Troy Flower · 71 min
After discovering his father's loaded rifle and losing his father-in-law to suicide, Troy Flower turned decades of restless corporate wandering into Wellteam, a global habit-change movement rewiring the status signals that keep men sick, isolated, and trapped.
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Troy Flower spent decades climbing corporate ladders, moving through banking, marketing, pharmaceuticals, and charity work with restless energy. He was good at stepping into the deep end, learning fast, and moving on. But somewhere in that scramble for advancement, he realised he was trying to impress people who didn't exist and didn't care, while the people who actually mattered got his neglect. His wife, his kids, his mates: they got what was left over after work took its cut.
Then came the fractures. At 20, he found his father in the garage with a loaded rifle, both a gun and a noose waiting. Decades later, after his mother-in-law died of leukaemia, his father-in-law took his own life two months after her funeral. Both men were isolated. Neither had built habits that kept them connected. Troy saw it then: habits are the difference between a life lived in community and a life lived alone.
He catalogued years of self-help books and preventative health research into six core themes: mind, body, movement, purpose, relationships, nutrition. From that came Wellteam, a global habit-change movement that hijacks the same ego-driven status signals that keep men competing over coffee cups and office hours, but redirects them toward things that actually help. The leaderboard still works. The competition still works. But now what wins is sleep, real connection, time away from work. Troy's goal has flipped the spotlight: he calls out others as the hero instead of seeking it himself. The real shift came when he started catching up regularly with mates again and recognised what he'd been missing all along. Connection, it turns out, is not optional.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses grief & loss and suicide & self-harm prevention, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au • GriefLine: 1300 845 745 · griefline.org.au
“he said yeah it was pretty dark and I had a noose in there as well you know”
“I think that dissonance kills men”
“if you can control your habits, then you can control your life as much as you can”
The hero, today
Troy realised that every habit he'd built was oriented towards impressing a group of people who didn't exist and didn't care, while the people who actually mattered got his neglect. When Troy challenged himself on who he was trying to impress before a senior banking meeting, he traced it back to trying to out-ego a phantom audience instead of showing up for his wife and kids. Troy found that both his father and his father-in-law were isolated men who died by suicide, and that habits were the key to preventing that isolation and disconnection. Troy learned through Wellteam that once people earn their t-shirt and figure out the system, they often stop logging behaviours because they've grasped the point, which he sees as success, not failure. Troy sees that men today have disconnected from community even though we evolved to need it for mental survival, not just physical survival, and we have to work hard to find ways of coming together again.
Yes. Troy Flower is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.
Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.
Troy realised that every habit he'd built was oriented towards impressing a group of people who didn't exist and didn't care, while the people who actually mattered got his neglect.
When Troy challenged himself on who he was trying to impress before a senior banking meeting, he traced it back to trying to out-ego a phantom audience instead of showing up for his wife and kids.
Troy found that both his father and his father-in-law were isolated men who died by suicide, and that habits were the key to preventing that isolation and disconnection.
Troy learned through Wellteam that once people earn their t-shirt and figure out the system, they often stop logging behaviours because they've grasped the point, which he sees as success, not failure.
John Milham (Host) · 00:05
Welcome back to Kintsugi Heroes, helping people tell the stories they need to share so you can find the stories that you need to hear. Today I'm chatting with Troy Flower, CEO of WorldTeam and a bloke whose life has taken him from Bendigo to far-flung corners of the globe. Troy is a biohacker, a coach, and a habit-breaking guru. And his journey has included managing ski fields, living in a zoo, and building varied career in banking and marketing. Along the way, he's gained deep insights from experiences across the board and all his personal challenges. Now Troy leads his Wellteam, which is a purpose-driven organization helping people create positive habits for mind, body, movement, purpose, relationships, and nutrition. We explore all of those things and listen to Troy's practical wisdom, his curiosity and his commitment to well-being. Please join me in diving deep into Troy Flowers' world. So ladies and gentlemen and listeners of Kintsugi Heroes, today I'm talking to a bloke— like, I guess in the purest sense, oh, you know, I often describe myself as a woke bloke, right? I think I'm awake, right?
Troy Flower (Guest) · 01:29
And I—
John Milham (Host) · 01:29
and then that was because most of my life I wasn't— I was sort of more comatose than asleep, but You know, I've kind of woken up out of that coma to what's real, what's important, um, and what's powerful in life. You know, I had a lot of misunderstandings, a lot of, a lot of sort of nightmares about what it was. And I think I'm talking today, uh, listeners, to, uh, someone who I think is extremely woke, right? And only in the best possible way. It's like, uh, you know, he, you know, they're He looks the part and he's talking from the heart and it's really impressive. Troy Flowers, welcome to Kintsugi Heroes.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 02:12
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This conversation includes a bloke who woke up, everything in our head is just a story, six months living in a zoo, the snake bite that taught him his limits, the thread through all the jobs and a loaded rifle in the garage.
Hey, thank you very much, John. Look, it's an absolute pleasure to be here. And we spent some time together last week up in the Men's Health Conference or the National Men's Health Gathering. And I must comment that when it comes to that kind of woke bloke stuff, when you were sitting up the front, Speaking to the other guy, who he was was kind of irrelevant because what I saw was somebody who really had his shit together in thinking and also parked your ego and it was actually about delivering value. That's what I saw from you. And so for me, this is a pleasure to be with somebody who I see as a sage.
John Milham (Host) · 02:52
Wow. That is high praise, man. Thank you for that. That's very kind of you to say. I, I, um, you know, it's difficult. One, one thing, actually, this is kind of germane to our conversation because just before I introduced you, right, it's interesting. Men have egos, right? And, um, you know, it's a, it's an important, it plays an important part in the development of a man, right? But we, I think it's one of those toys that we never really let go when it's time to, to do so, right? When we move on to long pants We should be putting the ego back into the toy box, right? And then dealing with it in a different way. And I love that, that, you know, we, we were indeed at the gathering. And I, I'm, I'm not sure about you, but I was just really inspired by talking to men of all flavors. There were blokes with tats and muscles and tall and short. There were blokes with beards and clean-shaven. There were, there were men, there were, there were women who, you know, work for men, with men. There were guys of all sexualities and flavors and, and, and focuses and niches. Uh, you cannot— could not put a box around any of them, right? But what they all had in common were they had woken up to the messages of their heart, and their, um, their compassion was alive, right? And that was so inspiring, mate. It was so inspiring.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 04:18
Yeah, and it is, I think it's perhaps it's one of those, it's something that life experience teaches you to expect the unexpected and to face into life with curiosity rather than an assumption that you know about somebody. And I think lots of things help to improve that, whether travel, I've been fortunate to have done a lot of travel and in that travel journey, you You go into a place or a culture with a perception and yet, and the reality really challenges that. And I think the longer you're on the planet or the greater the experiences that you have, if you're open to it, if you're awake to it, then you realize that everything in our head is just a story. And if the story in our head is that everybody with a long beard is this, then we just look for the bits that reinforce the story. But if you can break out of that and go, actually, I don't I don't care if the person's got a beard or the person is gay or the person is transgender or the person is full of tats. That is irrelevant. What I'm interested in is the bit that's behind all of that. What does that look like and what can I learn from that?
