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Upstate-Based Community Bank Expands Small Business Lending

  Most entrepreneurs will probably agree that small business lending has been slow to recover from the Great Recession. Our next guest says that one reason for this is that larger banks have not been able to devote enough funds to this sector due to being preoccupied with new regulations and simply recovering from the real estate crash. But he also says that while that is changing now, community banks have been able to pick up the slack and are looking to continue to grow that part of their business.

Mike Switzer interviews Rich Bradshaw, president of specialized lending at the Greenville, SC regional headquarters of United Community Bank.

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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.