CO-HOST | Make Money Without Falling for Predatory Business Tactics

0:00Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. And Thropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at clod.ai slash Spotify and keep thinking. That's clod.ai slash Spotify. Your listening to The Travis Makes Money Podcast. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to The Travis Makes Money Podcast. What's in your job? You make more money on this episode of the show. My preset Eric is in studio. What's up, Travis? How you doing? What's you been really enjoying the sports season? Have I? What? What a weird question. Have you really been enjoying the sports season? Says the guy who never watches football. Football season has been in full swing. Was that a question? Well, I'm asking if you've been enjoying, I've been enjoying the football season in full swing. Right? Yeah. No, it is. No, I know it. I know it is. I was at the cigar lounge the other day. No, it's going to be on the TV.

1:01And the guy came and said, hey, you guys are going to put the game on. And you're like, I'm watching secret lives of Mormon lives. Okay, that's so funny. I do have thoughts. Anyway. Anyway, yes. Well, I'm not. I'm not enjoying it. You haven't the Cowboys are one and two. Sounds like par for the course for those boys. You know what? It means nothing coming from you because you have no concept of football. Can you guys have no super bowl wins? So that's not true. Anyway, but not most all not recently. Not since you were born. Okay. You're born in a true curse on the Cowboys. 95 96. Wow. That's how I was like three. Wow. Yeah, I forgot how old you are. So anyway, you know who, you know who was the best thing never happened at football? John Madden. No. Tom Tim Tebow. Okay. Okay. Um, but I bring Tim Tebow up in this conversation because Tim Tebow scammed old people. Is that true? Allegedly.

2:01Allegedly. So anyway, so Tim Tebow was connected to a company called Life Search. Ever heard of it? I have. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What is it? Some sort of an event, something or other? Yeah. You nailed it. You got it here. First folks, the news from Travis. It is an event. I just remember seeing the ads online. Yeah, I'm going to read you a Yahoo. Who ran Life Search? It's something I'll get to it. Okay. I do. No sick Jeremy No sick. He's apparently like a Florida real estate guy. If I have it right, it makes a lot of sense. And we were like a Florida real estate guy doing a scam. Whoa. Crazy. Anyway. So Tim Tebow. And again, this is all alleged. You know, we don't know what's going on. But in Travis's opinion, Tim Tebow scammed old people. Well, they're lying on a second. In Travis's own opinions. I'm talking over you so you can't clip that. So as you were saying Travis, Tim Tebow. No, no, no. With malice, no, pursue vulnerable old people. Okay.

3:05Now, here's the Yahoo news article. Okay. I'm going to run down the story for you. And then I've got some video testimony. Okay. Well, Tim Tebow has put a, sorry, let me start earlier. Oh, yes, there it is. While Tim Tebow has publicly stepped back with the promise of an internal investigation, Life Search took the opposite approach digging in as the Christian Well Seminar Company. It's a well seminar company. In on the back end of this event company, which we've seen these pop up before Christian Well Seminar is. Yeah. You're going to need to see. I have thoughts. As the Christian Well Seminar Company faces mounting scrutiny over allegations that it pushed attendees toward five figure debt. It's CEO Jeremy Nozick isn't backing down and isn't saying sorry. He said, Life Search strongly disagrees with the characterization of our company presented in recent reporting. We will not apologize for who we are, what we believe. We had to add that or the work we do. The reporting presented serious allegations against Life Search.

4:05What he did not present with equal force was the full story. We stand behind our people, we stand behind our mission, and we stand behind the work we've done alongside Tim Tebow for years. Life Search markets itself is a Christian Well Building movement designed to help believers grow their resources for kingdom impact. Wait, we'll go quick though. Is it, is it just Tim Tebow that's involved with Life Search? He was to this extent. I will tell you more. He was in their speaker line. He was like their most frequent paid speaker. The most valuable workflows are often the hardest to document when they span people systems, judgment calls, they can stay undocumented, leaving teams, guessing, creating inconsistency and holding AI back. Well, that's exactly the problem that today's sponsor, scribe was built to solve. Scribe is a specialized intelligence platform trusted by 94% of the Fortune 500 that captures workflows as work happens and automatically generate step by step guides with screenshots and instructions. So no one has to sit down and write documentation from scratch.

5:07Teams can review, edit and share the guides for onboarding, training, software rollouts and day to day work. Scribe also automatically redacts sensitive info like names, account numbers, emails from screenshots, you know, all the stuff you don't want other people saying. And as an admin, you control and enforce that across the whole team. Once a guide is reviewed, anyone can launch real time on screen guidance that shows exactly where to click inside the actual tool. So critical processes can get done right every time. And because most AI was trained on the internet, not your company's way of working, scribe helps power your AI agents with real context, giving them a foundation built on how work actually happens, not just guesses. Learn more at scribe.how slash TNM and mention Travis makes money for your first month of scribe capture free on select plans. That's SCR IBE. How slash TNM. Most of us picked a bank at 16 and never looked back.

