I was sitting at my desk, staring out of the window.I had just come off another call with a lead. On paper, it was a good conversation. They were interested, engaged, and asking sensible questions.And yet the same thought hit me again... Why is this so hard?Not the work itself. It was the explaining that drained me.Every call felt like starting from zero. I had to reframe what I did, restate the outcomes, and fill in gaps that should not have existed in the first place.I had traffic. I had plenty of it. But sales still dragged.Everything relied on follow-up, memory, and me being fully “on” every single time. That kind of friction is expensive.It costs sanity.It costs time.It costs money.Once I noticed it, I could not ignore it.The problem was not leads or effort. It was friction between what I understood and what the business was actually communicating to prospects.So I stopped trying to sell harder and instead, I started fixing the gaps.I fixed the language. I fixed the moments where people hesitated, got confused, or needed reassurance before moving forward.The thinking went into the copy first. Then it went into the systems. Then it went into automation and AI so that the business did not rely on me holding everything together.There were fewer explanations and movement from interest to action became cleaner and more predictable.I had finally made it easy for people to say yes.If this feels familiar, and sales feel heavier than they should despite decent traffic, do not add more noise.Start by finding the friction.If you want a second pair of eyes on where things are sticking, send me a message and I will ask a few questions that usually surface it quickly.

Aaron Caister

Your technology works.
Your message doesn’t.

If you’re building products in agtech, crop protection, or life sciences, this is a familiar problem.

You have strong data. Solid trials. Smart scientists.

But when it comes time to explain what you do to growers, dealers, investors, or even your own sales team, the message starts to blur.

Most technical companies don’t have a science problem.
They have a translation problem.

Complex ideas get oversimplified or ignored.
Sales cycles slow because customers don’t fully understand the value.
Marketing, sales, and leadership tell slightly different versions of the story.

Over time, the science never fully lands.

When technical value isn’t clear, the consequences are subtle but costly.

Good products get compared to cheaper alternatives.
Sales teams spend more time explaining than selling.
Founders and scientists become bottlenecks because the story lives in their heads.

And the market never gives you credit for how smart your technology actually is.

I help agtech and life science companies bridge the gap from lab to market.

I work at the intersection of technical marketing, product positioning, and executive communication to turn complex science into clear, credible narratives that customers trust, sales teams can use, and leaders can stand behind publicly.

That work typically involves:

Clarifying product positioning so the science has meaning in the market
Translating data into messaging that supports both sales and marketing
Equipping executives to speak with authority without dumbing things down
Aligning R&D, sales, and marketing around a single, defensible narrative

If you’re building real technology and struggling to explain it simply, clearly, and confidently, you’re in the right place.

If you want to see if this kind of support makes sense for your product or team, let's start a conversation and explore your options today.

Grant Bolton

Oh no. The dreaded Chagas bug… wait.

Something’s fishy with that hero image.

Kissing bugs (Triatoma sanguisuga) are serious. The disease they can transmit is no joke. But a lot of insects look similar enough to confuse non-experts.

The insect in that image? A giant mesquite bug (Thasus neocalifornicus).

You can tell by the small disk-like nodule on the antennae. Kissing bugs don’t have that.

This is what happens when technical content skips expert review. One wrong image can quietly undermine credibility, especially when public health is involved.

I hate to toot my own horn, but when accuracy matters, having a subject-matter expert sanity-check your content is not optional. It’s responsible.

Grant Bolton, Ph.D.

Founder at Bolton Et Al | Technical Marketing & Product Positioning for Agriculture Companies | PhD Entomology

I’ve connected with a lot of new people here recently, so I figured a quick reintroduction was due.

Most people pause when they see my background.

A PhD in Entomology… working in marketing?

It looks like an unusual path at first (and it will probably still look unusual to most)

I studied insect behavior and chemical ecology, spending years running experiments and doing fieldwork. At the same time, I was building something in parallel. I freelanced as a writer and immersed myself in how storytelling shapes understanding, especially in technical fields.

During long days in the lab and in the field, I’d listen to podcasts and audiobooks on science communication, marketing, and narrative. I started to notice something.

The science wasn’t the problem. The way it was communicated often was.

That realization changed how I saw my work and my future. When I finished my PhD, I faced a choice. Continue down a traditional academic path, or lean into the writing work I’d been steadily building.

Today, I help AgTech companies untangle complex research and turn rigorous science into clear, engaging messaging that decision-makers can actually use.

Looking back, it wasn’t a career change away from science. It was a way of carrying it forward.

Are we just adding to the chorus, or are we building an amplification chamber?

In marketing, it’s easy to confuse volume with progress.

Most brands are posting constantly, repeating the same industry language, and hoping that being louder will lead to results. But when everyone is shouting from the same tree, “loud” quickly becomes background noise.

There’s another approach.

Some messages travel further not because they’re repeated more often, but because they’re designed to be amplified. The work happens before the message goes out, not after it’s ignored.

To illustrate this, I wrote a short piece on what a small (and somewhat ugly) insect can teach us about escaping the content treadmill and building strategies that attract the right clients with less noise.

If your marketing feels busy but ineffective, this will resonate.

Between the grass blades, leaves, and hidden chambers of the soil, male insects face the same fundamental problem: how to get noticed by females. For 

Open article: Stop Posting Like a Cicada: The Difference Between Being Loud and Being Effective by Grant Bolton, Ph.D. • 5 min read

Stop Posting Like a Cicada: The Difference Between Being Loud and Being Effective

Most AgTech companies don’t have a science problem.

They have a translation problem.

Brilliant work is happening in labs, greenhouses, and field trials every day. But somewhere between the data and the decision-maker, the value gets lost.

That’s why an analyst friend said something that stuck with me last week:

“You’re a freakin’ unicorn.”

