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StartUp Weekend Coming to Sumter, SC

Brenda Golden
Mike Switzer/SC Public Radio

If there’s anything we’ve noticed over the 20 years we have been doing this show, it’s the phenomenal growth of resources available to our state’s entrepreneurial community, from mentoring to incubators to even funding.  Resources like StartUp Weekend, an event that takes place around the country and our state and is coming next to Sumter, SC May 3-5.

Mike Switzer interviews Brenda Golden, a regional workforce advisor with the South Carolina Commerce Department in Columbia.

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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.