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He Got Fired By His DAD… So He Built a $60M/yr Empire ft. Craig Fuller

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Sam ParrhostCraig Fullerguest

Jun 13, 202456mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

55 min read · 11,413 words

0:00 – 2:45
Intro
1. SPSam Parr
  All right, my friends, today's episode, it's special for me, and it's gonna be special for anyone out there who's a creator or who owns a media company. Let me explain. So I've got this friend named Craig Fuller. Craig Fuller runs this company called FreightWaves. It's a data business, but they have a media arm, and it's a huge company. They've raised tens of millions in, uh, funding, and they make tens of millions in recurring revenue. Huge business. However, on the side, he ended up buying a bunch of magazines, including flying magazines, a bunch of boating magazines. Very weird of him to do that, and I wanted to do a podcast about that. Turns out he's bought all of these niche magazines for a very small amount of money, and he's only about three years into business, and the company's doing around 60 million in revenue and 12 million in profit. And it's his prediction that by 2030 it's gonna do a billion in revenue, which is, A, insane that that's someone's side project that they're doing that, and B, I wanted to learn all about it. I wanted to learn about the model that he's doing where he's basically buying these magazines and then he's selling the audience different products, products and services, including, like, building an airplane hangar and sell- and selling space in that hangar for his flying magazine, things like that. So if you have an audience, if you wanna build an audience, if you want to build a big business on top of that audience, this podcast is for you. All right, check it out. [upbeat music] Well, we're live. This is just how we, we just get right into it.
2. CFCraig Fuller
  Love it.
3. SPSam Parr
  It's not often that someone's side hobby becomes almost cooler than their main thing-
4. CFCraig Fuller
  [laughs]
5. SPSam Parr
  ... particularly given that your main thing is this, like, massive hit. So you're Craig Fuller. You've got this thing called FreightWaves, which is a data business, but you guys also have a popular media arm, and you dis- you display most of your financials online as if you're a publicly traded company almost. And I don't know what the revenue is, but it's somewhere in the high tens of millions, uh, in recurring revenue. And then you also have, uh, you've raised, what, $90 million for that?
6. CFCraig Fuller
  65 in venture capital, but we've raised some debt on top of it, so total about a little bit under 80 million or a little bit over 80 million.
7. SPSam Parr
  And then your, your latest kind of side project that is not really the size of most people's side projects is Firecrown Media, where you've bought dozens of magazines and you've parlayed that into, like, you've turned Flying Magazine into, like, a country club, but for flying enthusiasts. And so you've, like, bought, you know, thousands of acres of land. You've built a, a- an airport, and now you've, you're buying even more pieces of property, more stuff, and I think what... Firecrown does, what, 50 million this year in revenue?
8. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, 60 million run rate, so, um, is where we're, we'll finish this year, so.
9. SPSam Parr
  Golly, man.
2:45 – 3:36
Economics of long-haul trucking
1. SPSam Parr
  And what I didn't realize... I was doing research. I didn't realize that trucking kind of runs through your family, right?
2. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, my father started what's now... or he sold the business last year, but it became the fifth-largest trucking company in the US. And my uncle started the eighth largest, what's now the eighth-largest trucking company in the US.
3. SPSam Parr
  Were your uncle and father competitors?
4. CFCraig Fuller
  Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're pretty, pretty die-hard competitors.
5. SPSam Parr
  But are they tight? Are they, are they good family members?
6. CFCraig Fuller
  Nowadays they're much better. You know, they're, they do get along now. But there was a period of time where they just absolutely hated each other.
7. SPSam Parr
  My family is in the pro- my father's a produce broker, so I grew up with truckers. And it's an interesting industry because the people who own the businesses can be pretty wealthy, but they're still rednecks. Like-
8. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah. [laughs]
9. SPSam Parr
  ... they're still, like, blue co- they're, like, blue collar guys, but they're not necessarily always traditionally educated, and they're still rough even if they're quite wealthy.
3:36 – 5:30
Getting fired from the family business
1. SPSam Parr
  Was your dad like a, like a blue collar guy even though that he ran this huge company?
2. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, I mean, he's a blue collar guy. I mean, he, y- you know, he looks presentable in a suit, and he's talking to Wall Street investors. I mean, he certainly is... You know, he's presentable. He's not going to embarrass himself in front of folks, but he, he is, you know, he's, he's a finance guy. I mean, ultimately in trucking you're operating a business that operates with single digit margins, you know, 1 to 3% margins, and so, uh, you've gotta know how to operate that business. It's an owner/operator type business. And so he certainly is an operator.
3. SPSam Parr
  And he eventually, I think, recently sold that business for like $800 billion, right?
4. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, he merged it into Knight-Swift, uh, which is the largest. It was the second-largest trucking merger in history. Uh, the company did about $2.5 billion when it sold for 800 million.
5. SPSam Parr
  And you were working for him, and I read that you worked for him starting at a young age. You kicked ass, but for some reason you butted heads with the executive team. You got fired, I think, in your late 20s or early 30s, and you started, shockingly, which I can't believe you did this, day trading. And you were like, "I gotta build something." And so at 36, I think, or 34, you were like, "I wanna do almost like day trading, but for freight stuff." Is that right?
6. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, I mean, I got fired twice. So I got fired from my father's trucking company, US Express, in 2005. It was actually my older brother who became the CEO, uh, of US Express that had, [laughs] had me fired in 2005. And then my, they had-
7. SPSam Parr
  Dude, your family's a bunch of assholes, man.
8. CFCraig Fuller
  Pretty much.
9. SPSam Parr
  Ugh.
10. CFCraig Fuller
  But, um, we... I love them, but they're-
11. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
12. CFCraig Fuller
  This is j- this is the family tradition. You fire and you go out and start your own business. And then, uh, they had a payments company, a fuel card company that they had incubated, uh, that I took over and, uh, scaled up, and then we sold part of it to US Bank. And we were doing both fleet card processing and debit card processing, payment processing for banks.
5:30 – 6:40
Fuel cards for truck drivers
1. SPSam Parr
  What, what's a, what's a fuel card? I, I know that truckers have 'em, but I don't entirely know what they do or how they make money.
2. CFCraig Fuller
  When truckers wanna buy fuel, you figure 200 gallons if they're truly topping off their tank. Uh, is g- they're gonna fill up with, you know, a thousand to, you know, $1,200 to $1,400.
3. SPSam Parr
  Wow, okay. And what, they use some card, and do they get perks or something? What's the business?
4. CFCraig Fuller
  No, they... It's for fraud management because what will happen-
5. SPSam Parr
  Oh
6. CFCraig Fuller
  ... is if you don't man- I mean, think about it. You've got... You know, US Express had 9,000 truck drivers. Um, and you're giving them all an expense account that effectively they They're buying fuel, but they're also doing over-the-road maintenance. So if they need tires or they need, a truck breaks down, you know, those things can be 10, $20,000 on a breakdown situation or could be, you know, thousands of dollars in tires, um, or fuel. And so, you know, a truck driver is responsible for probably 6 to $8,000 of expenses per month when you look at total, what the total cost of an expense is. And so you have a lot of fraud that ends up happening. And so fleet cards are there to manage the fraud, both on the fuel spend, but also on the, um, on the, you know, all the maintenance and stuff.
