Kintsugi Heroes
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
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