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

In November of 2010 I turned 34 years old and I was as heavy as I had ever been. On a lark one morning I stepped on the scale and I weighed in at 260.2.

For the first time ever I weighed more than 260 pounds and something inside me snapped. I decided that morning I was going to lose weight, I was going to lose it as quickly as possible and I was going to do whatever I needed to do to get there.

A Simple Equation

A few years ago I was a member of a local gym where I had a personal trainer. It obviously didn’t last, but there was one simple equation he gave me that has stuck in my head.

He told me that weight loss is a simple equation. Take your calories in, subtract the calories you burn and to lose weight the balance remaining needs to be less than what your body naturally burns to maintain its self.

When I was at the gym, and analysis said it took 2,100 calories a day to maintain my current weight at that time.

For me, my simple equation was that to lose weight I needed to cut my calories to at least 1,900 a day. So I did.

In the first week I had the usual 10 pound instant drop as my body adjusted to fewer carbohydrates and less food volume. Encouraging, but we all know that is not real weight loss. One big meal and you get it all back. I decided to keep going.

Increasingly Harder to Lose Weight

One of the nasty little things about losing weight is that as your body gets smaller you require fewer calories to maintain your body weight. After losing about 25 pounds I plateaued and had to cut my calories again to about 1,600 a day.

It wasn’t too tough to cut from 2,100 to 1,900. I wasn’t really hungry all the time. It was more of a willpower cut. I just had to decide not to eat the fast food, not eat in my car, and cut portions down.

Cutting from 1,900 to 1,600 is a different story altogether. My body was wise to the plan now and it responded with lower energy levels and hunger at times.

The craziest thing is that before then I couldn’t remember the last time I had been physically HUNGRY. That is a testament to the world around us, but that is another topic all together.

As the days turned into weeks I started losing weight again and soon crossed the 30-pounds lost threshold.

Enter Supplementation

I could handle the hunger at times, but the energy loss was crushing to me. I am a workaholic and I move as fast as I can all the time. I stand for about half of my day working in Schrock Innovations‘ Service Centers.

One afternoon I was in a gas station getting a fountain drink and on a lark I decided to try a Five Hour Energy shooter. I was amazed at the results.

Understand that 5 Hour Energy is not a weight loss product. It is marketed as a substitute for your morning coffee. If you look at the ingredients it is loaded with tons of amino acid and b vitamins and a small amount of caffeine. Maybe it was the placebo effect, but for $3.00 a shot, it kept me moving and helped me cross the 40-pound threshold.

What Was I Eating?

Cutting calories did require me to make some dietary changes, but not as many ass you would think. In the beginning I was militant about what I ate, but as I lost the weight I experimented with the foods I previously denied myself and found that if I moderated or borrowed calories from one day to use in the next day my long-term goal was still achieved.

The biggest dietary changes included:

• No French Fries
• Ate Panera’s BBQ Chop Chicken Salad almost daily (550 calories and very filling)
• Qdoba naked burritos with salsa were good for variety (great online calorie calculator)
• 2 Packets of Quaker Oatmeal every morning for breakfast (about 300 calories)
• Daily Centrum multi-vitamin
• (2) 5-Hour Energy shooters daily (careful, not too close to bed time)

The last 10 Pounds

It took me longer than expected to drop pounds 40-50. Because I was not working out while I was cutting calories I did see some muscle loss.

In an effort to push the loss further I cut calories again to about 1,200. That was a mistake. I was tired all the time, moody, and the cravings for prohibited food were brutal.

On top of that, if I went over 1,200 one day – say a nice dinner out with my wife – making those calories up the next day means cutting below 1,000 calories.

On top of everything the increased effort and challenge was not resulting in additional weight loss. I returned to 1,500 – 1,600 calories a day and slowly – almost imperceptibly – dropped to around 210 pounds.

What is Next? Do You Want to Lose More

The funny thing about losing weight is that while you are losing it you are obsessed with the scale. Once it is gone you almost feel that “ok, now what” feeling.

I am 5′ 8″ and at 210 pounds I am still technically obese. I would like to get down to 175 – 185 pounds eventually, but additional losses are proving increasingly difficult.

One month after hitting 210 pounds I have ventured as low as 204 and weighed in today at 206. I think I may have to dust off the treadmill to get my body losing again.

What’s Your Weight Loss Story?

