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

Alarm Equipment Inc. (AEI) in Omaha, NE came to Schrock Innovations for a website “freshening” a few months ago.

AEI’s website was not ranking in Google for the key search terms they needed to bring in new alarm business.  Today more people use Google than the Yellow Pages so ranking when it counts can be vital to a business’ success!

AEI Asked Schrock Innovations to modify their existing website to modernize its look and improve its SEO performance without changing the basic layout and styling of the existing website.

Brad and Adam went to work on the website, adding a modernized version of the company’s logo, a new favicon, meta data that had been missing from the site previously.

The old version of the company’s website contains a lot of text, but it was mostly locked into images, rendering it useless to search engines that were trying to determine where the website should rank in comparison to other Omaha alarm companies.

Brad recreated the website, replacing the old tables design with a new CSS design, allowing the new website to look similar to the old one, but with the text broken out so it was visible to search engines.

After working with AEI on their website and learning about their dedication to their customers, we actually hired them to install alarm systems in our locations!

Pre-order Windows 7 at Schrock Innovations
** Save up to 58% off the October Purchase Price! **

Microsoft is making Windows 7 available for pre-order now through July 10, 2009!

Order your copy of Windows 7 and installation from Schrock Innovations and save 58% off of the software’s regular purchase price!

Windows 7 Installed for Only $219.99!?!

If you have ever purchased an operating system upgrade, you know that they normally cost hundreds of dollars and can take a degree in computer science to install successfully.

Between drivers, updates, and lost files upgrading your operating system can be a real challenge – Unless you let Schrock’s award-winning technicians do it for you!

We will get your computer running Windows 7
without all of the usual upgrade headaches for only $219.99!

Why have Schrock Innovations perform the installation?

Pre-purchase your Windows 7 software and installation through Schrock Innovations before the July 10th deadline and Schrock will:

• Test your system’s compatibility with Windows 7
• Test your applications’ compatibility with Windows 7
• Install the Windows 7 Upgrade
• Install any needed drivers and updates
• Cover the installation under warranty for 3 months (no matter who built your system)

Schrock is offering 100 installations under this special offer & reserving tech bench spots for quick turn around on your upgrade. When you contact us to place your order, your credit card will be charged the $170 flat rate installation price. Microsoft will ship your Windows 7 upgrade disks on October 22, 2009. Your card will be charged for the upgrade software when it is shipped by Microsoft.

Once you have your software, bring it into Schrock so our technicians can complete your upgrade. Its that simple!

Why Should I Upgrade to Windows 7?

Windows 7 runs faster than Windows XP does (on the same hardware) and is compatible with EVERYTHING that Vista is!

Some of the biggest benefits of Windows 7 include:

• Faster Hard Drive Access Times
• Much Less bloated than XP or Vista
• Faster Boot times
• Avoid the expense of hardware upgrades
• Support for the latest PC technologies
• Better notebook battery life and performance

Is My Computer Ready for Windows 7?

Vista users have nothing to worry about in moving to Windows 7. Microsoft guarantees that all programs and drivers that are compatible with Vista will be compatible with Windows 7.

In fact, because Windows 7 runs so much faster than Vista, upgrading to the new operating system will have the same impact as DOUBLING your PC’s current memory and processor capabilities.

If you are looking to give your Vista PC a boost, the best prescription for your sluggish Vista PC is Windows 7!

Windows XP users will need to run a Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor tool to determine if their computer is capable of running Windows 7.

Windows XP users have to perform a “clean install” to get Windows 7 up and running on their computers after they pass the Upgrade Advisor. After the clean install, all programs will have to be reinstalled from the original discs that were used to install them the first time.

Important Details:

• Microsoft will ship the Upgrade DVD to your address. Schrock Innovations is not responsible for lost shipments or damaged discs.
• There is an additional $5 shipping fee (from Microsoft) to ship the discs to your home
• This special offer and the warranty contained within does not cover hardware in your PC that fails during the warranty period. It only covers the installation of the operating system.
• Schrock Innovations always recommends you back up your important data before upgrading your operating system. We will do our best to protect your data, but we can’t be responsible for lost files.
• This offer is ONLY good through the end of the day on July 10th, or while supplies last. This offer is limited to 100 installations.
• When your discs arrive at your home or business, bring them with your PC into Schrock Innovations so our technicians can perform your upgrade.
• Because this is a limited quantity offer, Schrock will charge $170 in installation fees at the time you purchase the upgrade. Microsoft will charge your credit card for the upgrade disks when they ship on October 22, 2009.
• The quoted prices are for Windows 7 Home Premium. If you need more advanced versions like Business or Ultimate, additional charges may apply.
• All installations purchased under this offer must be completed by December 31, 2009. Installations that are not completed will not be refunded.

