5 Lessons From Bootstrapping a Biological AgTech Company

I went to a meeting one one time is a grower meeting and the company was presenting on our stuff and I sat in that room. Ten minutes had gone by before I even realized they were talking about our products. Welcome to Driving Growth, the go to market podcast for traditional B2B businesses that are looking to build systems to create predictable revenue. In short, turning their company into a revenue factory.

I'm your host, Steve Whittington, president of Roadmap and a believer in one simple truth. Sustainable growth is not an accident. It's engineered. And my company, Roadmap, is a builder of go to market systems.

On today's show, we're joined by Joshua Day Chief, CEO of AdvancedAg. Joshua unpacks his entrepreneurial journey, and he talks about the foundations that you need to understand in order to grow and scale. So strap in, have a listen to Joshua share and pull back the curtain on the ups and downs of his journey to growth. Joshua, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Steve. I'm excited to share some of our journey here today. What was the problem that you saw in the agriculture industry that AdvancedAg is going about solving, that has been solving now for 20 plus years? Sure.

So for your listeners, we we operate a biological technology company, so we're using microbes, different species of bacteria, to improve soil health, improved nutrient cycling for farmers. And at the end of the day, trying to make every acre a little bit more profitable for the for the eyes. And, we know the cost of everything has gone up over the last decade. But for farmers, their margins have been squeezed more and more as time has gone on.

And it's allowed the rise of biological products to to happen. So but going back, we weren't always involved in agriculture. When the business was started in 2001, we were actually focused on water and wastewater applications. That's where the technology originated.

My mom wrote a business plan. She was a technical writing instructor and wrote a business plan for an entrepreneur out of Florida who was using bacteria to cycle nutrients, in the Everglades. And she sat and she said, oh, this is kind of interesting. Is there anyone up here in Canada doing it?

And he said, well, I don't know why you want to treat bodies of water that are frozen half the year. No, there's no one up here to him. This and you have to imagine back then, you guys like 2001? This was like before probiotics in yogurt were talked about.

You know, probiotics in general were the mainstream thing. So just that whole concept of, natural biological products. It the education wasn't there, but my mom saw an opportunity. She said, you know, I think water is going to be a huge, huge thing.

Down the road here and although we had the most fresh water in the world, I think we're going to start moving to more natural treatments. And it was just, you know, honestly. And then since then it was, research, research money kept us afloat. We didn't have customers flowing in by any means.

And, and some of my mom's salary as well, I would say at that time, right there were, there were probably 3 or 4 times in the first ten years who should have shut the business down. Any person in their right mind would have. And then in 2015, we made a pivot to agriculture. We started seeing studies on how different bacteria can, can improve crop efficiency.

And, bacteria can improve nutrient cycling for a variety of different high value crops in third world countries. And we thought this is interesting. And we were able to leverage the research. We did in the early days and bring that to agriculture.

So yeah, it's been it's been a journey to agriculture. But, you know, when we got involved in 20, like, I've never farmed a day in my life. So in 2015, we started talking to farmers, and I had no idea. You know, I was completely naive as to how the industry worked.

You know what these guys pain points were, but I just listened, you know, what were the issues? And it was quite amazing to me how desperate, a lot of farmers were for something new for for something different. True to what the status quo had been, you know, 50 years before that? Yeah.

So, yeah. Yeah, it's just kind of been that's how it's developed. And since 2015. Yeah.

We started with 50 acres of peas. And Schuler, Alberta. And last year we hit over half a million acres across western Canada. So you've tied into a trend of organic farming, right?

And then, being able to get the yields of organic farming up has to have organic methods. And when, you've got soil that's been depleted from intensive agriculture for for generations, how do you get those nutrients back in the soil? And I, as you know, I come from the ag industry, so I have a bit of background in this. And and there's been folks, in my circles that have talked about the things that you're doing and the impact that you're making in Western Canada.

So I'm excited to to dig in deeper here today with what you're doing. So you started going out, getting some dirt on your boots, talking to producers and, hearing stuff in their fields. So how did you identify, the guys that were really going to be, you know, the early adopters that were going to take on and, you know, take the risk and start working with your products. Well, it happened quite organically, to be honest with you.

Again, I didn't I didn't know necessarily who to pursue with these technologies. We, I went down to Cleveland, Ohio, and heard a bunch of our scientists present on, on what the these products could potentially do for growers. And they were presenting on, you know, studies on pineapples and bananas, aloe vera. And I'm thinking, this is great, but these are Canadian crops.

