Lilach Bullock, marketing strategist and entrepreneur, was the guest on Episode 99 of the Monday Motivation Spotlight, hosted by Lesley Kaplan and published on 15 December 2025. The 37 minute conversation was recorded a week after the Jerusalem Business Conference and covers three big things: how Lilach lost 54 kilos and healed her back without surgery or medication by changing her identity rather than dieting; the 20 year arc of her career from one of the first virtual PAs in the UK to a Forbes-listed social media influencer, an agency owner and a paid international speaker; and what happened to that business after making aliyah in 2018, through COVID and October 7th, up to her decision in late 2025 to move back into an in-house role. The full episode is embedded below, followed by the key takeaways, a summary of each part of the conversation and a cleaned transcript.
Watch on YouTube: Monday Motivation Spotlight with Lilach Bullock and host Lesley Kaplan, Episode 99. The podcast is produced by Lesley Kaplan, business strategy and branding coach and founder of the Israel Networking Hub.
Key takeaways
- Lilach lost 54 kilos, healed a back that had put her in a wheelchair and was heading for surgery, and reversed a diabetes diagnosis, without weight loss medication. She was offered it and declined because she wanted to get to the root cause rather than put a plaster on it.
- The turning point was admitting she was a sugar addict. In her words, change can only come when you get honest with yourself and take ownership. She rebuilt her identity around four rules: no refined sugar, move every day, protect sleep, and catch self-sabotage as fast as possible.
- Timing was the biggest factor in her early business success. She became one of the first virtual PAs in the world about 22 years ago, before social media existed, grew the business fast because there was almost no competition, and sold it within two years.
- Being named by Forbes in 2013 as the 14th most influential social media power influencer changed her career overnight and opened up paid international speaking and a pivot from a digital marketing agency to a content and PR agency.
- Her one big failure: she built one of the first social media scheduling tools before Hootsuite, raised three rounds of investment, and shut it down after the developers let her down. Hootsuite later became a client.
- Her website, lilachbullock.com, has been a passive income source for 10 years, at one point reaching over 600,000 visits a month with more than 1.3 million backlinks. It carried her through COVID when the PR agency lost its market.
- When she launched a podcast she was told nobody would sponsor a show with no numbers. She sent around 2,500 outreach emails, most ignored, and raised about $30,000 in sponsorship in 10 days.
- After October 7th she stopped everything for three months and used her large, mostly non-Jewish audience to share what was happening. She received death threats and lost around 100,000 followers, but said the silence from long-standing colleagues hurt more than the hate.
The 54 kilo transformation and healing her back
Lesley opened with the personal side, and Lilach did not hold back. She described a chronic back condition so bad she used a wheelchair and a walking stick, was booked for surgery, was diagnosed diabetic and was having menopausal hot flashes almost constantly. She said she had yo-yoed with her weight for 30 years and had never been as slim as she is now.
The shift, she said, came from honesty rather than a new plan. “Change and transformation can only come when you get really honest and real with yourself and very aware. It’s only when you own up, take accountability, responsibility and ownership that real change can happen.” She had not realised she was a sugar addict, and once she accepted it the addiction clashed with her values and her identity, so she changed the identity. Her new rules are simple: no refined sugar under any circumstances, move every day, protect sleep, and notice self-sabotage early enough to stop it.
Because her back was too damaged to exercise at first, she had to work on food alone, which she said was the hardest part because every previous attempt had relied on exercise to offset what she was eating. She now runs, lifts weights, swims and walks 20 kilometres at a time. She was clear that she does not judge anyone who chooses medication, but for her it felt like a band-aid and she wanted to understand why she had struggled for so long.
Twenty years of pivots: virtual PA, Downing Street, Forbes
Asked about the business side, Lilach started at the beginning. When her daughter was born about 21 years ago, her employer would not let her return part time, so she set up as a virtual PA to work from home. It was so rare at the time that she had almost no competition, and she credits timing as a huge factor in any successful business. She grew fast through local networking, ended up with five women working from her house before remote work was normal, and sold the business within two years. She was invited to Downing Street as best mumpreneur of the year and had tea with the prime minister’s wife.
Other women then asked how to become virtual PAs, so she pivoted to training them, and sold that business too. Between those two chapters came the failure she rarely talks about: she spotted the gap for a social media scheduling tool before Hootsuite existed, raised money, held a launch party in Chelsea, and then the developers let her down. She had never managed a development team and eventually decided not to continue. Hootsuite later became a client.