Microsoft announced a special Windows 7 pre-order program today that offers the company’s newest operating system at a DEEPLY discounted price.  But is your computer ready for Windows 7?

There are two basic camps of people who will be upgrading to Windows 7 – Vista users and XP users (Windows 2000 users can also technically upgrade, but in many cases their hardware is so old that ot will be incompatible).

Testing Windows Vista PCs for an Upgrade to Windows 7

Vista users will have a pretty easy time upgrading to Windows 7.  Microsoft is promising that everything that works with Vista will work with Windows 7.

When you run the upgrade disk, Windows 7 moves all of your documents, settings, registry, and programs to a holding directory.  It then installs a clean copy of Windows 7 and copies all of your information back over.  This eliminates many of the layered operating system problems that plagued XP and older upgrades.

In theory, everything should just work after the installation, but if you want that extra measure of comfort, you can run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to check for any issues.

Testing Windows XP PCs for an Upgrade to Windows 7

Windows XP users will have a bit of a tougher time upgrading.

It is HIGHLY recommended that you ru the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor.  There is a good chance that some of your hardware and/or software will not be compatible with Windows 7.

As a rule of thumb, if your software is not compatible with Vista, it will not be compatible with Windows 7.

With that said, the business and Ultimate versions of Windows 7 have a special feature that allows you to download and run a virtualized copy of Windows XP from within Windows 7.

Think of it like running Windows XP as if it was a program, and then opening up other programs from within it.  This will allow business users who rely on older software (and lazier IT staffs) to still run many of their old XP programs in a limited form.  There is no additional charge for the virtualized XP download.

When new web clients come to me they all seem to want one thing – They want to rank well in Google to get FREE business leads.

Before you start to navigate the thorny paths of search engine optimization, take advantage of what Google gives you for FREE.  Take 5 minutes to list your business with Google’s Local Business Center and watch the sales leads ROLL IN!

What is the Google Local Business Center?

When you do a Google search for a product, service, or business name you might have noticed the listings that appear under the Local Results heading.  These results are listed in geographic order based on what Google believes to be your current location.

Google doesn’t just make these listing up.  Most of them come directly from the Local Business Center profile you can create free of charge to help promote your business.

Trackable Results

Last week Google added a feature to the Local Business Center that allows you to see how many times your listing was displayed, how many times visitors took an action, and how many people asked for directions to your business based on the listing.

For example, in the last 30 days our listing was shown 991 times resulting in 59 “actions”.  An action is whenever a visitor clicks on the map to get more information about your company, clicks through to your website, or requests driving directions.

Here is how our 59 actions broke out:

• 28 Clicks for more info on Maps
• 1 Clicks for driving directions
• 30 Clicks to your website

If you run the numbers, you find that this free listing converts about 6% of all Google searches for our key search terms right into our Lincoln Service Center.

Local Results

Keep in mind that these results are sorted by the distance Google believes the visitor is from the business.  This is not a situation where you can influence Google to list your operation above a competitor’s.  If your business is a very localized operation – like a lawn mowing service – Google Local Business Center can get you some new customers who want top do business because you are close by.

Additional Benefits of Completing Your Profile

Once you have created and confirmed your account (they make you confirm your address by mailing you a post card with a code on it) you should complete your profile as completely as possible.  You can add the following to your profile that will help boost the number of leads you receive:

• Up to 5 videos
• Up to 10 Pictures
• A Business Description
• Customer Reviews
• Accepted Forms of Payment
• Service Area
• Hours of Operation
• Hourly Rates
• Coupons

Here is a sample of the search results from Google with Schrock Innovations, another local competitor, and Brad’s PC Repair.  Schrock has a 100% complete profile with coupons.  The other competitor has a mostly complete profile, and Brad’s PC Repair has an incomplete profile.  Notice the difference in the search results:

The bottom line is that if you are not using Google’s Local Business Center you are missing out on new customers, leads, and probably sales.  This is a great alternative to the Yellow Pages and a no-brainer addition if you already have an ad.

