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Small Business Support Organization Celebrates 40 Years

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For the past four decades, our next guest’s organization has been assisting our state’s small business community.  And over that time, as we have seen over just the past two decades doing this program, the small business landscape has changed dramatically.

Mike Switzer interviews Michele Abraham, state director of the South Carolina Small Business Development Center at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC.

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After almost 20 years, Mike Switzer retired from Wells Fargo Securities in 2001 as Senior Vice President/Investment Officer and Certified Portfolio Manager. In 1999, he and his wife, Maggie, purchased and operated for eight years the Baskin Robbins ice cream store on Forest Drive in Columbia. They grew the store from a bottom-tier operation in the Baskin Robbins franchise system to one in the top 5% nationwide within three years, tripling sales along the way. While operating the ice cream store, Mike and Maggie received patents for a portable ice cream sink and fold-down sneezeguard they invented and in 2002 started Magnolia Carts, an ice cream cart manufacturing company, which they sold in 2013.