Flying Magazine's Real Estate Pivot

A story about how Craig Fuller bought Flying Magazine and transformed it into a successful lifestyle business by building an aviation community.

"There's this business called Flying Magazine. When you look at it, you're like 'what is this?' Basically, the story is there's a guy who bought this magazine called Flying Mag. Flying Mag produces this beautiful magazine with amazing photos, and if you're an aviation enthusiast, you'll love this magazine.

He bought it for high 7 figures. He had previously started a company called FreightWaves, which is a data company for the freight shipping industry. They do about $50M a year in revenue with $4-8M in profit.

One of the interesting things about Flying Mag is who the readers are. You have two categories: uber nerds and uber nerds who are rich. A big percentage of the readers are like rich people with private planes.

They recently did something really smart - they're building a community in Atlanta. It's basically a country club with homes around a landing strip instead of a golf course. You purchase a plot of land, they build you a home, and now you're part of this aviation community.

They presold the plots of land, and I think they've done at least $25M in presales on this thing. It could easily be double that. This is a really awesome example of taking a niche hobby, finding a media publication that works, and going from content to commerce."