Bryan Sims quickly builds his media empire aimed at youth, finances

By BENNETT HALL
Gazette-Times business editor

y rights, Bryan Sims should be in business school right now, writing up case studies and applying to MBA programs. The bright, driven 22-year-old ought to have a promising future in the corporate world ahead of him.

Too bad he couldn’t wait that long.

Instead of sitting in class, listening to lectures and taking notes, Sims is ensconced in his private office in a Corvallis professional center, running a small but growing media empire from the comfort of his very own Aeron chair.

Sims is the founder and CEO of Brass Media, which publishes a personal finance magazine aimed squarely at the youth market: 16- to 25-year-olds. The slick, full-color quarterly, called Brass CU, packages advice on maintaining good credit, picking stocks and going into business along with bite-size nuggets of business news and feature stories on the young and highly successful.

The common thread running through it all is money.

“Our three main categories are making it, managing it and multiplying it,” said Sims, seated behind an impressive cherry-wood executive desk but decidedly dressed down in jeans, fleece jacket and Brass-logo baseball cap.

“Finance is, like, really dull, but when you put something more lifestyle-oriented in it” — such as this month’s cover story on hip hop violinist Miri Ben-Ari — “that stuff’s pretty cool.”

The 32-page publication is distributed through credit unions, which buy annual subscriptions to be passed on for free to their young members. Although they may or may not buy ad space in the magazine, they see it as a way to connect with a group of consumers who are just entering the work force and may soon be looking for their first home or auto loan.

In two years of publication, Brass has seen strong growth.

“We put out our first issue in February 2004. That went out to about 30,000 people through 10 credit unions,” Sims said. “Our latest issue went to 150,000 readers through 86 credit unions in 32 states.”

Sims is hoping to hit a milestone with the next issue. If current projections hold up, the February 2006 edition of Brass will be mailed to 100 U.S. credit unions — roughly 1 percent of the entire industry.

“After two years,” Sims said, “we’ve got 1 percent market share.”

Not that he’s ready to rest on his laurels. Sims spends much of his time jetting around the country, swapping his jeans for a business suit and speaking to large and small groups at credit union conferences and just about any other gathering where he can pitch his product.

Last week, for instance, he flew to Baltimore to address 100 people at the Filene Research Institute, a nonprofit think tank for the credit union industry. It was one of about 50 such trips he’ll make this year on behalf of the company, which has grown to include 11 employees — including Sims’ father, Steve — and is looking to hire a few more.

Privately held Brass Media (Sims and his dad own a majority stake, with the rest spread among seven or eight individual investors) doesn’t release sales figures, but Sims said revenues roughly tripled this year.

“Now it’s to the point where people are offering us funds,” he said. “It’s such a huge mind evolution. We kind of have to figure out now what opportunities we’re not going to pursue.”

Ultimately, Sims hopes to grow the brand beyond credit unions. The next frontier may be financial education. Brass Media has had strong interest from teachers’ groups in New York state who want to use the publication in high school curricula, and other states may be ripe for the picking.

“Texas just mandated financial education for every high school student in the state,” Sims said. “It could balloon pretty quickly.”

That pretty well describes Sims’ career. After launching an investment club in high school, he conceived the idea for a youth-oriented finance magazine that would be “the Rolling Stone of money.”

He brought his dream with him to college, first at the University of Oregon and then at Oregon State University’s Austin Entrepreneurship Program. But as the business took off, he had less and less time for schoolwork. After a last-ditch effort to keep up with his studies via online courses, he left to focus on his company full-time.

“We didn’t see a whole lot of him because he was busy,” recalled Justin Craig, professor in residence at Weatherford Hall, OSU’s dormitory for budding business owners.

Although he was in Weatherford for less than a year, Sims left his mark on the program.

“He’s sort of an inspiration for all these guys who are in the building — they’ve all heard of Bryan,” Craig said.

“He’s our Michael Dell, he’s our Bill Gates. ... He’s a dorm entrepreneur.”

Someday, Sims said, he might return to school to get his degree — if he can ever sit still long enough.

“The politically correct phrase would be ‘put it on hold,’” he says of his interrupted college education, “but as of right now I have no plans to go back.

“I’m flying 100,000 miles a year. I can’t be in class at 10 o’clock on Monday morning.”

Bennett Hall is the business editor for the Gazette-Times. He can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.