From My Last $600 to $10M in Three Years [+ Acquring BBQs.com]

Ryan S Maltbie

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Published: May 6th, 2023

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Ryan S Maltbie

Founder, BBQGrills.com

$500K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

BBQGrills.com

bbqgrills.com

from Brentwood, CA, USA

started December 2019

$500,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools recommends to grow your business!

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Discover what books Ryan recommends to grow your business!

Want more updates on BBQGrills.com? Check out these stories:

1. From $600 left to $2M in sales in its first year of Business Selling BBQ And Outdoor Kitchen Equipment (2021) ➜

2. Letting Go Of Control Helped Me Grow My Business To $6M/Year [Update] (2022) ➜

This is a follow up story for BBQGrills.com. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published almost 4 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

It’s an absolute pleasure to have the opportunity, once again, to share our story with Starter Story and the incredible progress that BBQGrills.com has made over the past 36 months.

For those of you that may not know, my name is Ryan Maltbie and I’m the Owner and Founder of BBQGrills.com, BBQGrill.com, and the recently acquired BBQs.com. Over the past 36 months, BBQgrills.com has become one of the largest and fastest-growing online retailers of outdoor kitchen equipment, outdoor heater, and you guessed it, BBQ Grills.

In this article, I’m going to cover what our company has experienced over the past two years since the last time we did an update with StartStory and mostly go over our last 8-12 months in business and capture our focus since our last article, where we showcased our biggest achievement of hitting six million in overall sales revenue. If you’re interested in reading our other articles, I’ve linked them below:

I’m beyond excited to share this incredible journey with you all, so without further ado, let’s get right into it!

Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?

What started as a simple idea that we were hoping would just put food on the table for a few months, has quickly turned into a multi-million dollar operation, and nationwide business. When I launched BBQGrills.com I was defiantly behind the 8-ball in many facets of my life, one, in particular, was financial. I did not launch this company with any venture backing, no angel investor, I took the last $600 in my bank account and took a chance.

Looking back, taking that chance was single-handedly one of the greatest achievements I’ve accomplished in my life. I was guided by nothing more than blind faith, a do-or-die mentality, and a network of individuals that would ultimately make BBQGrills.com one of the largest online retailers of BBQ Grills and Outdoor Kitchen equipment.

Fast-forward 36 months since that $600 risk. BBQGrills.com has acquired over 12,000 customers, relationships with over 100+ of the top contractors, architects, designers, and builders in the industry, and has amassed over 10 Million dollars in overall revenue.

Growing to $10M was not an easy feat and there were many times when I felt like it was all over (those times were needed and taught me a lot about myself and my business, I respect them). There was one thing that always stuck with me though, and anytime I was going through a moment of failure was to allow myself the knowingness that it was only going to fail if I quit, if I didn’t quit, it could never fail. I’m grateful to know and feel that this has been the correct mindset to have even in dark times.

When I launched BBQGrills.com in the last quarter of 2019, it was just me, working 19+ hours a day and killing myself mentally. I did this for an entire year and drove myself into a deep depression and experienced many mental setbacks (once again, all needed). In 2021 I made myself a problem getting help with the business. Every 3-6 months I would bring a new team member on to assist in a new task - customer service, order entry, product loading, PPC advertising…and one by one big ticket items were taken off of my plate to allow me the ability to work ON my business and not IN my business.

It’s never selfish of you to take time for yourself. If you die mentally/emotionally, so does the business

Up until 2021 we had never advertised or used PPC, it was something I never agreed with and oftentimes felt as if it was a means to an end, a trap for many online businesses to get attached to. After months of my team bending my ear and allowing me to see that there was an opportunity just to use it as a tool to sell products, but rather garner exposure to our brand, we started utilizing Google PPC.

To ease into this, I did the following - I took our last 12 months of NET profits and divided them by 12, I then took that amount and took 10% of that and used it as our advertising budget. About four weeks ago, the account got big enough, and I was getting too involved so I had our friends at Digital Broiler step in and manage our PPC account. They’ve been doing an fantastic job.

Over the past few months, we’ve also acquired some pretty amazing partnerships and businesses. In March of 2022, we developed a direct relationship with Weber Grills and became their only internet-exclusive online retailer. A few months later we garnered relationships with Toni Pizza Ovens, Solo Stove, and a few more. I’m still waiting on that call from Traeger Pellet Grills, so Jeremy Andrus (CEO of Traeger), if you’re reading this, respond to my Instagram DM’s…let’s make some magic!

Last but not least, BBQGrills.com acquired BBQs.com a few weeks back and I’m so excited to announce the coming months what we have in store. It is simply unlike anything anyone has ever created, it’s not only new to our market, but to all markers and it’s going to create an opportunity like nothing our industry has seen before…this will be the biggest project I’ve ever created, and I can’t wait!

What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?