6:08Sound familiar? Well, that's where chime comes in. Chime is changing the way that people bank. They're not like traditional old stuffy banks who charge fees and gatekeep perks and rewards. Chime offers the most rewarding fee free banking all with no overdraft fees, no monthly fees, no minimum balance fees. Plus you get 5% cash back on chime card in the category of your choice, like gas or groceries, all while building credit through regular everyday spending with no credit check. And if you're ever in a pinch, spot me. Let's you overdraft up to $200 fee free. So join the millions who are already banking fee free with America's number one choice for banking head to chime.com slash Travis. That's chime.com slash Travis. Sign up now. It only takes a few minutes. Chime is a fintech, not a bank banking services and chime card provided by Chimes bank partners, qualifying direct deposits required terms and limits apply go to chime.com slash disclosures for details. Yeah, I'm never saying that's for this for sure. But life search markets itself is a Christian wealth building movement designed to help believers grow their resources for quote unquote,

7:09kingdom impact. However, an investigation published by journalists, public, Torrey on his podcast, public, Torrey finds out in collaboration with Mother Jones, Outland and aggressive sales funnel per the investigation. The organization draws large audiences to one day live events by charging low ticket prices around $30 and featuring high profile celebrities and athletes, including Tim Tibo, who is known for preaching the Christian faith. During these events, attendees are allegedly pressured to sign up for three day impact classes costing $97. I think they're called impact classes. Impact classes where the organizers pitch advance, real estate and stock market trading mentorships through surge you with some pretty pricey packages. I'll share that with you in a minute. Tim Tibo has been their most prominent paid headline speaker reportedly earning $50,000 to $100,000 per appearance. One, one alleged victim said, I'm so devastated. Christians like Tim Tibo made me trust in something that's taken so much money from me. This is evil, especially because I'm disabled on a limited income.

8:11And Tim Tibo stepped away from it, obviously, and said the allegations are extremely, extremely serious. And it's something that we take very serious. So 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. Anyway, so that's that so far. These things are tough. I don't think Tim Tibo knows anything about the back-end financials of life surge. Like I doubt he's a partner in the business or as equity, he's probably just a paid speaker that they use to increase credibility. So like crypto stage. Yeah, yeah. They hire you to come in and talk good about it. And then you go like, oh, we're not even talking good about it. Just just the fact that they can just use your name, image and likeness to say that we are a good. Like speaking at 10X comes close on. And then it's like, oh, wait, I didn't know anything about it. But I highly doubt that Tim Tibo has any knowledge of like their back-end. None, no. Because you're going to a conference where they're speaking about this stuff. And yeah, I would say the, I would say very limited knowledge. Again, that depends on whether or not he's actually like involved in terms of

9:15equity ownership in the company. My gut says it's probably just some real estate dude who started. Christian businessmen. It's like, come speak at our Christian business event. And then wants to turn it into a mastermind where he can make a lot of money. So in your opinion, he's searching out vulnerable older people and taking the money in your opinion. That's what you're saying. No, not as not what I'm saying. Oh, okay. Not Tim Tibo, maybe the organizer of the event. But like they're going to have a really tough time getting any of these types of things. Like it's going to be a legit and they're going to be allegations because the bottom line is people willingly paid money, showed up to an event, the event delivered on what they bought. And then they bought something else. Well, and so like I doubt that it's going to go anywhere. Unfortunately, because a lot of these companies are very predatory. Well, especially I was watching some preaching clips, which I don't have here. So trust me. No, but there was a clip and he's like, he's like, if you give, like it's all mixed with the Christian mess and he was like, if you get that's what makes these types of seminars so dangerous, he's like, I guarantee you God will not let

10:16that giving not come return to you kind of thing. And it's like, okay. So that's that's exactly the way that they sell the high ticket bullshit that they sell at these seminars. That's what it was called. What high ticket? He said, Hey, guys, we have high ticket bullshit available for $45 million. That actually to put it on a high ticket bullshit. Hey, guys, this is our new program. It's called high ticket bullshit. Yeah, you don't get much, but it is $50,000. I don't like that you said bullshit out. Okay. So here is concerns me. Here is a clip from one of the women who was involved in this. Okay. And this is from the 32, 40, 49 minute mark on the Pablo Pablo. That's a hard sentence. Pablo Pablo Torrey finds out podcasts go listen to the full one. It's really interesting. But I'm going to play from the 32, 49 mark to like the 39 minute mark. I know I had a seizure watching it. I had drooled all our my keyboard.