7. SPSam Parr
  Got it. I never knew what those did. All right, cool. Um,
6:40 – 9:08
How FreightWaves hit $20M ARR in 2 years
1. SPSam Parr
  and so you're, you're growing this thing, whatever, it's working out fine, and then you get into FreightWaves, uh, FreightAlley. It, that, that works out good. Uh, how long did it take to, to kinda get into the tens of millions in revenue?
2. CFCraig Fuller
  It's about $20 million business by... In two years, three years, something like that.
3. SPSam Parr
  How did it grow so fast?
4. CFCraig Fuller
  The formula, right? Like, timing was great. This was when a lot of venture capital investment made into the space. Um, and then you also had this digitization that was taking place where companies were di- trying to digitize their supply chain. And then, you know, at the end of the day, I had relationships. It's funny 'cause my dad didn't put any money into the company. [laughs] He told me I'd be a bad CEO and refused to invest in the business, and so I had to go raise venture capital.
5. SPSam Parr
  Dude, are you and your, are you and your family close?
6. CFCraig Fuller
  Oh, yeah. My dad and I talk, uh... He's now, like, after he sold U.S. Xpress, he's now m- one of my largest investors in Firecrown. He actually is my largest investor in Firecrown. So we're actually really tight.
7. SPSam Parr
  I've been following you for a while, and when I think of, like, a, a, a good media CEO, you are one of the s- the people that I think of. Uh, what attributes did you have that made him think that you would be a bad CEO?
8. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah. [laughs] Well, I had ran a business, a payments business. They fired me in 2014, uh, because it was a tech business, and techmi- technology businesses, while they generate a lot of margin, as they scale they actually burn a lot of capital. M- you know, trucking's a cashflow business. He didn't understand that, you know, a tech business as it would scale would actually consume capital. So he got really mad and he would- didn't wanna raise any money, so he fired me because he didn't think I could run a, a business that would be profitable, because that's not how technology companies typically work in their early phases. What's funny about that business is, is that's one of the most valuable assets in the family's portfolio [laughs] now. Um, it just got a $500 million valuation last, you know, sold some stock in September of last year. So, uh, it's done well, uh, but I've, you know, I've been out of that business for many years.
9. SPSam Parr
  All right, look, the question that Shaan and I get asked constantly is what skill set did we develop early on in our careers that kinda changed our business career? And that's an easy answer. It's copywriting. We've talked about copywriting and how it's changed our lives constantly on this podcast, and we give a ton of tips, a ton of techniques, a ton of frameworks and throughout all the podcasts. Well, we decided to aggregate all of that into one simple document so you can read all of it. You can see how we've learned copywriting, but you can see the resources that we turn to on a daily basis. You can see the frameworks, the techniques we use. It's in a simple document. You can check it out in the link below. All right, now back to the show.
9:08 – 12:14
Acquiring FLYING for $3.5M
1. SPSam Parr
  All right, so this is the main thing that I wanted to talk about. So there's this, um, blog that I love. It's called, um, Flash and Flames. I'm pretty sure that, like, only maybe 10,000 people a month read Flash and Flames. So if you're listening to this and you're a fan of, like, media businesses, this is my favorite blog on the internet. It's written by this guy named Colin Morrison. He's based in England. He wrote this article that I think it was called, uh, Why Magazines Are the New Trophy Asset, or something like that. And I read that you saw that article and you're like, "I'm gonna go out and buy magazines." Is that right?
2. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, I mean, I was reading it and I was, you know, it was essentially the trophy asset, and he was using the example of Mart Beneock buying Time Magazine and some others. And it was really interesting because I was like, "You know, I could never buy Time Magazine." You know? The two media businesses that I would own that would be trophy assets far beyond it would be like, Bloomberg would be number one and, you know, owning, owning something of CNBC scale would also be another. Obviously, those are way outside my league, so they're not happening. And I was thinking to myself, I had just taken up aviation, taken up flying, and I was reading FLYING Magazine, and I was pretty uninspired. And so I was like, "It would be cool to own, like, a, an aviation magazine, to own FLYING Magazine, 'cause that would be my trophy. I'm a pilot, and that's sort of what I would, I would like to do." And so it inspired me to reach out to the owners of FLYING Magazine and asked if they would sell the magazine, and they said, "It's not for sale, but we're happy to talk to you." And, uh, I made an offer, and they ended up selling it to me. And that sort of... It was started off the same as, started off as a side hustle. I didn't actually intend. I thought print magazines were dead and dinosaurs read print magazines, and I became very skeptical of the whole print magazine business model. But when I bought it, I fell in love with the, not just the content and what you could do with it, but also the value what print brings to an audience. And so what I found is that really these print magazines are completely undervalued, uh, that nobody will touch them because they view, have the same philosophy that I had about them dying. Yet they own these fantastically great communities and audiences that have been around for decades. And, and particularly as you get into sort of the older populations that have grew up with magazines, is they still have these really important, um, sort of connections to the brands. And we found that that's a really interesting opportunity.
3. SPSam Parr
  Were you liquid when you decided to buy it? Or were you like, "I, if they, if the price that they want is in the millions, I'm gonna have to go get money from someone else"?
4. CFCraig Fuller
  No, I had enough money to pull that off, so.
5. SPSam Parr
  With your money, do you keep a large percent in, like, the S&P 500, and this was just a fraction of it? Or was this, like, a meaningful amount?
6. CFCraig Fuller
  It was a s- I mean, it was a meaningful amount relative to my liquidity. I mean, in terms of my total net worth-
7. SPSam Parr
  Right. Yeah
8. CFCraig Fuller
  ... not significant. But I have a lot of paper worth as a venture-backed founder tends to be. Um, but you don't have a lot of liquidity. So relative to liquidity, yeah, it was a big, it was a big
12:14 – 16:02
Opportunity: Depressed media properties
1. CFCraig Fuller
  number.
2. SPSam Parr
  Then what was the thinking? Is, "I'm gonna have to buy this, and I'm gonna have to spend some hours per week to making sure that it doesn't lose money"?
3. CFCraig Fuller
  Well, it was profitable. I mean, it was generating about half a million dollars of EBITDA a year as a standalone entity, about two and a half million in revenue. Uh, so it was a small, this is a small business. Uh, and we buy businesses at three to five times EBITDA, is typically the number these things trade at. So we're not talking about a huge, like, this wasn't a huge capital outlay. Um-
4. SPSam Parr
  So it was like one, $1.5 to $2.5 million is what it cost?
