Our Story

A life changing illness that threatened his family’s future became the unlikely inspiration for Chris Young to start a training company based on his own principles of positivity, enthusiasm and equality.

Chris’ business career started when he completed the McDonald’s management development program in the UK and he spent several years working in operations management. He then spent three years on secondment in the McDonald’s training department. He was inspired by this environment where students were engaged by high quality training driven by positivity that changed their lives for the better.

On returning to Australia, Chris took up a role as Training and Operations Manager with the Resurg Group Chris where he spent 7 years managing a team who successfully delivered training and consulting services to small businesses across Australia, New Zealand and the USA. In this role Chris learnt what it took to be successful in small business, and what the pitfalls were. It gave him the appetite to want to start his own small business when the time was right.

On Wednesday August 8th 2012 Chris’s life changed forever. Chris woke up with flu like symptoms and went to see his Doctor. She advised that he had the flu, wrote a prescription and warned him that he should prepare myself for a few days off work to recover from it. By Saturday night the flu symptoms had worsened along with severe pain, Chris couldn’t sleep so decided to go to hospital for help.

Ten days later Chris woke up from a coma having no idea what had happened to him, or of the hell that his family had been through after being told that he wasn’t going to live. The illness that almost killed Chris was Severe Streptococcal A Septic Shock. There was no obvious reason as to why Chris had contracted the illness.

Just as Chris started to realise what a miraculous escape, he had made by surviving the illness, the next horror began to unveil itself. Chris had severe gangrene damage to both hands and feet and doctors advised that he would lose both feet and that eight of his ten fingers were ‘not viable’ and would also need to be amputated. In September 2012 Chris’ left leg was amputated below the knee. Chris decided not to allow any further amputations at that time. However in January 2015, after trying many different treatments, Chris lost the battle to keep his right foot and became a bi-lateral below knee amputee.

Due to pain and the inability to walk even short distances Chris was faced with the fact that he would be unable to return to his role with the Resurg Group as he would not be able to commute to the office or travel around Australia delivering training workshops. Chris and his family faced an uncertain financial future.

Chris wanted to find a way he could continue to enjoy his passion for business and training, but rather than being able to deliver the training himself he would need to be able to motivate others to deliver the training with the positive approach he believed in himself.

As a result Catch Training was born. Chris has personally selected each trainer at Catch Training using a thorough recruitment process. Catch has a strong focus on the professional development of all their trainers so that they are constantly working to improve themselves. Each Catch Training policy has been built around the needs of the customer, not the needs of the company. All the content on Catch’s courses is designed to provide knowledge and increase skills, not to be simply a tick box exercise where a certificate is gained. Every effort has been made to ensure that Interacting with Catch is an enjoyable, rewarding and easy experience.