Theo Venter Travels from Perth, WA

Theo started his beautiful family and settled into the life he created for them.  One day, out of the blue, Theo received a phone call that would completely redirect his life. It was an offer to immigrate to Australia.  Theo took the offer, knowing his kids would benefit most as they grew up in “the land of opportunity.” Unfortunately, the price he had to pay was leaving behind his own family, with whom he still had a strong, loving bond.

It was only six months after he arrived in Australia and three months after his wife and kids joined him when that fateful day came… 13th February 2006. By the end of that day, he didn’t think he would ever see the light of day again.

Specialising in working on live power poles, Theo found himself on an elevated work platform about 11 metres in the air with live 22,000 volts buzzing around him.  As he tried to replace an insulator but couldn’t get the nut undone, Theo faced a decision that would impact his life forever.

Theo chose to remove his gloves, and moments later found himself being exposed and uncontrollably contorted by the electrical current. Boiling up from the inside with over 1000 amps rushing into his left arm, through all his soft organs and heart, and out his right wrist onto the steel cross-arm, he lost consciousness after being hooked on for at least 2 1/2 seconds. His lifeless body then dropped straight down into the bottom of the basket.

Historically, infection would set in, and Theo would die within 2 days. He was going to pay the ultimate price for the convenient choice he made.

By some miracle, Theo pulled through the first 5 days and was told that although both his arms were severely injured, he was going to survive. After a marathon of 17 surgeries in just over a month, during which all the burned and dead tissues and tendons were removed, he was released from hospital in less than five months.

Little did Theo know that coming home meant his toughest battle was only beginning. Being totally dependent on others for feeding, washing, and care, Theo’s once strong self-respect and temperament quickly plummeted into a state of mental heartache. He found himself sitting in a dark room, and the constant pain and fatigue finally took the last little bit of dignity out of him. After a few months, Theo’s first thoughts of suicide became very real.

Through an enormous amount of hard work, dedication, and resilience, Theo started feeding the white dog in his head so that it could beat up the black dog that was trying to kill him.  Just as he thought he had it under control, another setback came in the form of a broken 17-year-long marriage. The stresses on their relationship had become unbearable.

Theo began dedicating his life to discovering why we make these opportune choices in the workplace and in our lives. He needed to find out what drives us and looked for different ways to overcome those instinctive keystone habits. In 2010, he founded his own business to inspire others to learn from his mistake. Over the next few years, he spoke to thousands of employees, senior leaders, and executives. Through experiencing hundreds of incident investigations on multiple sites around the globe, Theo founded the concept of making sustainable and autonomous change in the workplace.