5. CFCraig Fuller
  It was about, you know, total purchase price is about three and a half million when you look at cash and, and some deferred expenses and deferred payments. Uh, so it came out to about three and a half million dollars, uh, which, you know, seven times five, you know, two and a half million up front and a million deferred and, uh-
6. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, but then you gotta deal with like, dude, journalists, a lot of times, I hire journalists, they're fucking pains in the asses. And like, when I think of like all my potential side hobbies, I'm like, I'd rather be a beekeeper than like own a freaking magazine and deal with these employees, or I'd rather get to like going for walks or hikes. I don't know about this.
7. CFCraig Fuller
  Well, look, I, I mean, I had, you know, FreightWaves has 40 or, if you look at total contributors that are journal- could qualify as a journalist or contributors, we have 40 to 50. So I, I knew the, what the, you know, I knew what the rodeo was gonna look like for running, you know, having teams of journalists work for you. What was different though with magazines is these are different than sort of younger, sort of, uh, digital native journalist or, or journalists that have been sort of working in newsrooms, is magazine journalists don't do it because they make a lot of money, they do it because they love the content. And, and they're also, there's a sense of defeatism that has existed across all publishers, and I've seen this in the multitude of acquisitions I've done, is where the editorial teams feel like the, the, the owners of the magazines don't love them and aren't willing to make investments in them. And they almost look at you, and I hate to use this term, uh, as almost liberators of their business, because in some ways they, they love the content, they love the subject matter, they have the relationships. They tend to be sort of micro celebrities in their own communities for the... So these are the old school influencers, if you will, and yet they get no love from corporates. Because what's happened is the whole magazine business model has collapsed in the last 10 years because the way that magazines made money in the past, the internet has destroyed that business model. And rather than sort of digitizing their business model or sort of evolving their business model, they just started to cut cost. And so that was the way they sort of fend off the inevitable, and the problem is at some point, the value that the community gets and the audience gets is diminished and these things are just, it's a, it's sort of a death circle. And so what we do is we, we come in, we buy them, in some ways we liberate them from this sort of de- inevitable decline, and they feel really encouraged by that. You know, we, we upgrade the paper, we upgrade the quality, we make investments in the editorial team. You know, FLYING's editorial team went from sort of three folks when we bought it to 30. So you have three primary full-time employees, and then you have contributors that are submitting an article that goes in the magazine. Very different from the world you and I sort of come from, digital media, where you actually have a full-time staff that's writing content on a daily basis. They're writing, they're contributing a piece that's once a month. And so it may be an airline pilot or a flight instructor or someone who really knows the jet market or the turbine market. And so you, you want subject matter expertise, and typically writing is a second, is, is not their primary job. They do it as a sort of a side hustle, uh, to make a little bit of money. Uh, and that's why these businesses have operated. But what they've, what they've also done is they've, they've not made investments in like print quality or online assets or
16:02 – 20:31
From losing $8 per subscriber to profitability in 1 year
1. CFCraig Fuller
  any of that stuff.
2. SPSam Parr
  How much revenue did you do in the first year of owning it? Revenue and profit.
3. CFCraig Fuller
  Uh, in 2022, I think we were about $7 million in revenue, six and a half, $7 million, something like that.
4. SPSam Parr
  Oh, so you like-
5. CFCraig Fuller
  Aggressively grew it, yeah.
6. SPSam Parr
  How?
7. CFCraig Fuller
  Um, because we invested in, so a couple things we did was we invested in the magazine, we raised the price. Uh, the magazine was losing $7. So the magazine was taking in $8 per subscription, but it cost them $15-
8. SPSam Parr
  $8 a month. It cost-
9. CFCraig Fuller
  $8 a year was the net revenue. I know. You're look, you look, yeah. For folks that are listening, that your face is exactly what mine was. They were generating on average $8 in revenue per subscriber per year, and it cost them $15 to fill that subscriber. They were losing, and have since as far back as our data went, since 2006, losing $7 per subscriber. And I say-
10. SPSam Parr
  Wait, so FLYING Magazine costs $8 a year to subscribe to?
11. CFCraig Fuller
  On average, the average yield, the average across the whole subscriber base, the magazine generated $8 on average per subscriber.
12. SPSam Parr
  And when you say yield, that's not g- uh, g- uh, revenue minus the hard costs?
13. CFCraig Fuller
  No, that is the, that is the revenue, that's the top line number.
14. SPSam Parr
  Oh, that's stupid that you gotta like-
15. CFCraig Fuller
  They were losing, Sam, they were losing $7 per magazine, or per subscriber per year.
16. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, so like a FLYING Magazine subscriber is definitely gonna pay $50 a year or whatever, or-
17. CFCraig Fuller
  You would think, right?
18. SPSam Parr
  Yeah.
19. CFCraig Fuller
  That was my reaction to it, is essentially our communications to the staff were, to the sales team was basically you're gonna raise the rates, uh, of advertising sales because we wanna go to people who, who... So on the ad sales, we raised the cost of ads, but we also, to subscribers basically said, "Look, if somebody's not willing to spend $30 or $40 a year, then they're not really, uh, uh, they don't care about the content." I mean, think about this. To buy an airplane, you're gonna spend, you know, minimum 50,000. That's a, you know, old aircraft. To buy a, most of the folks are buying, you know, quarter of a million to a million dollar aircraft and, and some of our audience is 75 to $100 million airplanes. And so you have a, you have a, a natural ... audience that is going to spend a lot of money because they care about the hobby or they care about their careers or whatever it is, they're, if they're not willing to spend 30 or $40, they're also not gonna buy advertising. Because what happened is, in the old days-
20. SPSam Parr
  Well, and how many subscribers?
21. CFCraig Fuller
  So we, when we bought that, it was about 108,000 subscribers.
22. SPSam Parr
  That's pretty great.
23. CFCraig Fuller
  Um, we actually, when we raised the price, we raised it to 30 initially, it actually went down to 32,000 subscribers.
24. SPSam Parr
  No shit.
25. CFCraig Fuller
  We, we bled it out. But that's okay. Like, we wanted to do that. We wanted to get rid of, and there was a lot of what we call freeloaders. They were essentially targeted for advertising purposes. Uh, or they're the people, like, you may remember this, I, when you were younger is your, like, your school would have a fundraiser and you would bring home a form and your parents would sign. Like, buy a magazine they didn't care about. There was a lot of subscriptions like that where the people that were actually subscribing didn't care about the content. I basically said, "I don't want any of them. I want people who actually care about the content." And we were very successful in doing that. And the, and so we saw, uh, subscriptions grow substantially in terms of actual full-paid subscriptions. And subscription dollars, we were, basically doubled the subscription revenue over the course of a year, yet still had, like, a third of the subscribers. We went down to 32,000. We're now at about 45,000. We've grown it since. Um-
26. SPSam Parr
  And are you able to manage this growth off the cash flows of the business, or did you have to put more capital in?
27. CFCraig Fuller
  I put more capital, uh, than I, I wanted to put more capital in. Like, uh, I could have ran it tighter, but I didn't want to.
