The Giddy Goat Co-Founder Lost His Leg And Kept On Brewing

In the summer of 2019, then-25-year-old Carson Clough was living in Lake Norman, learning how to roast at Summit Coffee, and on the verge of opening The Giddy Goat Coffee Roasters in Plaza Midwood with his lifelong friend Rhyne Davis.

The Charlotte native took a break from his “workaholic” lifestyle one afternoon that August to wakeboard with friends. He fell from his board, and when the driver turned around to pick him up, the boat struck him. The boat’s propeller severed his right leg below the knee, and his left leg required extensive reconstruction.

He was released from Carolinas Medical Center nine days after the accident. He began walking on a prosthetic leg a month later. He and Davis opened The Giddy Goat the following year. The U.S. Paralympic Triathlon Team recruited him less than three years after his accident, and he won a silver medal at the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris. Today, less than six years after his accident, Clough leads The Giddy Goat’s two locations and plans to add three more. He continues to train and compete around the world in triathlons, and he’s learning a new sport, sled hockey.

“I do everything 150%,” Clough says through a smile. “Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not good.” We’re at Reid’s Fine Foods in Myers Park. His service dog, Calder, sleeps below his chair. Clough is wearing his running blade, a carbon-fiber prosthetic designed for sports, which the Paralympic Talent ID Program gifted him.

Now 31, Clough says he thinks of his life in terms of before and after the accident, but he’s not one to dwell on what he’s lost—his personality doesn’t allow it. “I had some physical battles to overcome, but I didn’t really have a lot of mental battles or dark days. I can’t even think of a single dark day.” That would be hard to believe coming from most people. But it isn’t difficult to buy from Clough, who seems to smile constantly. He exudes energy and positivity, and he takes the limitations others put on him as a challenge. Over the course of our conversation, he hops up from his chair several times to open the door beside us for folks whose hands are full, and he takes time to chat with an older man who stops to pet Calder.

“I mean, there were days that were tougher than others from a pain perspective, but I was never like, ‘Why me?’ The leg is gone, and it’s not growing back. … I’m fortunate that that’s how I looked at it, and that’s how I kind of look at everything,” Clough says. “I did have close people around me who did have more of a mental challenge from the fact that I was injured, so I gave them two weeks to mourn the loss of my leg.”

Here’s Clough in his own words, edited for length and clarity.

Sports was one of the big parts of my life growing up. Although they didn’t have the term for ADHD, I think my parents realized that I was ADHD and had way too much energy for anybody in the public. So the best way to tame that somewhat was to get me into as many sporting events as possible.

When sports were over for the summer, I would go up to my grandparents’ and live the luxury life in Sandbridge Beach, Virginia. That’s where I learned to surf and just became an absolute beach bum.

I went to UNC and got my degrees in biology, chemistry, and business entrepreneurship. I was thinking pre-med at first. Sciences and math were my strengths. I still am learning how to read, and history doesn’t stick with me at all. But I was just lost in terms of what to do. … It was a fun challenge at the time, but I eventually decided that pre-med wasn’t the route.

I played lacrosse my freshman year at Carolina and still had eligibility after graduation. One of my coaches from high school lacrosse, Mike Murphy, called me and goes, “Carson, I know you don’t want to get a job, but you’ve got to do something productive after college, so why don’t you use your eligibility to play lacrosse?”

Not even thinking it was a possibility, I told him I’d only be interested in playing for (Division II) schools in Florida, Colorado, and California. He said he knew a coach down in Florida, and so I ended up at a small school called Florida Tech. I tell everybody I got my master’s in surfing. I did also get my MBA—I guess that’s important.

After graduation, I was about to go to Oktoberfest in Germany to study beer, which, at the time, was my professional studies, whether that’s good or bad. Before I left, I was hanging out on the porch with my buddy Rhyne Davis. He was in the coffee business. His family started and owned S&D Coffee in Concord. He said, “Want to open up a retail shop where we can roast coffee and teach the general public what roasting is?” And I was like, “Cool. What is roasting? What is coffee?”

Clough founded The Giddy Goat in 2020 with his lifelong friend Rhyne Davis. “People are excited for what The Giddy Goat is bringing,” he says, “so it’s growing.”

I went ahead to Oktoberfest and ended up going to a bunch of cafés. And I just thought it was cool. Especially in Europe, it’s kind of this bar environment without the hangover the next morning. And it’s this product that puts a smile on everyone’s face and energizes them. At the beginning of 2019, I said, “Rhyne, let’s go for it.”

Rhyne’s the owner (of The Giddy Goat), and I’m one of the co-founders, but I was in charge of getting this baby going and utilizing his wealth of knowledge from his past. I moved to Lake Norman to learn how to roast, do business development, learn what an espresso machine was, what kinds of coffee drinks there are, what are the ratios when it comes to roasting coffee. There are a lot of aspects of roasting that correlate to biology and chemistry—the chemistry of what the bean goes through when you’re roasting it. And I just grabbed onto that and was stoked. I was roasting every day I could, and when I wasn’t roasting, I was thinking about roasting.

We had an agreement with Summit Coffee. They said they were not interested in coming to the Charlotte area at the time. They taught me how to roast.

The summer of 2019, I’d really become a workaholic. That’s something in my nature that’s a double-edged sword. I’d realized that working out was a way to take my productivity at work to a new level. So I was in the best shape of my life that summer. But then August is when I got into my accident, and I was awarded a below-the-knee right amputation.

