Troy Candy opens up: What life’s really like for popular influencer
He’s been called a party animal. A hoon. An influencer. And far worse. But who is the real Troy Candy? In his most candid ever interview, he reveals the reality of life behind the Candy empire.
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Everyone thinks they know Troy Williams.
The hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
The car enthusiasts.
The police who smashed in his door.
The media who have covered his every move since he arrived on the Gold Coast.
Even the people who firebombed his car wrap business.
He’s been called a lot of things. Party animal. Hoon. Influencer. And the one he really can’t stand – Candyman 2.0.
He wants you to know the truth is not so simple.
That this Troy Williams, aka Troy Candy, is not the person many people think.
WELCOME TO QUEENSLAND
In hindsight, it was a sign of things to come.
The unexpected drama on what was meant to be Williams’s first day as a Queenslander.
“My first day living in Queensland I got arrested out of quarantine,” he says.
“You had to be there for two weeks. And literally, on the 14th day, I got a knock on the door.
“And the police opened up. Because they were working there too, I thought they were escorting us out. But he comes in and he goes, ‘you’re under arrest’. I laughed, I’m like, ‘no I’m not’.
“I thought it was a prank.”
It was 2020. And Melbourne, where Williams had lived his whole life, was enduring the world’s longest lockdowns. Williams and partner Anita had decided to escape to the Gold Coast, to savour its outdoor lifestyle, one almost tailor made for a lover of cars and boats.
He’d been seduced on previous visits to the city – and it was one of those trips that now had him in cuffs.
“It was literally over a Helensvale burnout in 2019,” he says.
“I said, ‘why didn’t you just charge me in Melbourne?’ They said, ‘because it’s out of our jurisdiction, we had to wait. Because you hadn’t come to Queensland in so long it escalated to a summons, to this, to that, to a full arrest.’
“I had no idea. I didn’t get one phone call, letters, anything.”
Williams ultimately pleaded guilty to a charge of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle and was fined $2000.
A LIGHT BULB MOMENT
The arrest was a speedbump on the way into Queensland, but not something that was about to slow him down.
Williams proposed to partner Anita on Hamilton Island not long after arriving. Their son Saint was born in July 2021. And he expanded his car wrap business – Eye Candy Motorsports – onto the Gold Coast.
The fast car fanatic had opened his first shop in Melbourne at just 21 years old after dropping out of a graphic design course, a choice that worried his parents at the time.
“I was doing it from mum’s garage for a couple of years. And then, which is fair enough, she got sick of all these cars coming into her house, car parts everywhere,” he says.
“When I dropped out, my parents were really disappointed.
“My dad was a mechanic, so he taught me how to do everything on the cars. But he didn’t want me to get into that for work.
“He’d been a mechanic his whole life. He said it’s dirty, it’s hard work, it’s shit pay, I don’t want you to go down the same path I did.
“But I just loved cars too much.”
Dad was eventually won around – “it took a while” – and when he did, he led Williams to the discovery that would change his life.
“Once he realised that he wasn’t going to talk me out of it he took me to Vegas, to the SEMA show. It’s an exhibition where they show all upcoming products and cars,” he says.
“That’s where I saw wraps. When I first heard about it I thought it would be like schoolbooks, all crinkled and bubbles, but when I went over there and saw it, it was just crazy. No one was doing it like that here and I thought, this was f***king unreal.
“In Australia, when I started in 2011, you could only really get black or white.
“People weren’t pushing it too hard. So I started wrapping my cars, friends’ cars, and my business page, Eye Candy Motorsports, really blew up.”
THE FOLLOWERS, AND THE ‘HATERS’
A big part of the success was social media.
Eye Candy Motorsport has more than 200,000 Facebook followers. So too does Troy Candy.
But it’s something Williams has a love/hate relationship with.
It chews up a huge chunk of his time.
“They keep changing the algorithm,” he says. “So how often you post, what times you post, what’s engaging, key words that limit your posts.
“It’s not only the time I spend being on social media but the time I’m learning about it, keeping up to date with it.”
On the flip side, the rewards are massive. I ask how important it has been to his businesses.
“It’s all of it. I’ve never paid for advertising since I’ve been in business, which is more than 10 years now.”
Like all successful businesses, however, Williams says something a little more old-fashioned was also involved – sheer bloody-minded hard work.
He talks about 80 hour weeks, eating at the shop, staying until midnight and returning early the next morning.
“I just think that, if you’re willing to work hard and be disciplined, you’ll be successful,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what course you’ve got, or what degree you’ve got, these days, you’ve got social media, you’ve got your own voice, you can start your own business, get your name out there. As long as you’re willing to work hard.”
