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 Fright Waves.
It's a data business, but they have a media arm, and it's a huge company.
They've raised 10 to millions in funding, and they make 10 to millions in recurring revenue, huge business.
However, on the side, he ended up buying a bunch of magazines, including flying magazines, a bunch of voting 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 selling the audience different products and services, including 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.
All right, check it out.
I feel like I could rule the world, I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like no days on a road.
Well, we're live. This is just how we just get right into it.
Why? But 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 raised what 90 million dollars for that.
65 adventure capital, but we raised some data on top of it.
So total about a little bit under 80 million or a little bit over 80 million.
And then your your latest kind of side project that is not really the size of most people side projects is firecrown media where you've bought dozens of magazines and you've laid 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's firecrown does what 50 million this year in revenue?
60 million right so is where we'll finish this year.
So. Godly man. And what I didn't realize I was doing research.
I didn't realize that trucking kind of runs through your family, right?
Yeah. My father started what's now more eight sold the business last year, but it came to fit.
Largest tracking up in the US.
And my uncle started the eighth largest what's now how the eighth largest tracking up in US with your uncle and father competitors.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. That pretty pretty dire competitors.
But are they tight? Are they are they good family members?
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.
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 red next like it's still like blue color.
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 like a blue collar guy, even though that he ran this huge company.
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 he's a finance guy.
I mean, ultimately in trucking your offering the business that operates with single digit margins, you know, one to three percent 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.
And he eventually, I think recently sold that business for like $800 million, right?
Yeah, he merged it into Knights with, which is the largest.
It was the second largest trucking merger in history.
He probably did about $2.5 billion when it sold for 800 million.
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The breathing session is over back to the chaos.
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 are like, I got to build something.
And so at 36, I think or 34.
You were like, I want to do almost like day trading, but for freight stuff.
Is that right? Yeah. I mean, I got fired twice.
So I got fired from my father's trucking company, US Express in 2005 was actually my older brother.
It became the CEO of US Express that had had to be fired in 2005.
And then my family is a bunch of assholes, man.
Pretty large. But we I love them, but they're this is this is a family tradition.
You fire and you go out and start your own business.
And then they had a payments company, a fuel card company.
But they had incubated that I took over and 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.
What's a what's a fuel card?
I know that truckers have them, but I don't entirely know what they do or how they make money.
When truckers want to buy fuel, you figure 200 gallons of their truly top and off their tank.
Is they're going to fill up with you know, 1000 to 1200 to $1,400.
Wow. Okay. And what they use some card and do they get perks or something?
What's the business? No, they it's for fraud management because what will happen is if you don't man I mean think about it, you've got you know, US Express had 9,000 truck drivers 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 truck breaks down, you know, this thing's going to be $10,000 on a breakdown situation or could be thousands of dollars and tires or fuel.
And so, you know, truck drivers or sponsors will probably 6 to $8,000 of expenses per month when you look at total what the total cost of an expenses.
And so you have a lot of fraud that ends up happening.
So fleet cards are there to manage the fraud both from the fuel spend, but also on the on the you know all the maintenance and stuff.
God, I never knew what those did.
All right, cool. So you're growing this thing, whatever, it's working out fine.
And then you get into freight waves, freight alley, if that works out good.
How long did it take to kind of get into the tens of millions in revenue?
It's by 20 million are business by in two years, three years, something like that.
How did it grow so fast? It's just a formula, right?
Like timing was great. This was when a lot of venture capital investment made into the space.
And then you also had this digitization that was taking place where companies were trying to digitize this supply chain.
And then, you know, at the end of the day, I had relationships.
It's funny because my dad didn't put any money in the company.
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.
You and your, are you and your family close?
Oh, yeah. My dad and I talk about he's now like after he sold us express, he's now one of my largest investors in firecrown.
Hey, actually is my largest investor in firecrown.
So we're actually really tight.
I've been following you for a while.
And when I think of like a good media CEO, you are one of the people that I think of.
