What Did You Do With Jill?Jill Whalen's healthy lifestyle transformation                                               

[Jill’s Note: If you prefer to listen rather than read, please scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version.]

It’s been nearly four years since I announced to the industry I loved for 17 years (Search Engine Optimization aka SEO), that I was moving on.

In my parting message, the piece that stands out to me now is this:

“SEO was never about the money for me. It was my passion and something that I absolutely had to do. And because of that, the money came. I believe the same thing can be true for anyone who finds their passion and uses it to help others.”

Which is exactly what I’ve been doing these past 4 years.

I’ve found a new passion and am using it to help others.

Here’s the coolest part… Read the rest of this entry »

[Jill’s Note: If you prefer to listen rather than read, please scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version.]

Have you ever noticed how certain people are always up in arms about something?

Whether it’s a situation at work, home or in our social circles, we can easily find a reason to feel put upon. As soon as one problem is cleared up, there’s always another around the corner. Plus there are plenty of horrible happenings in the news to feel bad about just in case we can’t find anything to complain about locally!

No doubt, there are a zillion things we can be up in arms over. But why would we want to? It seems kinda dumb to me. Read the rest of this entry »

[Jill’s Note: If you prefer to listen rather than read, please scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version.]

How much of what you do is because you’ve seen others do it first?

I recently saw a Facebook post from someone running an online program wondering what she might use as a bonus incentive to register. My initial reaction (which I posted to her) was something like: “Why do you need a bonus incentive? Shouldn’t your program’s content itself be the incentive to sign up?” She replied that she did believe her content was valuable enough, but that everyone else always has bonuses so she felt she needed to as well.

I found her answer to be curious.

Read the rest of this entry »

[Jill’s Note: If you prefer to listen rather than read, please scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version.]

I enjoy games as much as the next guy. Especially challenging and fun ones. For instance, this game of life we’re all playing. But some of the “games within the game” that I see all around me seem so unnecessary, and in many ways–hurtful.

Sometimes it even feels like I’m back in high school. Read the rest of this entry »

If you prefer to listen rather than read, please scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version.

[Jill’s Note: I wrote a version of this post in a Facebook Group for budding coaches last summer and was reminded of it yesterday as I was listening to the classic Og Mandino’s “The World’s Greatest Salesman – Scroll #4.” Apparently my last blog post on approaching people with love instead of judgment reminded my sister of Scroll #2 in that book which is why I was listening to it in the first place. Great minds think alike as I could relate to much of what Mandino says as it relates to business. He’s a little more “Go get ’em tiger” than I ever was, but his overall message was very similar to how I ran my business for over 18 years. Mandino’s Scroll #4 starts out:

“I am nature’s greatest miracle. Since the beginning of time, never has there been another with my mind, my heart, my eyes, my hands, my hair, my mouth. None that came before, none that live today, and none that come tomorrow can walk and talk and move and think exactly like me.”

To me, this notion has always been the key to business success as you’ll see from my post below written long before I ever heard of Og Mandino! – Jill ] Read the rest of this entry »

[Jill’s Note: If you prefer to listen rather than read, please scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version.]

Have you looked at leaders in your space or community, and wondered how they got there?

There could be millions of different ways, but I am 100% certain that it wasn’t by being a follower.

It seems that in our world, there are followers and there are leaders. While there can be some cross-over, for the most part we are one or the other.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Read the rest of this entry »

[Jill’s Note: If you prefer to listen rather than read, please scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version.]

Is it possible to change shyness?

This past May, while attending the Innate Wellbeing Retreat in the UK, I had an epiphany about shyness–my own and that of being shy, in general.

As I was watching how people interacted, I noticed a few different personality types: Read the rest of this entry »

In my current online circles, I’ve been running into a lot of small, heart-centered business owners who are confused about how to market their offerings online. While I left my old SEO world in 2013 in part because I felt that most people finally knew all of the marketing wisdom I had to share, I now see that I was wrong. Yes, true professionals in the SEO space got it. And yes, many of the companies I had been working with who’d been marketing online for many years also got it. But it never occurred to me that there were still so many smaller and/or newer businesses coming online every day who had no clue. And sadly, there is still a lot of bad and outright wrong information everywhere.

So once again, I find myself drawn to helping them. (Who knew you can’t erase 18+ years of website marketing knowledge!) Read the rest of this entry »

[Jill’s Note: If you prefer to listen rather than read, please scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version.]

Last week my first stab at leading a 7 week online transformation program came to an end. For me, it was nerve-wracking, exciting, scary, fun, interesting, a great learning experience, and a whole lot more, all wrapped into one!

How it was for the participants, I’m not entirely sure. So far I’ve had feedback from a few  who found it helpful (one of whom has already signed up for my next program). I also got constructive criticism from a couple of people, which was helpful and with which I wholeheartedly agree. Read the rest of this entry »

By Jill Whalen

Back in 2011 when I was still heavily entrenched in my website marketing career, I wrote this article wondering why people thought Deceptive Marketing Was a Necessary Evil. Throughout my career I had seen examples of marketing through “white lies” such as those mentioned in the article, which always seemed like a bad idea to me.

Let me back up even further… Read the rest of this entry »

Now that I’m immersed in topics such as health, fitness and spirituality, I can’t help but notice some areas where bloggers could be doing a better job spreading their message. Interestingly, I see the same problems from blog to blog, which indicates that many may be simply copying what their peers do. I expect that there’s also some bad and/or old online marketing advice being spread around as well. Read the rest of this entry »

[Jill’s Note: If you prefer to listen rather than read, please scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version.]

Change Your Thoughts–Change Your Relationships!

Have you ever thought someone was mad at you only to find out they were just worried about something completely unrelated to you?

I remember an experience like that one day many moons ago when I was in college. The hypochondriac in me was worried about some non-existent health issue, and therefore I was being more quiet and introspective than usual. That night as I lay in bed before going to sleep, all of a sudden my roommate burst out, “I’m sorry!” Confused, I asked her what she was sorry for. She answered, “I don’t know, but whatever it is that you’re mad at me for!”

Most people can probably relate to this scenario. When we think that someone is mad at us, we come up with all sorts of things we must have done to piss them off. After all, why would they be so mad if we didn’t do anything wrong. During those times, it all feels so real. My roommate absolutely knew for certain in her head that I was mad at her, and it didn’t feel good. She went through all the feelings she would normally go through if I was in fact mad at her.

In other words, we create entire stories in our heads. Read the rest of this entry »

[Jill’s Note: If you prefer to listen rather than read, please scroll to the bottom of this post for the audio version.]

Just Thought This Looked Cool!

After nearly 20 years in the SEO industry, I learned a lot of things about how it worked. Now that my transformational journey has taken me down another path, I’m learning about completely different stuff. With my website marketing background, however, I can’t help but see similarities between it and personal development. In fact, I’ve found that noticing these help me to relate and better understand the new topics that I’m learning about. Read the rest of this entry »

Getting Caught Up In Thought

Recently, a friend who has a small consulting firm called me for some advice about a business situation. He told me of a client who had signed off on a proposal and was ready to move forward with his services. Wanting to get a good feel for exactly what would be needed to get started, my friend began to review what the company was currently doing. After analyzing their situation, he suggested to the client that rather than trying to fix a certain aspect of their business, it would be best for them to start over from scratch. He let them know that from his analysis, their current model wasn’t working well and was losing them money. Read the rest of this entry »