Social media was taking off, so she built one of the first digital marketing agencies. In 2013 Forbes named her the 14th most influential social media power influencer, which she said transformed her career overnight: paid speaking from Russia to Poland to America and Spain, courses on website conversion and digital selling for Simplilearn, and a pivot into content and PR because her influencer status could get tech companies such as Monday.com and Elementor into publications.
Aliyah, COVID and the website that carried her
The family made aliyah in 2018. Lilach said she could see antisemitism rising in the UK long before October 7th, had experienced it her whole life because of her name, and her daughter, then 14, wanted to live in Israel. At first the business travelled with her: she kept the agency, the staff and the speaking. Then COVID hit. Publications furloughed staff or covered only pandemic news, so the PR agency could no longer get anyone featured. She kept paying her staff and could not get support from either government, and it hit her hard. She pivoted into coaching and consulting at the same moment the rest of the world did, and then her back problems began.
What saved her was the website. For 10 years lilachbullock.com has produced passive income, at one point over 600,000 visits a month with more than 1.3 million backlinks, and she moved it onto a sponsorship model. She has written in detail about that rebuild in how she let everything go and grew her passive income 573% in five months, and there is a plain explanation of the model in what passive income is and what it takes to build it.
The podcast sponsorship story drew the strongest reaction from Lesley. When Lilach launched a podcast before the war, everyone told her a new show with no numbers could not be sponsored. She said she had to try because a podcast is a lot of work and she likes to be rewarded for it. She sent around 2,500 outreach emails. Most were ignored, the next largest group asked for numbers first, and a few took a punt. She raised about $30,000 in 10 days. Her advice to viewers: if someone tells you it cannot be done, research it, check it is right, and then go and do it anyway.
October 7th and the cost of speaking up
Lesley explained that the Monday Motivation Spotlight itself was started one to two weeks after October 7th to give exposure to Israeli business owners and nonprofits. Lilach remembered the morning: her daughter, then serving in the army, calling repeatedly before she picked up. She stopped everything she was doing and spent the first three months of the war using her network, which was large and mostly non-Jewish, to share what was happening. She received death threats and a great deal of hate, and around 100,000 followers left on Twitter alone.
What she found hardest was not the hate but the silence from colleagues she had spoken with and worked with for years. It also drove her weight up by another three stone in three months, because sugar was her drug of choice when she was not coping. She was later invited to New York to meet the American influencers who were supporting Israel.
What is next
By the end of 2025 Lilach was pivoting again. She said she misses having a team and collaborating, and wants to use her skills where she can make a bigger difference in growth, marketing and sales. Lesley’s response: if it is scary, it is good, because that is where growth happens. If that is where you are too, mindset for entrepreneurs when everything is hard is the longer version of what she says here.
Her parting words: be yourself, do not be afraid to ask for help, pivot as many times as you need to because the only person judging you is you, and remember that life is like a river, it flows both ways and nothing lasts forever, so be grateful for what you have.
Frequently asked questions
What does Lilach Bullock talk about on Monday Motivation Spotlight Episode 99?
Her 54 kilo weight loss and healing her back without surgery, her career from one of the first virtual PAs to a Forbes-listed social media influencer, making aliyah in 2018, how COVID and October 7th hit her business, raising podcast sponsorship with no numbers, and her decision to move back into an in-house role.
When was the episode published and how long is it?
It was published on YouTube on 15 December 2025 and runs for 37 minutes and 29 seconds. It was recorded the week after the Jerusalem Business Conference.
Who is Lesley Kaplan and what is the Monday Motivation Spotlight?
Lesley Kaplan is a business strategy, branding and goal coach based in Israel and the founder of the Israel Networking Hub. The Monday Motivation Spotlight is her weekly 30 minute podcast, started shortly after October 7th 2023 to give exposure to Israeli business owners and nonprofits.
Full transcript
Cleaned from the episode captions. Filler and repetition removed, meaning kept. Two speakers: host Lesley Kaplan and Lilach Bullock.
Host: Welcome to the Monday Motivation Spotlight. I’m Lesley Kaplan. Every week we feature a different special guest making a difference in Israel. Thank you as always to our sponsors, Egert and Cohen Insurance and Lalis Flower Boutique in Jerusalem. Today our special guest, well known to many of you, is Lilach Bullock, with a beautiful UK accent. Born in Israel and raised in the UK, Lilach returned to Israel in 2018. She has had an amazing career as an entrepreneur in marketing and tech, she is known for her podcast and her work with global brands, and she has spoken internationally at many business and tech events. Alongside her professional journey she transformed her life by losing 54 kilos, which is incredible, and she will share a little about that as well as her experiences in the UK and moving to Israel. So, Lilach, welcome to the show. We have known each other online for quite a while and I had the pleasure of meeting you last week at the Jerusalem Business Conference in person. Before we get into the tech, marketing and strategy side, tell us a little about who Lilach Bullock is.