What attributes did you have that made him think that you'd be a bad CEO?
Yeah. Well, I had ran a business, a payments business.
He fired me in 2014 because it was a tech business and tech technology businesses.
Well, they generate a lot of margin as they scale.
They actually run a lot of capital, but you know, trucking so cash for 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 want to raise any money.
So he fired me because he didn't think I could run 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 that's one of the most valuable assets that family support probably go now.
It just got a 500 million dollar valuation last, you know, sold some stock in September last year.
It's done well, but I, you know, I've been out of that business for many years.
That's all right. So this is the main thing that I wanted to talk about.
So there's this blog that I love.
It's called flash and flames.
I'm pretty sure that like only maybe 10,000 people on 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 Cal Morse and he's based in England.
He wrote this article that I think it was called the 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 going to go out and buy magazines.
Is that right? I mean, I was reading it and I was, you know, it was essentially the trophy asset.
He was using example of Mark Binyoth by time magazine and some others.
And it was really interesting because I was like, you know, I could ever 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 something of CNBC scale would also be another.
Obviously, there's a way outside my league.
So they're not happening.
And I was thinking to myself, I just taken up aviation, taking 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 an aviation magazine to own flying magazine because that would be my trophy.
I'm a pilot and that's sort of what 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 I made an offer and they ended up selling it to me.
And that sort of, it was started up the same as started up 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 that nobody will touch them because they view of had the same philosophy that I had about them dying.
And yet they own these fantastically great communities and audiences that have been around for decades.
And particularly as you get into sort of the older populations that grew up with magazines is they still have these really important sort of connection to the brands and what you found that's a really interesting opportunity.
Were you liquid when you decided to buy it or were you like, if they, if the price that they want is in the millions, I'm going to have to go get money from someone else.
No, I had enough money to pull that off.
So 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?
I mean, it was a meaningful amount relative to my liquidity.
I mean, in terms of my total amount worth, not significant, but I have a lot of paper worth as a venture back founder tends to be.
But you don't have a lot of liquidity.
So relative to liquidity, yeah, it was a big, it was a big number.
Then what was the thinking is I'm going to have to buy this and I'm going to spend some hours per week to making sure that it doesn't lose money.
So it was profitable. I mean, it was generated about half a million dollars of EBITDA a year as a standalone entity about two and a half million in revenue.
So it was a small, this is a small business.
And we buy businesses at three to five times EBITDAs, typically the number of these things, right?
So we're not talking about a huge, like this wasn't a huge capital outweigh.
So it was like 1.5 to 2.5 million dollars is what it's about.
It was about total purchase prices about three to half million when you look at cash and some deferred expenses and deferred payments.
So it came out to about three and a half million dollars, which, you know, seven times five, you know, two and a half million upfront and a million deferred and.
Yeah, but then you got to deal with like two 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 at the like own freaking magazine, a deal with these employees.
I'd rather get to like going for walks or hikes.
I don't know about this.
Well, like I mean, I had, you know, freightways has 40 year, if you look at total contributors that are generally could qualify as journalists, trick contributors, they have 40 to 50.
So I knew what the, you know, I knew what the rodeo was going to 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 digital native journalists or journalists that have been sort of working on news runs.
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 is existed across all publishers and I've seen us in the multitude of acquisitions like done is where the editorial teams feel like the the owners of the magazines don't love them and aren't willing to make investments and they almost look at you and I use this term is 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 is collapsed in the last 10 years because the way that magazines made money in the past the Internet is destroyed that business model and rather than sort of digitizing their business model or sort of evolving the business model.
They just started to cut cost and so that was the way they sort of finned 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 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 debt inevitable decline and they feel really encouraged by that you know we we upgrade the paper we upgrade the quality we make investments and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we get the money and we 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How much should you put it in?
Look, we total invested about $40 million in the business but that's not flying.
That's all the acquisitions we've done and everything we've acquired.
At this point in the story you've not raised outside capital.