28. SPSam Parr
  How much did you put in?
29. CFCraig Fuller
  Uh, you know, look, I, we total invested about $40 million in the business, but that's not flying. That's, that's all the acquisitions we've done and everything we've acquired.
30. SPSam Parr
  But at this point in the story, you've not raised outside capital.
20:31 – 22:55
A media side hustle becomes a real estate main hustle
1. SPSam Parr
  Okay. So, uh, we're at the end of '22, and I think around this time you actually were like, "Holy shit, uh, I might have just, like, hit on something interesting. I should go out and buy more and do this again." Or did you first come up with the crazy idea to buy all that land?
2. CFCraig Fuller
  So I bought the land in 2021, about 1,500 acres. So originally, it, I didn't plan on being in real estate. What we actually wanted to do was, uh, go out and build a media center connected to a runway. 'Cause I've, I, you know, if people are gonna fly in airplanes, remember, at the end of the day, the content for flying is all about the airplane. Like, people care less about the pilot, they care a lot about the airplane. And this is no different than a car magazine where you're gonna look at the Lambo or the Ferrari. For the aviation audience, they wanna see the newest aircraft being produced. And so we wanted to create a video center connected to an airport. The problem was that none of the airports in the community, there's five regional, uh, c- community airports around Chattanooga, s- were willing to sort of do anything. They said, you know, basically, "You have to go from the state, the municipality to state, and the FAA have to approve it in order to get, to build a media center."
3. SPSam Parr
  When you say media center, you mean-
4. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, to take video. We wanted to have a hangar that had a v- basically a video studio and-
5. SPSam Parr
  Right
6. CFCraig Fuller
  ... photography studio that we can bring airplanes in. But you have to build that, uh, because there wasn't, there's no hangar. There's a national hangar shortage across the country. Um, and, and because what happens is nobody wants to, municipalities who own all these airports don't want investment in private hangars, uh, for small aircraft. They, they want the big airplanes. And there's just a, a problem of allocation. So we decided to go build our own headquarters, and I was looking for land, looking for about 50 acres, and I came across this piece of land. It had 1,500 acres. And, um, it was priced at 3.65 million. And, uh, I, I drove up there, and it reminded me of this resort in East Tennessee called Blackberry Farm-
7. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, I love it
8. CFCraig Fuller
  ... which my wife absolutely loves. It's sort of back to farming, agricultural. So I show up there, and I'm like, "This looks and feels a lot like Blackberry Farm." And that was sort of the original inspiration, is we wanted to create a fly-in community with a runway and home sites that are connected to the runway that had that Blackberry Farm-inspired sort of experience.
22:55 – 25:32
Craig's tolerance for being leveraged
1. SPSam Parr
  How much did you pay for that?
2. CFCraig Fuller
  3.6 million.
3. SPSam Parr
  Did you pay it, or did you raise money?
4. CFCraig Fuller
  No, I borrowed from the bank. I mean, real estate is one of those things that you can go borrow money. Um, and so remember, I'm, I have a, a relatively high net worth. I don't have [laughs] liquidity.
5. SPSam Parr
  This is why I'm asking these questions, because your net worth is significantly higher than mine because, um, y- y- your business is bigger than mine, but I'm liquid. And even me, I'm, like, scared to make some of these bets. You don't seem to have that same fear. You seem to be way more offensive, and you seem way more, I mean, look, it's not like we're inventing, like, electric cars or going to Mars, and so I don't wanna, like, grandize it, make it too grand, but, like, you're outlaying a lot of cash on some really crazy ideas. You're like, "I'm gonna build an, I'm gonna buy an old magazine, and I'm gonna spend more of my money and build an aviation community." Like, that's, like, really weird. Uh, and that's really ballsy. Why, what do you think you h- what's that gene inside of you that makes you think these wacky things are gonna work?
6. CFCraig Fuller
  Because the data, like, my experience suggests that it will. But, uh, you know, it's taking more shots on goal. Like, yeah, I got three and a half million dollars in an investment for a real estate project, but if it goes to zero, I still own three and a half million dollars of land, right? At the end of the day.
7. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, but that's a huge project to get into, 'cause did, do you know anything about real estate?
8. CFCraig Fuller
  No, but you can, you can bring in teams to go run those things, um, which we have. So, like, Sam, it's a matter of scaling businesses and, and hiring teams to run these things. Yeah, it's risk, but-
9. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, I agree with you. This is just s- this is just outside your, your expertise, and you've made it your expertise very quickly.
10. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, I mean, but, but media was outside my expertise. Uh, da- running a data business was outside my expertise. But real estate is actually, frankly, I wouldn't say it's easier. It's a, it's a, it's a different playbook that frankly can be learned. It's not as if... You know, building a SaaS business and building a data business, there's a very small number of sort of models to follow. There's a very few companies that you can sort of model your business after.
11. SPSam Parr
  I think the risk is lower for that, though. The risk is lower for software-
12. CFCraig Fuller
  I, I disagree. I think real estate, real estate is, uh, so much less riskier because you actually have finite assets at the end of the day.
13. SPSam Parr
  That's true. The difference, though, is when I s- I can start a software, I can start an internet or data company with significantly less money than it'd cost to purchase a, a meaningful piece of property.
25:32 – 28:51
Pre-selling $28M units pre-construction
1. CFCraig Fuller
  But I own the land. Remember that land at 1,500 acres at $2,400 an acre has value.
2. SPSam Parr
  It's, yeah.
3. CFCraig Fuller
  You can sell that land for something else. You can partition it out. Um, you know, if you looked at that, at what an acre would go for in that community, 50 to 60,000 if it was subdivided. It just wasn't. And so we knew the land had some underlying value, but we didn't know if there would be any demand for pilots. Uh, we advertised, it was in January 2022. We actually took out ads in our own magazine to test the market.
4. SPSam Parr
  What did you say in the ad?
5. CFCraig Fuller
  You know, it was written as if it was written to my wife, effectively. Like, my wife was the target audience, which is your Blackberry Farm audience, and we wrote a story about we're building a resort, and we didn't focus on the aviation, which is really what you would expect us to focus on. We focused on the amenities around the experience that we're gonna build. We sh- we vision shaped it, and we didn't expect to get a lot of response. We had over 300 inbound inquiries on that one ad we took out in our own magazine, and, uh, we were able to get people to sign contracts to basically, uh, reserve their spot, and we knew then we had a winner.
6. SPSam Parr
  Did you, like, make a joke about the fact that you're new to this? Or, or were you, like, more professional, but you're like, "We're gonna-"
7. CFCraig Fuller
  No, I mean, I didn't make a joke about... No, but we d- I mean, it, like, we were very transparent about the fact this was a, a new development that we brought in.
8. SPSam Parr
  Not a joke, not a joke, but being light-hearted. You're like-
9. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, like-
10. SPSam Parr
  ... "Who knows what's gonna happen?"