Lilach: Hi Lesley. Thank you so much for having me on your show today. I’m thrilled, and I adored your event last week. The energy was amazing and I said earlier that it was the best event I have been to in Israel so far, so well done. A little about me: I was born in Israel and left when I was about one, grew up in the UK, and we made aliyah in 2018. We live in Modiin and I love it here. Personally, I have gone through a transformation recently. I had a very bad back. I was in a wheelchair at one point and needed a walking stick, and I was about to have surgery, and I managed to heal my back. My menopause was through the roof as well. And I have lost 54 kilos.
Host: That is amazing, and yes, I definitely want to go in that direction because it is not easy. I have seen you post a lot about it on social media. For someone to lose 54 kilos and transform their whole life is incredible. Please share that with us.
Lilach: Thank you. I did not realise I was a sugar addict. I always say that change and transformation can only come when you get really honest and real with yourself and very aware. It is only when you own up, take accountability, responsibility and ownership that real change can happen. That is my belief anyway. I had to do a lot of soul searching as to why I was constantly struggling with my weight. For the last 30 years I battled and yo-yoed up and down. I have never been as thin as I am now. It got to the stage where my back was so bad I needed surgery and could barely move. I was in chronic, acute pain every second of the day, which is very debilitating. My menopause was through the roof and I was having hot flashes nearly every second. And I was diagnosed diabetic. So I hit rock bottom, and there is only one way up.
It was a challenging period, if I’m honest, because I was in denial. I did not realise how sick I was. I thought everybody liked sweets and chocolate and cakes, and I did not realise I was overeating. Once I went through the painful exercise of accepting that I was a sugar addict, that is when I realised I had to make a change. I was offered Ozempic or Wegovy by the doctor and decided not to take it. A lot of people ask why. I’m not disrespecting anyone who chooses that, because it is still better to be a healthy weight however you get there. But for me it felt like a band-aid and I did not want that. I wanted to get to the root of why I was like this and why I always struggled. I knew people who had been on it and regained the weight, and I did not want any more yo-yoing. So for me it was giving up refined sugar and rewiring my mind so that I could make healthier choices, which I did. I managed to heal my back and my menopause as well.
It has taken a long time. In the beginning my back was so bad I could barely exercise, so I had to focus on the food, which was very hard for me, because in the past whenever I lost weight I did a lot of exercise while still eating everything I should not have been eating. Now I’m running, lifting weights, swimming, walking 20 kilometres at a time. I’m a totally different person physically, mentally and emotionally.
Host: That is so inspiring, and I agree. We are in control of our thoughts and our actions. We cannot control what happens on the outside, but it is about self-accountability and making the decision. One of the things I always say to the business owners I coach is: are we interested in doing something, or are we committed to doing it? You were probably interested for a long time and then you committed and made it happen. How long did it take once you made that decision?
Lilach: It happened once I realised I was an addict. That changed my perspective, because it went against my values and my identity, and that is ultimately what I did: I changed my identity. My new identity is that I do not eat refined sugar no matter what. I move every day. I protect my sleep, that is another big one for me. And, this one is a work in progress because I’m not perfect at it, I’m aware when I’m self-sabotaging and try to stop it as quickly as I can. That could be about anything in my life. We are often our own worst enemies.
Host: Every stage you mentioned is important, especially the last one. You have also been helping clients with this. Can we talk about that before we get into the side of your life we all know?
Lilach: Sure. I have always been a high performance coach and consultant, but more in the business realm. As part of my journey a lot of people reached out to ask how I did it and whether I could help them, so it transpired into helping other people overcome this too. It is heartbreaking. People are very judgmental of overweight people and think, just eat less and move more. It is really not so simple. A lot of women, particularly at our age, have had decades of patterns and behaviours, and it is very hard to break those cycles. It leads to a lack of confidence, a lack of self-esteem, wrong decisions and even depression. It has been an honour and a privilege to help others overcome it, because I would not wish it on my worst enemy. It is a heartbreaking experience to hate your body and still overeat because you cannot break the cycle. And it is so common, which is really sad.
Host: It sounds easier than it is. When someone is going through it, it is not easy at all. Kol hakavod, keep up the amazing work. Let’s take this in a different direction. Let’s talk about Lilach growing up in the UK. Your life there was very different from your life in Israel. Let’s talk about the businesswoman in tech, strategy and marketing, and despite the huge success you had there, what made you decide to make aliyah? Did you continue at the same pace? And I’m talking about before October 7th; we will get to that afterwards.
