This working man can

By Dick Hughes  

DECEMBER 3, 2010 2:54 p.m. (0)

Michael Switzer is stockbroker, financial adviser, ice cream vender, entrepreneur, inventor, manufacturer, writer, marketer, retirement counselor.

At 53, he’s done all of those things, sometimes at different times, sometimes all at once.

What runs through it all is the career he never made any money at but is in his blood – radio.

Listeners of ETV Radio know Switzer as host of South Carolina Business Review, heard each weekday morning at 7:53 as a segment of Morning Edition.

Switzer has done versions of the show on South Carolina commercial and public radio since 1990, but his radio career goes back to the time his father was director of Armed Forces Radio in Goose Bay Air Base in Labrador, Canada.

“I was in high school looking for a part-time job to make some money, and I asked if I could do a weekend rock ‘n roll show,” he said. “He went through the channels, and I ended up getting a two-hour show on Saturday nights. That was a lot of fun for a high school kid, having a call-in radio show at 16 or 17.  Dad told me I was the youngest broadcaster in the history of the network.”

After he graduated from high school, Switzer returned to South Carolina, where his dad had been based at Shaw Air Force Base at Sumter. He enrolled at the University of South Carolina at Sumter and started a top-40 radio show.

Switzer began with a major in journalism but “found out how little journalists make and changed my major to business.”

Graduating with a degree in finance in 1982, Switzer launched a 20-year career with A.G. Edwards and then First Union/Wachovia, where he was senior vice president and investment officer.

He “retired” from the securities industry in 2001, conducted retirement planning workshops, wrote for financial publications, helped set up a certified financial planner program in Columbia, built the only LEEDS-certified house in the Midlands and won awards for inventing an energy-saving light switch.

While at A.G. Edwards, in 1990, he got back into radio doing a call-in financial news show, Money Matters, for WSSC in Sumter, a station he and his wife bought, ran a couple of years and sold.

While still with A.G. Edwards, he took Money Matters to WVOC, the 5,000-watt AM station in Columbia, for Sunday afternoon broadcast.

“They gave me another half hour, and so I added the South Carolina Business Review,” Switzer said, to interview business executives of South Carolina companies.  He did it without compensation “as sort of like a community service.”

“After doing that a few years, WVOC got bought out by a big corporation, Clear Channel communications. They reevaluated everything and asked me to start paying to do the show.”

Switzer said Clear Channel figured “since I was in the financial business, I was gaining some benefit. But being on the radio Sunday afternoon, let’s be honest:  How many people are listening to radio on a Sunday, especially in the middle of the day?”

He declined to pay them “what I thought was a pretty ridiculous amount, like $20,000 a year, to have that radio show” and called South Carolina Educational Radio to see if they were interested, and they were.

“After a couple of months at 8:45 to 9 a.m., they moved me to the station’s highest rated quarter hour on the network, which is 7:45 to 8, and I have been there ever since and that quarter hour is still the highest rated on the network.  I feel pretty good about that.”

The move to ETV Radio made a “huge difference” in Switzer’s audience. “We’re on eight NPR-affiliated stations across the state during the highest rated quarter hour on the network.  There’s a huge difference in feedback and a step up in responsibility, too.”

While still working in securities, Switzer and his wife Maggie got into the ice cream business, buying a Baskin Robbins store in Columbia.

When Maggie started catering for office parties and the like, they grew frustrated with the large portable unit they had to haul by trailer hitch. So Switzer took to the garage and invented one that fits in the back of a minivan by separating the sink and freezer components.

“Others started hearing about it and wanting one. We decided to do a website and see what happens. The orders started coming in and the business ended up being bigger than the ice cream store, and so we sold the store a couple of years ago.”

The Switzers take the orders and send them to independent contractors who fabricate, assemble and ship.  Responding to customers who ask “can you do this, and this and this,” they now offer carts in three sizes and “every year we have added something new.”

The experience with the cart gave him appreciation for the resources available to small businesses in South Carolina.

“The Department of Commerce, this big organization that you think is only going after these big organizations like the Boeings and the BMWs, is committed to small business assistance that I personally used,” Switzer said. “I don’t think people realize how fertile the state is for small business growth and small business formation.  There is just no reason why small businesses can’t succeed in this state.”