No, I didn't raise. I actually had a half a million dollars and from two brothers of early investors and freightways that bought in and they got 15% of the business for $500,000.
So you've got $500,000.
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So you've got $500 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.
So about the land in 2021, about 1500 acres.
So the regionally I didn't plan on being a real estate.
Well, we actually wanted to do was go out and build a media center connected to a runway because I, you know, if people are going to fly in airplanes, you remember at the end of the day, the content for flying.
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 going to look at the Lambo or the Ferrari for the ABA audience.
They want to see the newest aircraft being produced.
And so we wanted to create a video center to connect to an airport.
The problem was that none of the airports in the community.
It's five regional community airports around Chattanooga.
We're willing to sort of do anything they said, you know, basically you have to go from the state, the municipality, the state and the FAA have to approve it in order to get to build a media center.
When you say media center, you mean.
Yeah, to take video, we wanted to have a hanger that had basically a video studio and photography studio that we can bring your planes in.
But you have to build that because it wasn't there's no hanger.
There's a national hanger shortage across the country.
And because what happens is nobody wants to municipalities who own all these airports don't want investment in private hangers for smaller craft.
They want the big airplanes.
And there's just a problem of allocation.
So we decided to go build our own headquarters.
And I was looking for land, looked for about 50 acres.
And I came across this piece of land and had 1500 acres.
And it was priced at 3.65 million.
And I drove up there and a reminder of this resort in East Tennessee called Blattberry Farm.
Yeah, like my wife absolutely loves it sort of back to forming agriculture.
So I show up there and I'm like this looks and feels a lot like library farm.
And that was sort of the real general inspiration is we wanted to create a fly in community with a runway and home sites that are connected with the runway.
And that had that Blattberry farm inspired sort of experience.
How much did you pay for that?
3.6 million. Did you pay it or did you raise money?
No, I borrowed from the bank.
I mean real estate is one of those things you can go borrow money.
And so remember I have a relatively high net worth.
I don't have no quality.
This is why I'm asking these questions because your net worth is significantly higher than mine because 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 want to like grandia is it make it to grand.
But like you're out laying a lot of cash on some really crazy ideas.
You're like I'm going to build an I'm going to buy an old magazine and I'm going to spend more of my money and build an aviation community.
Like that's like really weird and that's really ballsy.
Why what do you think you have what's that gene inside of you that makes you think these wacky things are going to work.
Because they dated like my experience suggests that it will but 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 to half thing hours of land right in the day.
Yeah, but that's a huge project to get into because did you know anything about real estate.
No, but you can you can bring in teams to go run those things which we have.
So like saying it's a matter of scaling businesses and hiring teams to run these things.
Yeah, it's risk. But yeah, I agree with you.
This is just this is just outside your your expertise and you've made it your expertise very quickly.
Yeah, I mean, but but media was outside my expertise date 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 ability of data business.
There's a very small number of sort of models to follow up is a very few companies that you can sort of model your business.
I think the risk is lower for that though the risk is lower for I disagree.
I think real estate real estate is so much less riskier because you actually have finite assets at the end of the day.
That's true. The difference though is when I I can start a software I can start an internet or data company with significantly less money than a cost to purchase a meaningful piece of property.
But I owned the land remember that land at 1500 acres at 2400 dollars an acre has value you can sell that land for something else you can partition it out.
You know if you looked at that at what an acre would go for in that community 50 to 60,000 it was subdued by this wasn't.
And so we knew the land had some underlying value what we didn't know to be any demand for pilots.
We advertised it was in January 2022 we actually took out ads in our own magazine to test the market what did you say in the ad 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 going to build we shape we vision shaped it.
And we didn't expect a lot of response we have a 300 inbound inquiries on that one ad we took out in our own magazine.
And we were able to get people to sign contracts to basically reserve their spot and we knew then we had a winner 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 I didn't make a joke about no but we I mean like we're very transparent about the fact this was a not a joke but being lighthearted you're like you know what's going to happen.