Not because I’m special, but because I sit in a place most teams ignore. The bridge between agricultural science and communication. In his world, you’re either a data person or a word person. Pick a lane.

But in 2026, the bridge is where the leverage is.

AgTech still treats communication like a downstream task. Write it up. Clean it up. Simplify it.

That’s backwards.

The real differentiation happens when someone can take complex science and make it legible, credible, and motivating to the people who actually make buying decisions. Not by dumbing it down, but by translating why it matters without losing how it works.

That’s how companies stop sounding like everyone else and start occupying a category of one.

Marketing: “Ugh. I honestly can’t tell what R&D is trying to say. Every explanation turns into a lecture. I just need the point, not the entire origin story of the molecule.”

R&D: “Why can’t marketing get the science right? It’s not that hard. Accuracy matters. One wrong word and the whole thing falls apart.”

Marketing: “I’m not trying to be wrong. I’m trying to be understood.”

R&D: “And I’m trying to prevent us from saying something that isn’t true.”

(awkward silence)

Sales: “Uh… I’m here too. Anybody? Bueller?”

Sales: “I’m the one talking to customers who ask real questions. I need confidence that what I’m saying is correct and language I can actually use in a conversation. Right now I’ve got marketing slides I don’t fully trust and technical docs I can’t explain without stopping the meeting.”
(more silence)

Marketing: “Well, I assumed R&D would catch anything important.”

R&D: “I assumed marketing wouldn’t simplify it that much.”

Sales: “So… should I just keep saying ‘it’s proprietary’ and hope for the best?”

This is how good science gets trapped inside organizations.
Not because people don’t care.
Not because they’re not smart.

But because no one owns the translation between precision, clarity, and persuasion.

If your company sells science, someone has to be responsible for turning expert knowledge into language that marketing can use and sales can trust.

Otherwise, everyone keeps talking.
And no one is actually communicating.

“Wait... what do they actually sell?”


Before I started writing in agriculture, I spent my PhD years writing video scripts as a side hustle.

5-6 years. Over 3,000 scripts for companies in every niche imaginable.

I noticed a recurring (and expensive) problem:

Whenever I looked at a client's website or marketing materials to do research, I’d find myself stuck. I often had to ask: “What is it you actually do?”

The copy was buried in so much jargon and "corporate-speak" that the actual product was invisible.

In marketing and sales: If you confuse, you lose.

We often fall into the "Complexity Trap." We think more information equals more value. But the reality is that complexity is just friction.

When you overwhelm your audience with a noisy message, their brains do one thing: They tune out to save energy.

The hardest part of marketing isn't adding more. It's having the courage to strip everything away until only the essential truth remains.

Stop trying to be everything to everyone. Be one thing to the right someone.
Simplicity is a competitive advantage.

"The biggest risk in thinking isn't poor thinking... it's being confidently unaware that your thinking could be radically better."

Saw this quote in a comment made by Chris Thomason recently.

Most agriculture companies aren't losing out on sales because their science is weak.

They're failing because they're confidently unaware that their explanation of the science could be radically better.

More data, more details, and more features won't sell more product. Farmers don't need more information. They need better interpretation.

And a lot of the time, when you're so close to the data, science, and product, it can be hard to step out of that box and explain it to someone who has no idea how it works.

Or if you don't understand it yourself, regurgitating memorized features won't convince anyone either.

Ultimately, you're confidently unaware how unclear it still sounds to someone who isn't you.

The companies that win aren't the ones with the most information. They're the ones who realize their current explanation could be radically better and they do something about it.

Steele does a fantastic job laying out what it really means to gain a farmer's trust. 

"It matters that the farmer has a point of contact at your company that they like and trust and feel comfortable texting if they need to, no matter what time of day it is."

Can you imagine if a farmer were familiar with a sales rep before they even showed up on the farm? 

That's the power of building an executive brand online, not just for your C-suite, but for the people who are actually face-to-face, boots-to-boots with your customers. 

Anyone have a sales rep who has strong opinions but doesn't have the time or desire to write online? That's what I can do for them. Bring trust and familiarity to your customers through a digital presence. 

Send me a message if you're interested.

Precision Irrigation Enthusiast | Agtech Advocate

Agriculture is a deeply relational business.

I underestimated that at first because it’s such a common business cliché.

Every company has employees and managers, customers and suppliers. Every business is “in the people business.”

But last week Ben Palone said something to me that made me realize I was mistaken.

He said, “Farmers will often talk more about the team than the technology.”

And he’s absolutely right.

When I speak with Lumo customers, they’ll often talk about the team first. About Devon, Kathy, Josh, Andy, Aaron, Morgan, and Ernie by name. About how responsive they are, how hard they work, how quick they are to show up and help.

But I had always just figured they were being polite. I thought that’s just what people say. No big deal.

Only in ag, it is a big deal.

It matters that the farmer has a point of contact at your company that they like and trust and feel comfortable texting if they need to, no matter what time of day it is.

Sure, to some extent all businesses are in the people business. But it’s a spectrum.

Some of the businesses I interact with are completely faceless and it doesn’t bother me at all. I know the product or trust the brand. Any point of contact will do.

But there’s another end to that spectrum, where the only reason I deal with a certain business is because of the person I know at that business.

The agriculture industry falls a lot closer to that other end.

As cliché as it might sound, ag business really is built on personal relationships.

Your technology still needs to work of course. And your brand needs to be trusted and reliable.

But more than anything, you need a team of folks who farmers want to deal with. Who farmers feel they can rely on. Who farmers trust to fulfill their promises and live up to their word.

Ag is a deeply relational business. I’m a little embarrassed by how long it took for that to fully sink in.

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Grant Bolton

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Grant Bolton's LinkedIn Performance

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