Entrepreneurship
Gef’s 30 Under 30 Winners: Q&A with Thomas Walmsley
Ten categories. Thirty young visionaries making their mark on the Isle of Man. Introducing the all-new #Gef30Under30 winners: the next generation of our island’s leaders.
First up is the Acantha Entrepreneurship category: these young leaders knocked our judges’ socks off, proving that living on a small island is no excuse for small thinking.
What is your name and age?
Thomas Walmsley, age 24.
Job title or role in the community?
Videographer, editor and director at Belmont Media Group, Marble Weddings and Foghorn Podcasting.
How did you start your career or role in the community?
After making the decision to drop out from studying architecture, I worked for over 6 years as a freelance videographer in both Nottingham and the Isle of Man. During 2022, I decided that I wanted to scale-up my business on the island so I founded Belmont Media Group, which is our Isle of Man based full service media production house that specialises in video production. Shortly after a successful launch, and with the help of new team members, I was in a position to start Foghorn Podcasting (our podcast production company) and Marble Weddings (our wedding film production company).
In one sentence, summarise your journey so far as a young and successful person under 30.
My journey so far has been fuelled massively by my curiosity and passion around content creation and an intentional decision to never get complacent.
Tell us about your business/industry, is there something interesting about it that most people wouldn’t expect?
90% of the work completed by a videographer isn’t actually holding a camera and shooting; it’s actually spent behind a monitor piecing together the clips to tell a compelling story. With the videography/content creation industry, I think a lot of people underestimate the work that goes on behind the scenes. Many people might notice a 10-second video posted online and assume it took exactly that amount of time to shoot – which I wish were the case! We produced a 30-second promotional video last year that took about 2 months of work, from pre-production to multiple shooting locations, editing, and distribution.
Tell us about why you think you won the category?
Being noticed for entrepreneurship on the Isle of Man is incredibly humbling and really verified that all of my efforts over the last 7 years have been focussed in the right direction. Now that I look back, I have always had that type of entrepreneurial mindset – from building birdhouses out of spare wood in the garden and selling them across the neighbourhood, to successfully launching 3 video businesses with a growing team of videographers and editors.
What, for you, are the benefits of staying on or moving back to the island for young people under 30?
I think it can be popular to slate the Isle of Man for its ‘lack of opportunity’; but I have never found that to be true. Whilst the physical size and population of the island is relatively small, I have found that it is still incredibly rich in opportunity and potential, so it really depends on where you focus your attention. If I came out of school looking for a video production company to join, there might not have been much choice, and I might have felt compelled to search further afield – however that doesn’t mean there are no opportunities. If there isn’t a business for you to join, why not create your own?
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