I mean ultimately say it's about we recruit recruited people that actually had experience and during 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 1500 acres of huge project you're not going to do that yourself you're going to want teams to deal with zoning issues environmental issues engineering issues if we brought an air planning consultants we brought in 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 one of these projects I have a team that's running them that's managing all the different pieces of it.
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.
No that's the that's the lot so 600,000 so the homes are probably two million to three million dollars and did they sign and what do they what do they give to you that the bank took as they signed a contract and they let they put it the deposit so $40,000 an acre on a $600,000 purchase price but they put $40,000 in per acre and you were a thousand per lot and it was it like you basically quote pre sold was it like $15 million worth of these yeah we actually got up to about $28 million dollars and total bookings total reservation deposits but we thought we were going to get through this process for environmental approval quick or zoning approval we actually thought we'd break ground by the end of 22 so we had some turnout we've refunded their money because these are refundable deposits that is if they're giving you money that you get to hold on to it's no different than that you bought you put a deposit on an airplane or put a deposit on a car these are fully refundable but we're about 15 million dollars and total reservations right now so this project alone is awesome but then it gets even crazier and like this is I'm just fascinated by you because I view you a little bit as a little bit as a peer and 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 but it doesn't it's all working out and this is where it's interesting is you're like all right this thing worked for flying magazines what fly magazine what happens if I go out and get more of these titles and do this whole content to commerce thing and did you get money for that not initially 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 and I was just using a bank debt and I was just using a bank debt and I was just using a bank debt 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bank debt and I was just using a bank debt and I was just using a bank debt and I was just using a bank debt and I was just using a bank debt and I was just using a bank debt and I was just using a bank debt and I was just using a bank debt and I was just using a bank debt and I was just using a bank debt and I was just using a bank debt and I was just using a bank and there's a lot of value in that business and I had a salary, it's not as if I'm not admit 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 for at least a generation like my kids would be able 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 risks through all these other projects actually enhances my long term returns, particularly if I'm using my balance sheet to borrow money from the bank at frankly relatively low cost.
What about diversifying your time that's probably that what that's what teams do for you right like you hire people to run it like you know press to the Holland who I think you know we brought precedent or initially run flying is now running a finance business that we've got.
That is doing aircraft financing we brought into team to run we have reached running our real estate project so again and I fired myself from almost every functional role I had at freight waves is.
Are you are you chairman or CEO for the CEO but I the day to day day to day.
Functions inside that business I have a Spencer pile and is my seat CFO and COO is running most of the day to the most of the day decisions are going to I'm working through strategy and think about the long term and 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 running a business so how many titles has firecrown acquired at this point we're about 54 I think is the number did you buy the batches like you bought you typically I mean publishers in the magazine business it's hard to get scale with one title this because it'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.
At 25% of the operations that business actually value added to a customer you have audience development you have magazine production you have layout like a customer doesn't experience that they.
Only about 25% of the cost structure is the editorial product for the photography so you need a lot of infrastructure to run a successful magazine or frankly media business operation you know the media side magazine.
It was the pain basically the hustle we could have I mean we're out 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.
Yeah and there's three people bring all the value it's crazy right it's it's how these media businesses work is you have a couple people that are upfront 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 a couple on whether and so we've done a.
Yeah maybe two maybe maybe 20 different acquisitions that have made up that portfolio but some of them have been really big we bought bombier which is like the the largest publisher in Sweden this from the group of Murdoch family of Sweden and they owned a bunch of voting titles which we bought last been last fall and really we own voting yachting selling world fish saltwater sportsmen and so really this large rain title an aviation we bought a lot of money.
We bought a number of aviation titles through various portfolios and then we just recently bought model trains a bunch of railroad titles and astronomy titles so bring that all together that puts us the whole portfolio just whatever 12 year old Craig is into boats planes RC trades so it's almost like by five year olds like dream so I mean think of it's boats it's airplanes it's trains and space it's pretty cool for like a five year old boy it's pretty magical.
