Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock
Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock

The Midlands Business Journal ran a special technology section on the 13th and I was interviewed for the article on green technology.

It was an opportune time for them to interview me on the subject because I was in the midst of replacing a ton of Schrock Innovations’ outdated tech equipment with modern, more energy efficient gear.

Fox News posted an article yesterday about Facebook changing its terms of service.

Facebook always claimed the rights to any content you place on the Facebook website, including the right to use the content to promote third party products or services. The change they tried to slip in under the radar states that even if you terminate your Facebook account they can still use the content you uploaded in the past.

Lincoln, Nebraska is the 7th best metropolitan economy in the country right now. That is a good thing for Nest Furniture, because with their poor customer service I wouldn’t be surprised if they are still around next year.

Maybe the owner was having a bad day. Maybe his dog died. Maybe he had a fight with his wife just before we came in. The point of this post is that NONE OF THAT MATTERS. Small businesses need to understand that the quality of their service – especially in an industry as competitive as furniture – is what separates failure from success.

Here is the situation my wife and I encountered at Nest Furniture today as we tried to give them $500 for a pair of tables for our new service center. Needless to say, our order has been canceled and we will not be back again. How would you have handled this one?

Online reputation management is more than having a website about what you do. Potential employers, business partners, investors, or even the girl you meet at the bar can learn everything about you with a simple Google search.

Anyone can write anything about you on the Internet, so its important to know what is being said and how you can enter the discussion in a tactful way that furthers your goals. The online information about you or your company paints a public portrait of who you are and what you represent.

Here are some examples of situations my clients have experienced in the past, mistakes they made, and what you can do if you find yourself in similar situations. Have you ever had to deal with any of these common online reputation missteps:

I have had a ton of success using radio (AM and FM) and I prefer it over all other mediums for dominating a local marketplace.

Over the past 10 years I have learned what works, what doesn’t work, and what you can do to leverage your relationship with a radio station to gain the maximum exposure for the least expenditure.

If you do things right, you can penetrate a market quickly and effectively. If you don’t, you can always blame the bad economy for your failure 🙂

Here are some surefire radio advertising strategies that can transform the fate of your business in weeks – not months and leave your competition wondering how you do it.

I am seriously thinking about buying a Psystar Mac clone. I am a little nervous about what might happen if they lose their case with Apple, but its still hard to justify spending $5,048 on a true Power Mac when I can get the same thing from PsyStar for $1,903.

The hardware is nearly identical, the software IS identical, so my experience should be almost the same as well, right? Here are some of the PsyStar positives and negatives that are weighing on my decision.

Mid-2008 Walmert and Dell teamed up in an experiment across 15 of their Dallas-area super centers to create a competitive answer to Best Buy’s Geek Squad. The experiment was called “Solution Station.”

The experiment is old news, but I think it is interesting that there has been no mention of the effort since its launch.

Google searches for “Solution Station” only bring up spammy sites and a few press releases dating back to the project’s launch. Normally you at least find a few complaints online, but there is not a single one.

If you have been following the Apple v. Psystar saga over cloned Mac computers you might get the impression that Psystar is just trying to make a buck selling inexpensive clones of a popular Apple computer system.

But according to legal filings, Apple thinks that Psystar might be part of a “Pirates of Silicon Valley” style assault on Apple’s future in the computer market. And they might be right.

If the door is legally opened to those who might want to make Mac clones, large manufacturers like Dell, HP and others would be racing each other to deploy Mac clone systems at breakneck speeds.

This end result is what fuels the conspiracy theory that some other person, persons, or competitors are providing aid to Psystar to keep their legal options alive. Some sources believe that this support is the reason Psystar has been so belligerent in the face of resistance by Apple.

My friend Steve from Podnutz.com called me up the other day because he heard that Schrock Innovations was about to launch a data recovery service center.

We did a phone interview about what goes into creating a data recovery center and how data recovery pricing structures work. You can listen to the 53 minute interview here.

We would like to sign up 50 or more affiliates in February. To accomplish that we are thinking about paying commissions around 40% of the total recovery charge for every paying referral the affiliate sends us. To give comparison, other recovery companies with affiliate programs pay between $25 and $100 per referral.

Based on our pricing structure, affiliates can expect to make between $240 and $800 per referral. Considering that our data recovery center is charging less than 1/2 of what other similarly equipped centers charge, we should get off to a pretty good start.

The first post was targeted toward things that I accomplished as part of Schrock Innovations. This post will be more focused toward personal and internet marketing accomplishments.