The joy, pain and sacrifice of starting Wellteam

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Troy Flower

When you start a new business like Wellteam you have to make a lot of sacrifices, it's tough.

It requires stepping away from a regular paycheck, any immediate income, it requires drawing down into savings or chewing back into your homeloan, selling stuff to free up cash so you can keep your vision alive.

If you do it in your 20's you're a hero, but if you do it when you have a partner and kids...you're selfish, foolish, driven by ego.

Now I've been criticised personally for doing what some in society see as 'the wrong thing by my family'. But what those people don't get is the buy in from my family.

Should success in life be solely based on how much money you can deliver to your partner and kids? Should your success be in raising spoilt kids, who want for nothing in life? I guess that's your call.

Sonia and I started Wellteam because we've experienced how life can be cut short, really early. We lost Sonia's parents in their 60's, one due to cancer, the other due to an unrelenting darkness.

It was completely devastating...and still is.

We felt powerless in both cases.

We lost my mother two years ago from COPD brought on by smoking and when I was younger my father stepped very very close to the dark light after a failed business venture.

In my 20's I returned to my family home one weekend to find a loaded gun in our garage. Dad only spoke about his pain, frustration, isolation and sadness almost 30 years later...after we started Wellteam.

Life is tough, whatever your story. We all have them.

It seems every corner I turn now there's a negative new story about a 40-60 year old man who's done something wrong. We tear them down, like they're villains. Maybe some are, but maybe some are just worn down, lost, frustrated, tired, exhausted and stuck. Stuck.

Maybe it's just hard to know what role to play in society today.

Maybe we've ticked all the status boxes; car, house, job title, partner, kids, passport stamps, income and realised that there's still something fundamental that's missing.

We're still not happy, not necessarily unhappy either but can't put our finger on what's missing.

We're stuck between being raised as a 'historical man' by grandparents, parents, partners, doctors, lawyers, politicians, teachers, partners, kids and society and now...

...now we're expected to be a 'neutral gendered person' with no bias, masculine drive or traditional 'male' tendencies.

We should all pay for the sins of a minority of questionable individuals...who happen to also be men.

We have to completely rewire ourselves at an age when the pressures mount to be great providers for our families. To be tough, strong, resilient...and yet soft, gentle and vulnerable.

Wellteam is out to provide a space in the middle, a place of trust, with camaraderie and men out to reboot themselves with more energy, drive and purpose. Good men.

Men who know that the best way to look after their families is by living their own life healthier and happier. To, as they say on the plane, 'fit their own oxygen mask first'.

Living healthier is not a choice of the modern man...it is an imperative.

We must regain or perhaps reinvent what it is to feel in control.

Men must seek out ways to explore what's possible without the 'toxic masculinity' that pervades so many traditional male 'packs'.

We are Wellteam.

We're starting a #healthrevolution.

It's happening already.

Here's what some of our members have to say...and we're just warming up. In fact, we haven't even publicly launched Wellteam yet.