From Door Knockers To Bug Busters

Insects don’t respect business hours, so pest-control companies hire Slingshot to handle sales and service calls day and night. Co-founder and CEO Taylor Olson’s unusual odyssey from Mormon missionary to bug-bomb scheduler.

- Leigh Buchanan

In Utah, we have this weird cottage industry of companies that sell pest-control services door-to-door. Typically, they employ young LDS [Latter-day Saint] people who are recently back from their missions, where they spent a couple of years knocking on doors every day. That develops a massive amount of muscle tissue for rejection.

I was 19 when my cousin got one of those pest-control jobs. He expected to make $10,000 in four months. I was making around $6 an hour, so I asked if I could join him. Before going on my mission, I made 100 sales in four months. After I came back, I made 100 sales in four weeks. My people skills had accelerated that much. I understood how to build rapport.