All Media Services Ltd

Karen Blair, Features Writer

"With my entrepreneurial spirit awakened, I had set up All Media Services in 1998, but we didn't trade until 2000. We started that company in a bedroom with a computer, with much less memory than the cheapest modern cellphone, an email address and the ideas in my head".

One of the first non-traditional communication jobs the company did came from an unlikely source when a company's senior officer told him her superiors were fearful of interacting with journalists.

"I saw it as an opportunity, and realised this was a trust issue. So I assembled a team of veteran journalists and developed a workshop with a focus on trust-building techniques, interviewing skills and transparency", James reminisces.

The client thought the programme a huge success and requested another one. This opened the door for the company to do similar workshops for large Jamaican companies and expatriates.

"The first money I got out of the exercise to coach decision makers, I used to buy a video camera; and the first job from the camera bought another piece of equipment", James recalls of his building-block approach to entrepreneurship.

Business soon outgrew the bedroom-turned-study and, in 2002, by then remarried to a bright, attractive, young attorney-at-law, Katia Denise Henry James, with his new wife's encouragement and blessings, James relocated to the Towers in New Kingston. Business soon outgrew that location, prompting him to move to his current New Kingston office.

Today, All Media Services is a highly diversified small business, providing content for radio and television. The company is owner of 'On A Personal Note' - an award-winning half hour personal financial programme aired on TVJ for over eight years up to June 5, 2011, but now at a new home CVM TV, Sundays at 3 p.m.; Market Watch JA - a four-minute business programme aired on the island's leading radio station Irie FM, weekdays at 6:05 p.m.; and Jamaica's first video-driven business website businesscontentjamaica.com which highlights professionally produced video stories from Jamaica and the Caribbean.

The company also provides videotaping service for a select clientele; edited corporate videos, web streaming and corporate communication troubleshooting.