Do you have any hints or tips for me? Share your story below. I appreciate the tips!

My wife needed to replace her Buick Rendezvous so we visited Rusty Eck Ford in Omaha, NE to look at what Ford had to offer. Four hours later we had to literally fight our way out of the dealership and once we got out we never looked back. It was easily the single worst service experience I have had in my entire life.

When we first arrived we wanted to look at the Ford Flex. My wife liked the marketing pieces and reviews. They had several 2011 models, but as a rule I don’t like buying brand new cars.

Instead they showed us a used 2010 model that was about $6,000 less expensive than a brand new one.

Anyone who knows anything about cars knows that the value of a vehicle drops SIGNIFICANTLY once it has been titled to someone else. Even if it is only driven 100 miles, the fact that it was titled to someone makes it a used car. The price difference between new and used should have been more than $6,000.

Rusty Eck’s Service Experience Begins to Show

They have a wall of hand-written customer testimonials outside of their rest-stop like bathrooms. They all brag about the favorable deals and great service experiences.

Never mind the fact that they were all written on the EXACT same cheap Wal-Mart stationary using the same pen… Hmmm…

We left the crazy price in the used Flex simmer on the back burner for a bit figuring they would offer us a favorable trade-in allowance to make up for the difference.

My wife’s Buick has a trade-in value according to Kelly Blue Book of just over $8,500. Rusty Eck offered us $3,000. That’s when things started to slide downhill.

The salesman got gruff with us about expecting more for the trade in. We told him we could sell it easily on Craig’s List for over $9,000.

Then he left us in his uncomfortable office chairs for over 30 minutes listening to the searingly awful 80’s music they are pumping into the whole showroom using a single plasma TV. He was “checking with his manager” to see what they could do for us as a “special exception.”

We took the opportunity to look up used Flex’s with similar features at other dealerships and on Craig’s List. Almost everyone else had identical 2010 Flex vehicles priced $10,000 or more under the cost of a new one – right where they should be.

Prisoners to Rusty Eck’s Horrid Service

When he came back in to his office and told us that his boss was giving us a good deal and they couldn’t do any better, we got up to leave. Maybe he thought we were bluffing.

We told him that while his manager could not do better, we used the afternoon we wasted in his office to do some research. Guess what – other dealerships have better offers than what you manager can do. The Internet is a bear isn’t it?

As we put on our coats, the salesman hobbled around his desk to get between us and the front door. He informed us that no one leaves without talking to the sales manager. We started walking for the door.

At the last possible moment a slick looking man stops us and asks us if there is anything he can do to help us get into the car we wanted. We briefly told him that he was trying to low-ball us on our trade and his vehicles were overpriced to begin with. We then LITERALLY pushed through him and out the door.

Have a Look at What Other Say About Rusty Eck Ford

Apparently our experience was not that unique. Take a look at these online reviews of Rusty Eck Ford:

Top 10 Reasons Not to Buy Your Car from Rusty Eck:

#10. Lacking the comfort feel- doesn’t feel welcoming
#9. Uniformed salesperson- Lacking information about financing and rebates
#8. A feel of “Buy Today”
#7. They don’t back up what they say
#6. Unprofessional finance manager #1-Talking about he and his wife “getting effed up”
#5. Unprofessional finance manager #2-Discussing how hungover he is from the Christmas party the night before
#4. Unprofessional finance manager #2-Watching a live football game on his computer while working with us
#3. Unprofessional finance manager #1-rushing through paperwork and avoiding explaining anything and then tacking on an $1800 bumper to bumper warranty without our consent.
#2. Stating the vehicle would be picked up from Iowa Monday morning and failing to do so. Then neglecting to make things right and NEVER receiving a call from a manager.
#1. There are other Ford dealers in Omaha that truly care about their customers and will work to do everything in their power to make you happy.