John Milham (Host) · 05:32
Mate, that's such a balm to hear. And of course, when you talk about sort of unexpected, right, your history is incredibly unexpected, right? Yeah. What haven't you done, right? And what haven't you done in some far-flung place, right? So, you know, overseas, you know, you're, you know, Greece, you've been what, you know, you've been in corporate business with pharmaceutical, you've, you know, you've run global companies, marketing, development, sales. You hung around, you know, everyone says they're working on ski fields, but, you know, you were, you know, obviously, you know, that's not the purpose of being there, right? But, yeah, so you were, you know, in management at Mount Buller, you know, remote cattle stations, right? What I particularly like, you've been not just in the in the, you know, the tourist places, right? But you're in, um, Iran and South America and, you know, all sorts of places like that, which is just fascinating. What I'm particularly interested— I do need to hear about living in a zoo.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 06:52
Yeah, well, it's funny, you know, most people have that as a metaphor, don't they?
John Milham (Host) · 06:55
You know, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 06:57
Well, yeah, um, after my wife and I, uh, got married, we decided that we would move to, to to Queensland. We were living in a place called Bright in northeast Victoria, in Port Punker actually, which has made the news recently for unfortunate events. But yeah, so we moved up there and my uncle and auntie had owned a zoo, as you do, you know, a zoo called Elmer Park Zoo, which was on the northern side of Brisbane. And they had a couple of cottages in there for the caretakers. And so they said, oh, one of those is free, would you want to stay in there when you relocate. So we spent 6 months living in the zoo and it was fascinating. I mean, it's kind of like what— I think that movie We Bought a Zoo came out several years afterwards, but it was very much an amazing experience. We would walk through the zoo after hours and we would get close to the animals.. And you would see some of the machinations of the zoo that you didn't see as a person, as a tourist to the place. And that kind of highlights perhaps a lot of what life's like. We see the animals and you see enclosures, but you don't get to see what's behind the scenes. And when you do that, it gives you a very different perception.
John Milham (Host) · 08:23
So totally. I didn't live in a zoo, although I'm incredibly envious of it. The, um, but I did, um, camp at Taronga one night, right?
Troy Flower (Guest) · 08:34
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 08:34
And, uh, it was the animals that you don't like. It was a completely different, um, uh, connection with animals, right? The ones that were, you know, are not available during the day. They're all wandering around, you know, cats are active and also, you know, reptiles and things, right? So But, and, you know, with the staff will take you in, so you're like, you're in, you're in with the giraffes and zebras and things like, like, so, um, it was, perspective was changed completely.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 09:09
Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 09:10
And I, like, I had, you know, I had some thoughts about, you know, standing back and watching and being that comfort zone line, and then there's, you know, stepping into the unknown, moving into these spaces where they're occupied by things that we would normally be hesitant to touch, right? And we're invited to engage. Expands your world. It's such a good— in my mind, it's always been a little bit of a metaphor for what we're asking, you know, the people we care for. In particular, you and I are thinking about men, right? From our perspective, you know, embrace the, you know, stepping into the zoo cages, right? So, you know, into the enclosure.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 09:51
Well, I, yeah, so we were exposed to a lot of stuff there. I remember once that they had these water buffaloes, these massively big, beautiful creatures with these massive horns, and they were down the bottom section, which was prone to water. You know, water buffaloes, they want to be around there, and we had a massive storm come through, and they had an electric fence around the enclosure to hold them in. It's very hard to hold a water buffalo if it wants to get out. And the water came down and my uncle said, oh, look, I'm not there. Can you go and check the water buffalo and just see that they're still in the enclosure? If they're not, run. So there I was at like 11 o'clock at night walking through with a torch just going, holy shit.
John Milham (Host) · 10:37
Yeah, water buffalo. Yeah, water buffalo.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 10:39
They're there, thankfully. Get the hell out of there. Job done. But you spoke about how those experiences can change you. Well, not long after we left the zoo, we moved into a place in Queensland, a house. And I was working on the garden out the front one day. It was a fairly quiet little street in the suburb of Tarragindi. And a lady stops a car in the middle of the road and winds down the window and yells out, "Snake!" And of course, I've worked in a zoo, so that gives me a whole series of— a level of confidence around animals that isn't justified. So I thought, well, I'll just go up and move the snake. And so I walked up and think, you know, I was very confident. I was probably overly confident.
John Milham (Host) · 11:31
Here we go, love, let me at it.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 11:33
Let me, you know, it's fine. You know, I'm Troy, I've got this. And so I picked the snake up by the tail. I could see that it was a python. And I knew our neighbor had one in his garage somewhere hiding, so I picked it up by the tail and it was a reasonable length. And I walked off the road and it was sort of wiggling around and I thought, I'll just— you know, the woman was still in the car sort of watching in awe, and I'm thinking, I've got this. And I put my hand up behind its head and of course, never having done this with a snake before, I'd seen it and just assumed. And I grabbed a little bit too far back behind the head and it spun around and went snap on the hand. So, I've got this sort of puncture mark there, or of all of the teeth, this U-shaped smile, an inverted smile, and blood pouring from it.
John Milham (Host) · 12:24
I'm walking off the road going, "Ha ha ha." Because people say pythons aren't dangerous, but they can hurt like blazes, right?
Troy Flower (Guest) · 12:35
Well, apparently, as I've learned afterwards, it's the bacterial infection because they they will kill animals like mice and the like. And the bacteria that builds up behind the teeth is what can cause infection. And so people get ongoing infections from those things. Thankfully, I was fine. I've got a good story to tell. But sometimes just being around people who know what they're doing, that confidence can—
John Milham (Host) · 13:02
That's so true. Trouble. Yeah. And that fits nicely back to what we were saying earlier about egos, right? The sense that You know, sometimes, you know, knowing, you know, the limits of your capacity, as what the great Clint Eastwood said, a man's got to know his limitations, right?
