Bear Grylls Is Taking On His Most Daring Adventure Yet: Entrepreneurship

Bear Grylls has devoted his life to high-risk outdoor adventures and been remarkably successful in most all of them. An early exception was breaking his back in a skydiving accident while serving in the elite British Special Air Services. Proving the maxim that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, he went on to climb Mount Everest just 18 months later, earning him a place in the Guinness Book of Records for being the youngest British citizen to reach the summit.

These, plus numerous other adventures that tested and honed his outdoor skills, served as a platform for his next act. He wrote his first book in 2000—Facing Up in the U.K. and The Kid Who Climbed Mount Everest in the U.S. That led to a television career, including Man Vs. Wild and Running Wild with Bear Grylls. He continued to write, producing a best-selling autobiography, Mud Sweat and Tears, a series of children’s adventure books, a fictional Will Jaeger action series and his latest, The Greatest Story Ever Told, an eyewitness retelling of Jesus’ story that he called “my hardest achievement” and the one he is “most proud of.”

All the while, he was venturing into entrepreneurship, staying in his outdoor-adventure lane with Bear Grylls Ventures, Bear Grylls Survival Academy, and Be Military Fit. More recently, though, his entrepreneurial drive—much like his faith-based writing—has taken him further afield.

New Horizons

Grylls has partnered in two new consumer-facing ventures: Water2, a U.K.-based water filtration company and Organised, a nutritional company specializing in beef-organ supplements. The companies were founded in 2023 and 2024 respectively.

These ventures are testing new muscles in Grylls’ formidable skill set, yet continued entrepreneurial success is not guaranteed. In fact, one has over a 90% chance of reaching the summit of Mount Everest and less than a 2% probability of dying in the attempt, compared to a 50% likelihood that a small business will survive five years.

While this is not an apples-to-apples comparison, it highlights a statistical curiosity: a well-prepared climber has better odds of summiting the world’s highest mountain peak than an entrepreneur has to keep a new business going over its first five years.

Both pursuits take courage and perseverance, but the likelihood of a devastating fall—or failure—is greater in entrepreneurship.

Yet Grylls is confident about the ultimate success for the two companies he’s invested in and the two entrepreneurs he’s mentoring.

“These two companies are such outliers and clear winners that align with our vision to help people live better,” he shared with me, adding, “If you truly want to help other people, success will always follow.”

Pure, Clean Water From The Tap

Water2 was founded by Charles Robinson, a 20-something entrepreneur who got his start during the pandemic selling hand sanitizers under the Gelcard brand. After that health crisis abated, he turned his attention to the more pervasive public-health issue of clean, fresh-tasting water from the tap—a problem that has spawned a $364 billion global bottled water market that ultimately contributes to environmental degradation and poor water quality through microplastic contamination.

Working under the wings of University College London professor Luiza Campos, he brought a compact, easy-to-install, under-the-sink water filter to market. It removes contaminants commonly found in tap water, including lead and other heavy metals, chlorine, chemical treatment byproducts, microplastics and other sources of contamination.

Sold originally direct-to-consumer in the U.K., but now also available online in the U.S. at $149 for the full system, including a filter that lasts about a year before replacement, Grylls got turned onto Water2 by one of his son’s who saw a social media post by Robinson explaining the many problems surrounding water from the tap.

After becoming a customer in 2024—Grylls knows better than anyone the critical need for clean water when out in the wild—and meeting Robinson, he threw his support behind the company’s mission to deliver pure, fresh-tasting water from the tap and to disrupt the bottled water industry.

“Our message is simple and universal: tap water should taste great, be as clean as possible and never cost the earth,” Robinson shared. “It’s not just about fresh water, it’s about smarter, more sustainable use of it. And there’s an even bigger environmental impact: by removing the need for bottled water, each Water2 system prevents thousands of plastic bottles from being produced and discarded every year.”

Grylls rolled up his sleeves to help develop Water2’s next innovation: a filtered showerhead that removes up to 90% of chlorine, filters out heavy metals and microplastics, boosts the feeling of water pressure and prevents limescale buildup.

Both Grylls and his son have sensitive skin that benefits from showering with filtered water, so it’s personal for him.

The Water2 showerhead, sold for $136, including a filter that lasts 90 days, goes up against the popular Jolie showerhead, selling for $165. However, Jolie is positioned as a beauty accessory while Water2 aims at consumers’ wider health and wellness concerns.

Currently, Water2 filters are being used in 200,000 U.K. households and the company is scouting out launch sites to expand distribution in the U.S. market. While Robinson aims to grow Water2 into a billion business, Grylls said it’s not all about the money.

“We always try to work for something more than just worldly success,” he shared. “We care most about the team, the community, the mission, and making the lives of everyone who comes into our orbit a little happier, healthier, and more adventurous. That’s the goal.”

Fuel For Life

With his focus on that goal, another venture caught Grylls’ eye: Organised, a nutritional supplements company founded by Niall Kiddle that offers organ-based protein powder. Organ meats—liver, heart, kidney, lung and spleen—have largely disappeared from the modern diet, yet humans have consumed them alongside muscle meat since the beginning of time.

Organised protein powder delivers the nutrient-rich benefits of organ meat without the ick-factor, helped along by a little natural honey and maple syrup. And just like Gryll’s involvement with Water2, he got behind Organised after experiencing the failure of a vegan diet to promote health.

“I bought into the idea that vegetarianism and veganism was somehow better for my health and better for the planet,” he said in a video interview with Kiddle. “But after a while, I found my health really went downhill.”

Following his eldest son’s example, who was eating a diet focused on meat and eggs, and observations from animals in the wild—“Look at what lions do when they take down their kill. They go for the soft organs, like the liver, first. That’s how the scales dropped from my eyes after seeing the signs in animals, nature and among indigenous people.”—he brought natural grass-fed beef back into his diet and his health, strength, stamina and sleep improved. Organised protein powder added even more.

After meeting Kiddle, he took one step further and got on board with the company mission to restore nutrients lost in the modern diet. In that, Organised is turning the traditional nutrition supplement business on its head.

“What if health wasn’t about adding more, but remembering what we lost?” the Organised website states. “Organised is the only supplement in the world returning to real food, the way humans were meant to eat.”

As much as Grylls believes in the product and the company mission, what’s more important is his belief in Kiddle.

“People first. Always,” he answered to my question about how he evaluates investing in a business. “We partner with folk we really like, trust and believe in. Obviously, the mission must align with our goals, but we primarily back good people with good hearts who live and breathe outside the box in everything they do. It’s where the good stuff in life is always found.”

Meeting New Challenges

Grylls will turn 52 in June this year and while he still has years of adventures ahead—he just wrapped season 9 of Running Wild, which he said is “probably our biggest season yet in terms of stars and adventures”—it’s natural to evolve one’s life mission for broader impact as one ages. Helping the next generation of young business builders is one way he is doing it.

“We try to stay pretty focused on the core things that we create and care about most. Under that category comes filming our Running Wild series, our LIVE shows, my book, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and then our two consumer-facing businesses: Water2 and Organised. The goal is always the same across all our endeavours: to inspire and empower people to live healthy, exciting, happy lives, rooted in friendships, natural health, the outdoors, faith and adventure,” he concluded.