11. CFCraig Fuller
  I mean, ultimately, Sam, it's about we, we recruit- recruited people that actually had experience in doing, you know, the development, the master planning community. There are groups that actually take on a lot of the burden to do the work that you need to build these things. It's not as if I'm having to... 1,500 acres is a huge project. You're not gonna do that yourself.
12. SPSam Parr
  Yeah.
13. CFCraig Fuller
  You're gonna, you're gonna want teams to deal with zoning issues, environmental issues, engineering issues. And we brought in air- airport planning t- uh, uh, consultants. We brought in, um, uh, development consultants. And so it's not as if I'm doing all this work myself. I have a whole team. You ask who's running these projects, I have a team that's running them, uh, that's managing all the different pieces of it.
14. SPSam Parr
  And they, and people wrote in, and they basically said, "If you're able to build this, count me in for buying a $800,000 home on that property," something like that.
15. CFCraig Fuller
  No, that's the, that's the pro- the lots are 600,000. So the homes are probably two million to $3 million.
16. SPSam Parr
  And did they sign? D- And you, they, what did they, what did they give to you that the bank took as, uh-
17. CFCraig Fuller
  They signed a, a contract, and they let- they put a deposit. So $40,000 an acre on a $600,000, uh, purchase price, but they put $40,000 in per acre.
18. SPSam Parr
  And you raised-
19. CFCraig Fuller
  Or 10,000 per lot.
20. SPSam Parr
  And d- was it, like, you basically, quote, "pre-sold," was it, like, $15 million worth of these properties?
21. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, we actually got up to about $28 million, uh, in total bookings.
22. SPSam Parr
  That's insane.
23. CFCraig Fuller
  Um, yeah, total reservation deposits. But we thought we were gonna get through this process, uh, for environmental approval quicker, zoning approval. We actually thought we'd break ground by the end of '22. So we had some churn out. We've refunded their money, 'cause these are refundable deposits. It's not as if they're giving you money that you get to hold onto. It's no different than if you bought, you put a deposit on an airplane or put a deposit on a car. Uh, these are fully refundable, uh, but we're about $15 million in, in total reservations right now.
28:51 – 31:11
Diversity, Asymmetrical risk, and generational security
1. SPSam Parr
  So this project alone is awesome, but then it gets even crazier. And, like, I, this is, I'm just fascinated by you because I view you a little bit as a peer in that we're both, like, media nerds. But the way that we're different is that you're, you're doing great with risk. Like, you, you're, you're going, you're taking more risk, I think, uh, but it doesn't, it's all working out. And this is where it gets interesting, is you're like, "All right. This thing worked for FLYING magazines, FLYING magazine. What happens if I go out and get more of these titles and do this whole content to commerce thing?" And did you raise money for that?
2. CFCraig Fuller
  Uh, n- not initially. Uh, so I have not raised any... My father invested when he sold his trucking business last year. So he's my only outside investor other than the initial round. Everything was done by myself. And I was just using bank debt [laughs] frankly, borrowing money from banks and liquidating my portfolio, because I felt like I would rather invest in myself than invest in the S&P. I think the difference between, Sam, isn't necessarily that I'm, like, I am willing to take more risk. I'm also willing to take more shots on goal. I just think fundamentally, like, an asymmetric mindset that I have is, is I may lose, let's say the real estate project went to zero. I'm gonna lose $3.5 million. That sucks. But you know what? I had been, my dad cut me off. My dad fired me in 2014. I had basically, like, no job, nothing. Like, it was, I was for all intents and purposes on my own at rock bottom. I had to figure it out. I've done that before, and so I'm not afraid of losing it all. And I know that I can get it back, and so we've applied that role to everything that we've done, and we make acquisitions under the philosophy that it's asymmetric risk. It's like let's say that we buy a business or buy a magazine, that's, we spend half a million dollars or a million dollars, and let's say it goes to zero. Let's say that we're completely wrong about a thesis, and the thing is just a dog. Well, then we write off that half a million or million dol- uh, dollar investment. But if we're right, and we get a three or five or 10X multiple on that business, that creates an enormous amount of value for us. And so that's how we've approached our acquisitions. Um, and I'm willing to take bank debt because bank debt is frankly pretty
31:11 – 34:21
Teams to diversify your time
1. CFCraig Fuller
  cheap.
2. SPSam Parr
  By the way, I think about money differently than you, and I think it's cool to hear your perspective, 'cause I think I should do it more. But the way that I think about it with privately, as a entrepreneur of private companies, I think if most of my money, if most of my net worth is illiquid, any liquidity that I get, whether it's annual cash flows or it's from selling, I, I sold o- one of my companies, I take all that money and I stock it away in, like, a safe thing where it's like, uh, if all else goes to shit from whatever I have, that is enough forever. And so that's how I view it. So, like, whatever, how much money I have, I, I stick it away and I'm like, "That doesn't exist, basically. And, uh, I'm gonna go and use a very s- much smaller sum to go start more companies, and I'll try to live off of my income from those companies. And if they sell, great. If they don't, hey, I still have this other thing that I have." What you're doing is different than me, and I like what you're doing because I think it's bolder and I think it's probably a bit more fun if it works, which is you're like, "Even though I've got this private, this other private company that is doing quite well, so it's not gonna go out to nothing, but I have some liquidity. I'm gonna pile that liquidity into more interesting but potentially risky things."
3. CFCraig Fuller
  Well, I, like, FreightWaves at some point will sell. Like, it will sell-
4. SPSam Parr
  Sure
5. CFCraig Fuller
  ... and it will do be an exit. That to me is the nest egg, like, for, for my long term. Like, I know it's going to sell. Who knows what it sells for? But there is va- fundamental, tangible-
6. SPSam Parr
  Yeah
7. CFCraig Fuller
  ... value in the business. So for me-
8. SPSam Parr
  And it's, and, and, and it's big enough that it's slightly de-ri- or very de-risked.
9. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's totally de-risked and, and there's a lot of value in that business, and I, I have a salary. It's not as if I, I'm not m- like, the board takes care of me, and I... So for me, I have that asset. Everything else is, that will set my family up for gener- you know, for at least a generation. Like, my kids would be able to go to college, be able to buy a house, and so forth. So I'm not worried about, like, my ability to survive if everything else falls down, but I do think diversifying my risk through all these other projects actually enhances my long-term returns, uh, particularly if I'm using my balance sheet to borrow money from the bank at frankly relatively low cost.
10. SPSam Parr
  But what about diversifying your time? That's probably, that w- w-
11. CFCraig Fuller
  Well, that's what teams do for you, right? Like, you hire people to run it. Like, you know, Preston Holland, who I d- I think you know, um, we brought Preston in to r- initially run FLYING. He's now running a finance business that we've got, uh, that is doing aircraft financing. Uh, we brought in a team to run, we have Reece that's running our real estate project. So again, and I fired myself from almost every functional role I had at FreightWaves, is I allowed-
12. SPSam Parr
  Oh, God, are you, are you chairman or CEO of FreightWaves?