So what does this mean? But, both my mom and myself are, very excited people. I think that's what's kept the business afloat, is seeing the opportunity that could be there and just being persistent. So the first thing I did on the flight back was I called all of my Saskatchewan buddies that I played volleyball with, college volleyball with and everyone I knew, family that farmed.

And I was like, hey, can you got to try this product? Like it's doing all these things? And honestly, they kind of looked at me sideways and, and, I the response wasn't great, but, when I, I posted something on Facebook and, within ten minutes got a call from this farm in Schuler, Alberta. And he said, you know what?

I've been looking for something like this for the last few years, and the only technologies I've seen have been in Europe. So right there was but then he went on and on and, and I just did a lot of listening at that point. He said, we need to change. I've hit a wall and putting more and more fertilizer on the farm is getting more and more expensive to run.

I believe this is the future and this guy is is clearly an early innovator, an early adopter. I'm going to get a few of my buddies together and we're like, can you, set up a meeting? So that's that's essentially how it all started. I remember that first meeting there being, you know, 11 or 12 people there wanting to learn about what we were doing.

And, and at that time we had no Canadian studies. None. Right. I'm sharing data on bananas.

Right. So but there was an interest there. And every single person in that room, if they weren't there for the free lunch that I was providing, they were there because they were all early adopters. And that happened organically.

And it was just word of mouth guy guys talking. We'll get back to the show in just a moment. Revenue leaders are under more pressure than ever. Growth from the top, utilization from the bottom.

That is why we launched the Growth Table, which gives you a revenue leader, a trusted group of peers who get it and help you work through the challenges that you're facing. Go to roadmapagency.com forward. Slash the Growth Table link in the notes.

Apply today. You think about that first meeting that got you going. Obviously that influenced what you're doing next to get the word out and get more customers. So sort of take us through the journey of then what happened, what happened next?

Did you did you try to operationalize that and scale it, or was it you poking around a little bit and still still fumbling a bit, trying to figure things out? Well, what I'm going to do on, on this podcast is I'm going to be very transparent because that's just how we operate. And I think, you know, even talking to the first group of farmers that, that we that we did in the first meeting, I think there was, just, a refreshing sense from them on how transparent we were. Like, we didn't have all the answers.

And I think anyone that's ever approached them in the past, they were just being sold a product, you know, all these claims. All. And we were I don't know, maybe this could happen, maybe this won't. We just don't know.

And I think for them it was refreshing. But for us, yeah, there was no scaling model. I was just how many more guys can we sit next to and talk to and, not do it from a sales perspective, but just learn about what their pain points are. And honestly, Steve, like that.

That was the biggest thing, in the first few years is more listening than talking, and learning about each farm and seeing what the crossover was between an organic farm and a conventional farm in a dry land versus irrigated farm. Yeah, completely different farms. But a lot of the same issues were there. And so, yeah, we just learned a lot from these guys and they're willing to tell you their issues.

One of the big common things that would come out of these meetings was we need more research. We want more data like good sounds great. All this stuff you're doing on bananas. But, let's see some Canadian research.

So for us, that was tough in the early days. Because you need the research in order to go and get the sales, but then you need the sales in order to pay for the research. Right? Right.

So, it was tricky, getting going and, yes, there's IRAP and there's some funding opportunities that you can access to, to get some of the third party replicated research. But but that's what we did report every ounce of profit, in into the research side of things and borrowing money from friends, like some of the stories are pretty crazy on on, how we got started. But we were seeing trends, with the third party research and some sometimes, you know, in the first three years of doing that, you know, where we didn't see results is actually was actually more important than when we did because it, it brought up more question marks.

And, you know, how can we stage the next research project because of this? You outsource it to some agronomists to do some trials. Yeah, it wasn't some agronomist. We started working with Doctor Bill Hammond, just outside of Lethbridge.

He was an old Monsanto guy, but got into the replicated research side of things, and we looked at all your typical crops, you know, in Western Canada, your, your wheats, your barley, canola, peas. And we were seeing trends. In fact, we were winning on four of four out of every, five plots. And again, me being naive, I'm thinking, okay, like, this is great.

This is three years where we're improving yield on these plots. We're going to be on every farm. Well, this isn't this was manure spread land. Some of it was irrigated.

This is southern Alberta. This has nothing to do with what a dry land guy up in northern Saskatchewan is dealing with. So that research I was doing in order to generate the sales. But really for us, what it did was validate the technologies for us.

And we learned a lot about, you know, how much to put on, how to put it on, right, what crop of respond best. It was more important for us internally than it was for, our customers, I think, at the end of the day. But I want to I want to back up and frame up what you did because you follow what what we would have would advise, you know, understand deep, deep customer understanding. And so you did that, and then you got understanding about the process and you, you know, trials, research back which gave proof that your product actually has product market fit.