11:16All right. Here we go. Here's a here's some excerpt or an excerpt from their like hour and 17 minute deep dive into the sucker. So here we go. 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. So just when you sign up for this stuff and the price you had mentioned before, we're talking 97 or so dollars 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 search. Right. I mean, that's the big question. I did. So I will say I will say I do have a hard time with I appreciate the information guys. No, I do. When podcasters, so script over one person's clearly there to say like, I want to prompt that the next part of the conversation like, like, sometimes I listen to like MPR. They'll be like, yeah. So I said, today I've disclosed that I pay for the New York Times and I listen MPR.

12:18And I also only eat organic. That's not true. No, it's not. I did buy two. I know that chickens today. Did you? Yeah. Because the other ones were sold out. So I had to pay five dollars more for those. Shicken that's smaller because they don't pump the stuff in and make them bulked up. And it also means nothing. So yeah. Anyway, that's a scam too. Yeah, I know. And I got scammed. Yeah. Well, you can get scammed. You didn't have any options and you need to chicken. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, anyway, scripted question to someone who paid the $97 for herself and her husband. Wait, can I guess the price point? One of these training courses. Can I guess the price point of the offer that they're selling at the $97 course? Yeah. Because that's obviously how they're making money. Well, it's the back end offer. Uh-huh. If it's like a real estate, wealth building mastermind top thing, it's definitely higher ticket. It's definitely more than 10. So they're starting $30 to go to the event. $97 for this three day thing. What are they getting sold up to? Okay. So there's one of two options here.

13:19Either they're selling the Mac daddy package here or they're selling to another event that's like a like five three to five K to send them up the ladder. I'm going to go, I'm going to go that they're selling like the higher ticket thing. It's 15 to 20 K. And she actually did the real estate one. She didn't get to start market. 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 Indian. She did not disclose that information. She popped back in the back. And by the way, this lady 61. She didn't even give the year she was born. She has been a firefighter. You know, we went to the classes and they were just really, they were, 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 and, you know, they get to kind of know you. They started wanting to know your backstory. Why are you here? They really, really pushed the whole aspect of, oh, you know, you, you want to

14:24get 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. If 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. The state investing God's way. Many like that. I've been told that the lowest tier ranges from like maybe 10,000 to 13,000 dollars. There's a middle tier that's like maybe 20, 25,000. Wait, wait, just, just a pausier versus like, and we've gone from 97 bucks to now retirement funds. And the highest tier is like 40,000 to even 50,000 dollars for like one on one mentorship. I was pretty hesitant. I was like, Clivicular Simon Charging that. Yeah. Like we don't have the money to do this. They brought in an outside like credit card application.

15:27I guess a loan company or a company that would find credit cards. How do you know this? For you to or help convert your 401 card with zero percent interest for a certain period of time. The most valuable workflows are often the hardest to document when they spend people systems. Judgment calls they can stay undocumented leaving teams guessing, creating inconsistency and holding AI back. Well, that's exactly the problem that today's sponsor scribe was built to solve. Scribe is a specialized intelligence platform trusted by 94% of the Fortune 500. That captures workflows as work happens and automatically generate step by step guides with screenshots and instructions. So no one has to sit down and write documentation from scratch. Teams can review edit and share the guides for onboarding training software rollouts and day to day work. Scribe also automatically redacts sensitive info like names, account numbers, emails from screenshots, you know, all the stuff you don't want other people

16:27saying, and as an admin, you control and enforce that across the whole team. Once a guide is reviewed, anyone can launch real time on screen guidance that shows exactly where to click inside the actual tool. So critical processes can get done right every time. And because most AI was trained on the internet, not your company's way of working, scribe helps power your AI agents with real context, giving them a foundation built on how work actually happens, not just guesses. Learn more at scribe.how slash TNM and mention Travis makes money for your first month of scribe capture free on select plans. That's SCRIBE.how slash TNM. Most of us pick the bank at 16 and never looked back. Sound familiar? Well, that's where chime comes in. Chime is changing the way that people bank. They're not like traditional old stuffy banks who charge fees and gatekeep perks and rewards. Chime offers the most rewarding fee free banking all with no overdraft fees,

17:28no monthly fees, no minimum balance fees. Plus you get 5% cash back on chime card in the category of your choice, like gas or groceries, all while building credit through regular everyday spending with no credit check. And if you're ever in a pinch, spot me. Let's you overdraft up to $200 fee free. So join the millions who are already banking fee free with America's number one choice for banking head to chime.com slash Travis. That's chime.com slash Travis. Sign up now. It only takes a few minutes. Chime is a FinTech, not a bank banking services and chime card provided by Chimes bank partners, qualifying direct deposits required terms and limits supply. Go to chime.com slash disclosures for details. So they told us, oh, why don't we get you a credit card for only cost you 10% of the credit dollars. 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.

