switches that only exists to generate leads where you learn such seemingly vulnerable Christians and with cheap tickets and lunch and Tim Tebow or sage steel and then funnel them into these allegedly predatory impact classes they say this is not what's going on here. Right. Yeah. And in Hartford on Saturday in the aftermath of our reporting, Sean Marcel, who's the president of LifeSearch, said something that our inside sources say is new. So we are led by the foundation of our faith, but we step out and form 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? If you would be, 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 can you need God to reignite something in your heart? Come on, let me hear from you. If you want, and there's nothing wrong in the inspire, there's nothing wrong with getting your heart posture correctly for God. But we also need practical next steps. So LifeSearch is more than just an inspirational day. There are also a powerful education platform where we teach and train people how to create multiple streams of income, who's not 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. Which sounds a bit like a disclosure. Not everything is for everybody. Sure does. 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 trust pilot 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 worked with LifeSearch by the name of Brad Logan. My name is Brad Logan. I am the owner of a company providing merchant services and charge back protection called Court Compass. So Brad Logan is the co-founder and CEO 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, 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 are the machines that were running people's credit cards, correct? And so I'm delighted to now be able to share my knowledge of credit card transaction processing with everybody, but basically to simplify, 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. Right. And in order for Court Compass to make their money, they take 3% of every transaction that they do with LifeSearch. It 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. 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 throughout the day, the temporary workers that are brought into these one day events, they have a usually a great big room with food. There are teams of LifeSearch employees that are there. And during the downtime, when transactions are not being taken, I'm watching these people have the temporary workers go to the website and fill out positive reviews for all that search. The workers themselves were doing that. This was temporary workers in the break room. So that's not normal, but it's really waiting their trust pilot scores. So it has to be clear, Red 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 trust pilot 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. But it did say, and it complaints about said deadline, quote, "We have little confidence that our responses will be represented fairly or accurately," end quote. 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 an upstanding and popular company they are. 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, Len, you're, it's worn by LifeSearch employees, they have a QR code on the back, and they present these two 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. 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. 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. 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. I'd be 170 terminals at $400 a terminal. So it's not nothing. 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. The real estate account was closer to $60,000 a month in profit. 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 life surge 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." That was 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. And you promised me the percentage on $8,000, $10,000,000 a month. That's when 3% of that ballpark would pay a little bit of fees out of that 3% and the rest goes to us. And so what does Brad Logan do? What he says is that he proceeded to attend himself a 3-day impact class in Atlanta. This is in the fall of 2024 and 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. 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 use car salesmen look like beginners. These people are seasoned at what they do and they're very, very damn good at it. 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. Credit stacking. Credit stacking was the term that was used. And then also, there's the ability to perhaps pull equity out of the home you have. Yeah, two of our guests talked about that very thing. They said it 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. Which is, for the record, f***ing 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. They had questions that only life surge and its founder, Joe Johnson, could answer. The risk departments had our very dependable relationship merchant processors that we run through, the risk departments for f***ing these accounts. So I literally got on the phone with the heads of risk at three different processors that we work with. And they were leery about the whole setup. You know, 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. And so this is where I just need to say that life surge, once again, denies any allegations of wrongdoing. But that wasn't Brad's only concern. On top of that, it was getting harder and harder to get life surge to actually pay him. The first time we tried to do the ACH pool for merchant processing costs and the first installment on the equipment, we got NSF. What does NSF mean? So NSF is a non-sufficient funds available in the account for the amount that we requested. So eventually, after months and months of complaints, Brad decided to just cut his losses. So we're shutting the merchant IDs down. We're going to have access to the terminals shut down. You owe us thousands of dollars at this point. We haven't seen you pay those bills. 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? 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. So when we went to life surge and we said, Brad Logan of Court Compass claims that you owe him 90 grand. Life surge 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. To have tried to work with them as long as I worked with him, I 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. 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 life surge students, the customers who's payments, Brad was processing have described to you and me. Right down to Christianity actually being a key part of their pitch to him to Brad. It's one of their pressure techniques when they're doing with their merchant partners. They use, I'll give us a break, give us a better price. We're a Christian organization. We don't have as much funds as other organizations. Dude, I've got your tax returns. I've got your corporate financial statement. You've got money pouring out your ears. You have to pay your bills. And when Brad Logan said very casually that last part, near the end about how, dude, I've got your tax returns. That's where I think both of us had the same thought. Can we see them? And so finally, Kira, we get to the stack of internal life surge documents that we have been chasing for a while. Finally have in our hands thanks to third party credit processing vendor, Brad Logan, who had acquired them from life surge itself, his client. I mean, 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 attention to. And this is life surges consolidated financials from 2021 to 2023. Because for those who are tracking the timeline here, the very first life surge event was 2021 in Tampa, headlined by Tim Tebow. And their revenue in 2021, Kira, was what? $1.97 million. But by year two, 2022, the revenue becomes. $16.6 million. Which is a pretty significant leap, I would say. It takes us then to life surges revenue in 2023. $47.4 million. 