So then you can go to market. So we're fast forward in our in year four since you got more involved or you're five you've got deep customer understanding. You're starting to understand the differences between, you know, the different different producers and what are there areas you've got some research to to back up the claims and now you're going to market again. Now, I could imagine at this point in time, you're back to where you gathering people in the field that sort of demonstrate what you're done and showing, showing how to do this stuff and talking about application methods and all that sort of fun stuff.

So now fast forward to that point. What what what was happening? How did you now start to take the business forward? Well, what we thought was an exciting opportunity ended up biting us in the butt a little bit, honest with you.

So we had some interest. We were working with some larger farms. We were growing year over year, and we had some research to validate our technology. And then we had a group come out to Raymond, visit us, look at what we're doing, learn about what we're doing.

And, the, the company that came out was getting into the retail space, right? So they were interested in carrying our products. And they said, you know, what would we need for exclusivity in Saskatchewan? And for us for like, oh, I don't know, 100,000 acres or 100,000 gallons, whatever.

And and they said, sure, you know, we'll do it. And for us, I mean, we were like every year, like almost in the red every year. Right? That was an exciting opportunity for us.

That's a massive order. That's our first million dollars. Right. So as an entrepreneur, you're you're almost it's a bit of a tunnel vision in a way.

You're thinking, okay, this is fantastic. We have made it to the next step, but you're not thinking about the issues that can come from that. This is a new technology. This is a new way of thinking.

And now a new channel in which you're going to push it through, right. Your channel. And, and honestly, from what retailers have been doing and still are doing, it's quite a disruptive technology at the end of the day. Right?

We're talking about reducing fertilizer, reducing chemical inputs. Well, that's what you know, these retailers that's their bread and butter. So yeah, we we did that. We signed on for for 2 or 3 years with this group.

And you know, that was back in 20 would've been 2016 to 2019. And we're still paying for that, you know, 6 or 7 years later. So yeah, it was a lesson learned. But we thought, okay, these retailers, they have the agronomists, they have the relationships, they deal with all these farms.

Let's go the wholesaling route. Yeah. It was a mess. It was honestly a mess.

And we did it with a few wholesalers. We learned very quickly that we didn't understand where products, we didn't know where they were, which farms they were selling to, how they were selling the products they were. I went to a meeting one one time is a grower meeting, and the company was presenting on our stuff, and I sat in that room. Ten minutes had gone by before I even realized they were talking about our products like, oh, I'm thinking, I do not like the way these products are being sold.

They're being oversold. You know, a lot of claims are being made on on things. We just don't know. And and really, I think it hurt some of the, the relationships we had started to build with, with a number of farmers.

So we had to, we had to go back and, you know, it really wasn't until two years ago we, we completely scrapped that model. And I do think eventually we can get there again. But the world of biologicals, there needs to be more education around it. First.

Hey, we'll get back to the show in just a second. Here's a shocking stat less than 30% of Canadian B2B companies have a documented go to market strategy. And if you want to know where you stand, go to roadmapagency.com and become part of the go to market readiness index and get yourself benchmarked across your peers.

It's free, it's worth doing, and it gives you a one on one gap analysis on which you can define your future. Links in the show notes. So let's let's unpack what's going on here. So your your first your first go at this you started growing organically understanding your customers getting getting proof going direct.

And then you created enough interest that, a large, large player said, hey, listen, we want to wholesale this, and you decided to try that channel out, and there was, challenges with the channel because there was lack of, interaction with the customers to make sure that the, the experience that they needed with your, with your product was, was, was occurring. So now you've gone and you're, you've looked at what was happening in the space, you know, a, you know, kind of a competitor in the South or lateral, so to speak.

And you're like, okay, well, I see what they're doing. And you've now developed a new channel, which is through agronomists, and that is scalable. And it's also, controllable, right, where you can control the experience. And the other thing you've done is you've put in technology, you put in a CRM, so you now have a platform in which all your customer information is in that you can, ensure that the customer experience is occurring and you've got scalable growth that is allowing your customer experience to not be, diluted as you grow.

I think we talked about CRM last time I saw, you know, for sure. And a few to us, like at that time, we were just getting into it. So for your founders that are listening to this, don't feel bad. Like my CRM was my phone.

Yeah. And I am, full transparency. I'm the I'm not organized. I'm the worst guy.