One of the biggest challenges that our company faces over the last 12+ months was not financial, it was not an issue with internal growth or inventory/supply chain setbacks (even though as a company started in 2019, we’ve dealt with those nightmares and had many sleepless nights). Honestly, the biggest setback we experienced in 2022 was TRUST.

Let me explain…

Almost daily I will log into the customer service phone line system and answer calls. I love doing this and advise all CEOs to do so because if you want to learn things about your company, listen to your customers. One after one I answered calls from customers until I talked to a customer that made me realize we were missing a HUGE mark with our company:

Me: BBQGrills.com, this is Ryan how can I help you?

Customer: Yes, I purchased something from your company yesterday, and quite frankly, I’m feeling uneasy about the purchase.

Me: I’m sorry to hear that, what is it that is making you feel this way? Maybe I can help ease your mind.

Customer: Well, maybe it’s just buying something online, but…I mean it just all seems too good to be true.

Me: Interesting, would you care to elaborate on this?

Customer: Yeah…it’s just - your prices are the best, customer service is so far amazing, my order is going to ship in a few days, I just feel like it's all too good to be true. The website is easy to use, amazing name by the way, I don’t know…maybe I’m just off, but it feels like it's too good and makes me feel like I’m buying from a spam site.

I don’t often live under the premise that ‘the customer is always right’, but he was and he made some solid points. I realized that while growing a business during the COVID boom many online businesses saw incredible increases. I realized that it wasn’t going to be the ones that sold the most that stuck around, it was the ones that would be trusted enough, that would win the game.

I thanked the customer for his time, explained to him that I was the Owner of the company (he laughed and said “see…even the Owner is answering customer service calls, do you get it) and I went to work. My goal was simple - build trust in my customers with our business. We opened a TrustPilot account and Google My Business account for customers to post their feedback and reviews of our business. This worked, but it wasn’t enough. Then…then it hit me! I need to partner with a brand that has built a foundation for security, a brand that when people think of web security and safety they think of this brand. I need Norton!

It just so happened, that Norton Security had teamed up with Buy Safe and introduced a new shopping security for a web-based business called Norton Shopping Guarantee. It took little as 10 hours to get the product loaded on our site and within hours of being added, we saw an increase in overall conversion, why you ask, because customers immediately trusted our brand.

It was a match made in heaven.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

There are many things I’ve learned along the way of growing a business from $600 to 10 million dollars in revenue, from doing it myself to having a team of 10+ members that love and appreciate this company just as much as I do, to lastly being an industry that truly respects and admires what it is that we’re doing. Here are a few things that I try to live by:

“If I can’t control it, I don’t let it control me”.

“What we’ve created, was created when we didn’t want to work, not when we wanted to work”.

“It’s never selfish of you to take time for yourself. If you die mentally/emotionally, so does the business”

“Partnerships and collaborations will do more for a business than any PR marketing, or advertising will ever do.

This question is also asking me to inspire you, so I’ll leave you with a piece of our first article with StarterStory, which truly is one of the greatest life experiences I’ve ever gone through:

On the surface, I may seem like some successful 30-year-old kid that’s got it all figured out, but you’re wrong and to make matters even worse, it wasn’t always like this. There were moments of defeat in my young life that I truly think without them, wouldn’t have made me the man I am today. If you’re an entrepreneur or a business owner that’s currently struggling then I hope this story reaches you and provides you with hope.

When I was 11 years old, my Father and I were practically homeless. We’d jump from hotel to hotel and on the weekends that I would be able to see him, we’d go to the park or walk around downtown because we didn’t have anywhere else to go. I thought he just liked being outside, it wasn’t until I was older did I get the big picture.

During one of those months we were living in a mother law unit on the side of a house, the homeowner allowed my Dad to stay there because he would clean up around their house and would do little side projects, once again, this was a HARD time for him.

One night, I happened to fall asleep on the floor while watching TV while eating a ‘breakfast quesadilla’. I awoke to my entire bottom being covered in ants, I ran to the shower only to find that the water heater was off because the bill wasn’t paid, so I had to take a painstaking cold shower at 3 am, while covered in ants. When I finally came out and dried myself off, I was shriving, cold and my Dad was standing there, “What’re you doing, are you okay?” He asked, so I let him know…” I’m TIRED! I’m exhausted. I hate this. I hate this house. I hate this place. I want my friends. I want my life back. I want to know the truth about what's going on. I want to go HOME.

I still remember to this day the look in his eyes. The white lie he’d been trying to hide from me was finally broken, he knew I knew. He kneeled and told me something, so simple, so powerful and something to this day motivates me to no end. “You’re right, I owe you an explanation, but I want you to know something. Even though we’re defeated right now, even though we’re not at home, and even though we’re going through a tough period, I want you to know one thing...It Won’t Always Be Like This”.

Whenever I’m having moments of doubt, or maybe something isn’t working out the way it needs to, I always go back to this moment and find relief in knowing that even though today might be hard, tomorrow might be a little harder, it won’t always be like this.