Nine days later, I got in a wheelchair when nobody was looking, ripped out my IV, and snuck off and went home. Just kidding—but that would be such a cool story. At the time, I didn’t have a prosthetic leg, and my left leg had also sustained pretty severe damage, and I had what is called an external fixator, which was basically scaffolding that allowed me to walk and put full pressure on my leg while also letting everything heal. Everything down there was a little messed up. As soon as I could put full weight on it, they let me go. I lived right behind the hospital, so a group (of friends and family) wheeled me home.

The next day, I was like, “Where’s my laptop? I’ve gotta get back to business.” I also went right back to the working-out mindset. I call it “sweating out the demons,” whether that’s mental or physical demons. I truly believe that when you keep your blood moving, you heal faster. I’d use my granny walker to go from the back room of my house to the front room, then exit the front door, then go down to Freedom Park. My carrots that were dangled in front of me is that I still had this great business opportunity that Rhyne and Lisa (Rhyne’s wife and other business partner) provided. While I was in the hospital, they’d found out they’d secured the Plaza Midwood building.

Everybody kept giving me these timelines for things. They said, “Oh, you’re going to be in the hospital for three months.” If you tell me that, I take it as a challenge, and now it’s me against that challenge. So I got out of the hospital as quickly as I could. Then I said, “Give me a leg, and I’m gonna learn how to walk on it.” I got my external fixator off my left leg three weeks before 2020. Right after, I made it up three stories of stairs without my crutches. The next day, I threw them away. If the crutch isn’t there, I can’t lean on it.

The Giddy Goat supports the Navy Seal Foundation by selling bags (of coffee) with their logo on it and donating proceeds. Every January, our leadership team goes to Tampa Bay for their (3.4-mile open water swim) Tampa Bay Frogman Swim fundraiser. In 2022, I was just gonna kayak for our general manager, Enzo Pasos, and he was going to swim. The day before the event, they had a practice swim, and he’s like, “Come on, let’s go in.” I’m like, “OK, I like water.” I kept my leg on, and I was one of the first to go in. I was also the last one out. Enzo’s dad swam with me and was seriously concerned for my life.

I think somebody must’ve seen me and thought, This guy’s crazy enough to do a triathlon, because a few weeks later, I got a mass email from USA Triathlon. It had the Olympic rings, and then it had a bunch of weird-looking things that ended up being the Paralympic rings. It said, “Send us a 200-meter swim time and a 1K run time.” 

I didn’t really know what triathlon was, but I heard it’s a terrible sport. But there are so many people doing it, there must be something about it. It was then that it kind of clicked that, based on this new adventure I had been on, that I’m gonna have doors opening that I never could’ve dreamt of.

Clough at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, Courtesy photo

The Olympics were never a dream of mine, but when I was younger, one of my favorite movies was Miracle. I wanted to wear a Team USA hockey jersey. Well, this isn’t a hockey jersey, but there’s a chance. I had Enzo show me how to swim. And then I jumped in the pool, no goggles, my hair was super long, I had board shorts on. He was like, “What is wrong with you?” I’m like, “I’m not wearing a Speedo. I don’t need goggles. I’m a surfer!”

I sent in my times, and it wasn’t long before they invited me to Colorado Springs to the Olympic Training Center. I was in my first race three weeks later. I had to learn how to run, bike, and swim. I hadn’t even done those things in my two-legged life. But I was able to complete the race, and I did it in my walking (prosthetic) leg. Everyone else had fancy bikes. I couldn’t clip my prosthetic into my bike like everyone else.

Then I did another race that I ended up winning. USA Triathlon added me to their Talent ID Program, and they got me a running prosthetic.

I started training 15 hours a week in 2022 and had to figure out how to fit that into a schedule that was all about coffee. This was a test if I could have two things that take up a lot of time and use them together to become better at both. It taught me a lot about what I was doing wrong in my job, and I was able to elevate my position as a leader and a creator.

Calder is my babysitter. He’s a mobility assistant service dog that the Charlotte Checkers and Project to Heal donated to me. I originally said I didn’t want a dog when I was still in a wheelchair because I couldn’t give him a normal life. I want him to be able to go do dog things. Now, I just keep up with his basic service training, when my mother doesn’t absolutely ruin that and spoil him. But he was one of my motivating factors to get out of my wheelchair.

People are excited for what The Giddy Goat is bringing, so it’s growing. Right now, we’re working on four major projects. We have a warehouse in South End, at Griffith and New Bern (streets), where we are going to have a commercial kitchen to be able to produce more food and distribute, and then a café—basically a bigger Plaza Midwood. Then, we’ve been at the Dowd (YMCA) for two years now, and they’re giving us the opportunity to expand. We’re adding a smoothie and shake program. I’m going to bring some of the things I’ve learned from triathlon in terms of nutrition and pre- and post-workout supplements and drinks.

I’m hoping to take it to the next level and share the professional advice I’ve gotten. Third is there’s another gym in SouthPark called Motion, and we will be doing a similar café in there. And fourth, we’re partnering with Protagonist, who’s opening a liquor concept called the Antagonist, and we’ll have a smaller coffee program there, on the Dilworth side of South End.

I just got back to training following the Paris games. It’s no fun. But for the next two years, I’m going to try to develop my weaknesses. I want to keep myself in a place where I can keep my world ranking and go to these international races but also allow myself to focus on and prioritize the business. I want to use triathlon to supplement these Giddy Goat expansions.

I recently got into sled hockey, which is hockey for disabled people. This is my chance to wear a Team USA hockey jersey. I’m not giving myself any credit that I will be able to actually get there. But I did get the bug. So, you know, I’m gonna go for it.