I like, keeping track of everything, especially as this thing is snowball and has grown like, And I'm sure there's guys out there. It's the same way. Like what CRM you're using. Like, we were with one, and the one right now is like twice as effective and I have the right people managing the CRM.

Whereas before, like I was trying to do it, I was terrible at it. But now I have the right people doing it. And we actually have a process for documenting. And before it was everything on my phone.

So that's kind of a running joke here around the offices. Every week you should just have the sales team look at, look through my phone and look back at all conversations to see what they could dig up. But yeah, I mean, you think about it. I mean, you know, we're going to be, you know, over 6 million in sales this year.

And I was two years ago we started using a CRM. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And so like we we talked about it like you have to have processes. You have to have the right people. You have to have a platform which is a CRM. And then of course, when you get all that stuff human, that equals profit.

And that's the four Ps that that gets you. So, so good stuff. So you've got there, you figure it out. You're, you're moving up.

So now you know, there's so many so many lessons from your from your journey. But if you, if you wanted to think about right now what is the what do you think is the biggest selling or the what you're bumping up against for growth. What's, what's what's your challenge right now? Moving near to sales and, and maybe this happens.

I think this happens a lot from what I've seen from founders is, the CEO is either great at sales or not great at sales, and they think they're great at sales. They say, I've seen that a lot, too. And it's like, you need to hire someone. You're a great, inventor.

You know, you're a great founder, but you need to hire someone to, to be part of the sales process. Right now, it's my wife and I, so we we are the ones on the other end of the discovery meetings. We have people reaching out, generating leads, and then we we're still a part of the discovery meetings. And that's that's tricky because how do you scale that?

I think and also at we love doing it. Like I think part of it is giving away control and moving away from something you love doing. I love talking to farmers. I love hearing the pain points they have and figuring out solutions for them.

But so what we're doing now is, is this education platform that we're starting to build out. How do we create more jobs, how do we create more Kaylees? And, right. And then we're really, really focused on that.

My oldest sister does a lot of work with the Lethbridge Polytechnic on virtual reality training and making, the training process for police recruits and, you know, training and other industries, very interactive. We want to bring that into what we're doing so we can, yeah, create more more of me, I guess I, I think it's probably something that at some point when every business is scaling, how do you get the CEO to step back and move out of sales and, and do CEO things? You're you're you're spot on because that is that is the leadership lead.

That is a lot of organizations, the founder led sales, my organization as well, we, we struggle with that. And we've faltered and failed on that. I used to do most of the sales. I love it, I love it, I love it, I love sales.

However, you know, we are working on scaling that, you know, scaling me out of sales as well. And we've, we've got five sellers. So, you know, it's not all me, but I still have to back away from it, just like yourself. And and that's going to be one of your big challenges moving forward.

But you are operationalizing it with an LMS, a learning platform, which will then be able to, as you said, duplicate and recreate. And you as a CEO can put your energy into making that amazing. So then you have 30 people that can do what you do today. Yeah, I have to be careful with it too, Steve, because I think part of the part of what farmers really enjoy is that we're family owned and that they get to talk to the CEO, and they've made that comment numerous times that, you know, I'm not just a number from some big company, like I'm a I'm a person and we're a family owned business, right?

As a, as a farm. And the fact that I get, to call the CEO or text the CEO and, and deal with their family, there's a lot of value in that. Oh, producers love that. You feel that.

And then I think that comes down to a culture thing, too, for us at the office. Right. We want to still operate as a family owned company and never really give that up. So yeah, the process is and moving me out of it's one thing, maybe not out of it, but less of me, you know, with with each customer.

It's going to be tricky because that's been our value and that's what guys have loved doing. How do I scale that not only from a people standpoint, but a culture standpoint, so that the clients still get that feel, in a discovery meeting or with the interaction with their sales team that they're still dealing with the family. Yeah, yeah. You're going to you're scaling.

You're going to have to protect your culture and make sure that you have your culture values documented. And you hire for those values like without fail. Yeah. And that's and that'll be how you can protect it and scale at the appropriate pace.

So I want to I want to wrap this up. You've, you've given, a lot like transparent story about where you've gone and what you've done and how you're growing and how you're scaling. What? You've hinted at it a couple times, but, what's the one growth mistake that you think or you're seeing other founders making?

Know you talked about founders getting out of sales, so is there something else that you're also seen that founders need to do to maybe not repeat what you have done, so to speak? Well, I just I want to focus maybe just on the agtech side of things because I've been a part of some of these accelerators, you know, provincial federal accelerators that are funded and they're fantastic. But that bootstrapping is so important. It's so hard.