13. CFCraig Fuller
  No, I'm CEO, but I, the day-to-day, day-to-day functions inside that business I have, uh, Spencer Piland, who's my C- CFO and COO, is running most of the day-to-day. Most of the day-to-day decisions are going through him. I'm working through strategy and thinking about the long-term prognosis of the business. So I can run and do deals and look at additional ways to lever this business up without getting caught up in the individual sort of minutia of running a business.
34:21 – 37:20
Building a portfolio of hobby magazines
1. SPSam Parr
  So how many, uh, titles has Firecrown acquired at this point?
2. CFCraig Fuller
  We're about 54, I think is the number.
3. SPSam Parr
  Did you buy them in batches, like you bought like-
4. CFCraig Fuller
  We do. You typically, I mean, publishers in the magazine business, it's hard to get scale with one title just because there's a finite audience that will care about that content. And so typically a publisher, and here's the thing about magazines, is that only 25% of the content, uh, uh, 25% of the operations of that business actually is value added to a customer. You have audience development, you have magazine, uh, production, you have layout. Like, a customer doesn't experience that. They, only about 25% of the cost structure is the editorial product or the photography. So you, you need a lot of infrastructure to run a successful magazine or frankly media business operation. I think you know the media side. Magazines actually have-
5. SPSam Parr
  Dude, it was insane. Basically the hustle, w- we could have, I mean, uh, we were at about two million subscribers when I sold. Now I don't know what it's at, let's say three or three and a half. Basically three people on editorial, if we were selling ads, so when I ran the company, three people on editorial and 37 people selling ads and managing ads and making it grow.
6. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, and those three people bring all the value.
7. SPSam Parr
  It's crazy, right? It, it-
8. CFCraig Fuller
  It's, I mean, it's just how-
9. SPSam Parr
  It's the thing
10. CFCraig Fuller
  ... these media businesses work, is you have a couple people that are up front and the rest of it is infrastructure. And so what you typically see when we buy a magazine is we're having, we're buying a portfolio. We're buying not just one title, but three or four titles that come along with it. And so we've done a, you know, maybe two, may- maybe 20 different acquisitions that have made up that portfolio, but some of them have been really big. We bought Bonnier, which is, like, the, the, the largest publisher in Sweden, the sort of the Rupert Murdoch family of Sweden, and they owned, uh, a bunch of boating titles which we bought, uh, last, I mean, last fall. And really we own Boating, Yachting, Selling World, uh, uh, Fish, uh, Saltwater Sportsman, and, uh, so really this large marine title. And aviation, we bought a, a number of aviation titles, uh, through various portfolios. And then we just recently bought, uh, Model Trains, a bunch of railroad titles, and astronomy titles. So- Bringing that all together, that puts us the whole portfolio
11. SPSam Parr
  Just whatever 12-year-old Craig is into, boats, planes, RC trains. [laughs]
12. CFCraig Fuller
  So it's almost like my five-year-old's, like, dream. So I mean, think about this. It's boats, it's airplanes, it's trains, and it's space. It's pretty cool for, you know, like a five-year-old boy, it's pretty magical. You know, but what we're buying are these audiences that love the content. They're, they're enthusiasts, and effectively by owning the, the magazine, which we finance through the, the P&L of the magazine, it sells subscriptions and advertisings. We make money in media, but we're ultimately buying the audience itself to s- to offer some other product or service to them.
37:20 – 47:03
Content to commerce playbook
1. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, so let's walk through this playbook. So the playbook is to acquire customers profitably, and you do that by having a media arm that its own business, or having a media company that's, is its own business and makes a profit via subscriptions and advertising. Step two is to make sure the audience, I imagine, you'll have to correct me, it's you're, you're doing something in your head of like, "Will they spend a lot of money on something?" Is that right?
2. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, essentially. But if they're, if they're enthusiast, if a, if a category's big and they're enthusiastic about the category, then the answer is pretty much yes. I mean, if they're a ... The thing to remember about magazines, and particularly magazines that are decade-old magazines, is these things have survived potentially the great ... We know magazines that are over 100 years old. They've survived multiple wars. They've s- have survived multiple pandemics. They've survived, uh, the Great Depression. Like, the audience truly cares about the content enough to subscribe, and if they've, if these magazines have survived the internet age and multiple phases of it, they're going to be around for many, many years. And so essentially we're buying it because they, they care deeply about the content, and then ultimately they can buy another product or service.
3. SPSam Parr
  And then is step three, like, raise prices and sell ads better? Or, like, do you think about that?
4. CFCraig Fuller
  Well, I don't think we look at it in the same step, right? So, like, we do, we treat these, we have a m- we have a media business which runs the media operation, and then as we go find commerce, so let's say aircraft finance, we find essentially an executive, a CEO, if you will, that can run that business through its own P&L. That's separate than the media business.
5. SPSam Parr
  But in order to finance that, you, like, these people wouldn't be selling you these businesses if they were kicking ass.
6. CFCraig Fuller
  No.
7. SPSam Parr
  But you're been able, you've been able to make them kick ass a lot better, and so you must be doing something just on the media side that they didn't do. What are those things?
8. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, I mean, effectively you're fixing a lot of their cost structure, and looking at it in terms of the spend opportunity of that audience and create data that can dr- you know, really, uh, look at data from the perspective of intent for someone that wants to buy a product. So if you're, if you're reading FLYING Magazine, you're either a pilot, an aspiring pilot, or an aircraft owner, or somebody who wants to own an airplane. Those, that's the four pri- I mean, there's people who read FLYING 'cause they like airplanes, but it's a small piece of the audience. And so we know each of those categories are gonna spend some money in each of their outcome. So a student pilot's gonna take flying lessons, it's gonna cost him $10,000. If he's gonna be a career pilot, he's gonna make $15 million over the course of his career. Lot of opportunity to, to help him, uh, along his journey. Uh, if they're an aircraft buyer or prospective buyer, they're gonna buy an airplane. They're also gonna buy insurance and finance out of that. They're also gonna have a lot of expenses to own that aircraft throughout their life. And so these are the journeys that we, we have, and that's ultimately what we're doing, is we're optimizing the, the magazine, the advertisers, based on intent, not based on the fact that this is a number. And what we've explained to the owners, the, the advertisers, is wouldn't you rather reach the 100 people that are gonna buy them, buy your airplane, versus the 100,000 people that, you know, 99% of those people are never gonna buy any of your products? That's what we need to do, is actually get into that intent data, and we do that through digital. Like, print is just an, one aspect of what we do, but it's driving intent data to actually be able to demonstrate to them there's a value to that customer.
9. SPSam Parr
  That was a very good pitch. And then, uh, you, when you hire these guys to create ... So, uh, I guess airplane financing means you help people get loans to-
10. CFCraig Fuller
  Yep. That's right
11. SPSam Parr
  ... to buy a plane, and then I think you have, like, a classified section, so people selling, uh, planes, and then now you have the real estate one. I don't know what you've done with the other titles, how you've done the same content to commerce type of play, but I wanna hear more about what those are. But when you're hiring people to build these businesses on top of an audience, so do you hi- how much do you decide to invest in them until, in, to invest in their, their new, the new business until they're able to make a profit?