Troy Flower (Guest) · 13:25
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I found mine.
John Milham (Host) · 13:27
Yeah, it's just beautiful. Speaking of which, all the things you've done, you know, you've been a banking executive and a marketing executive and all this stuff, so sales directors and so as well. What was your calling? What was the thread through all of that?
Troy Flower (Guest) · 13:46
Yeah, I think about this a lot. I did a presentation many years ago to some uni students and I thought, how can I deliver value here when I don't have a career? What I've got is this sort of assemblage of different experiences that when you think about it, what connects them all? And I think the only thing that connects them all is that in every one of those instances, I didn't know what I was really getting into and I had to learn. So I think for me, the thread is an acceptance or a willingness to be outside my comfort zone and to have to learn quickly. So I'm very much the deep end sort of person and always have been. Bite off more than you can chew, do what you don't know. And for me, I stay in those organizations only so long as my interest and curiosity is piqued. And once I've figured it out, whatever that is, sometimes the figuring it out is the system or the model, like in banking, and you go, I understand the system and the model now. I can't change it because it's so big and innovation is not going to work. And I tried that in banking and I was sitting there with the— I remember sitting there opposite the legal team. I was going against the legal team telling them that there's something that they could do and that they should do. And the legal team were there with the other, with the legal team from a massive Sydney law firm that specialized in financial services. I've forgotten their name now. And so I'm there arguing against the legal team and the legal counsel who they'd employed said, oh yeah, you can do that for sure. That's no problem at all. And so for me it was that, how do you challenge stuff? How do you make stuff better? Whatever that is and whatever way I perceived better to be. And so I just kept doing that and that's ultimately where it's led me into something that and I've been building Welltame for 5 years now. And I think the reason why I'm still completely determined in this space is that it's bloody hard. I haven't figured it out yet. I haven't solved it. But in a lot of those other roles, I kind of figured out what I needed to figure out.
John Milham (Host) · 16:23
Yeah, well, working with men can be incredibly simple and incredibly massively difficult and complicated. So I guess there's plenty of room for you to be challenged, right? It's interesting, if I go back at, you know, all of these things, do you think you was— was it you searching for, you know, like answers, experience, service? Were you trying to find a purpose? And like being, you know, a little bit of a polymath, you, you're able to take on lots of different challenges. Or do you think it was, um, you know, say, less worthy, right? You were just like like me sometimes, like flighty, right?
Troy Flower (Guest) · 17:04
So yeah, look, I think it's, maybe it's a bit of both because I do love to learn. Learning is the passion thing. And so if I don't know something, I want to try and know it and I want to know it as deeply as I can. But there's no structure to that. So that's kind of the flighty bit. It's very opportunistic for challenge. If I've got some people at the moment saying, oh, we want to run an ultra marathon. And I'm looking going, okay, so how do I do that? I got hit by a car last year, which did some damage to my knees. And so I'm kind of going, how do I work out the system within the body that will enable me to do that? That's a challenge that I love the idea of. Wow. But then the other side of me is that ego bit going, yeah, yeah, you don't need to do this, Troy. You know, you just sit with it. You're fine. Let them run the marathon, ultramarathon, and sing their praises and highlight how amazing they are. You don't have to do it. Just sit back and admire and be inspired by others, but you don't have to do it.
John Milham (Host) · 18:22
That very question, right, that internal dialogue you just had, you know, like, you know, that you gave us a glimpse of, do you think that's like for blokes, do you think that's maturity?
Troy Flower (Guest) · 18:39
I think so. You know, I look at one of the things that I, when I was studying, I came across a professor of marketing who remains, is one of our Wellteam members in Ireland. He says he runs the Northern European chapter, which is very cool. And he highlighted 4 core drivers of human behavior that marketeers tend to focus in on. And one of those, so the 4 were food and drink. So we're motivated to that. You put on free food somewhere and we go because without that we would die. The other one—
John Milham (Host) · 19:18
so yeah, the least cost we expend in gaining food, the more attractive it is.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 19:25
That's right, which is why a lot of us eat more than we should because it's easy to get to and we've got this internal driver that says, if it's there, eat it because it might not be there tomorrow. And from an evolutionary perspective, it's served us very well in the past.
John Milham (Host) · 19:38
Yeah.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 19:39
The other one was kinship and, you know, kind of that speaks a bit to men's health gathering. We seek people who are like us because that's enabled survival. When we find people who we're not fighting with, who we have a close bond with, who we are willing to defend and support, then as a species we've survived. So it's that inbuilt driver. And in a family scenario, you go, why would a parent throw themself in front of a car to save their child?
John Milham (Host) · 20:08
Yeah.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 20:09
From a survivalist perspective, that doesn't make any sense.
John Milham (Host) · 20:13
No.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 20:13
Because why would you kill yourself? But from a kinship perspective, it makes perfect sense that we're there to support others. So that was the second one. The third one was reciprocity, and reciprocity being that inbuilt check and balance in us. So you're interviewing me, which is wonderful. So thank you. I'll look for opportunities to do that. And we have this sort of silent ledger all the time, what we're marking up against. We always feel the need to give back to people who have given to us. That was the third one. The fourth one is this notion of fitness signaling, which is how do I look better in what I do? I shared some of this in the conference up in Brisbane because it's such a strong driver for male behavior, which is how do I look more successful by whatever measure I deem success?
John Milham (Host) · 21:07
Such a, such a, a rich concept to explore. I'm, I'm kind of thinking, um, uh, we have like, uh, you know, thinking about, uh, saying, you know, letting go of your ego or picking up your ego, right? They're, they're sort of kind of, you know, aspects in different situations of the same choice, right? It's mature to, you know, to take control in some situations. It's mature to let go of control. When it's mature to put yourself forward, to step back, all of these things. It's the nuance. And I was trying to think of how you can't just simply get a set of guidelines, right? You've got to go back to values to build your guidelines. And it's all about intention, right? You're like, my intention is to be a good bloke, whatever serves that. So when you look at your, you know, what you're doing now is you're CEO of Wellteam and that has, that's a purpose-driven organization. Where did you find that purpose in all of that bouncing around in doing what is an extraordinary and exciting kind of history, right? But you know, where did you find that purpose?
