Jason Oakely has made it his business to help people waste time, and he’s good at it. A fifth year business student at Memorial University, Oakley publishes RECESS!, a weekly broad sheet of advertising and distraction. ”We looked at things that draw people to print — things that are best done on paper; cross words, word searches, sudokus,” says Oakley. “We print on paper what should be on paper.” In a publishing world increasingly obsessed with the internet his approach is remarkably analog, and straight forward too. RECESS! isn’t something you pick up to read, it’s the kind of thing you doodle on while you’re waiting to meet your lab partner. And advertisers love it.

Oakley distributes a run of 4000 copies on campus every week, each issue funded by eight large banner ads. ”Student’s are a hard demographic to get to,” says Oakley. “There are so many places they go — we’ve found something that works.” It’s working well enough, that the business is expanding. RECESS! Media Inc. is actively looking to franchise the publication to entrepreneurial students at other universities – those students will be responsible for filling ad slots (for now), but all the content will be centralized. The website promises a chance to make more money in five hours than someone working a full time job, and business experience to boot. RECESS! is innocuous, easy to ignore, and the goal is to expand to 20 universities by September.

Oakley didn’t just stumble into the publishing business by accident. He joined a Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team in high school, and he’s been actively  competing in student entrepreneurship development workshops and competitions since then. Before he started RECESS!, Oakley founded Launch Pad, the only on campus business incubator in the country (it has four members/clients, and they’re all doing pretty well).

In Canada, SIFE is managed by Advancing Canadian Entrepreneurship (ACE), and it is within ACE that Oakley has been competing.  He didn’t compete last year, to give RECESS! a change to develop,  but this year he re-entered the contest circuit and most recently was named one of two Regional Champions for Atlantic Canada. He won a $1,000 cash prize and a chance to compete at the national level, against five other regional winners, during the ACE National Exposition in Calgary May 12. The National Champion will move on to represent Canada internationally at the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards.

Whatever the outcome, RECESS! isn’t the kind of project you file away at the end of the semester. To date, Oakley has made a profit of over $10,000 through advertising sales — and he’s looking to expand the company. The key to his success, he says, is trial and error while keeping the risk as low as possible. He sees the franchise as an opportunity to offer companies a national advertising platform to a very target audience. And he’s looking at incorporating QR codes to link the paper to online ads and content. Every idea might not work, but it seems like Oakley is going to keep ‘em coming.