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

Schrock Innovations received a letter last week that our Lincoln Service Center has been selected as one of 100,000 “Favorite Places” on Google.

The selection was based on how many people have sought out information about Schrock Innovations on Google. That information includes reviews, requests for driving directions, and general search data.

Contained within the letter was a window decal for our Service Center as well as some statistics about how local Lincoln, Nebraska Google users were seeking out Schrock Innovations over the past 6 months:

• An average of 14 people a month request driving directions to Schrock Innovations (pretty nice considering we are on one of the busiest intersections in Lincoln)
• There were 942 requests for specific information about Schrock Innovations (coupons, reviews, etc.)
• The majority of users who look into Schrock Innovations are looking for computer repair services

Gooogle Favorite Places is a sub component of Google Local Business Center. I was unaware of this program until Google contacted us to let us know we had been selected.

If your business has not been selected, you can apply for consideration by signing up for and completing an entry in Google Local Business Center.

Yesterday I attended the Nebraska Retail Federation’s annual awards banquet and accepted the 2009 Customer Service Business of the Year on behalf of Schrock Innovations.

I am no stranger to political and business gatherings, but those in attendance at the NRF ceremony were not from the circle I normally meet up with at events.

At our table we were joined by several higher-ups from JC Penny. Other sponsors of the event included Pamida, Walgreens, Target, and a few other big-name retailers.

We were among 30+ nominees for the award and some had traveled in from as far away as Kearney.

As each of the nominees was introduced we were asked to briefly talk about our company to the audience.

Its All About the Service

When it was my turn on the stage I asked the audience to raise their hand if they had ever had a computer problem. Everyone raised a hand. Then I asked people who had someone to help them with their computer problems to put their hands down. About 40% did, leaving a majority of people in the room with nowhere to turn for PC help.

I explained the Schrock Innovations was founded 10 years ago o help people with their computer problems – even if we were not being paid to help. I explained that the Schrock approach was about building trust and relationships.

Schrockies in the House?

At the end of my presentation I asked if there were anyt Schrock customers in the audience. 6 people raised their hands (not bad considering there was no one from Omaha and 1/2 of the crowd was out of our Lincoln service area).

I asked them in front of the crowd if they fel;t special after they worked with Schrock Innovations. They said that they did.

Thank You NRF

This award means a lot to Schrock Innovations and its employees. On the eve of launching the biggest sales event of the year, our Holiday Sale, this award reminds everyone of the reason we are in business. It’s not to sell hardware or software – we are in business to provide service. Everything else will take care of its self if we take care of our customers.

Christine Campbell DDS wanted to create a website that communicated her practices’ commitment to dental health while at the same time differentiate it from their competition.

She knew what colors she wanted and some site styles she like but needed help to make her vision a reality. She contacted Schrock Innovations to bridge the divide.

Schrock worked with her step by step to turn her ideas into a design she liked. Once the design was created the Schrock Innovations team went to work creating a flash intro page that matched her design. Brad then worked with Christine’s office personal to assist them with the creation of the page content.

Their unique content helped the website stand out amongst its competitors in search engine rankings.

Christine now has a site that is expandable and ready to change with the needs of her patents and practice.

Last year Kim and I put our house on the market, and although we had a lot of interested people look at it no one could get financed in the middle of the credit crunch.

We plan on attempting to sell the house again next Spring, so the name of the game right now is to make the improvements that will help us sell the house quickly at a fair market price.

Our Realtor told us that one of the biggest concerns about the house was that the roof was at the end of its lifespan. We had a cedar shake roof that was designed to last 30 years. It was put on in 1982, so it really was about time to have some work done.

Kim and I interviewed 6 roofing companies before we finally settled on Hustad Roofing. Kim liked the owner because she had that woman gut feeling that she could trust the owner. I like them because they came in with the best reputation AND the lowest bid.

They showed up at 9:00 in the morning and 7 men amazed my 3-year old son by climbing on the roof and peeling off wood shingles like they were a fruit roll-up wrapper.

The whole removal process took less than a couple hours, and the new roof was on by the end of the day.

Hustad had laid tarps on the ground to catch the nails, shingles and paper that was being torn off for a quick, easy and complete clean up.

Overall I was very impressed with the job they did, and the pictures speak for themselves.

Brad Donner has been an entry level web design employee at Schrock Innovations for a few months now, but many of our customers don’t know that he is an amateur photographer as well.

Last year Brad asked all of his friends and family to vote for his company, Donner Digital Photography, in the KETV viewer survey. And he won!

I work every day with Brad and I know he works hard every day to improve his photography skills.

Take a moment to look at Brad’s best picture and vote for him in this year’s KETV survey.

I happen to have some inside information about KFOR’s Best of Lincoln survey (due out in October) and its only fair that I do my best to help an employee win a consumer award when my employees give their all so Schrock can win one as well.

On Friday I had a small oral surgery to correct a birth defect that has been a problem for the past 2 years.

Oral Surgeon Dr. Andrew Glenn implanted a small titanium screw into my upper jaw yesterday to act as an artificial root for a tooth that Dr. Chris Haag will be crafting and mounting to the screw in about 5 months.

Only 2 days remain to get Schrock Innovations’ Preventative Maintenance Checkup on sale for only $19.99! This is the FINAL maintenance checkup sale of 2009, so it you miss this one its a long wait until 2010!

We are “officially” launched the sale on last weekend’s Compute This radio show, and our staff has done an amazing job keeping up with the workload. Unlike the previous sale, our turn around times are very reasonable (3 days or less).

A PC Maintenance Checkup is a complete head-to-toe examination of a computer that takes between 8 and 12 hours of bench time to complete. Our Maintenance Checkup is normally a great deal at its usual price of $60, but for next week only we will be discounting that price to an amazing $19.99.

The Midlands Business Journal runs some really informative articles on subjects and trends that can seem daunting to many business owners. When they are doing a feature on a technology related subject they will often ask for some comments on the basic questions they plan on writing about in the feature.

Michelle Leach is one of the MBJ’s most talented writers and she recently sent me an email with some questions about data recovery and data backup. Here were some of the questions she asked and how I answered them:

Just a few days ago I told you about an interesting meeting I had with Lynn Hinderaker, the man who invented the fast food value menu and literally transformed Taco Bell into what it is today.

Since that post, Lynn was also featured in the World Herald with some additional detail of what he did for Taco Bell, how he transformed a high-cost-low-profit company into a low-cost-high-profit national icon.

If you are loking for an inspiring story in a challenging economy give Lynn a call. I am know as an idea guy, and he found a few things for Schrock that were right in front of my face that I had not seen!

If you have ever eaten at Taco Bell, you have this man to thank. Without Lynn Hinderaker it is very possible that Taco Bell would not exist and that the concept of the fast food “value menu” may never have seen the light of day.

In the 1980’s Taco Bell was a struggling subdivision of PepsiCo and was about to be closed down completely. One struggling franchise owner contacted Lynn and said he wanted to make his restaurant’s last stand on an idea that surrounded a value menu. His idea was that if customers could buy their food through inexpensive small transactions, they would buy more of it and profits would follow.

Lynn helped design the concept, the marketing pieces, and then shepherded the franchise owner through the process. Success soon followed and as the word spread, other franchise owners asked Lynn for his help.