Rohrbach Uses Social Media to Help Realize Dream

By Matt Flumerfelt 

VALDOSTA — Neal Rohrbach was a featured speaker recently at the 140 Characters Conference in Hollywood, Calif.

He lives in Valdosta and works in Ray City at the Outdoor Channel satellite station.

He is a co-founder, along with Bradford Shimp, of iDea Anglers, an online resource for people with business ideas who need a little, or a lot, of help shaping and implementing those ideas.

The conference was held Oct. 27-28 at the Kodak Theater, where the Oscars are held each year.

Conference Founder Jeff Pulver noted that the 140 Characters Conference explores the effects of the real-time Internet on business.

“It was phenomenal,” Rohrbach said. “It was kind of surreal because for the first day and a half I was seeing and hearing some of my social media idols on stage, but after the conference people were coming up to me at the conference and at the airport later thanking me and shaking my hand.” Read More>>

Idea Anglers featured on BusinessWeek.com

Services for Aspiring Business Owners

Aspiring entrepreneurs already know the Internet has made it cheaper than ever to start a business. They also know there are dozens of inexpensive services available online vying for their dollars, ranging from CRM software to Web analytics to legal advice. But which services are worth considering? In this slide show, Scott Blitstein, who blogs frequently about Web tools on WebWorkerDaily and runs a Park Forest (Ill.)-based small business consultancy eSeMBe Technical Services, discusses his favorites for those looking to start a business on the cheap. Read More>>

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

I’ve always thought that all businesses, regardless of their size or market position, could benefit from some form of collaboration. People in business, especially small business, stand to gain by learning from and partnering with others.And that’s why I’m in love with ideaAnglers.com

(Full disclosure: I’ve been involved with ideaAnglers for a few weeks as a guide, but I’m not directly compensated by them, nor will I be in the future)

A brief case for collaboration

There’s value in the direct collaboration that an agency and a printer have. There’s value in the pricing model that’s structured so that when a client’s program is more successful, a vendor earns more (I make a more detailed argument here).

I’m not suggesting that direct competitors should be forced to hold hands. But competitors can almost always benefit from a little co-opetition. Co-opetition recognizes that

…business is both co-operation and competition.

Adam Brandenburger (of the Harvard Business School) and Barry Nalebuff (of the Yale School of Management) wrote a book about co-opetition in 1997, but it’s still relevant—for example, in 2009 “many products [still] don’t take off because complementary products or services are either too expensive or don’t exist at all.” And a PSA in 2009 about “living green” will benefit all green companies.

The point of co-opetition:A rising tide lifts all boats.

Why I love ideaAnglers

ideaAnglers (iA) is a project started by two brilliant entrepreneurs, Neal Rohrbach (@nrohrbach) and Bradford Shimp (@bradfordshimp). Their vision is to

bring together a network of experts who will provide resources and work in a collaborative fashion on new ideas and projects.

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Help Shape Business Ideas with the Idea Anglers

Here at WebWorkerDaily we’ve written a lot about Twitter and its increasing usefulness for productivity, business and networking. As it grows in popularity, there have been a multitude of businesses that have been formed around the service. One such service is Idea Anglers, a community for entrepreneurs looking for help in shaping their business ideas.

It’s been a real pleasure to watch Idea Anglers take form right before my very eyes. Founders Neal Rohrbach and Bradford Shimp met in a weekly Twitter chat and began exchanging occasional tweets in the weeks that followed. An off-handed comment by Bradford about being an “Idea Wrangler” led Neal on a domain search, and thus the business was born.

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New Startup Created Solely with Social Media: Idea Anglers

This week on The Bella Buzz podcast, we are very excited to have with us the founders of an online business incubator called Idea Anglers. Brad Shimp andNeal Rohrbach regularly participate in a twitter chat called SBBuzz, which we have mentioned during previous podcasts. Over the course of the weekly chats it became apparent that Brad and Neal were involved in something rather interesting, so we invited them to join us on this week's episode.

It is an amazing story as we discovered that these two entrepreneurs had developed this concept, executed the launch of a web site, crafted a business plan ... and this appearance on the Bella Buzz podcast is the first time that they have actually heard each other's voices! Read More and Listen to the Podcast