The founders of D2D HIRE: Peter and Jake Swenson
We built the recruiting engine for our own business first. Then other door-to-door owners asked us to build it for theirs.
Our founders have been recruiting door-to-door reps continuously since 2004.
How we got here.
We both got our start in the early 2000s, selling books door-to-door with Southwestern, America’s oldest direct sales company. From there, we went on to build teams and regions in home security. Recruiting people and teaching them the job became as much a part of our work as making sales.
In 2020, we started a solar company in Arizona. We wanted to build a year-round business, which meant we needed a way to recruit year-round. We hired outside help, but we weren’t getting the quality or the number of people we needed.
So we started building it ourselves. We worked on the ads, the screening, the interviews, and how we prepared people to get into the field. Over about three and a half years, our solar company hired more than 2,000 reps through job boards and generated more than $130 million in sales. About 90% of those sales came from rookies who’d never knocked a door before joining us.
We did a lot right, and we did a lot wrong. Getting people interested was only the beginning. We had to give them a reason to commit, prepare them for the work, and help our leaders get them started.
Other owners saw what we’d built and asked if we could build it for their companies. In early 2025, we left solar to focus on that work. Today, D2D HIRE works with more than 100 partner companies across 43 states.
That’s the experience we bring to a partnership. We’ve had to recruit for a business we were responsible for running, and we’ve had to live with what happened after someone said yes.
Recruiting is a process, not a moment — and it requires closing the trust gap and the confidence gap as quickly as possible.
Sales builds your character. But before it builds your character, it reveals it.
Make promises you can’t keep. Then develop yourself into the person who can keep them.
Peter Swenson, CEO and co-founder
Peter’s work in door-to-door has taken him from selling books to leading teams in home security, building a solar company with Jake, and now running D2D HIRE. During his first 16 years in the industry, before the solar business, he recruited more than 2,000 sales reps and developed a division of over 200 reps.
Jake Swenson, President and co-founder
Jake started knocking doors in 2005 and tried to quit after his first four days. He stayed with it and has since knocked around 105,000 doors. He and Peter went on to build sales organizations across three industries, with teams that grew to hundreds of people. Today, Jake teaches Sales School alongside Mike Yandre.
See Sales SchoolFour principles we won’t compromise on.
Good fit or no go
Our work has to help your team today and make sense as a long-term partnership. If your business model or culture isn’t a good fit for the way we recruit, we’ll tell you up front. Saying yes to the wrong partnership costs both sides too much.
Aligned incentives
Our profitability is tied to the success of the reps you hire through us and keep. That shapes how we work with you. We care about whether people get into the field, start producing, and stay with your team, because those are the things that make the recruiting valuable.
Integrated approach
We work with your leaders as part of the recruiting effort. That means looking at the numbers together, testing what we can improve, and listening to what’s happening with the people who join. Your team’s feedback helps us make better recruiting decisions.
Keep earning the partnership
The work continues after the recruiting starts. We keep reviewing what’s working, where people are getting stuck, and what needs to change. We want the partnership to keep making sense because of the value it brings to your team.
Still doing the work.
We’re still on recruiting calls, working with partners, teaching new reps, and helping leaders work through the problems that show up as their teams grow. That keeps our work connected to what owners and reps are dealing with today.
The recruiting engine keeps changing as we test, learn, and get feedback. The experience that helped us build it matters. So does what we’re learning from the teams using it now.
“We stopped second-guessing our training and started keeping the right people.”
Read Peter’s articles on recruiting and leading a door-to-door team, or hear from owners about their experience working with us.
See if we’re the right fit.
We’ll talk through your recruiting, where you want to take the business, and what your leaders can take on. From there, we can see whether a partnership makes sense.