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Partner Profile:
Oklahoma Small Business Development Center
Meet Dana Hugle
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Born and raised in southeastern Oklahoma, Dana Hugle grew up on farms and ranches in the Wilburton area, which instilled in her a love for rural communities.
klahoma's Small Business Development Center serves as a core partner of Oklahoma Farm Bureau's Oklahoma Grassroots Rural & Ag Business Accelerators Program. Together, the accelerators program, Oklahoma SBDC and other partners provide immersive business curriculum and development programming to rural Oklahoma innovators. We sat down with Dana Hugle, assistant state director of performance & operations for Oklahoma SBDC, to learn about the resources that SBDC provides for all Oklahomans and especially Oklahoma agriculture.
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Hugle got her start in entrepreneurship right out of college with an agritourism venture, which she later sold before shifting her career to working in healthcare administration. She then joined Oklahoma SBDC as an adviser before transitioning into the role of assistant state director of performance and operations.
We work across industries. From Main Street retail to farms and ranches and a wide variety of other businesses, our advising team provides support. It is important to note that all of our work is confidential within our team, which is really important to small businesses.
What is Oklahoma SBDC, and how does SBDC help small businesses in our state?
ur goal at Oklahoma SBDC is to help Oklahomans start, grow, buy and sell, and expand small businesses. We follow the Small Business Administration's definitions for small businesses, which for most industries is businesses with 500 employees or less. That means 99% of businesses in Oklahoma are currently classified as small businesses. Many times, the businesses we work with have more like one or two employees or are even self-employed. We work with those types of businesses along with enterprises that are a little bit bigger and have 20 to 50 employees. Our confidential services are available at no cost to our small business owners. Our team of approximately 30 people across the state helps support our business community. All of us have been small business owners, and we understand that not everything is black and white and that business owners function in multiple roles each day. In that way, our advising comes from both a professional development standpoint and from real-life experience. We have areas of expertise that range from business start-up, lending, how to obtain diverse funding, marketing, sales, HR issues, buying and selling, and succession planning.
24 Oklahoma Country
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As you work in local communities across the state, what are some of the challenges that are unique to rural businesses?
n rural Oklahoma, we still deal with infrastructure challenges. Oftentimes that is limited internet access, but it can even be phone service issues. So in very rural parts of the state, there are struggles that can inhibit or change how someone might use technology. We try to work with business owners to find available resources to either increase access or improve infrastructure. Sometimes that means even working with communities to identify what resources are available for the community to fix the infrastructure for all of the small business owners in that area. That’s a great thing about our team being located across the state and having so many connections: you don't just get our team, you also get the wide network of resources that our team is familiar with. Oftentimes,