Congratulations to Leslie from Grill Charms!

Twitter friend and fellow grilling enthusiast Leslie Haywood appeared on ABC’s the Shark Tank last night.  Leslie was invited onto the show by a producer to secure additional funding for her invention Grill Charms.  Leslie came up for the idea of Grill Charms when her husband mistakenly gave her the spicy piece of chicken.  Her solution was to make a stainless steal charm that could be inserted into meat to mark spicy versus mild, medium versus rare, etc. A great solution to a common problem at cook-outs.

Apparently it’s pretty rare to actually get INVITED onto the show, but Leslie was able to do so, partly due to the amount of PR she does for her products.  Leslie does a great job of getting the word out.   We found Leslie’s product about 8 months ago and assumed that she had been working on the idea for a long time, given the fact that she had a packaged product on Amazon.  We were even more impressed to learn that she has only been at it for about a year and a half!  Oh, and during that time she has battled breast cancer and dealt with the difficulty of losing a close family member.

It is awesome and inspiring to see great people not let anything get in their way to make their dreams a reality.  Leslie did an amazing job on the show and was able to secure $50,000 for 25% equity in her product with shark Robert.  My favorite part is when she politely told Kevin O (the mean Shark) “I do like you, I just don’t think I can work with you”.

Congratulations Leslie, great job!  Learn more about her product here.  Click here for a recap of the show.