Troy Flower (Guest) · 22:25
Yeah, it's kind of, I think in life you have experiences and, and you don't always do anything with the experience when you have it, but, but over time, all of a sudden, out of the blue, everything makes sense. Um, for me, when I was, uh, at my second year at university, I studied sports science many years ago. I was 20 years of age and I came home to my family home. So my I grew up in Bendigo in Victoria. I was studying in Melbourne, came home and found a loaded rifle at home in the garage. And I knew my dad was in a difficult situation. He was trying to grow a business to try and get more money because that's part of what was driving him. We had an old washing machine, we had an old car. And so he was selling life insurance. You kind of was a Barry Lomax kind of struggling in that space. And then, uh, while he was very successful at that, it just, you know, it's a difficult game. And, um, uh, yeah, he, he started a trucking business, or trying to start a trucking business, and it was involved in a fatal accident. A series of unfortunate events left him in a difficult hole. And, um, yeah, and I, and I found the, the loaded, the loaded gun, you know, bullet in the chamber, ready, ready for action. And, uh I raised that with him and said, oh, Dad, you know, I found, found this at home and, um, in the garage, you know, what's going on? And, you know, he made up some line about needing to do something with it about a bird or an animal or something. Yeah. Um, and I, I knew that not to be true because we, we did have guns growing up, but we were very, very careful about putting things in different spots, so there was never a chance that you were going to ever find that. Unless there was something deliberate. But I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to help him. I spoke to mum about it and eventually he got some help through that situation, which was very dark for him. And it was only recently, in fact, when I started Wellteam that I raised it with him after all that time. And he said, yeah, it was pretty dark and I had a noose in there as well. So you don't— and my father was one of those happy-go-lucky guys. You saw his face, you saw him out interacting with people, and you'd never get any sense that he was in a difficult situation. And so that always sort of sat with me, but of course that had a positive outcome at the end. And it was a year after I was married that my mother and father-in-law, who were very, very healthy and active and and were doing really well in their life. She developed leukemia and very sadly passed away. And then within 2 months of that, my father-in-law took his own life.
John Milham (Host) · 25:31
And jeez.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 25:32
And so that was a really difficult phase for us as a family to go through and still difficult to make sense of. And then in various experiences, from working in the pharmaceutical industry, I saw how many people struggle with their health and end up developing type 2 diabetes and seeing the pathway for that and then seeing how the medical system operates to treat the symptoms and not the cause. And then working in the Cancer Council because of what we saw with Sonya's mother and then So that was a real passion play to do that, go from the pharmaceutical industry that was a very well-paid sort of industry to then going and having a lunch that I had to pay for, for once in the charity space. So that contrast was great and that was real passion work, but it was the same thing, the same behaviors that we all benefit from. There. And so I was working in a company just over 5 years ago that was focused on ageing and looking at what's happening in the population and how the healthcare system can't support us as we all age in a more unwell state. So this is the data that you see playing out across the globe. Many countries, we're living longer, with chronic disease than we used to before. We used to develop chronic disease before, but we would tend to die earlier. Now we live with it longer. And with the mental health challenges that are occurring across society now as well, then you kind of go, actually, the only option here is to try to get people undertaking behaviors that are going to help them in mind and body earlier. So we kind of went, right, let's focus in that 40 to 60-year-old space. And for men, you know full well, the insight there is that primarily for men, we have this focus on family. I work to support family. And then in actual fact, I think the work to support family becomes habitual and we become, I work actually because it's easier than family in many ways. And so we keep doing that and then all of a sudden family disappear or relationships break down or kids move out of home or all of the myriad of things that happen. And then we go, well, now I just work and we lose who we were. We don't play anymore. We just work and we get money and then the money goes because we used to buy a $5 block of tasty cheese and then we buy some affin goût French thing for $30 and the wine gets more expensive, the cars get more expensive, the holidays get more expensive. And we don't realize that we haven't actually improved the value of anything. We've just increased the price. And the ultimate price is we've spent more time working and less time doing what we want to do. And you see it all the time, the corporate handcuffs. When I worked in the bank, that paid well, really well, but I was doing stuff that wasn't in line with my values. So I ticked the box, I had the corporate office, I had the executive level of the bank and all the wank that goes along with that. And it felt good initially and everybody was driving fancy cars and all that stuff and I was driving an ex-Army Land Rover. So there was a distinct values disconnect there. But I was able to step away from it because I. But so many people find themselves sort of trapped in that space and it's very hard to get out of.
John Milham (Host) · 29:35
It becomes a cage, doesn't it? It's interesting, you know, we talk about a values dissonance, right? There's what we know to be true if we spent time even sort of examining our or reflecting on our own truth, right? And then of course, corporations are fantastic at giving you a set of values that says this is us, which means you, right? So they, you know, we, we put on the cloak of their values and then are expected to execute those, and sometimes they're vastly different to the ones that we hold inside of us, right? And that causes this conflict. I think that dissonance kills men.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 30:17
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree.
