About Troy

Troy Butterfield is a highly successful real estate investor and businessman. In partnership with his wife, Lanelle, the couple has specialized in growing, managing, and selling small businesses.

Their past businesses include promotional products and property management companies, and they presently own and operate a service business called Color and Relationships, which helps businesses and families find peace and profit through better personal and employer-employee relationships.

Troy and Lanelle have been married for thirty-four years. They raised four sons (Lanelle insists that she really had five boys to deal with). Their family has expanded to include two daughters-in-law and two grandsons. They love to travel and have set foot in thirty-one of the United States and over twenty-five foreign countries. A man of deep faith and patriotism, Troy loves to talk about two subjects no one is supposed to mention—religion and politics.

Despite his achievements in his personal life and businesses, Troy considers himself to be “just an average sort of guy.” Yet he always wanted his life to make a difference—to mean something more than just trudging through the motions of making a decent living. 

By reading, observing, and emulating good examples, he built his own life around a set of solid principles which he calls “Essential Elements.” These elements enabled him to rise above mediocrity and achieve exponential excellence. After watching so many friends, colleagues, and business acquaintances struggle to find peace and contentment, Troy felt a strong need to share with others his elemental discoveries in what it takes to achieve exponential excellence. The result is his book, Excel Exponentially.

 For the past 8-10 years Troy has been collecting ideas and thoughts about writing a book. Most of his thoughts came from reading books and the observations of others. Early on he pretty much knew he wanted to write about excellence as that is something he has been pursuing his entire life. The title of the book "Excel Exponentially" came early to Troy. After that it was just searching for the values, virtues, characteristics, principles, morals, and truths that would help one reach exponential excellence. 

While doing some reading, Troy would come across words that would start with the letter E and underline them. One by one the "elements" to excel became apparent. He realized that each element would need to start with the letter E. Troy decided that there should be certain criteria for establishing what an element must consist of. He produced a list of criteria and ended up calling them the Essential Elements. Overtime he ended up with over 20 essential elements. He has since narrowed them down to 18 (the number had to start with an E). 

Because of time constraints from working in his small businesses to volunteering his time it has taken a few years to get serious about writing the book. In 2022, Troy and his wife ended up selling one of their small businesses that he spent most of his time working in. By February 2023 they started working on the content of the book. 

While writing the book it became obvious to Troy that excellence is not about being superior or eminence to others. It is about the other "rewards" or "benefits" one receives to excelling. He read a statistic, at one point in time that said, 89% of people want to write a book but only 1% end up doing it. Troy now considers himself very fortunate to be a part of the 1%.