18:29I'm sorry. I'm going to either get alone or get a new credit card to pay for this. Or several. Thank you for that. Contribute. Really solid to pay for it. What is happening? So there's a first company that has a close relationship with life search. It's called copper rock financial. And they basically do something called credit card stacking. I'm just adding this to kingdom wealth along the list of terms that I got a credit card stack. What is credit card stacking then? The company applies for a bunch of credit cards simultaneously. All at the special zero percent interest rate. So far, it sounds great. You're up. I mean zero percent. What is it? Well, that is that is. But then copper rock. He's cards to pay life search for the courses up front. 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 zero percent promotion expires,

19:30the interest rate can get really high, like 30%. Well, that's just a question. This is all escalated quite quickly within the framework that life search has encouraged. Right. And I feel that here's the thing about it all is that obviously the reason that I could call this out is because I've seen all this stuff in the business. But the, but if you're doing it in the business space, like I, I, I have mixed feelings about it at this point because like, you know, I've paid exorbitant amounts of money to be in rooms and it's, oh, and it's paid off very well for me. And I encourage people to do that. The difference is is that they're going to people, like, first of all, the God messaging is something that I'm definitely against because again, you can use verbiage that business people can't or don't use. And you can guilt people and use this like a foritative Trump card of God says, this is what you're supposed to do to convince the 61 year old who has zero business experience and is retired. Retired, retired firefighter has right, right, who are probably getting their set

20:31amount of money. Exactly. Then every, you're not talking to a, a room of sophisticated business owners who, like, okay, your business is doing three million, you want to take it to 10 million, we'll invest 50 K programs and you can increase your profit. In this mentorship with this business coach is going to help you get, like, cool. That's all, like, that's all fair play to me because they have the business and they have their P and L and they have their profit and they know that they can section off a piece of their profit for the next 12 months to get in this program. That's going to help them learn this thing or this new tool or this exercise that's going to help them get to the next level of income that they're hoping to come. He's going to get to. I'm cool with all that. But this, like, it turns predatory when you start, when you start pulling out credit cards and caching in 401Ks for people who've never done a thing in business in their entire life and then using God as like the vehicle to, to, to be the thing that pushes them over the edge to be like, I dare you to out give God or spend God. Like, if you invest with this, like, God will bless you. Like, that stuff sickens me to death. Like, you're,

21:32you're taking people like this, this, this lady that they're profiling here. Like, she's one of the good Christians probably in from my perspective where she's like, she actually believes the stuff and so when they say this person is probably true to it. And she's taking them at their word is something that they're also doing it from a good perspective. Because why was it trying to cash in? Yeah. Why would a Christian leader lie? You know, yeah. Yeah. How some of these former customers feel too is that it all has escalated very quickly. For example, 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. 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, should 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 healer. But they push you on do it. They tell you to do that. Go,

22:34go. Taking out money against your own house. It's so hard because it's like, especially retirement, they probably have a house that's pretty close to pay off. Hopefully and like, it is it is absolutely predatory and wrong. And then it's also on the other side of the coin. It's like, why? But you did it. You're like, you're talking about it now. And you're like, the way that she's talking about it is like, can you believe that they would actually push us to do this? But I also get why? Of course, we did do it. But I think about though, when you're seeing down with somebody and they're like high pressure sailing you with all of the back. And it's the emotional decision. You're at a conference. I hyped up. You need to find the preaching. You've been sitting in like a schedule of programming for the last three days. The air conditioning set to a certain temperature. Like they engineer the hell. I'll show you. I'll show you this sermon clip in a second. But please. Zach of credit cards that allows you to pay life search to teach you to make. Yeah, like even that. Like I've used credit cards, stacking multiple times in my career. And it's been very helpful because I like having 0% interest to start a new business. But I'm not convincing a risk to give me money and pull out and put it

23:38on 0% credit cards in order to pay me. Hey guys, Travis here. Just letting you know that sometimes on the show, I go a little bit longer. I try to keep these things, these solo shows pretty short, like 10 to 15 minutes. But sometimes when I get going, I just can't stop. If you know what I mean. So this, if you're listening to this message, that means that this episode is being put into two parts. And the first part is now coming to a close. So be sure to tune into the next solo show to hear part two of this episode. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you next time.