You know what we're buying are these audiences that love the content there they're enthusiastic and effectively by owning the magazine which we finance through the the PNL of the magazine itself subscriptions and advertising so we make money in media but we're ultimately buying the audience itself to sit to offer some other product or service to them.
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 is is own business and make the 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.
Yeah essentially but if they're if they're enthusiastic if the categories big and they're enthusiastic about the Calgary then the answers pretty much yes I mean if they're the thing remember about magazines.
And particularly magazines that are decade old magazines is these things have survived to enter the great meal magazines are over a hundred years old they've survived multiple wars they've survived multiple pandemics they've survived the Great Depression like the audience truly cares about the content enough to subscribe if they 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 care deeply.
But the content and then ultimately they can buy another product or service and then is step three like raise prices and sell ads better or like do you think about that well I don't think we look at it in the same step right so like we do we treat these we have a 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 they can run that business through its own P and L that's separate than the media business but in order to finance that you like these people won't be selling you these businesses if they were kick and ask 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 one of those things yeah I mean effectively you're fixing all the things.
And then you're going to be able to make the way you're fixing a lot of the cost structure and looking at it in terms of these spin the opportunity of that audience and create data that can you know really 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.
Either a pilot an aspiring pilot or an aircraft owner or somebody who wants to earn airplane is that's the four prime there's people who read flying because they like airplanes but the small piece of the audience and so we know each of those categories are going to spend some money in each of their outcome so a student pilot is going to take flying lessons is going to cost them $10,000 if he's going to be a career pilot he's going to make $15 million of the course of his career lot of opportunity to help him along his journey.
If they're an aircraft buyer or prospective buyer they're going to buy an airplane they're also going to buy insurance finance out of that they're also going to have a lot of expenses to 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 magazine the advertisers based on intent not based on the fact that this is a number and what we've explained to the owners that the advertisers is wouldn't you rather reach the hundred people they're going to buy the buy your airplane versus the hundred thousand people that you know 99% of those people are never going to 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 one aspect of what we do but is driving intent data to actually be able to demonstrate to them there's a value to that cost that was a very good pitch.
All right look the question that Sean and I get asked constantly is what skill set did we develop early on in a careers that kind of changed our business career and that's an easy answer it's copywriting we talk about copywriting and how it's changed our life constantly on this podcast and we give a ton of tips a ton of techniques a ton of frameworks and throughout all the podcast well we decided to aggregate all of that into one simple documents 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.
So, all right now back to the show and then when you hire these guys to create so I guess airplane financing means you help people get loans to buy a plane and then I think you have like a classified section so people selling planes and then now you have the real state 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 want to hear more about what those are but when you're hiring people to build these businesses on top of an audience so do you how much do you decide to invest in them until they invest in their new business until they're able to make a profit?
You know we we have a or pretty patient I mean it depends on the business itself if it's growing and it's getting its KPIs then we'll continue to sport 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 going to take many years to sort of generate 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 and we buy e-commerce businesses we now and six e-commerce businesses what are you selling?
We on the largest NASA or the largest space merch store on the internet called the space store 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 to 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.
And so what are some of the like what what are you going to do with boating are you going to build a harbor?
No I don't think we're real estate because I think real estate to we like 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 lake front 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 right right pilot want to be there.
And so with boating it's not as if I can arbitrage like from property or an ocean from property because that's already awesome.
Exactly. And this 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 another categories that we think we can be successful.
So probably won't be real estate but it will be in other categories that will we'll look at commerce.
I think you said 40 million that you've raised for this whole thing.
Yeah and raise I mean between I mean my father funded has invested the money into we haven't used outside capital if you will.
So family office of that 40 how much have you spent on acquisitions.
No that's been the predominance of the investment has been through M&A.
But you're going to do 60 million in revenue this year I think on the tweet you said 10 or 15% profit.
It's about to do our profit in March was 18% and we we think we can sustain 20 and we think ultimately it sort of like levels out around 30%.
So you could do 60 million in revenue I think you said so that means 12 million profit.