12. CFCraig Fuller
  You know, we, we have a, we're pretty patient. I mean, it depends on the business itself. Uh, if it's growing and it's hitting its KPIs, then we'll continue to support it. You know, every business is different. Obviously, the real estate business has, you know, we haven't broken ground yet, so that, that is gonna take many years to sort of generate a, a profit. It has its own sort of journey. The finance business is a finance brokerage business, and it should generate profitability much quicker than some of the other projects. You know, we buy e-commerce businesses. We, we've now owned six e-commerce businesses.
13. SPSam Parr
  What are you selling?
14. CFCraig Fuller
  We own the largest NASA, or the largest space merch store on the internet, called The Space Store. Uh, so it's like collectibles. The aviation nerds and the space nerds are, the Venn diagram for both of them is pretty tight. So if you want a, if you want, like, a model of a rocket or a patch from one of the missions, we, we can sell that, whether it's SpaceX or NASA.
15. SPSam Parr
  And so what are some of the, like, what, what are you gonna do with boating? Are you gonna build a harbor?
16. CFCraig Fuller
  No, I don't think we'll do real estate, 'cause I think real estate's a re- like, the, the arbitrage in aviation is that you're taking a piece of land- That has beauty. It's a beautiful piece of land, but it's not next to a body of water to build a lakefront home. And so essentially what you're doing is you're taking this land and you're arbitraging because the, the runway itself is the arbitrage.
17. SPSam Parr
  Right, right, right.
18. CFCraig Fuller
  The fact that pilots wanna be there. And so with boating, it's not as if I can arbitrage-
19. SPSam Parr
  Right
20. CFCraig Fuller
  ... a lakefront property or an oceanfront property.
21. SPSam Parr
  'Cause that's already awesome.
22. CFCraig Fuller
  Exactly. And there's, the, the market's already priced that in accordingly. So for us, we're looking at financing, we're looking at e-commerce, we're looking at other categories that, uh, we think we can be successful. So probably won't be real estate, um, but it will be s- in other categories that we'll, we'll look at commerce.
23. SPSam Parr
  You, I think you said you're $40 million that you've raised for this whole thing?
24. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, I'd raised, I mean, in between... Uh, I mean, my father funded, has invested the money into it. We haven't used outside capital, if you will.
25. SPSam Parr
  And-
26. CFCraig Fuller
  Sort of family office
27. SPSam Parr
  ... of that 40, how much have you spent on acquisitions?
28. CFCraig Fuller
  No, that's been the predominance of the investment, has been through M&A.
29. SPSam Parr
  But you're gonna do $60 million in revenue this year. I think on the tweet you said 10% or 15% profit?
30. CFCraig Fuller
  It's about to... Our profit in, uh, March was 18%, and we, we think we can sustain 20, and we think ultimately it sort of, like, levels out around 30%, uh, net margins.
47:03 – 51:32
The story of William Randolph Hearst
1. SPSam Parr
  You're basically building a, a, a Hearst bus- style company. So Hearst, um, have you read The Chief, the biography of, uh, William Randolph Hearst?
2. CFCraig Fuller
  I have not.
3. SPSam Parr
  You should, man. It's awesome. So William Randolph Hearst, he, uh, he had a successful father. His successful father was a miner, I think-
4. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah
5. SPSam Parr
  ... or, like, uh, gold, gold. And in a gambling bet, he won, I think, the San Francisco Chronicle, and he goes to his son and he goes, "Well, William, uh, you've got the Chronicle. Hopefully you can make it so- into something. You've got a year to, to make it not lose money." And so he, uh, he does that, and he does it by creating what's called yellow journalism, which is like-
6. CFCraig Fuller
  Mm-hmm
7. SPSam Parr
  ... clickbait of the, uh, late 1800s, early 1900s. And he kicks ass, and he crushes it, and he starts buying another thing, another thing, another thing. He starts buying all these titles, and he's killing it. He's crushing it. This is like, uh, a cable business before cable, where it's recurring revenue subscriptions, massive margins. And then they, uh, they get so big, so they do a bunch of things. One, they invest in this new sports network called ESPN. So now Hearst owns something like 30% or 40% or 50%, I forget the number, of ESPN. That's, they've made a billion off of that. Then they, uh, buy, uh, Fit- Finch Ratings, I think, which is a data business-
8. CFCraig Fuller
  Yep
9. SPSam Parr
  ... which is exactly what you're in. Uh, and they start buying all this stuff. At this point, Hearst is owned by the family. It's one of the largest family-owned businesses in America. They own this massive building in, right in the heart of New York City. My in-laws live literally fi- like, I'm on my, uh, wife's, like- ... bedroom that she, like, grew up in, and I could, like, reach out the window and touch, like, the Hearst building. And I remember that was funny because I almost sold my company to them, and I was, like, sleeping in that room when I was visiting New York City. And, uh, anyway, they own this massive building that I don't think they got a loan on. I think they own this, like, multi-billion dollar building. They own a ranch in, like, Wyoming or something like that. They own everything, and it's owned by this family, and it's kinda sick, and it's been around for 100 years. That's sorta what you're, you're doing.
10. CFCraig Fuller
  You know, Hearst is amazing 'cause it's 10, 10 billion or 12 billion of revenue, no debt. Like, that's what's pretty astounding about Hearst.
11. SPSam Parr
  Not even on the real estate.
12. CFCraig Fuller
  They, they, they're, they're n- no debt. They actually have a very large venture capital portfolio.
13. SPSam Parr
  Yeah.
14. CFCraig Fuller
  They're, they're an investor in FreightWaves, by the way, so that's one of the reasons-
15. SPSam Parr
  Oh, so you know all about them. I m- I met... I forget who I met with there, but I learned a lot about them. But they're, like, older guys. They're, like, they wear suits. They're like the Mad Men era, where they, like-
16. CFCraig Fuller
  Oh, yeah
17. SPSam Parr
  ... you know. So it would've been a bad fit. But that's what you're building, and it's awesome.
18. CFCraig Fuller
  Look, I think media businesses are underappreciated. I, like... I think what's happened is the pr- you know, Hearst, the thing with Hearst is they own a bunch of newspapers as well. But I think what we're seeing now is this y- if you own a strong sort of thesis around a media asset and you can build products that take that audience, that's ultimately the playbook, is like, I- we have these audiences. They love the content. They're subscribing and paying for a, a product, which is a print magazine or a digital, uh, experience. They're already the audience. We can offer them products and services that they naturally would buy anyways.
19. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, that sounds like, when you say that, I'm like, yeah, that's so obvious. But, like, everyone, not everyone, a lot of people have tried this. Few have succeeded. Uh, Hodinkee, I think, is succeeding.
