Will Carr doesn’t talk about grit like it’s a brand asset. He talks about it like a choice you make after impact.

“Are you going to pick yourself up when you get punched in the face?” he says early in his conversation. His answer is immediate: “Yep. And keep going.”

That isn’t justmotivational poster language for Carr. It’s lived experience, sharpened through sport, tested through entrepreneurship, and grounded in a faith that asks him to become the kind of person who can hold both the win and the wreckage.

A 6’11” Kid on a Corn Farm Who Learned Community Before Success

Carr is 6’11”, and he knows it’s the first detail people clock. But the more defining detail is where he grew up: rural Midwest, on a corn farm, in the pre-cellphone era where “going to play” meant hopping on a four-wheeler and trusting you’d find your way back home.

Sports didn’t become his outlet the way it does for many kids. For Carr, it became belonging.

It was how he spent time with his dad. How he connected with family. How he socialized when “neighbor” could mean a long country road away. Baseball was his first love. Basketball became the logical next chapter as he kept growing taller and taller, until the path was practically chosen for him.

He went on to play college basketball at Colorado School of Mines while studying engineering, and later played professionally overseas. Eventually, like every athlete learns, the clock runs out. The identity shifts. The built-in team disappears. And you find out what you’re made of when the uniform is gone.

Why Athletes Make Dangerous Entrepreneurs

Carr believes athleticism trains you for entrepreneurship in ways business school can’t replicate.

Athletes don’t just learn to win. They learn what losing is for.

“You learn to love to lose,” he says, because losing is where the data lives. It’s where you reflect, retool, and return sharper. Winning feels good, but it doesn’t force evolution.

In business, that mindset becomes a survival skill. You can lose nine out of ten times and still be the person who wins in the end—because the most successful people are often the ones who have failed the most.

Schroeder echoes this with her own story of extreme highs and lows in entrepreneurship and the “zones of turbulence” that show up right before a breakthrough. Success, she argues, requires capacity: the ability to hold the equal and opposite swing of challenge.

Carr offers an image from Taoist philosophy: the pendulum. Pull it high to one side, and it will swing hard to the other. The work isn’t eliminating the swing. The work is getting comfortable inside it—then finding the center.

Faith Without the Noise: “The Kingdom of God Is Within Us”

Schroeder asks Carr what people misunderstand about faith. His answer is direct: many people’s first exposure is organized religion—rules, dogma, shame, constant self-judgment.

Carr’s faith is more intimate than institutional.

For him, Christianity is about following Christ and remembering that “the kingdom of God is within us.” Not outward seeking. Not proving. Not performing. A connection already placed inside you.

From that lens, hardship becomes something you can hold differently. Carr speaks to gratitude in seasons most people rush to escape, because he believes in a simple but demanding idea: if anything in your life were different, everything would be different. The painful detours shape the entire map.

The Day a “Smart” Coupon Code Turned Into a $7,000 Punch in the Face

If Carr’s philosophy sounds calm, it’s because he’s paid for it.

Earlier in his entrepreneurial life, he ran a protein powder business. A manufacturer added the wrong ingredient into a batch—an error that made the inventory unsellable under the original brand. Carr signed off on it, so he treated the fallout as his responsibility.

He had 2,000 units he couldn’t move. So he did what entrepreneurs do: turned the problem into a product strategy.

He launched an Amazon-exclusive brand in a week—fast, scrappy, designed to offload the inventory and recoup costs. To speed up shipping for influencers, he created a 99% off code only he knew, then used it to buy his own product and let Amazon handle delivery.

It was clever. Until it wasn’t.

The coupon surfaced through a deals ecosystem connected to browser plugins like Honey, then got posted on a Facebook deals page. In two to three hours, Carr watched a “viral” spike in sales turn into a gut drop: strangers had cleaned out his inventory for pennies.

Amazon shipped everything. Then charged him roughly $7,000 for fulfillment.

The result: a financial hit, a hard lesson, and a moment that separates builders from dreamers.

“What are you gonna do?” Carr asks. “Are you gonna stop or are you going to pick yourself up when you get punched in the face?”

He doesn’t romanticize the pain. He acknowledges the emotional reality—sometimes you do need to feel it. But he refuses to live there.

Schroeder adds a practical take: if you fully allow a wave of emotion—no resisting, no numbing—you can move through a full emotional cycle quickly. The takeaway isn’t to bypass feelings. It’s to process them, then keep going.

Carr’s “win” from the disaster wasn’t money. It was capability: he learned he can launch a brand in a week. He learned what not to do next time. He learned that even a punch can become training.

Genesee Nutrition: A Protein Bar Built Like a Values Statement

Today, Carr is the founder of Genesee Nutrition, a company built around athletic performance, clean ingredients, and a philosophy of fuel that’s more foundational than trendy.