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 life surge started, why he has these documents. And by March of 2024, they had made Kira $18.2 million just in that first quarter. Which would put them on track for $72.8 million in revenue in 2024? And the thing that I think is even more interesting than that as everyone, again, maybe 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 on stage. And the answer, it turns out with extraordinary clarity, is not a lot. No. In 2023, the life surge ticket revenue was only 9.2% of the total. And it was only 8.4% of the total revenue in 2022. And so the question we ask ourselves at this point is, so what in the f*** is life surge as 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 life surge 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. So, over these three years, plus the first quarter of 2024, base education accounted for no less than 78% of life surge as revenue. And so in 2023, base education accounted for 81.5% of life surge revenue, $38.7 million. Which sort of backs up what our sources have been telling us from the very beginning? 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 end time that life surge 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 scamby impact classes where this Liberty speakers serve as bait to generate leads, meaning people in the world of sales and go, 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, where life surge 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? It's labeled cost of lead gen parentheses 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. - That is a lot. - But also notable is what you see when you scroll down, which is a line that reads cost of sales, parentheses, impact classes. - So just a recap, life surge in parentheses is labeled cost of lead gen, lead generation. The impact classes are labeled cost of sales, which indicates that internally life surge 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 life surge is own signed merchant application and agreement from May 2024, a separate document that we have here describes how. - Under credit card transaction profile, life surge describes the average ticket size as $20,000. And the highest ticket size as $60,000. - And we see that price range again over and over in 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 indescribable, except for the fact that what they show us in detail is what you and our producer nearly 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. - 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. And 78% of those charges took place between one 30 minute period, three and 330 PM. 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 life surge for these classes. - 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. - Right, and in the statement to us, life surge CEO Jeremy Nosek told us that the company does not ask its headline speakers to promote or endorse impact classes. - Which now takes us to yet another internal life surge 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 life surge for such a document. And I just wanna draw your attention to the very first numbered item in this agreement. - One A, services in term. The following services are to be provided by the talent to the producer. - And in this section, it lists one item of particular interest, I think, to us. - Impact class student reception. Talent agrees to participate in post-event Q&A and reception. - 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, Temptivo say something like this. - I know that many of you today are probably signed up for classes that probably sign up to take you next to them. And I want to encourage you to change that, to follow through, to follow through on that commitment, to change the strong one. - And we'll reiterate here again, that Temptivo has not responded to our request for comment. But Kira, there is just another thing that I wanna bring up that didn't quite add up when we were reviewing this, which is that, according to these financial documents, life search, as you put it, was on track for $72.8 million in revenue in 2024. That's as of the Q1 document. But they're net profit, right? So they're actual bottom line when you take out those other costs and stuff. - That was a lot smaller. - As of Q1 2024, it was $919,042. - 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, life search every single year is also taking millions of dollars in this unidimized line item, just called overhead allocation. - Right, in Q1 of 2024, they spent $2.5 million in overhead against 3.4 million in gross profit. - And in 2023, that total annual sum, they spent $8.9 million in overhead. And we wanted to know, what was that? Can we itemize that, perhaps? And so when we asked life search 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 in arguable according to these documents as we have them is that the margins of life's reader's business, Kira, are thin. They're almost shockingly thin. And while sage steel and the Benham brothers to their everlasting consistency are defying apparent cancellation. They are holding on, refusing to get off the stage. Life search is 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 life search could maybe go from here. They're going to end up shutting this. They're going to milk this for everything it's worth. They're going to shut it down. They're going to rebrand it and come back as something else. 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 window 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 going to be the end of the story, kind of a warning. - Right, there's so much more that life search has in store. - I don't know if you're ready for the second coming. - Oh, I'm ready. - But the incoming as we, a mass documents has been, it's been profound, frankly. - It's been amazing. The number of people who have wanted to share with us has been really inspiring. - And while neither of us, of course, can speak for Tim Teebo'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. - Sounds like it. (upbeat music) - Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Walter Averoma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lomon, Rob McRae, Laura Nukem, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tuminello. - CD-Engineering by RG Systems, sound designed by Andrew Bersick, digital strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern, theme song, as always, by John Bravo. And we'll talk to you next time. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)