John Milham (Host) · 30:21
I've, uh, you know, I worked in a bank, right? I was a— I'm a corporate escapee. I remember several deaths, right, either heart attack or suicide. And I remember my boss's boss collapsed in the foyer, right, just on the way out for lunch. So we all came down the lift and, you know, this is in, you know, like Macquarie Street, a fancy place in Sydney, you know, street in Sydney. And of course we were stepping over or around the paramedics as they worked to save his life. Sitting there on the marble floor, right, in this beautiful corporate edifice. And we went off to, you know, have coffee and a bite. And our discussion was, to my shame now, was succession planning, right? Who's going to get his job, right? Because that all meant for us that there might have been room to move up.. And when I think back, I'm horrified at the lack of compassion that we had in that environment. And I realized that was ultimately the values of the organization. I had lost touch with my own, which, you know, I left, eventually left because I needed to get back in touch with my own values. But that man died and all we could think about was the space he left.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 31:51
Yeah. Who gets the title? Who gets the job? Who gets the money? Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 31:55
Who gets the hierarchy, which is that leadership style under the patriarchy, right? We were just thinking about, you know, how could, how would we acquire that? Is that, you know, you, you've been in that, you've played games, you've tried, you've, you've studied, you've had great jobs. Why did you, why did you, you know, your personal choice to turn away? Inspired by events and lived experience, but it's still a choice.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 32:22
What was the catalyst for that? Unfortunately, I'm an idealist. I've always believed in good. I believe that inside everybody is this sense of good and wanting to deliver value. And yet nearly every organization I went to, the leadership structure had been corrupted. By the hierarchy, the sense. And I saw this in the charity space as well where people, and it used to happen. I was the general manager in charge of marketing, fundraising, communications for Cancer Council and you would see people come in going, I want to raise money towards the cause because insert personal experience and they would be hugely passionate and driven to make a difference and you go, that's awesome. And they would raise the funds. And occasionally you would see somebody go, well, actually, I raised that funds. I think I have a right to spend it. So I'm going to start my own charity and I'm going to raise money to spend it. And incredibly well-meaning, hugely passionate people. And then all of a sudden they're in their own charity and they're the CEO of the charity or the managing director or whatever role they title. And then all of a sudden they've got to protect their position and then the charity changes a little bit and it becomes about money. And then the values, while they're still there, they lose the gloss. And so I think that's what you see in organizations and certainly what I've experienced. So people might come in as an accountant and think, I love numbers, I love the order, I love the nature of everything goes in a box. And the logic behind it. And then you work your way up and then it becomes about the position and the title and we get corrupted by the capitalist system in a way. And then we buy more expensive cheese and wine and houses and leverage. And before we know it, we are in that cage and we're going, well, I don't really want to be here, but what are my options? And so many people find themselves in that situation through So many organizations. When I was working on Mount Buller, I was responsible for overseeing the car parking, the visitor entry, the marketing, the development, sales development up there. And there was one guy who was a bit of a legend up on the mountain. He was still doing that job, Jimmy. He was an awesome guy, lovely man. 70 years of age, still operating and running the whole car parking thing. And it had become his identity, that was who he was. And it was very difficult then for him to abdicate responsibility to others. And at 70 years of age, you go, well, if he tripped or slipped, as happens in that sort of environment, then the entire mountain operation could have in jeopardy because he was the one. And that sense of responsibility or authority or power can corrupt us. And so in this case of an absolutely lovely guy, a lot of time for Jimmy, awesome, a legend of the mountain, absolutely, it's done a lot. And also like a corporate executive and like these things gets in some ways trapped in your identity around the money or the power or the system. And I think it's very hard for us to go to stop and take that deep breath and go, this is not about ego anymore. I don't spend time with my family, I don't spend time with my kids, I don't spend time doing the stuff that I really love. I'm just making sure that I prop up this this thing that I've added some value to because it's who I am, but it's not who I am at all. No, we just a role that I play.
John Milham (Host) · 36:29
Yeah, we buy into, you know, to the point where we lose ourselves in the identity of the gray of what we choose to buy into, right? I love that. So you decided, right, that you needed to make more of a difference in a different way. And you said Wellteam, right? So how did that happen? What is the purpose of Wellteam?
Troy Flower (Guest) · 36:54
Yeah, well, it is kind of the combination of things. It's in some ways to redress the situation of losing my father-in-law and seeing my father so close to taking his own life and thinking, what can I do that's positive in that? And so I looked— and my wife and I sort of looked at the characteristics of both thinking, you know, they were both kind of fairly isolated individuals that didn't know anything about mental health or really physical health. And so their habits were just accidental. What they did was just what they did. And in all the study that I've done, I could see that habits were the key. If you can control your habits, then you can control your life as much as as much as you can. And so I went about looking over my playbook, over all of the self-improvement, self-help books and all of the preventative health stuff through the different organizations I've worked with and thought, I'm going to catalog it. There's 80,000 self-improvement books out there and I swear every one of them has 150-odd, 200 pages that they all have a story, but they have about one paragraph in there that if you were to summarize the actual value of the book from what an individual can do, it's probably one concept per book. And they're all saying the same thing largely. So I kind of went through my back catalog and said, if I was going to advise myself today on how to live a better life, what would it look like? And so I kind of broke it down into 6 core themes, one being the mind. The mind really dictates our quality of life. And so therefore, what is it within the mind? So if you don't sleep well, then your ability for your mind to function at its optimal state is just not there. You just can't do it. So fix sleep first. Then if your mind is so busy all the time jumping around, you won't have the clarity to make good choices. So if you fix sleep and then you think about how do I get more clarity, which might be something like meditation or stillness or just being mindful or conscious of how your mind's working. And then if you get out in nature, you know, for 200,000 years as a species, we've spent the vast majority of that time in nature. So when we're in nature, we reduce the amount of artificial stimuli and we focus in on stuff that's been part of us So we can— our entire life is a story. There's no truth in it. There's almost no reality because I'm having a conversation with you, which is essentially I'm looking at a piece of glass that has little pixels that are coming on and off in color and you're saying stuff and I'm saying stuff and that's being transmitted somewhere and I'm thinking it's meaningful, but I'm staring at a If someone was to walk in the room and go, what are you doing? They'd think I'm mad. But we create this story of value. And again, that's in the corporate world. We deem money to be the thing of value or pay it power or status. But it's all the story and positivity and negativity is a story and it can often become a habit as well. And so I kind of looked across all of this stuff. So MIND is sort of the first first spot to explore. And then the body, the human body is this machine. And as guys— and I saw somebody at the Men's Health gathering talking about the guys from Western Australia talking about the body as a vehicle. And it's a really nice way for us to think about it. And we talk about the body as being like a— you get to choose whether you want to drive a Formula One vehicle or a demolition derby vehicle, really. And so the difference between those two is one of intention, really. So if you're driving Formula One, you don't see a doctor, you see a chief engineer. You know, you want to be getting, squeezing out maximum performance. You want to know the numbers, you want to do the data. If you're a demolition derby vehicle exponent, then you're just trying to keep the thing running. And there's that wonderful graphic of this person sort of holding a glass of wine saying, when I get to the grave, I want to be one just creeping over the line. And that sounds great. I kind of subscribed to that for a long time, but then realized that in fact you don't get to choose in those later years. And invariably it doesn't look like you expect unless you take those earlier interventions.
John Milham (Host) · 41:49
It's a classic, we get blasé about that you don't get to choose is such a key line because you have chosen, but it's been 15 years or 20 years before you think you get to choose. So it's that, as a footy player, I used to say, well, I'll worry about my knees later when they have the technology to replace them. That's it. But there's a lot of hobbling between now and then.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 42:11
Yeah. Well, and in fact, what you've touched on there is key insight that stimulated Welltame, really. So if I just tidy up that little thought that I was going along with, or the structures. So we do mind, body, movement, not exercise, but movement, because it doesn't have to be exercise, but movement. Our bodies are essentially in a state where there's small sacs, and those sacs constitute our entire our body. And if those sacks are stationary, they don't work properly. So the sacks have to move, otherwise they remain kind of in this sort of state that can become a bit like leaving water sitting stationary for a long period of time. And so we need to move. And then we look at purpose and the way in which people direct their energy and where they direct that and what they want to achieve. And then We look at relationships and look at some simple mistakes that we make around relationships really, and then look at nutrition and not nutrition from a sense of you should do this diet or that diet, but really looking at what are the substances that we take into our body that interfere with our normal operating. So some add value. There's 5 very common ones and you'd know most of them that that our bodies don't respond well to. And yet often we never challenge that.