And I understand that a lot of founders, you know, you get excited because you get through some of these accelerators and their whole mindset is on raising capital. And, you know, they seem to have all the ideas. Like when we first started, I thought we were only going to sell to organic growers almost. Right.

Like I was like for but so much has changed. We went to retailers, not reps. And it's because we've had boots on the ground. I see so many founders out there just tunnel vision, trying to raise capital and it's like, go talk, get on the ground level with your customers, go talk to your customers, go sell product.

You have a great product. Go sell that. And that will give you leverage when you go to raise capital and grow. And I feel like it will help.

It will help you ultimately understand your market better and how you're going to grow. I just not everyone does that, but I've seen that as an issue with a lot of founders in the tech space. Just chasing that that venture capital and giving away a lot because they don't have the leverage with with sales. And it's harder to do it that way to go and grind and and make some sales and grow it slowly.

But once you do that, you have more of a seat at the table. But then again, like we've talked about it, I think this has been the common theme with this, with this conversation is just talking to your customers understanding and and never stop that. Right? Yeah.

Because things change in the ag industry so, so often. And I'm sure that happens across many industries. You have to be in contact with your customers and you have to listen. You're not there to tell them what to do.

You're there to listen, and find their pain points so that you can build solutions around that. Yeah, 100%. The impact of technology today is such that you it's a mountain with no top. You have to be constantly learning and understanding of your customers, to support them in what their needs are.

And you can you can never stop your bang on with that. What's next for you? And AdvancedAg. It's an exciting, phase for us.

2026, 2025 is the best year we've ever had in terms of revenue, bringing people in. We we did raise our our, seed series and and it wasn't about the capital as much as it was bringing in partners who are going to be active on the strategy side of things. That that raise allowed us to, to access IP and build an IP portfolio and really start to, to carve out a clear path for us. Whereas before we were a distributor, sales were great.

We were growing. But what's that end end goal or what's our mission, or vision like? It was really hard to define that every single year. And now we're able to do that, which is allowing us to grow into international spaces, work with, you know, more crops across not just western Canada, but in Ontario and British Columbia on high value crops and do it from a sustainable standpoint, not just exploding in sales, where we're going to crash and burn 3 or 4 years later.

And I and I do think we're going to see a lot of these biological products do that. They're just it's like a race almost, take more of the market. But if you're not doing it right, you're going to lose. If you lose trust with these farmers early on, you won't get it back.

So we're going to build this sustainably. Probably raise our our series A, that's the plan here. This year, and again bring in strategic partners to really, really grow this thing, build on the research, the IP, side of things and, and just work with more farms. At the end of the day, if we're saving farmers more money per acre on their farm, it's just it's a win win across the board.

So, yeah, it's going to be an exciting year for us. Well excellent stuff. And if folks want to learn more about you and, AdvancedAg and, what you do where, where's the best way for them to connect, reach out websites. You know, you can even I think you can get my email off of there.

It's still which, again, Steve's part of the problem, right? So how do we, funnel it more into our sales team? But, LinkedIn LinkedIn's a good one. And, yeah, we love visitors.

Like, Raymond's not a bustling metropolis, but unless it's for kids sports. But, we love having people out here and learning about what we're doing and meeting. Not just myself, but the family. My sister's the other owner, my wife's our director of sales, and my brother in law is our director of operations.

So, yeah, come on down and need the family if you're ever all this way. Excellent stuff. Well, thanks so much for your time. Thanks, Steve.

Thanks for having me. There was a great episode from a very entrepreneurial, guy, Joshua. I've known him for a long time, and I loved how he kept circling back to deep, deep customer understanding. And that's the first thing we always say that you have to have in order to have a foundation for a growth system beyond all the, the, the numbers, the, the marketing, math, the sales, the science, the mathematical model.

You need to have deep, deep customer understanding. The second thing that Joshua went through was figuring out how to scale, with channels, and his first channel didn't work. But then when he got it figured out with his second channel, it five X to his growth. And that was a bit of information that I learned after the fact.

So when you look at this episode and you think about what you can pull away from it, understand your customer, never stop understanding your customer and then figure out the channel that can actually scale your growth while protecting the entire buyer's experience and customer experience. Which is what Josh learned that he had to retract from and figure out the right channel to be able to grow. If you've liked what you heard, go to roadmapagency.com/podcast to download the Revenue Factory Toolkit, in which you will receive mathematical models and a framework for building your go to market system.

Also subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. With new episodes dropping the first and third Wednesday of every month. I'm Steve Whittington, thanks for listening. Keep building your revenue factory one brick at a time.