Genesee makes a grass-fed bison tallow-based protein bar, sweetened with raw honey. Carr calls it the only one of its kind on the market, with tallow as a standout ingredient because it provides nutrient-dense healthy fats.

He breaks down his food hierarchy simply:

• Hydration first (he notes the body is largely water)

• Protein next

• Healthy fats to support the system

Genesee’s core ingredients reflect that:

• Grass-fed bison tallow

• Whey protein isolate

• Collagen peptides

• Organic peanut butter

• Raw honey

The company also has an athletic footprint: Genesee is the official protein bar of the NJCAA, serving junior colleges across the U.S. Carr works closely with smaller athletic programs and speaks to college athletes about what happens next.

Because the career ends. Even for the few who go pro, it ends soon.

And then you have to answer the question most people avoid until it’s too late: Who am I without the sport?

The Real Business He’s In: Identity After the Jersey Comes Off

Carr loves fuel, performance, and competition. But his deeper mission is helping athletes translate discipline into adulthood.

He points out what often breaks after sports: community.

Team sports give you a built-in ecosystem—friends, structure, belonging, accountability. When that disappears, people scramble. Carr urges athletes to think ahead: What are you passionate about? How do you want your days to look? How will you build community on purpose?

For Carr, entrepreneurship didn’t replace sport. It extended the same hunger: to compete, improve, and create something real.

And underneath it all is a family-first orientation. Genesee is a small family business. He runs it with his cousin. He homeschools his daughter. He designs his life around the people he loves, not the optics.

Lifestyle Freedom, According to Will Carr: Cut the Unnecessary, Keep the Sacred

Schroeder introduces her concept of lifestyle freedom: money doesn’t automatically create time. Often, the structure you build to earn binds you—golden handcuffs disguised as success.

Carr’s advice is practical and almost stubbornly unglamorous:

1. Get crystal clear about what you want your life to look like.

2. Identify what you don’t need, and remove it.

He offers an example: he drives a 2012 Toyota Tundra with over 200,000 miles. He could buy a new truck. He doesn’t want the payment. Less debt means less required cash flow. Less required cash flow means more choices.

His philosophy is simple: the more you simplify, the more you can direct your life instead of financing a version of it you don’t even want.

The Unconventional Life, in One Sentence: Choose the Sacrifice That Buys You Back Your Life

Everything creates sacrifice. Either you sacrifice for the life you want, or you sacrifice the life you want for things you don’t need.

He pairs that with gratitude—no matter where you are in the journey. Not as toxic positivity, but as a stabilizer. A way of remembering what matters when society sells you a louder target.

Because you can have all the money in the world, Carr says, and still be crying in your Ferrari at night.

And to him, that’s not success.

Giveaway

This week’s giveaway is a two-part bundle:

• Genesee Nutrition protein bars

• A unicorn-themed coloring book created by Will’s daughter, Blakeley Darling

Bonus: If you don’t win the giveaway, you can use code “unconventional life” for 15% off on Genesee’s website.

Connect with Will:

• Website: willcarrspeaks.com

• Instagram: @willcarrspeaks

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/willcarrspeaks/

• Blakeley’s coloring book is available via BlakeleyDarling.com

In the wellness world, water is everywhere in conversation but rarely examined deeply. People debate supplements, track sleep scores, optimize workouts. 

Yet the single highest-volume input into the human body—water—often goes unquestioned.

For Charlie Carlisle, that blind spot became an obsession.

Carlisle is the co-founder of Rorra, a Colorado-based water filtration company building what he describes as a “Dyson-style” business in water—premium, design-forward systems backed by rigorous lab testing. But Rorra didn’t begin as a branding exercise. It began with a problem that felt personal.

And uncomfortable.

A Baby’s Eczema and the Question No One Was Asking

Rorra’s origin story isn’t rooted in trend forecasting. It started when Carlisle’s co-founder, Brian, became a father. Shortly after birth, his daughter developed eczema that wouldn’t clear.

They tried everything—creams, different fabrics, dietary changes.

Nothing worked.

Then they installed a simple filter on her bathing water.

Her skin began clearing.

That shift triggered a deeper inquiry: If water could impact skin that dramatically, what else were people missing? And why wasn’t water being examined with the same scrutiny as food or supplements?

Instead of rushing to market, Carlisle and Brian spent six months immersed in research. They brought in industry advisers, studied filtration technologies, and analyzed where the water industry was overpromising and under-delivering.

What they found was an industry saturated with plastic systems, aggressive marketing claims, and limited transparency.

Rorra would be built differently.

The Real Health Lever: Volume and Bioaccumulation

Carlisle frames water through one key lens: quantity.