John Milham (Host) · 43:39
The sweet poisons, sugar, alcohol, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 43:44
Yeah, that's right. And caffeine is a classic. I love—
John Milham (Host) · 43:48
Oh, really? Surely that can't be right.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 43:51
I love talking about caffeine because it's in fact the story of caffeine and the progression of caffeine into society It has so many things attached to it. I could talk about caffeine all day and it's hard. It's a drug. Like if you think about it as a compound, it's something called an adenosine blocker. So during the day, our normal situation is as soon as the light hits the retina at the back of our eyes, we start to produce a chemical within the body called adenosine. And adenosine is also part of our energy production cycle. So the more energy we produce during the day, the more adenosine that ends up accumulating. Now, when you get a lot of adenosine in your body, you feel really tired, which works because it's the mechanism by which we rest and recover.
John Milham (Host) · 44:47
Time to go to bed.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 44:48
Time to go to bed. Time to lie down. Time to have a nap. Time to recover so that my body can do all of this again tomorrow. If we didn't have it,, we'd keep pushing through and we'd eventually run out of operational nutrient or requirement. So adenosine builds up. Coffee binds to adenosine receptors. So the adenosine is floating in our system, but there's this other stuff that's caffeine that's bound to the receptors as the adenosine passes along. So once the coffee wears out, then we can start to the adenosine can start to bind again. So when we have coffee, we are staving off the thoughts of being tired or the tired feeling that adenosine brings. But coffee is a— this is a drug. And so having worked in the drug trade, the legal drug trade, a drug has what's called a half-life. So the amount of time with which the drug will reach a certain percentage of its initial concentration. So caffeine's about 4 to 6 hours, right? Well, I like to use just 6 hours because it's an easy model. Um, but so you take in coffee in around 30 minutes to an hour, it's going to be at peak concentration. So if you look at one shot of espresso, it's around 100 milligrams of caffeine. Um, so let's say you have 100 milligrams, you have your coffee at, uh, what time's your first coffee in the day?
John Milham (Host) · 46:14
Uh, yeah, 9:30.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 46:16
Yep, perfect. So let's say 9, just to make it easy for my head. So 9 o'clock, or let's say you do it at 9:30, okay? So by 10 o'clock you're at peak concentration, 100 milligrams of caffeine floating in your system, blocking adenosine. You're not feeling tired at 10 o'clock. Then 6 hours later, the, the half-life of caffeine, which means that 100 milligrams is down to 50 milligrams. Mg. Right. You go, great. Okay, so 10:00, 6 hours after that, 4:00 in the afternoon, I'm 50 mg. Great. Well, the way half-life works is that it has this kind of long tail effect. So 6 hours after that, I've got half of the 50 mg. I'm at 25 mg. So at 10:00 at night, I'm sitting at 25 mg. Okay. So then half an hour after that— oh, sorry, 6 hours after that, I've gone from 25 to 12.5 milligrams. So, so this is the effect that occurs during our day, but then we multi-dose.
John Milham (Host) · 47:22
Yeah, so, you know, for me, that's probably like, you know, 250 milligrams after 12 hours or so, or, you know, 18 hours, right?
Troy Flower (Guest) · 47:30
So, yeah, yeah. And so, so when you think about that The logic that we do is we go, okay, but I fall asleep straight away, so therefore caffeine doesn't affect me. But we never measure our deep sleep because exhaustion— interestingly, the US military explored caffeine as something, high-dose caffeine, to provide to soldiers in those combat situations. And it turns out that they decided it wasn't safe to use and they started using amphetamines instead.
John Milham (Host) · 48:07
Yeah, they go speed instead.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 48:09
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, because caffeine wasn't safe, because people would crash regardless of caffeine and the fatigue that you experience mentally meant that even if you kept awake, your decision-making and your ability to make good choices wasn't there. So, So, but if you trace back caffeine, you go, why did you start drinking it? Because if I give— I told my kids, if you want to drink coffee, you drink like a pro. It's black. I hate it. Don't drink coffee then. Well, but if I add milk and sugar to it, then I like coffee. No, you like milk and sugar. You don't like coffee at all. Why are you drinking coffee?
John Milham (Host) · 48:50
Yeah. Well, just that's the beer argument as well, right? Like, most kids don't like beer. Why are they drinking it?
Troy Flower (Guest) · 48:59
I had a wonderful argument one night with somebody who was a wine researcher and PhD in wine research and said, Grange, Penfolds Grange wine is crap. Well, and the conversation, you line up all these wines from cheap to expensive and give it to somebody who's never drunk wine before, they're going to hate all of them. They might hate some less, but it won't be Grange. They'll hate that more than up there with any of them. These are all learned behaviors, and we learn to like wine, and then we learn to figure out what expensive wine looks like and tastes like, and then we learn to talk about it. And caffeine is the same. It's that argument, how many? I'm on my 5th caffeine, 5th coffee. And everyone's supposed to go, you're amazing, you must be successful, you must be working all hours of the day or night, you must be in demand, you must be a legend. It's just a story, it's got nothing to do with it and it's this ego model again, back to the ego. We go, I drink more coffee than you, that makes me a legend. How much do you drink? I only have 2.
John Milham (Host) · 50:13
So if we were to take one thought out of today, that concept of exceptionalism for men, right? Ego-based behavior that is outside of our own well-being. Is that what we're talking about with Wellteam, right? The idea of saying, how do I change my habits so that I can take out something I've learned that isn't good for me and put in something I— Yeah, that is.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 50:36
Yeah. And so ultimately, Wellteam is exists to incentivize the behaviors that we should be doing by using the same mechanism of status and ego that works for the things that we shouldn't be doing. Yeah. So if we take caffeine as that example, you know, society says more caffeine equals legend. If you're at the coffee shop, you're a legend. With Welltame, if you don't have caffeine, you're the legend. Right. Because that's harder. It's harder to have no coffee than it is to have 7 coffees. Much harder. But society has kind of got it all wrong. And time in the office, if you work all of your time in the office and you don't spend any time with your family and friends, society says, legend. If you go, how much did you sleep last night? I got 1 hour sleep a night. Society is gone. Legend. But none of these are true. This is the reality. So we have these behaviors. We serve up 10 of them each month to people in the Wellteam Global Challenge. They choose the ones they want to commit to for the month. When they log the behavior online, they earn points. We have leaderboards and we've had Garmin watches and all sorts of stuff, prizes, $1,000 Garmin watch in prize for people who are undertaking behaviors that are incredibly healthy for them that often fly counter to the hero culture that we have.
