Greenhouse Grower: How and why has education became such an important part of your career?
Charlie Hall: I’m an educator by training, and I’ve been doing it for so long that it comes natural to me. No matter what the setting is, I’m always teaching. It’s something that crosses over every single aspect of my life.
I think education is critical. The knowledge that’s provided through the trade press, at Cultivate, and through other educational programs conducted either by associations or the trade press, is invaluable. But the conundrum is that we’ve charged too little for that education, and I think people undervalue it because of that. If they had to pay a little more, I think they’d be more vested in it. That’s something I’ve seen with the Extension Service. I’ve always had a partial Extension appointment in whatever university I’ve been at, and the Extension Service is notorious for giving away their education. I think when you give it away, people undervalue it. The long-perceived perception about education is that people know what they know and don’t know what they don’t know. When you give them a little glimpse of what they don’t know, that’s when they realize why it’s so important.
Dr. Charlie Hall is one of the featured speakers at this year’s GROW Executive Summit. Click on this image to learn more and to register!
Greenhouse Grower: Can you talk about the EAGL program, why it was formed, and where it’s headed?
Charlie Hall: About 14 years ago, I was speaking at a big grower meeting talking with Kip Creel, who’s with Standpoint Incorporated. Kip is a market researcher, and his firm did a lot of work connecting with growers on some of their branding efforts, including the development of several well-known brands in the industry. We were talking about ways to reach growers at a deeper level. When I’m asked to speak, there’s a certain amount of “edutainment” that goes along with that. I’ve become a better entertainer when I speak as well as an educator. It’s not all about the education, but recognizing you have to entertain as well.
In the previous part of my career, when I was in the Ag Economics department at Texas A&M, I was director of our Masters of Agribusiness program. At the time, there were a number of executive MBA programs that Purdue, Stanford, MIT, Harvard, and others offered that were very successful in drawing executives in from all industries. They offered the traditional MBA type of programming: strategy, finance, marketing, etc. That was the basic structure, and that’s how I structured the Masters of Agribusiness program at Texas A&M. I developed that program with some of my colleagues from scratch, and I was the first director. I realized this approach could work within the green industry, and decided to develop an executive education program with Kip’s input. He was willing to teach the marketing sessions, so we set up a joint venture that allowed growers to go through the program and get a certificate in applied horticultural business management from Texas A&M. It means something to all of them, regardless of where they are from. and it’s now in its 10th year.
We only allow 10 growers to come into the program each year, and they can’t be in the same trade area selling to the same types of customers. We want sharing of information, which means we don’t want direct competitors in the room.
It’s been the most rewarding educational program of my entire 34-year career. I’ve never had something that has been as successful as the EAGL program. The Your MarketMetrics program, our benchmarking program, was a spin-off of that EAGL program, and we have 68 growers supplying income statements and balance sheet data. Those 68 growers represent $2.6 billion of sales, so there’s a lot of impact that’s represented within those growers. It’s not just large growers, either; there’s a mix of small, medium, and large growers in the program.
The EAGL program and the Your MarketMetrics benchmarking program have been the most impactful things that I’ve ever done for the industry. When I developed the first economic impact study of the industry back in 2005, that’s really what put Charlie Hall on the map. The national and state associations knew who I was, but when I developed that economic impact study that showed the number of jobs we created as an industry and the total economic contributions of our industry, they could go to Washington or their state legislatures with a third-party resource talking about how important the green industry was. It was a real turning point.