Schrock Innovations has hired Steve Borland to head our Data Recovery Division!

Steve is a promising technician and an entrepreneur in his own right.   His company, Minaska Outdoors, makes some of the highest quality gaming calls on the market. His made-in-the-USA products can be found in retail locations like Cabela’s.  The electronic game calls his company produces can bring animals within 10 feet with the push of a button!

Why Schrock Likes to Hire Entrepreneurs

Steve started his company from the ground up.  Now that he has people performing the company’s day-to-day operations, he thought it was time to try something new.  Steve is returning to his PC roots to use his 10+ years of experience for Schrock’s customers.

Some company owners are hesitant to hire people who have an entrepreneurial blend of talents.  A smart business owner is one who is willing to hire people who can do things he can’t do – or doesn’t have the time to do.  Rather than feeling threatened by an employee’s drive and ambition, smart business owners visualize the amazing things that could be accomplished if their company was able to harness those entrepreneurial abilities.

Steve Will Head Our Data Recovery Division

Just as entrepreneurs have a unique blend of talent and ambition, they also require a uniqe position that will motivate and challenge them every day.  Schrock plans on placing Steve in charge of our Data Recovery Division.

Steve is already training on the Deepspar Imager and the Salvation Data Hard Drive Doctor System, as well as a host of data recovery software suites.

Steve has some experience with software based data recovery and he is excited to expand his knowledge to the realm of hardware recovery.  He will be swapping drive heads in our clean room before you know it!

A few weeks ago I posted about a special offer we put together to help get Vista’s Service Pack 2 safely installed on computers before it is force-fed to our customers via automatic update on June 30th.  The response was pretty good, and we were turning around most of the installs (even the problem children) in less than a day.

We cut a new commercial that is running on local Lincoln television to promote the offer as well.  Take a look:

Jon had to pioneer a couple new fixes with Microsoft that we came across, but we were able to get everyone up and running with the new Service Pack.  Some of the problems we had to overcome included:

• If you are running Vista Ultimate and have all language packs installed, Vista Service Pack 2 will not install (you have to remove them to install SP2)
• The Czechoslovakian language pack doesn’t uninstall -  You have to do an in-place upgrade (the equivalent to a repair installation in XP)
• The dreaded 0×8000ffff “End of File” error – This stumped MS for 2 whole days
• Death after installation reboot – Usually a symptom of a bad hard drive
• Service Pack 1 was not installed – This is easy to fix

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:

• What are the emerging trends with regard to business continuity/disaster recovery?

The corporate clients we service are becoming more an more aware of the need for off-site backups of their critical data.

Secure off-site backups like encrypted online services are entering the marketplace as an alternative to carting a removable drive home with you every night.

In the past, businesses have demonstrated the value they place in their methods of doing business and physical inventories by investing in trademarks and insurance policies.

As our economy shifts away from a manufacturing base and more toward an information base, organizations are understanding the need to protect their data assets just as they do their physical assets.

We are seeing clients move away from the old CD and DVD backup methods.  They are slow, typically incomplete, and are extremely prone to human error.

Software has evolved to a point where clients can automate their backups using flash drives, removable hard drives, and even online storage options.

We just spent 15 hours sorting out an office in Beatrice that did not have any standard operating procedures for their data.  They had been backing up the same 2007 Peachtree information for three years while their current Peachtree files were being stored on the secretary’s workstation.

They had no backups, and all that stood between normal operations and a data recovery crisis was a single, 9 year-old hard drive.  That is not an optimal situation.

The economy is actually forcing companies to look at their stored data in new ways.  Small business owners are beginning to understand the power of couponing their products to their customers via email instead of direct mail.

They are starting to realize that you can look at a past customer’s purchasing history to predict future purchasing patterns.

All of these recession-busting sales and marketing strategies are based on current, accurate data.  As companies invest in these next-generation strategies to keep their balance sheets in the black during a recession, they are also protecting these newly discovered tools just like a salesman of the 20th century would guard his call list.

They are making backups because they understand that the cost of losing that data would by far exceed the cost of protecting it.

Thanks for asking   We currently have a functioning class 10,000 clean room in our Lincoln Service Center.  We have invested more that $70,000 in technology, equipment, training, and tools to establish the only fully-functional data recovery center in the Midwest (the next closest are in Texas and Minnesota).