John Milham (Host) · 52:12
Well, why do we hang on to those behaviors? Like, I like just the idea of giving up coffee, you know, like, just freaks me out, right? You know, I've created this whole culture around me and coffee. Right? And, you know, it's comforting, it's grounding, you know, I associate it with connection. I, you know, I'm often meeting and enjoying company with coffee and so on. How am I gonna change that behavior?
Troy Flower (Guest) · 52:45
So, well, the other question is, why should you change that behavior?
John Milham (Host) · 52:50
Because, you know, because there is a cost, right? If I don't have my If I don't have my coffee, I get that, you know, I get that, you know, sort of addiction headache, right? You know, like, you know, I can sense that it is, um, a sort of, you know, a negative physical presence in my life. But, um, you know, I love everything else about it.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 53:14
So yeah, and, and something that— so if you think about, you think about what is is drinking coffee. So it's going to be slightly different things for different people. And as you said, like, all at the heart of addiction is often this sense of repeatability, reliability, and comfort that you get from the behavior. You— it is predictable, the routine. Yeah. So if you think about that, what could you swap from a caffeinated beverage? You can swap any number of it. My favorite go-to is— so, so if you— again, if you think about caffeine, the drinking of caffeine as a process— in Japan you have these elaborate tea drinking ceremonies which are about status, and they're about— it's almost a meditative practice. So you can do the same with anything. So, so I, I grate some fresh ginger, and so that's part of the, the coffee grind. I grate the ginger, same thing. I spoon a small teaspoon or a portion of a teaspoon of cinnamon into it. Sometimes I'll add some olive oil and then hot water. Now, what I get there is what feels like in the mouth a similar thing to coffee. It's kind of the olive oil gives it a mouthfeel that's kind of like the oil that you get within caffeine. And the cinnamon tastes a little bit expensive. It's got a bit of a luxury element. And the ginger. Now, the difference is that ginger, cinnamon, and olive oil are all really good for us. And you can just top up the glass, which makes— if you're lazy like me, then that's a great thing to do. So you have the process, sort of a ceremony. And then you have the mouthfeel and the different components. So you can't do that when you're out at a cafe. So what do you do? Well, you can choose, and I found—
John Milham (Host) · 55:19
There are plenty of other drinks that are much, you know, like, you know, you gotta love a ginger and lemon and honey tea, right? You know, like, absolutely. Yeah.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 55:28
But why? So these decaffeinated beverages exist, and we know that if we're wired then these are good for us. Why don't we have them? And so I started anytime I go out to a cafe, I have one, generally one coffee a day, sometimes two. And that's only ever in the morning, within no earlier than an hour after waking. And a hard line, absolute hard line at 12. If it's 12:01, no coffee. I have no caffeine, no tea or anything with any caffeine. No dark chocolate, no ginseng, no any of these other stimulant, stimulatory things. I avoid them at all costs in the afternoon. But when I go to cafes, I'll order a peppermint tea or a chamomile tea. It's really common that the— if I order first, that the other person will go, oh yeah, I might have one of those as well.
John Milham (Host) · 56:23
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 56:25
So, so again, this is just a— it's a really simple but very Classic example of how society says success equals caffeine. Yeah. And not even— and we go, oh, caffeine, success. I don't like the taste of caffeine, so I'm going to load it up with milk and sugar and friggin' all this other crap because I don't like the taste of caffeine. Yet we still can't let go of the fact that, oh, caffeine, I've got to have my coffee. It robs us of deep sleep. We wake up in the morning feeling tired and then we repeat, wash, rinse, repeat. So that's why in Welltune we're trying to incentivize people to go without it and just see what happens.
John Milham (Host) · 57:12
It's like the gamification of this, of good versus sort of unresourceful is like it's a whole theory and it's kind of You know, it's effective, right? It's almost like a 12 steps kind of thing, you know. But, you know, I wonder, like, one of the leadership styles of patriarchy is competition. And I see men really working the shadow side of competition so often, right? You get 3 blokes together, you know, 4 blokes together, they join, they make 2 teams and whether it's raking the lawn or sunbaking, they'll start turning it into a competition. And far too often it turns into something ugly and something. So is gamification the way forward?
Troy Flower (Guest) · 58:11
Yeah. And this is the bit that I love. So the answer to that is of course, yes and no. So if you think again from this evolutionary perspective, the reason why I think that the notion of fitness signalling is so strong is because fitness signalling for however long in evolution across all species, it's the same, doesn't change. The lyrebird— sorry, the lyrebird song, the male peacock's feather, Everything is about, I'm more attractive, I don't want to miss out on the opportunity to reproduce, so I've got to be this, this, this thing. I've got to meet whatever society thinks is important. You know, the, the peacock, the peahen, the peacock and the peahen have kind of figured out this thing that the bigger the feathers, the more, the more healthy the bird, and therefore the more likely the offspring. Across all species, same thing. Birdsong, nest height, nest best. All of that, it's there. We go, well, we shouldn't have it, but it's in us, so we should use it. What's fascinating in Wellteam, and I see this a lot, is that people start competing. They do the behaviors. They've got to earn their Wellteam t-shirt. So generally takes people about 4 to 6 weeks to amass enough points to earn the Wellteam t-shirt. And then a lot of them go, I don't want to log the behaviors anymore. I don't care about the leaderboard. And so then they switch off and they don't log the behaviors anymore. And I kind of go, oh, maybe we're failing. But in fact, we're succeeding for the very reason you said, that when you figure it out, and this is where the ego has to go through this, whether it's maturation process, We kind of go, actually, it doesn't need to be this big anymore. And one of the things we're always encouraging is this sense of humility, the opposite of the selfie culture. It's the yui culture. Yeah.
John Milham (Host) · 1:00:16
Wow.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 1:00:17
I want to take a photo of them and I want to call them out as the hero. So if you follow my social media stuff, I'm hoping that— and people probably won't pick it out, but my goal is not to say I'm a legend, but to say John's a legend. Yeah. And if John says, hey, Troy, you're a legend, it's like, no, I'm not a legend, John, you're the legend. Because this is how we change the world. We don't change the world by going, I'm a legend, John, you tell me I'm a legend and I'm going to like that. We go, John, you're the legend because you are. If I'm looking in the right spot, I'm looking for what's amazing about you and I should call that out.