The social media side has other downsides. Not all of the attention is positive. There’s the “haters”. The cynics. The ones that want to believe the worst. To see the tall poppy fall.
An opportunity they got when Williams was delivered a second surprise.
“When you’re someone quite young and driving flashy cars and stuff people are ready to go, ah yeah, he’s a drug dealer,” he says.
“And then when you get thrown on the news as a drug raid and stuff, all these haters, they suddenly think their conspiracy’s confirmed.”
A NASTY WAKE-UP CALL
Troy Williams lives in an area that has copped a hammering from the youth crime crisis.
Neighbours have had their cars stolen.
Early on the morning of May 19, 2022, and still half asleep, he heard loud banging noises coming from downstairs. He though he was about to become the latest victim.
“I woke up and I thought they’re in. I was half asleep obviously and then I’m like, shit, they’re in the garage, and they’re trying to get my car out. That’s what the banging is.”
It wasn’t. The banging was police breaking down his front door with a battering ram.
“When I ran down and I saw the police I relaxed. I thought maybe they had chased somebody into my house or something. I didn’t know what was going on.
“But when they threw me to the ground and cuffed me, they were just pulling everything out of my house, then I actually started to panic because I thought shit, maybe someone’s set me up, done something. There was a million things going through my head.
“And getting thrown to the ground in front of your missus and your kid, them not knowing what’s going on. They were scared. It was very full on.
“We didn’t sleep right for ages after that. Every little noise down the side of the house, we just thought, is someone going to bash our door in?
“It was a shit experience.”
Police had a warrant that alleged Williams had been involved in trafficking cocaine. A claim reportedly made via CrimeStoppers, a vehicle for anonymous tip-offs. A claim for which not a skerrick of evidence has ever been produced.
The allegation, the coverage on the evening news stung. And stung hard.
Williams worried it would hurt his businesses, and his relationship with charities he was involved with – he says he has donated $7 million through his businesses over the years.
“Kids are stealing cars and running through houses and you call the cops and you might get one divvy van rock up, but then they send three cop cars to my house when I’ve got no priors and I’ve got nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with drugs.
“I would never know how they got permission to do that or why. That’s frickin crazy.
“But when you’re running your own businesses and networking, doing big business and stuff, it’s crazy how they can throw you on the media like that.”
Police searched Williams’s house – “tore it apart” – but all they found was some Tramadol and some CBD oil. And the former had been left behind by a neighbour.
Still, he was charged with possessing dangerous drugs. Something else he couldn’t fathom.
When the case got to court months later, the police prosecutor simply stood up and told the Southport Magistrates Court: “We offer no evidence in relation to possessing dangerous drugs.”
Williams still does not know what led police to his door. Who fed them the false tip. Or why.
Someone out to get him maybe. To cut him down. Tall poppy syndrome.
Either way they failed.
The same could not be said about what happened in June this year.
THE WORST PHONE CALL
Five in the morning, Williams was disturbed by police again. But this time they weren’t at his door. They were calling from Arundel, where he had established Eye Candy Motorsports Gold Coast (ECMGC).
“It was insane. Definitely one of the worst phone calls I’ve got. They just said, ‘Are you the business owner of ECMGC? I said, yeah, and they’re like, ‘we regret to inform you it’s on fire’.
“That was at about 4.30 or 5am. And I thought, ‘what the hell do you mean it’s on fire?’
Straight away I was thinking, shit, has someone left something on?
“And then you don’t know what’s in there, you can’t think what cars are in there, how bad is it. I felt sick. I felt sick for weeks.”
The building had been subject of an arson attack.
The impact was devastating. And not just financially, but also emotionally, because he had no idea who did it, or why.
On Wednesday police charged two men in relation to the incident, something he is “very, very happy” about. Maybe he’ll get some answers soon. But for now, he still doesn’t know.
“I don’t know who, what or why but I do know that my main concern is I want my name cleared of the rumours.
“I just want the whole thing sorted so my name is cleared, because I’ve done nothing wrong.
“The police asked do you owe anyone money, do you this, do you that, and I can honestly look at them and say, I know I don’t owe anyone money, I know I haven’t ripped anyone off, I haven’t done the wrong thing.”
A CHANGE IN DIRECTION
The fire prompted a major change in Williams’s life. He’s still involved, but after pouring his heart and soul into it since arriving on the Gold Coast, he’s taken a big step back from the day-to-day running of ECMGC.