Or this one from Dealerrater.com:

This has to be one of the dealerships that movie makers copy when they want to show a scumbag type dealership. They have no morals and absolutely no professionalism. They will try to milk you out of any money you might have and then some. We bought a used 1999 Chevy Blazer from them about 3 weeks ago. It was on a Sunday night and at closing time so everyone was in a hurry. When we asked about everything working o.k. (especially the 4wd) the salesman said yes just hit the button and it works. Well the first time it snowed, my daughter pushes the button for auto 4wd and tells me it is just blinking, well I take it out for a drive and sure enough, it never kicks into 4wd. I take it back to them and want to see if there is anything we can do to fix it. To make a long story short, a new salesman tries to get me to purchase a lesser priced vehicle and charge me more money for a “trade-in” when I get angry and tell him that this must be a joke, they tell us to leave and as I am telling them what I think of their dealership, a manager comes around the corner and starts telling me how I am the piece of sh*t customer and I need to leave. Then about 6-7 “salesman” come outside with me and one of them starts taking his coat off and rolling his shirt sleeves up like he’s wanting to fight!! What a joke, this is truly the SCUM of the dealerships. I hope Rusty Eck is proud of what he has built out there. Ford should take their name off of the signage because this is very much a used car lot filled with lot lizards looking for a next victim. They probably sit around and joke about how bad they screwed their last customer. Truly despicable.

I am a big believer in radio advertising.  If you have a business on a tight budget, or if you just want to get the best marketing deal around, radio can get your message out there quickly at a cost that is much lower than television or print media. If you decide to use radio […]

While browsing through my posts from the past few weeks I noticed that I had been placing a pretty heavy emphasis on my work and work-related topics.

While I am a self-diagnosed workaholic, I do find some time to unwind.

The Lovely Kimberly and I took some time on Friday to head out to the Bullet Hole for some time on the range.

I was firing a 9mm Tanfoglio compact and the Lovely Kimberly was testing out her newly repaired 9mm Ruger.

My grouping was pretty good at 25 feet. I was able to place 15 rounds center mass in less than 30 seconds. It had been a few months since we found time to shoot, so I was glad to see I wasn’t too rusty.

At feet I placed 6 of 15 rounds center mass, with the other 9 rounds all hitting the silhouette – just not smack in the middle where I was aiming.

Pretty fun stuff!

Schrock Innovations‘ PC Maintenance Checkup Sale is by far one of the most popular times of the year to bring a computer into their computer repair Service Centers.

Over the past week Schrock’s technicians have been pulling overtime to keep up with demand.

As you can see, as soon as Schrock launched the sale computers started pouring in to the Service Centers.

By the end of the first day more than 100 computers had arrived for the $30 maintenance offer. Throughout the course of the sale Schrock took in over 1,000 systems for maintenance between Omaha and Lincoln, NE.

The load was unusually weighted toward desktop computers over laptops. Over the past couple years Schrock has seen a steady shift away from desktop computers toward notebooks.

The company has also been advertising on FM radio stations for the past 9 months which tends to bring in a younger demographic who prefer the portability of a notebook over a desktop. Either way, it was a little surprising to see the desktop hanging in there in the quantity department.

Schrock;’s customers oftn hear that the Maintenance Checkup Sale is going on for “one week only,” but in reality Schrock’s technicians have been working under a load of 100+ computers in queue for more than 3 weeks now.

When Schrock launches a sale this big, it is always a challenge to keep turn-around times reasonable the customer.

To help moderate the work flow, Schrock will email customers about the sale first, then work through the bulk of that response before taking it live on the radio.

Schrock emailed over 8,500 customers about the sale and the response was immediate and intense.

While a flood of Schrock’s existing customers was expected, we were all shocked to see that about 20% of the computers coming in after the email were new customers. Apparently the sale announcement email went viral with customers forwarding it to their friends and relatives.

All in all, Schrock’s technicians have been putting in 60-70 hours a week EACH in an attempt to keep up with the demand. With the sale ending today at 5 PM they should have everything back to normal again in each Service Center within a few days.

Thank you Schrock customers for another amazingly productive Maintenance Checkup Sale!

This week Schrock Innovations launched a new commercial in Lincoln and Omaha promoting the PC Preventative Maintenance Checkup Sale that is running through March 20th at both Schrock Innovations’ locations.

In the commercial you will see a computer’s processor fan that is almost 50% constricted by dust.

While Schrock does a lot more than a physical cleaning during a Maintenance Checkup, there is no disputing that the 8 hours of work that goes into a checkup is worth the $29.99 sale price!

Contact Schrock Innovations today for more information about the sale.

On March 9th, Nick Bock of the Five Nines Technology Group and myself both testified in opposition of Nebraska Legislative Bill 626, which was a recycling mandate bill improperly named a job creation bill.