John Milham (Host) · 1:00:58
So that's a little bit of like we talk with young people, right? Often it's associated with young people, but maybe, you know, us blokes are equally, you know, it's equally necessary to bring growth mindset in, right? The idea of, you know, saying you're doing it well, mate, right? You know where you are now and the people you're helping and influencing and the life you're building. That's good.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 1:01:25
Yeah. Oh, of course. Because there's either growth mindset or there's dead. If we've stopped growing, what are we doing? I just see this. I don't have the answers. And I was listening to something the other day and it said something like when you're young and stupid, you know everything. And when you're wise, you know nothing. But I think that's it. The older we get, certainly for me in having traveled across lots of different countries, the thing that I've learned is that what I thought I knew about those countries was wrong. I'd made statements about certain countries. When I was in Iran, I had to repair the engine of this Mercedes-Benz truck in a parking lot. My perceptions of people in Iran was not a positive one when I went in there. I carried all this belief from what I'd seen in the media and so I knew what it was going to be like and yet the reality was very different. I was covered in grease and oil and people were coming up to me who I didn't know, who didn't speak English and offering food and they were doing stuff that in our culture we probably wouldn't do. So there was a level of generosity that I experienced that challenged everything that I thought I knew.
John Milham (Host) · 1:02:50
Yeah, that's such a great call to action for men. I'm sure everyone, but we focus on men because that's the low-hanging fruit sometimes. But we've got so much more to talk about and we've run out of time. But I really want to talk about parenting and fathering and, you know, like you've got a unique perspective on that as well. So we'll have to, you know, book another time down the track and focus on some family things. But, um, just, I just wanna like, it's so important what you're doing around habits, which is like a real key to genuine on the ground frontline behavior change.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 1:03:34
Yep.
John Milham (Host) · 1:03:35
From your perspective, what, what did you most struggle with And what was the best outcome? You know, like, what, what was the— what did you learn about doing this work?
Troy Flower (Guest) · 1:03:48
Perhaps what I, what I've learned the most in this process is that I thought I didn't need mateship. Yeah. And, and in actual fact, the, the habits that I built reinforced that I didn't need mateship. Um, prior to Welltane, you know, I've got, I've got friends who I, I would speak to maybe once a year. I was very much in, like my father and my father-in-law, in the family and work camp. But it was only when I started to catch up more regularly with guys that I, that I recognized the value of that. And I think that's, again, if I challenge why was I doing that, why was I 100% focused on work? And I did an exercise, I remember I was working in the bank, I was flying into Randwick Racecourse for the senior leaders meeting of the Westpac Bank all of this, all of the head honchos in there and I was flying into that meeting and I got a pen and paper and sort of I challenged myself. I said, why am I doing this? And I went down to the point and at the top of the page wrote, who am I trying to impress? And that was the exercise. I went, right, I'm going to focus in on that flying in and I went really honest with myself. Most of us really do the superficial thing and I went, I'm trying to impress my wife, I'm trying to impress my parents. But the bigger driver of who I was trying to impress was kind of this group that I would call people that I know. I was trying to impress society, all of these people who thought, oh yeah, I've got a better job and all of those with the bigger egos. I was actually trying to out-ego to show them to be better. And at the end of that, I got off and went, actually, I'm not impressing my kids by being away from them, impressing my wife by not spending time with her and focusing on work all the time. None of those things impressed those people. What I was doing was trying to impress a group of people that didn't exist. That was the big lesson for me is that every little habit that I'd built in was oriented towards meeting the needs of a group of people who really didn't care and nor should they. And the people who did care and the people who I really should have invested in, I'd had the wrong habits.
John Milham (Host) · 1:06:32
An observation on that, you know, like I was fascinated with the power of Strava, right? The idea like men are now connecting and, you know, the online, they solve the problem they used to have by sort of, you know, meeting together to chop wood right now. They, you know, they're off chopping wood or, you know, biking or running or whatever. They're in their own world. And then connect via a third-party app, right? It's just like we try to solve the problems with the tools we have at hand, but perhaps we should just go back to the simple process, like actually having a conversation.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 1:07:09
So yeah, I agree. I think my insight again from Wellteam and seeing the response to people logging behaviors online is that In life today, we don't belong. We don't. And we belong in family, but we've really disconnected from this thing called community. In the house that I live in, I know my neighbors. I catch up with them probably once a year, but there's not the community that there used to be. And That's why when you put people together and you give them some, something in common that they have, that you, you often see people really respond very positively to that. But it's, it's so easy. Life, life used to be that, that community and tribe meant survival. Yeah. And for 200,000 years, the, the vast majority of that was survival. Together we were safer, together we could endure. Now we don't need that. And so as a consequence, we're not forced into it, we don't work at it very hard. But what we don't realize is that we need it, but it's for the mental survival, not the physical survival. And that's a bit that we lack. So we absolutely have to find ways of connecting and coming together as groups, small groups, bigger groups with common interests. And that's what I see a lot of what you do is getting those stories out of people and if people can connect with those and find sort of kindred spirit in there and come together. But that's the bit that's lacking, the how do we get people together bit. That's the critical stuff. We don't have that. It's just a nice story.
John Milham (Host) · 1:09:11
Yeah. Well, you're certainly doing your bit, mate. I love hearing about Wellteam and all the things that led up to it. I think really exciting that great blokes like yourself with capability and insight are on the job, and that fills me full of confidence that we'll get it done. And it's been an absolute pleasure to have this chat. As I said, so much more to talk about. I look forward to that in the future. Thank you very much on behalf of Katugi Heroes, Troy Flower, mate. It's been a joy.
Troy Flower (Guest) · 1:09:45
Thank you, John. What you do is genuinely valuable for community. We need to be having these conversations. We need to be going this deep. We need to question. We need to push back on what society thinks is right by forming new paradigms of what society is and what what people should do. And my hat goes off to you, you know, it's amazing what you and Ian have been doing, and more of it, please.
John Milham (Host) · 1:10:12
Mate, thank you. That— I couldn't agree more. Thanks, brother. Thank you for listening to this episode of Kintsugi Heroes. Thank you to Colin Lilly for permission to use Broken as our theme music for this series. If you enjoyed this conversation, share the podcast with a friend and let us know by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to support Kintsugi Heroes and the stories we share, head to kintsugiheroes.com.au and follow the instructions to make a tax-deductible donation. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.
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