Mike Dodd, CEO at Propane Ninja

Mike Dodd, CEO at Propane Ninja, is the visionary cofounder of a fast-growing, full-service propane company based in Florida. With a sharp entrepreneurial instinct, a commitment to exceptional customer experience and a relentless drive to innovate, Mike has spent the last 11 years transforming a grassroots idea into a regional propane powerhouse.

A nomination for Mike to join the 2025 Industry Innovators cohort highlighted his journey into propane and his work with his business partner, Peter Samuelsson, to grow Propane Ninja from a startup into a multiprogram company.

The journey began with Mike’s frustration with poor service in Florida’s 20-pound propane cylinder exchange market. He traded his car for a pickup truck and set out to change the industry. His father’s observation of market gaps sparked an idea, and soon Mike and Peter were off and running with Propane Ninja, a name that came about when Mike’s wife saw him heading out dressed in all black to deliver cylinders.

Propane Ninja, CEO, Mike Dodd embraced the metaphor — stealthy, precise, efficient — and Propane Ninja was born along with its mantra: “We slip in, do the work, make the delivery — no interruptions for our customers.”

“I didn’t come from propane. I came from grit,” Mike says. “I started Propane Ninja with $5,000 to our name, no investors and a chip on my shoulder. My background was hammered out by my family business as a child working in construction at a young age. I developed the itch for the entrepreneurial grind working with my family.”

“At the time, just before we started this endeavor, my father was working for a major propane company, and I noticed something they were blind to: They weren’t willing to put in the effort to service the hospitality industry to the extent it needed,” Mike explains. “That was my ‘in.’ We saw a gap, and we moved on it. At 26 years old, we set up shop with another local propane dealer to fill our grill cylinders, and the momentum built from there.”

Early on, Mike and Peter identified pain points in propane marketing and tackled them head-on, rotating between sales and delivery to avoid burnout, collecting used tanks from dumps and Facebook listings, then refurbishing and delivering them to backyard grillers. It was scrappy and risky — but it worked.

Mike believes that innovation isn’t about gadgets and gimmicks. “I measure innovation by outcome,” Mike says. “If it saves time, drives profit, improves customer retention or reduces errors, it’s working. … If my team can’t feel it or our customers can’t see it, it’s not innovation — it’s noise.”

Over 11 years, Mike built Propane Ninja from two men and a truck into an Inc. 5000 company with 70 employees and millions of gallons sold annually. The company expanded into forklift supply, patio heaters, bulk delivery and ag solutions. Alongside Peter as his business partner, the company has become a model of operational strength, customer loyalty and smart growth.

With cutting-edge software integrations and major market expansion on the horizon, the next chapter of Propane Ninja promises to be the most transformative yet.