20. CFCraig Fuller
  Mm-hmm.
21. SPSam Parr
  There might be a couple others. But, like, when BuzzFeed says they're gonna do it, it's shit. It never works out. I think it doesn't work out because they have, like, uh, a committee deciding on these things, whereas you can be a bit more of a, a, kind of a monarch where you're like, "This is what we're gonna do. Go crazy."
22. CFCraig Fuller
  Well, I, I think BuzzFeed, along with a lot of other publishers, have sold out to programmatic and, and have relied upon the, the, the platforms, the Facebooks and the-
23. SPSam Parr
  And no one really, like, loves them too much. Uh, Amazon-
24. CFCraig Fuller
  I mean, like, what is BuzzFeed anyways? It's like a-
25. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, there's, like, no-
26. CFCraig Fuller
  ... a listicle, like... And I think the difference is that we're f- we're buying magazines and media properties that had been around for decades, where the audience, like, the people talk about their father or their grandfather, they, you know, reading Trains Magazine or Model Railroader or, or FLYING. Like, they, they, they ha- it has a, a lot of affinity to it, and then effectively we just have to find services. So we make money in media, but then we have to find services that we can offer on top of that.
27. SPSam Parr
  Uh,
51:32 – 53:15
What's the chase?
1. SPSam Parr
  how many hours a week you working?
2. CFCraig Fuller
  You know, I don't, [laughs] I don't count my hours. I-
3. SPSam Parr
  You think, you, but, like, maybe, like, a normal 9:00 to 5:00, 40-hour week?
4. CFCraig Fuller
  No. I mean, I, I, I do, when I wake up at 6:00 in the morning, 'cause my kids wake me up, till midnight, I'm pretty much either with my kids or, or working on the businesses.
5. SPSam Parr
  So you're grind-
6. CFCraig Fuller
  But that's not work to me, man. Like, like, I, to me, this isn't work. These are, this is a game in some ways. I mean, I, I-
7. SPSam Parr
  But you're still in, you're in grind mode. It's not like this is all, like, awesome, where you're like-
8. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, I'm not sitting on a beach. Like, I, I do it to myself, too. Like, I end up getting overwhelmed, and then I'm like, "I only have myself to blame." [laughs]
9. SPSam Parr
  What's your goal? To, you wanna be a billionaire? You wanna just do cool shit? You wanna create something that lasts for 100 years? What's, what, what, what are the-
10. CFCraig Fuller
  No, I mean, one of the reasons I like media businesses is because you're, you're always learning something new, and you get intellectually stimulated by a new challenge. It's a new audience. It's an, it's a new product. I don't know. To me it's-
11. SPSam Parr
  You don't want all the power, fame, sex, and drugs that comes with owning spacemagazine.com.
12. CFCraig Fuller
  [laughs] Trains Magazine is gonna give me an enormous amount of power? Yeah. Or Model Railroader.
13. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
14. CFCraig Fuller
  No, it's not that at all. Um, and it's not even the wealth. It's more the chase. It's the, it's the putting up the score in some ways of solving problems and learning about a, a different... I mean, I, we have a business that I paid $10,000 for. It's called AeroSwag. It's an e-commerce business. It, it will do $100,000 this year. That is, I spend more time on that business proportionally than any other one, just because I think it's cool. It's a print-on-demand T-shirt shop for, for pilots. I frankly should not be spending that much, as much time as I do, but I enjoy the... To me, it's a hobby. It's a tinkering kinda thing.
53:15 – 56:01
"The best thing to give a founder is an enemy"
1. SPSam Parr
  I bet it feels awesome to make your dad regret firing you.
2. CFCraig Fuller
  It was fun proving that I could make it work, but I had a lot of that. I mean, I had a lot of doubters when we first started the business.
3. SPSam Parr
  Yeah. Look, behind most successful people is a girlfriend or boyfriend that broke up with them or a father-
4. CFCraig Fuller
  A father that said no. Yeah
5. SPSam Parr
  ... that, that made, like, one rude comment, or, like, in my case it was a, a media executive who, like, he, like, half-hazardly, like, in passing was like, "Man, these newsletters will never make more than a million dollars a year." And, like, I was like, "You motherfucker."
6. CFCraig Fuller
  And you thought about that every day, right?
7. SPSam Parr
  Every day.
8. CFCraig Fuller
  You don't forget.
9. SPSam Parr
  And I see this guy on, sitting at floor seats at the Knicks, and I'm like-
10. CFCraig Fuller
  [laughs]
11. SPSam Parr
  ... "You son of a bitch. I'm gonna make-"
12. CFCraig Fuller
  So I would say the best thing to give a founder is an enemy. So at FreightWaves, I had a guy who was a, he was a CEO of our largest competitor, and he really pissed me off 'cause he told me I couldn't, couldn't compete against him. He's like, "I, I'd like to see you try," one of our products. And I, I woke up every day thinking about him. And he got fired, and I tell you, the motivation, it wasn't as fun anymore because I needed him to be the guy. All of a sudden, the company became nice to me, and it was like, "No, I want you assholes." Like, please go back to being assholes because it, like, I wake up more, slightly more motivated every day.
13. SPSam Parr
  I was like that with the founders of Morning Brew. I was like, "I wanna kill you."
14. CFCraig Fuller
  [laughs] Yeah.
15. SPSam Parr
  I'm like, "If I see you in public, I, I wanna, like, get in a fight." Now they're like my, they're family to me. They're like my best friends. Um-
16. CFCraig Fuller
  Well, you, you are doing a, you're, uh, hosting a po- po- one of the podcasts on their platform, so.
17. SPSam Parr
  You know, people say, uh, uh, you know, d- "Don't be hateful towards this person," and in my head I'm like, "Dude, rage is, like, the greatest fuel ever."
18. CFCraig Fuller
  It completely-
19. SPSam Parr
  I, I don't, you know, someone once told me, "If you got hate in your heart, let it out." I'm like, "No, I'm burying that deep."
20. CFCraig Fuller
  [laughs]
21. SPSam Parr
  "That ain't going nowhere. That's fuel. I need that." [laughs]
22. CFCraig Fuller
  But Sam, you know, it's also, it's good for the team because if-
23. SPSam Parr
  Yeah
24. CFCraig Fuller
  ... they also have the hatred of the enemy, then they will, they'll go much further and, and fight harder than if, than if you don't.
25. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, I love that. And it's sorta like a sport, where you know, like, uh, once you, once the whistle blows, you're, like, anything goes. But, uh, once the game's over, like, it's like, all right, nothing but love, nothing but respect. But while we're in between those, the, the lines, like, we're getting after it.
26. CFCraig Fuller
  Yeah, exactly.
27. SPSam Parr
  Uh, and so I think it's good. Uh, dude, thanks for doing this.
28. CFCraig Fuller
  Yep. Enjoyed it.
29. SPSam Parr
  Craig Fuller, that's the pod. [upbeat music]