Jamie McAnsh
Jamie McAnsh | |||
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| Born | 12 May, 1981 Pietermaritzburg, South Africa | ||
| Nationality | African | ||
| Citizenship | South Africa | ||
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Jamie McAnsh (born 12 May, 1981) is a motivational speaker, multi-award winner, entrepreneur, and sportsman.
Life
Jamie was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, to Welsh parents, Alan and Lynda McAnsh. He moved to Wales in 1990. Soon after he finished school, McAnsh joined the army as a Royal Engineer and served with 31 armoured engineer squadron and was part of the Desert Rats battle group. He served from July 1998 until May 2003 and was involved in several conflicts. When McAnsh left the army, he worked in the funeral industry for 5 years, before moving on to a job in motorcycle sales. In 2013, he contracted shingles which he recovered from but faced longer lasting effects.
Two months after recovering from the infection, on January 7th, 2014, Jamie woke up paralysed from the waist down after his spine ruptured in his sleep. He now suffers from CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome), an uncommon neurological disorder which causes chronic pain that cannot be controlled. As a result, his successful career in motorcycle sales was cut short and Jamie worked in a call centre for five years. At the same time, he had to change many aspects of his life such as altering his house and car, leading to financial strain. Ultimately, the build-up of traumatic events led to a suicide attempt in 2014 which was fortunately unsuccessful. On top of this, he was diagnosed with cancer in 2017 and had to undertake chemotherapy. Jamie set out to make it his life goal to raise awareness of such issues, exceed expectations of himself and inspire others to not feel bound by their physical and mental capabilities.
Motivational speaking career
McAnsh has won multiple awards for his charity work including the prestigious ‘Against all the Odds’ Charles Holland Award in 2016. The award was created in honour of World War II veteran, Major Charles Holland, and celebrates the achievements of exceptional members of the public, who have shown remarkable courage. Since then, he has also won the ‘greatest achievement award’ for his climb up Pen y Fan as part of the Waat4 challenge. In addition, he was won many other smaller awards for overcoming a multitude of challenges, as well as for his charity work and positive approach to networking and building a community.
Jamie regularly gives motivational talks in sports clubs, in schools for students, with businesses to motivate teams to work together and with disabled children and adults to promote wellbeing and motivation. In 2021, he did a talk for The Apprentice winner 2014 Mark Wright’s company Climb Online. In addition to this, he works with big organisations such as Big Ideas Wales and The Princes Trust to inspire and motivate young people. Using the resilience and lessons learned as a result of the challenges he has faced, McAnsh strives to show people that they are capable of achieving anything, regardless of their current circumstances. As a result of these successful talks, Jamie was then invited to do a Ted Talk in Pontyclun in August 2021, encouraging people to ‘Get Back Up’ when they fail or when a challenge is presented.
Sports
In 2015, Jamie McAnsh set out to prove to himself that his impairment was not going to limit him and took on a new challenge or embarked on an adventure each month. This included doing wheelchair motocross, a hand-cycle marathon, downhill rough riding at 45 miles an hour, surfing, motorcycling, and going on a zip line. He also did clay-pigeon shooting, jumped out of an aeroplane, rowed down the River Wye, completed the carten100, travelled 30k across the Brecon Beacons in a wheelchair and finally in December attended a busy Christmas market! His amazing feats raised a massive £250,000 for a range of local charities, such as Noah’s Ark, TSS Aware, Brecon Mountain Rescue, Welsh Air Ambulance, the Dyfed Police Charity and CRPS Aware. This led to a television appearance on GB News in October 2021 with Neil Oliver celebrating Jamie’s achievements.
After Jamie was left paralysed from the waist down in 2014, he began playing wheelchair basketball for Cardiff Celts (now Cardiff Met Archers) which is the 2nd division of the national league. Soon after, he was signed to play wheelchair rugby for Wales. His love for sports did not stop there as McAnsh then went on to play squash in a wheelchair before he gained more strength and moved on to playing on crutches. This led to him competing in the Welsh Open Master in December 2018 and the Slovenian open masters in April 2019. Jamie remains the only registered squash player with a lower limb impairment. He is also the second person ever to climb Pen y Fan, the tallest mountain in South Wales and South England, in a wheelchair. His next challenge that he has set himself is to climb Mount Everest, which he will be doing on May 5th, 2022. McAnsh will be the first person with CPRS to do this.
Entrepreneurship
Jamie McAnsh founded the company ‘See No Bounds’ in 2014. It was originally set up as a blog to connect similar people, that had woken up with life changing experiences. In 2015, when Jamie began his monthly challenges that he had set himself, he used the blog to document his experiences and show people what they can achieve. When Jamie’s motivational speaking career kicked off after winning the Charles Holland Award, the blog grew to include an events board to share details of his upcoming talks. The e-commerce arm of the See No Bounds platform began when he was made an ambassador for Smartcrutch and Flexi Foot.
See No Bounds developed into an online business directory when Jamie started working with other companies to help them break into the disability market. See No Bounds thrived during the pandemic, one of the toughest times for businesses. Its purpose has broadened, and it is now aimed at helping small and medium businesses to increase their exposure and visibility. In addition to promoting SME’s and start-ups in their directory, Jamie, alongside his wife and co-founder of See No Bounds, Charlott, place a strong emphasis on creating a supportive online community for its members. They now have hundreds of members from around the world that are signed up to their directory. More recently, the community has begun to move offline as See No Bounds regularly host networking meetups in picturesque locations, such as Snowdon, Pen y Fan and Skirrid Mountain.
Jamie and Charlott co-host a variety of online live shows and podcasts every week that their members take part in to talk about their business, showcase their personality and discuss a range of topics. On the See No Bounds website, members can advertise their services, courses and events, and access the library of blogs and podcasts (as well as post their own). Jamie and Charlott have a passion for helping people and businesses to succeed – they have also got involved with the Government’s Kickstarter programme recently.
Personal life
Jamie McAnsh married his first wife, Natalie, in 2010, then filed for divorce in 2017. He met Charlott McAnsh (previously Fagergard) in 2019 and married her two years later. They now reside in Cwmbran where they run their business together.
Jamie is the youngest of his two siblings. He decided at a very young age that he didn’t want to have children.
References
External links
This article "Jamie McAnsh" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles taken from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be accessed on Wikipedia's Draft Namespace.