Just over a month ago I attended Mark Anastasi’s Social Media Millionaire Summit in London which was a great chance for me to network and find out whats hot right now on the internet from the top experts.

One person in particular whose talk I thoroughly enjoyed was a woman named Deborah Micek AKA ‘Coach Deb‘. She was speaking about new media marketing and how its very important to be ‘top of mind’ if you want to get the most business. Following her talk we then went up to the bar where everyone hung out, I then took the opportunity to ask her for an interview. So here it is below and the transcript too, hope you like it!

Heres the Mp3 Below so you can listen on the go!

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Coach Deb Interview Transcript…..

Aaron: Hi guys and girls, it’s Aaron Darko here and today I’m here with Coach Deb. She’s one of the speakers here at Mark Anastasi’s Social Media Millionaire Summit, and she actually moved from New Jersey to the island of Oahu to build her multi-million dollar social media empire.  Debbie, it’s really nice having you.

Deb: Thank you, it’s great to be here.

Aaron: So, can you tell us a bit about your story and what you’re about?

Deb: Yeah, I decided to change my life, quit my job, sell everything, I literally sold my furniture in the house…  just everything to move to move across the country, all the way across the Pacific to an island. Just to really see what you could do if you’re on an island and you couldn’t necessarily go from state to state, from country to country without getting on a plane.

So, what could I do just using new media marketing and do it on a shoe-string budget like a startup company and how much impact and how could I reach the UK from this tiny little island.

And that’s pretty much what the quest was and that’s how I became known as a Social Media Queen and Twitter Queen, I wrote the first book on Twitter, I wrote the first book on new media and part of that was just being online, observing what’s happening, observing the trends and being a participant.

I wasn’t just talking about it, I was using it, because that was my access to the outside world.

You know, I’m here on an island and you have a certain amount of people that you can talk to but it’s limited. Especially if you’re talking about meeting other business owners and other entrepreneurs.

So, I got that quest, I got on that quest and I got that need fulfilled by the whole internet aspect of social media.

Aaron: So, how important it is for people to get online and actually get involved in these social media conversations as opposed to traditional markets?

Deb: It’s extremely important if people want to get to be top of mind, and be known in this 21^st century. 2010 is going to be a very different year than it was when websites first came out back in the ‘90s. And,

“If they’re not involved with social media, they will be behind the curve.”

Just like if they didn’t have a website and they thought it was gonna be a fad. And they see: “Oh, now, blogs aren’t a fad either”. They’ve only grown and they’re now in the billions.

There’s billions of blogs out there but at the time when they first came out people were like: “Oh blogs, that’s just a cute name…” and they thought they could ignore it but that was to their peril.

“It’s the fast; in this economy it’s the fast that eat the slow.”

It’s no longer the big that eat the small, right? It’s the fast that eat the slow. So, I wasn’t a big company when I moved to Oahu, we didn’t have corporate backing it was all self funded. But, I was faster than my competitors and that’s what differentiated myself, and that what has put me on a bleeding edge of this type of technology that I’m now a ‘go to’ person in this area because I’ve put myself out there and I did it first.

“So, if they’re not going out there in social media they’re gonna lose business, they’re gonna have to pay a lot for advertising instead of getting it for free.”

And, the links to their sites, there’s a lot of SEO work that is also involved but right now we’re just talking about social capital which will be more important than your financial capital.

It’s the social capital. How many friends you have online that can then trigger a viral campaign. And those are the people that are going to be your raving fans. You can’t pay for that type of exposure.

Aaron: Definitely. So, like, what type of sites should people go on if they want to grow their business with social media?

Deb: The two best sites are Twitter and Facebook and a third which a lot of people aren’t talking about, haven’t heard it mentioned this weekend and it probably won’t unless I start talking about it now. But, here’s something that I hadn’t even shared on stage ‘cause I’m gonna wait to chat about it with my clients and the secret society of the Quan.  But it’s LinkedIn.

A lot of people, it’s been around, but a lot of people have ignored it and they haven’t looked at it as a social media event. They’ve looked at it as: “Oh, that’s where you put your resume or your CV” and it is becoming so much more than that.

It is becoming the social media place where people are also doing what they did on Facebook and Twitter but now it’s growing and I promise you it will be… it will spike in this growth. Over the next nine months you’re gonna see LinkedIn Spike

But you wanna get in there before the spike happens and that’s how you garner all the… not only friends instantly and more of them than your competitors but you get the early adopters, you get the people like you and I and those are great clients in this industry.

Aaron: On stage you spoke about Wayne Gretzky.

Deb: Yeah.

Aaron: Can you talk more about that and what the implications are of what he said?

Deb: Yeah, it’s really important in social media that you skate to where the puck is going. Just like Wayne Gretzky in Hockey.A reporter asked him like: “Why are you always there where the ball is?” and he said:

“I’m not faster than anyone else and it’s not even my speed, it’s how I see where the puck is going and that’s what I’m looking at”. He’s like: “I’m looking at where the puck is going and I skate to where the puck is going not to where it is”.

And that was my whole… he inspired me in social media. I thought: “I wanna be the person that sets the trends and predicts the trends; and sees where the puck is going and then share that with all my clients”.

Aaron: Yeah, definitely, absolutely. And I’ll say it for everyone like, get online because that’s where the puck is going, right?