Here are some Schrock Innovations Data Recovery Quick Facts:

1. We have recovered over 100TB (roughly the equivalent of 900 standard PC hard drives) of data for our customers and clients in 2009 so far
2. We are planning our next $50,000 investment to develop a class 100 clean room (allows us to do forensic data recovery)
3. 80% of hard drives in our Data Recovery Center don’t need to be opened to recover the data
4. We recover date most frequently from camera memory cards and flash drives than hard drives
5. Hard Drives tend to fail in their 1st year of their 3rd year
6. Larger drives are more likely to fail than smaller ones and are more difficult to recover when they do
7. Only 12% of our data recovery jobs are “software jobs” (i.e. 90% require hardware equipment to facilitate recovery of data)

You read that right!  Schrock Innovations is teaming up with 104.1 The Blaze in Lincoln, NE to give away one FREE netbook computer EVERY DAY for a whole month!  The promotion is called PC’s and Pudding.  (Seriously)

How to Win One of the Schrock Netbooks:

All you have to do to win is listen to 104.1 the Blaze on the air or on the Internet and wait for the cue to call in.  When you hear the sounder, be caller #10 at 402-464-1041.  They will air the sounder once each day.

Improve Your Odds of Winning:

If you are trying to win by listening online I have a couple pointers for you.  The online feed is delayed by upto 45 seconds.  Since you have to be caller #10 to win the computer a time delay will make that challenging for online listeners.

You can improve your odds (and get more sleep) if you follow the Blaze on Twitter.  They will tweet specific details about when the sounder will be going off so you can be one of the first people to call in.  Knowing WHEN the sounder will happen dramatically improves your odds of winning!

What Are You Trying to Win:

You are trying to win an Asus netbook from Schrock Innovations.  The netbook has a retail price of $349.  Because the promotion is called PCs and Pudding, the radio station will throw in a box of instant pudding as well (seriously).  If you don’t know how to use a netbook, the instant pudding is a nice addition to any office.

I have no inside information about when the sounders are going to air, and I can’t do anything more than what I already have to improve your odds of winning, so enjoy the great music and have fun trying to win!

Netbooks are the latest arrival on the computing scene and are rapidly gaining popularity and acceptance among serious computer users.  In fact, there are reports that even Apple who one said netbooks were “junky” is bowing to the pressure to enter the netbook game.

What is a Netbook?

Basically, netbooks are miniature laptop computers.  They have screens that range from 7.5 to 10 inches, small keyboards, wireless capability, and often don’t come with CD drives.

Netbooks are designed to be small, light and run a LONG time on a small battery.  For example, Schrock Innovations carries the Asus netbook line in our Computer Service Center.  These netbooks weigh in at less than 2 pounds, last 5-6 hours on a single battery charge, and have enough power to run Windows XP or Windows 7 comfortably.

Why Would Anyone Want a Netbook?

Netbooks are primarily designed for two user groups.  If you travel and you want the ability create documents, check email, and browse the Internet on a normal web browser (as opposed to a mobile browser) the netbook is designed for you.

For this user class the netbook fills the gap between smartphones and laptop computers with a device that can be slipped into most glove compartments or purses.

Secondly, netbooks are designed for people who have a standard desktop, but don’t have a need to spend $700-$900 for an entry level notebook PC.  Netbooks are priced between $299 and $499, so they offer an inexpensive alternative to their larger notebook brothers.

The idea is that if you only plan on using the unit occasionally, the small keyboard and lack of a CD drive won’t impact you because you will use your desktop for anything serious you want to accomplish.

Can A Netbook Be A Primary Computer?

Yes, netbooks can be used as the only computing device in your household as long as you do not do anything more advanced than internet, email, and solitaire.

Most netbooks have a VGA connector for an external display and at least 2 USB slots that could be used for a wireless keyboard and mouse.  With these devices you could use the netbook as a primary computer.

Which Should I Buy?

So with this new kind of computer on the market which type of unit is best for you?  That all depends on what you want to do.  Here is a basic guide that can help you decide:

Choose a Netbook for:

• Internet
• Email
• Very Basic Games
• Light Productivity Use (Word, Excel, etc..)

Choose a Laptop For:

• Internet
• Email
• Intermediate Games
• Home Office Productivity
• Digital Photography
• Light Video Editing

Choose a Desktop For:

• Internet
• Email
• IAdvanced Gaming
• Home Office Productivity
• Digital Photography
• Advanced Video Editing
• Specialized Applications or Activities

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!