After the conclusion of my testimony Senator Ken Harr asked me how the private sector could solve this problem. Little did I know that my answer would go viral on Lincoln’s airwaves later that day.

A Potential Free Market E-Waste Solution

Ironically, Nick and I had been discussing the viability of a non-profit 501c3 technology reclamation company that would collect e-waste, refurbish what could be resold and use the revenues from selling it to fund collection points across the state and create jobs.

It was all very back of the envelope and off the cuff, but never the less it was the first thought that popped into my mind when Senator Haar asked the question. I briefly explained the idea and in conclusion Senator Haar suggested that a bill could be crafted to accomplish that goal.

Senatorial Smackdown?

I responded to Senator Haar that a bill wasn’t required because it could be done with free enterprise.

Yesterday on the way home I was listening to Drive Time Lincoln with Coby Mach and I guess my off-handed comment was more like an unintentional Senatorial smackdown.

Click here to listen to the audio from drive time Lincoln.

What Happens Next?

I know Senator Haar, and we have had discussions in the past on multiple items including the promotion of Wind Energy in Nebraska. He also knows that I come from a less government more free enterprise position.

I enjoyed testifying and I believe the committee listened to the input that Nick and I provided because the bill will not be prioritized (at Senator Mello’s request) and a roughly 2-year study is being proposed to attempt to formulate some legislation that might have a chance of making it thought the sausage factory.

There is going to be a hearing at the Nebraska Capital Building today at 1:30 regarding LB626 the “Electronics Recycling and Job Creation Act.”

This bill will not create any net jobs, will collect up to $1.5M in taxes from local companies, and will burden individual citizens and businesses alike with new rules and regulations.

What Does LB626 Do?

A few years back a similar bill was introduced in the unicameral that I testified against. This bill is very similar to that one and I believe it represents a hidden tax on consumers in Nebraska.

Here is a link where you can read LB626.

LB 626 does a lot in a mere 20 pages. The bill proposes:

1. If you make your own house brand computers you WILL pay a tax to the state between $1250 and $10,000+ annually
2. If you do not pay this fee, you are prohibited from selling computers in Nebraska
3. You are REQUIRED to provide FREE recycling to your customers and you are REQUIRED to pay the cost of recycling collected equipment
4. If you resell Dell, HP, Gateway or any other national brand that is not participating in the state’s program, you pay the taxes described above
5. This bill imposes a landfill ban for all consumers and schools and requires recycles to accept goods form consumers and schools at no cost
6. This bill collects between $1M and 1.5M a year from local manufacturers, and the amounts collected per company operate on a sliding scale. The bill states NE WILL collect $1M – $1.5M annually, regardless of the number of manufacturers. If NE loses manufacturers individual manufacturers pay more.
7. Although this bill collects ALL of its revenue from Computer manufacturers and recyclers, it promises grants of up to $1M to small towns and villages to demolish old buildings. If the bill collects $1M to $1.5M a year, how can they operate the bureaucracy, grant the million, and “create recycling jobs”?

In my opinion, this bill represents a hidden tax on the Nebraska consumers who patronize our local businesses.

The costs of this bill will be eventually paid by the consumers in Nebraska at a time when Social Security cost of living increases are non-existent, wages in Nebraska are not rising fast enough to keep up with food and energy price inflation, and our state, cities, and counties are running budget deficits.

This is a bill that will reduce consumer choice in Nebraska as businesses choose not to sell PCs in the state, increase the costs of electronic goods, create time and energy burdens on individual citizens, and will kill more jobs than it creates.

The State does not create jobs. Only businesses can do that.

This is a bill that costs EVERYONE involved form the consumer to the manufacturer more money and duplicates many services that the private sector is already providing to consumers at little or no cost.

I know this is VERY short notice, but I will be present to testify against this bill this afternoon in the legislature. Three years ago I was able to kill a similar recycling bill with my testimony, but this is a different scenario. New players and new rules. If there is any possible way you can make it down to the capital today at 1:30 in Room 1525 please make an effort to do so.

Schrock Innovations will be holding our first Preventative Maintenance Checkup Sale of 2010 starting this weekend, March 12, 2011 through March 20, 2011. Although we are “officially” launching the sale on this weekend’s Compute This radio show, you are invited to bring your PC in now and beat the inevitable rush! Last week I was […]