Deb: That’s where the puck is going.

Aaron: And in few years, where do you see the internet, in few years time?

Deb: See… it’s gonna be mobile, it’s…

Everything is gonna happen on your mobile phone.

If sites aren’t designed to be mobile friendly that’s another thing that’s gonna be the turn for them. So, that’s another thing that they really need to focus on now, because advertising all of these things will be happening online and it will all be about mobile.

So, it may be a mobile phone, it may be the things like the iPad, but everything that you can portably take. TV, I think that’s also going to drop in viewership and, you’re going to see more people getting portable devices that they can travel and watch TV but on the go, on their convenience instead of being stuck in a living room, in a chair tied to a box.

So, everything is gonna be portable. When I say mobile it’s not just mobile phones it’s gonna be literally mobile at your convenience.

Aaron: So, what can someone do right now to grow their business and make contacts on social media?

Deb: And make contacts?

Aaron: Yeah.

Deb: Definitely start with Twitter; go to TwitterHandbook.com you’ll get a free download of a portion of the published book. And it will get you started using twitter which is one of the hottest social media sites out there.

When you have every news station talking about: “Oh, follow me on twitter, follow me on Facebook” and you’ve got people…. Oh they’re giggling over here, we’re entertaining them, they’re just having a blast filming us [Laughs].

But, when you have reporters now, reporting the news from tweeters and they say, we’re getting all of our information… there was a hurricane (actually there were 2), and then there was an earthquake and in various places around the Globe, and each time some type of major world event, you have traditional media saying: “Oh, we’ve just got a tweet that a hurricane hit over here, the earthquake hit here…” And the volcanic ash, when that all happened, people and news casters, the media were going to twitter to find their information.

And we saw this in the early… the turn of the century, the early 2000, we saw people turning to blogs, traditional media types, to get their news and information, to then talk about it in the media.

So I look at this… this is great PR for you and to get that exposure in media, like traditional media. Because, all you need to do is to blog and tweet and if the media finds you now, you get in front of millions because newscast and journalists are going online to find about information.

Aaron: Definitely. Since you’ve started an online journey, what has been your biggest mistake?

Deb: Biggest mistake was ignoring things and not doing things as they weren’t perfect. You know, I wanted to look a certain way, I wanted to lose ten pounds or whatever and my mistake was not just going out there and doing it what it is.

Perfection, don’t wait for perfection, if you do you’re gonna be behind someone else. And it’s all that “the fast eat the slow”, your competitors are gonna beat you to it. So, I look at a lot of missed opportunities because I waited for things to be perfect.

Aaron: Right.

Deb: Yeah.

Aaron: So, your message is basically: “don’t wait, get involved right now”.

Deb: Yeah, absolutely.

Aaron: Definitely.

Deb: Perfection will come, you know, and when we say perfection, it means results! Don’t go for “perfection”, go for results. Go for massive exposure and if you’re there first you’re gonna beat your competitors and you’re gonna have a hold stronger than someone who comes in and tries to copy you.

Aaron: So someone right now is watching this, thinking: “Can I really be a celebrity online”. What would you say to that person?

Deb: Yeah, absolutely and I would tell them to go to Quansite.net and find the people who have found fame and fortune and we got case studies and examples of people who just got online.

There’s one individual who had a blog and he got a movie deal pick him up. Another woman was in music and she not only had a million fans, she sold a million of her songs the moment it was released all because of the new media.

It wasn’t because a record deal picked her up. So, we see this again and again and again.

CNN Money contacted someone, they got exposure on Fox News, we’re just seeing stories over and over and they’re all going online to get these stories.

So, don’t just think online and think that’s the only place you need to get exposure, think strategically: “how I can use online marketing in order to get traditional media advertising?”

And that’s free PR for your advertising.

You don’t pay a million dollars for a Super Bowl ad, just get on the news, for free.

Aaron: Absolutely, so do you have any last tips for people?

Deb: Last tip is: “take action now”! Millionaires take action now; people that are successful take action before things are perfect. Bill Gates didn’t know how the PC is gonna be developed, he just knew he could and he said: “yes, we can do it!”

That’s what you wanna start doing. Get the vision of what you wanna do and just start. The details will just take care of themselves I promise you.

Aaron: Absolutely, so where can my viewers get more information about this?

Deb: If you go to… actually, you know, the blog is perfect since we’re talking about the blogs. So, my blog is TribalSeduction.com, and you can follow me on Twitter at CoachDeb. So, @coachdeb.

If you go to Twitter.com (if you’re not familiar with this), just go to twitter.com, forward slash (/) and then just type my username (coachdeb) and then tell me that you’ve found me through this podcast, or blog, or video or whatever you’re seeing. ‘Cause the beautiful thing about this video is it can be repurposed.

It can go up on Youtube, it can go on your own site, it can go on your Quan site, it can go all over the place and it’s more exposure.

And on Facebook it’s “Deborah Cole Micek”. So, friend me up, I’d love to meet with you.

Aaron: Ok, thank you very much Deborah.

Deb: Thank you, it’s a pleasure!

I hope you really enjoyed todays post. Coach Deb shared some real gems! She definitely walks her talk! You can catch her at her blog.

Let me know what you learnt from this interview, what are your views on where the internet is going?

Talk back to me below

Your Friend

Aaron

P.S. Retweet if you found it valuable! Thanks