Yeah remember that's a run rate number so that's not run rate.
Yeah 60 million in revenue revenue a little bit over 60 with 20% margins.
And then what do you think that would be worth.
You know if you look at sort of public comps you're probably talking 12 to 15 times earnings.
It's probably what if it was a public our goal is to get to a billion dollars.
I got a new plans to sell this business I like having cash flow same I do appreciate cash flow so it's not just taking risk I actually love cash flow.
You know it's funny is a venture backed founder.
You kind of jealous you have heard this you talked about this on your progress before is you get jealous of the cash flow guys.
Yeah the cash flow guys get jealous of the valuation and venture and the venture guys almost every founder that I know are super jealous of the cash flow guys because like wait.
We built this fantastically high valued business but we don't see any of that money it goes you know ultimately exit so.
But you you have both at this point but you have so on 12 million profit 10 times is 120.
Is it or no sorry you said 12 times 12 times.
Yeah I mean you can look at if it was a private trade probably 10 times as a fair number.
So the business is worth at 60 million run rate 12 million profit I don't know if it's trailing 12 months revenue whatever but roughly 120 million to 180 million dollars.
That you that that foot the business is worth and you started this in 22 or 21.
21. Yeah that's awesome okay and then you said I think this is going to get to a billion revenue by 2030 is that.
That's our goal and we can do that through both organic and organic growth.
I mean here's the reality is there's 4,500 magazine publishers in there and say there's no exit for these guys I mean a lot of them are.
They're either owned by large corporations which frankly want to divest their print products because public cops are challenging for them or they're you know family own businesses where they've been run to business for multiple generations or perhaps they started it 50 years ago whatever.
And they don't have an exit and so we can go find and we're doing a deal right now where it's a business about a million half revenue about $600,000 and when you take out all the expenses all the owner expenses about $600,000 a contribution will pay less than one time for that business.
And so there's just not a lot of folks buying in this category and ultimately you're buying the audience I mean that's really what it's all about is yes we own and Jerry profit and that's great and cash flow that ultimately.
So I like to say we're a private equity business meets venture capital because ultimately VCs want the asymmetric 100x return.
We're going to incubate businesses that can potentially bring those high level returns but using the audience which we already and so I mean e-commerce is never going to hit that mark but you have an aircraft finance business you have a real estate project that very well could and we'll find other business models as we grow.
You're basically building a hersqp style company so hersqp have you read the chief the biography of William Randolph hersqp I have not you should man it's awesome so William Randolph hersqp he he had a successful father his successful father was a minor I think early 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.
Well William you've got the Chronicle hopefully you can make it something to something you've got a year to make it not lose money and so he he does that and he does it by creating what's called yellow journalism which is like clickbait of the late 1800s early 1900s and he kicks ass and he crushes it and he starts buying another thing another thing another thing he started buying all these titles and he's killing it he's crushing it this is like.
A cable business before cable words recurring revenue subscriptions massive margins and then they get so big so they do a bunch of things one they invest in this new sports network called ESPN so now hersqp something like 30% or 40% or 50% I forget the number of ESPN that's made a billion off of that then they buy fit finish ratings I think which is a data business which is exactly what you're in.
And they start buying all the stuff at this point first 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 fight like I'm on my wife's like bedroom that she grew up it and I can like reach out the window and touch like the hersqp building and I remember that was funny because I almost sold my company to them and I was like sleep in in that room when I was visiting New York City.
And 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 kind of sick and it's been around for a hundred years that's sort of what you're you're doing.
You know hersqp is amazing is ten ten billion or 12 billion revenue no debt like that's what's pretty astounding about her not even on the real state they they they're they're no debt they actually have a very large venture capital for the old yeah they're an investor in freightways by the way so that's.
You know all about them I'm I forget who I met with there but I learned a lot about them but they're like older guys they're like they were suits they're like the madman era where they like yeah so it would have been a bad fit but that's what you're building and it's awesome.