The average person consumes between half a gallon and a gallon of water per day. No supplement, no smoothie, no functional food comes close in volume. Which means small exposures—repeated daily—compound.

He emphasizes contaminants that bioaccumulate and are difficult to remove once inside the body:

• Lead
• PFAS, often referred to as “forever chemicals”
• Microplastics

Particularly for children, developmental risk raises the stakes.

For Rorra, filtration isn’t about trend-based features. It’s about reducing meaningful exposure to measurable contaminants, validated down to parts per billion or trillion.

The Mineral Mistake Most People Don’t Know About

While many biohacking conversations focus on structured water or hydrogen water, Carlisle takes a more grounded approach: focus on what can be measured.

One overlooked factor, he says, is mineral content.

Reverse osmosis systems can strip water down to near-zero content, leaving it functionally distilled. While effective at removing contaminants, fully demineralized water—if not remineralized—can have unintended consequences, potentially impacting the body’s mineral balance over time.

Rorra’s countertop system was intentionally designed to preserve beneficial mineral content while removing harmful contaminants.

The logic is simple: health optimization isn’t only about removing what’s harmful. It’s also about retaining what’s essential.

And on a practical level, minerals improve taste. Many premium bottled waters are prized specifically for their mineral richness.

Design as Strategy, Not Decoration

Carlisle describes Rorra as a “Dyson-style” water company for a reason.

Historically, filtration systems have prioritized function over form—or claimed function without validation. Rorra’s approach is to integrate both:

• Stainless steel construction instead of plastic
• Extensive third-party lab testing
• Publicly available data
• Products designed to live on a countertop without feeling industrial

Their flagship product is a 2.5-gallon gravity-fed stainless steel system inspired by legacy designs but refined for modern homes. The use of high-end stainless steel isn’t aesthetic vanity—it reduces plastic exposure and is designed to last for years, reducing waste over time.

Scaling that level of quality is operationally harder. Supply chains become more complex. Manufacturing tolerances tighten. But for Carlisle, difficulty is not a deterrent.

It’s a filter.

The Entrepreneurial Thread: Obsession Over Opportunity

Carlisle’s entrepreneurial instincts began early. As a child, he ran small businesses—pet care, car detailing—while watching his mother and stepfather build companies of their own. Entrepreneurship wasn’t theoretical. It was modeled.

In college, he studied finance at the University of Denver, expecting to follow the conventional investment banking route. After experiencing that environment firsthand, he realized it wasn’t aligned.

Rather than forcing a prestigious path, he leaned into startups and building.

His advice for aspiring founders is direct:

• Work on something you can obsess over for at least five years.
• Don’t chase money alone. Burnout follows misalignment.
• Avoid glorifying the solo founder narrative.

Rorra is built in partnership with Brian, someone Carlisle has worked with for nearly a decade across ventures. Their skills are complementary—Carlisle oversees the tangible world of engineering, design, supply chain, and fulfillment, while Brian leads digital presence, marketing, and revenue strategy.

Trust first. Complement second.

Using Discomfort as a Tool

When asked what living an unconventional life means to him, Carlisle answers without hesitation: using discomfort as a tool.

Entrepreneurship, especially product-based entrepreneurship, involves seasons of friction. Rorra’s launch cycle—spanning months of scaling, polishing, and troubleshooting—required sustained intensity with minimal margin.

The key, he says, is anticipation. Expect the friction. Prepare for it.

Then take deliberate breaks.

After one intense scale cycle, Carlisle unplugged for a 10-day backcountry ski trip in Italy. Hard reset. No half-measures.

Grinding without recovery isn’t discipline. It’s erosion.

Discomfort builds capacity—but only if you manage it intentionally.

The 24-Hour Test for Any Idea

Before closing, Carlisle offers a framework for anyone sitting on an idea.

Can you put in 24 cumulative hours of research within a week?

Not scrolling. Not fantasizing. Actual reading, synthesizing, prototyping.

If you can sustain that level of interest and still care, that’s a signal.

If not, the idea may be more ego than obsession.

For Carlisle, building Rorra wasn’t a flash of inspiration. It was sustained curiosity applied to a real-world problem.

Where Rorra Is Now

Rorra currently offers:

• A stainless steel countertop filtration system
• A filtered showerhead

Over the next 24 months, additional product platforms are planned, all designed around the same principles: measurable performance, mineral preservation, durable materials, and radical transparency.

The company’s growth has been accelerated by partnerships within the health and wellness space, reinforcing credibility and expanding awareness—but Carlisle is clear that they are still early in the journey.

 

Giveaway: The Rorra Home Outfitter Upgrade

One lucky Unconventional Life listener will receive:

• 1 Rorra Countertop Filtration System
• Filtered showerheads