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

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
All right, my friends, today's episode, it's special for me, and it's going to 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 Freight Waves. It's a data business, but they have a media arm, and it's a huge company. They've raised tens of millions in 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 is doing around $60 million in revenue and $12 million in profit, and it's his prediction that by 2030, it's going to 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 and services, including like building an airplane hanger and selling space in that hanger for a flying magazine, things like that. So, if you have an audience, if you want to build an audience, if you want to build a big business on top of that audience, this podcast is for.
You.
Well, we're live. This is just how we just get right into it.

**Craig Fuller** (1:32)
Love it.

**Sam Parr** (1:33)
It's not often that someone's side hobby becomes almost cooler than their main thing, particularly given that your main thing is this like massive hit. So you're Craig Fuller, you've got this thing called Freight Waves, which is a data business, but you guys also have a popular media arm.
And you just 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 in recurring revenue. And then you also have, you've raised what, $90 million for that?

**Craig Fuller** (2:03)
65 in venture capital, but we raised some debt on top of it. So total about a little bit under $80 million or a little bit over $80 million.

**Sam Parr** (2:10)
And then 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 an airport, and now you're buying even more pieces of property, more stuff.
And I think what Firecrown does, what, $50 million this year in revenue?

**Craig Fuller** (2:40)
$60 million, right. So that's where we'll finish this year.

**Sam Parr** (2:43)
So, golly, man.
And what I didn't realize, I was doing research. I didn't realize that trucking kind of runs through your family, right?

**Craig Fuller** (2:51)
Yeah, my father started what's now more, 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.

**Sam Parr** (3:02)
Were your uncle and father competitors?

**Craig Fuller** (3:04)
Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're pretty, pretty diehard competitors.

**Sam Parr** (3:07)
But are they tight? Are they, are they good family members?

**Craig Fuller** (3:10)
Nowadays they're much better. You know, they do get along now, but there was a period of time where they just absolutely hated each other.

**Sam Parr** (3:16)
My family is in the, 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 they're still like blue, 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.
Was your dad like a blue collar guy, even though that he ran this huge company?

**Craig Fuller** (3:42)
Yeah. I mean, he's a blue collar guy. I mean, he, 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 is, you know, he's a finance guy. I mean, ultimately in trucking, you're operating a business that operates with single digit margins, you know, one to 3% margins. And so you've got to know how to operate that business. It's an owner operator type business. And so he certainly is an operator.