Son Saint is a big part of the reason why.
“If I get kicked when I’m down I get back up but, with everything else going on, it (the fire) was very demotivating,” he says.
“Before having my kid, if I worked 70 hours a week, I didn’t care. But now I have a kid, if I work 70 hours a week I see that as being away from him for 70 hours a week.
“So now I’m being really selective about my time – who I hang out with, what I do for work, the return on what I’m doing.
“I think my business partner, he’s going to just really take over and run it solely.
“I’ll still go down there and support the boys and get my cars wrapped there and all that.
“But I just can’t be involved any more. Too much work went in, too much time, and with all the other businesses going on and how much I want to spend time with Saint, I just can’t be involved so much.
“I used to be able to work back to midnight, not care, skip dinner, or whatever. Now I love making sure I get home in time, seeing him.
“He’s one of my biggest motivations now, Saint. I want to make sure he grows up having anything he wants.”
THE LATEST VENTURE
The chances of Williams being able to provide that life for Saint have been massively boosted by his latest venture – the launch of a range of vodka mixers called Gee Up.
As with Eye Candy Motorsports, the ingredients for success have been the same: hard work, a gap in the market, and the power of social media.
“When I started the snorkel (a drinking funnel he invented and sold online), because I can’t drink beer I used to just put them on vodka cruisers.
“So when the snorkel went very viral, so did the cruisers.
“I was posting cruisers all the time, and then heaps of people started drinking them.
“People were coming up to me, saying ‘I used to hate these girly drinks, these lolly waters, and then when you were drinking them I just started drinking them and now I love them.
“They had started drinking cruisers because of me.
“People kept saying, surely they’re paying ya, and I’m like no, and they’re, are you kidding? You’re doing massive marketing for free.
“They said why don’t you ask them to do something together, maybe make your own flavour. So I asked them and they said no. So I thought, I’ll just make my own and try and grow it bigger.”
Williams started working on the concept in 2019, but put it on hold because of Covid. He describes the experience of getting the business up and running as “overwhelming”.
“It was just crazy. I had no idea how much of a beast it was.”
However since launching at the start of the year, Gee Up has grown rapidly, moving quickly from just online sales to a presence in bottle shops across the country.
“Our first sales were in February this year. It’s grown really quick. Last month, July, we did $1m in sales. It’s amazing. so we’re all really happy about that.
“In July we got into the head distributors in Australia. we pretty much went from a $500,000 month to a $1m month.”
Williams, who doesn’t drink beer, is especially proud that Gee Up has smashed a stigma he endured himself for many years.
“The whole reason behind it and the whole reason the thing happened with cruisers and everything – and we’ve heard this time and time again in the industry – is we’re probably only one of the few premixed drinks to target males in the vodka space.
“A male would normally go to beer, a Jack, a Jim Beam, anything but that.
“I’ve been one of the first people really, I’ve been breaking the stigma to show blokes, you’re allowed to drink a purple or pink vodka.
“When I was 18, drinking them because I couldn’t drink beer, I copped shit.
“The amount of times I got shit for drinking a ‘chick’s drink’. It was, ‘nice drink, do they make it for men?’ and blah blah blah.
“So I joke to the young ones, we paved the way fro you guys, we copped all the shit, now you’re allowed to drink ’em.”
THE FUTURE
Despite wanting to spend more time with Saint, Williams is far from done yet.
The mind, he says, is “always ticking”.
He hopes to follow the success of Gee Up with another new venture – an energy drink called Flipside Energy he’s been developing with friend Adrian Portelli, owner of a business called LMCT+, which Williams is also heavily involved with.
“It’s really exciting. It’s like an energy drink mixed with multivitamins. So you get all your vitamins at the same time. We’ve done our first test batch run and we’re almost ready to pull the trigger on that.”
It’s been an eventful three years since he moved to Queensland. He could probably do with a rest. But that’s not the real Troy Williams.
“It’s funny, sometimes I get so stressed I can’t wait to lay on the couch and do nothing for the day,” he says.
“And really, I get that day, and I lay on the couch for 15 minutes and I think, shit, I need to go and do something. It’s very hard for me to switch off.
“If I’m overseas, or wherever I am, I’ve always got the laptop, doing Zooms, sorting out problems.
“But I’m excited to see what the future holds with the growth of the businesses, stuff like that.
“Hopefully I don’t have any more dramas or run-ins with the police. Even if they are helping me, with the fire, it’s still a shit thing. If they’re involved there’s something going on that’s a headache.
“Hopefully I can just work.”
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