Lilach: Where to start. I’ll tell you where my career began. When I had my daughter, who is now 21, they would not let me go back part time, so I decided to become a virtual PA. I was one of the first virtual PAs in the world. Twenty one or 22 years ago it was quite rare, and this was before social media, before everything. I set out to be a virtual PA so I could work from home, and I have been working from home for about 21 years. Because I was one of the first, and this is why I’m a great believer that a huge factor in a successful business is timing, the business grew so quickly. I did not have much competition. I was networking too, at local groups, and I grew the business phenomenally fast. I had the opposite problem: I remember phoning agencies to get women to come and work at my house, before people worked virtually. At one point I had five women in my house. I always tried to work with other mums so they could work part time. I always wanted to give back.
Within two years I sold it, and I went to Downing Street for best mumpreneur of the year and had tea with the prime minister’s wife, which was very special. My husband came and my parents met us afterwards with Emily, who was about two, so I have a photo of the three of us outside Downing Street. There were famous people there as well. I remember walking around inside the building and even having a look at the toilets. It feels like such a long time ago and I rarely talk about it now.
On the back of that, other women started asking how to become a virtual PA, because back then it was so rare, so I pivoted and started training other women to become virtual PAs, and then I sold that business. At that point social media was starting to come into play, and I was an early adopter, which I think really helped my career. I created a digital marketing agency, one of the first. Fast forward to 2013 and I was featured in Forbes as the 14th most social media power influencer.
Host: Wow, that is incredible.
Lilach: This was 2013, when Forbes meant something. Today it does not mean as much. It transformed my career overnight. Suddenly everybody wanted me. I became one of the digital marketing influencers of the day, was able to speak internationally as a paid speaker and work with all types of clients. I pivoted again into a content and PR agency, because a lot of people were now in digital marketing, and because of my influencer status I was able to get companies like Monday.com and Elementor and all sorts of tech companies into publications.
I have missed a bit of my story. Should I tell you the bad part?
Host: Share whatever you like. You are an open book here.
Lilach: When I sold my first business, the virtual PA business, I realised social media was just starting and there was a gap in the market, and I created one of the first social media scheduling tools. Think Hootsuite. I came up with it before they did. I raised a lot of money, had a big launch party in Chelsea with a lot of famous people, and people who paid for it. To cut a long story short, the developers let me down and I had to raise three rounds of investment. By then I was becoming more influential and more into the tech space, and I decided not to continue with it. I had never raised money before, I was not a techy person, and it is not like today with AI. I did not know how to manage a development team. So it did not happen, although I later worked with Hootsuite and they became a client of mine, which is quite interesting.
So before I made aliyah I was very successful. I was doing a lot of influencer marketing, I had my agency, I was a paid speaker everywhere from Russia to Poland to America and Spain, and I created courses on website conversion and digital selling for a company called Simplilearn. Things were ticking along nicely, and then we decided to make aliyah. I could see antisemitism was on the rise, and this was before October 7th. I have experienced antisemitism my whole life because of my name; no one could pronounce it, so it always came up, even as a child at school in the UK. Emily was 14 and whenever we came to Israel on holiday she would say she wanted to live here, then change her mind when we got home. In 2018 I was home educating Emily because I was not happy with the education system in the UK. As an entrepreneur I realised they were not teaching business or entrepreneurship.
Host: How did you have time to home educate while being such a busy entrepreneur?
Lilach: I was very fortunate. When you are an influencer you make a lot of money for not a lot of work; that is the truth. And I had a big team. I was the visionary and the face of the company. I brought in the clients, did the strategy and the relationships, and got everyone else to do the work. Also I only have one child. We are very close. She did a TED talk at 12 and I’m a high performer, so I suppose that influenced her too. It is easier when you have one. Most of my friends have four or five children. I had a lot of fertility problems, and I think that is why I threw myself into my career and into Emily, because I could not have more children, which was heartbreaking. I don’t think I could have done it with four or five children.
Host: Pros and cons and having to make choices. So you decided to make aliyah despite the huge success in the UK. Were you able to maintain it at the beginning? Was it a soft landing or a hard landing?
Lilach: When we made aliyah, Emily had to go to school because I could not continue to home educate. She went to YTA, a private school in Jerusalem, which was a nice soft landing for her.
Host: I know YTA very well. One of the social impact projects we launched at the Jerusalem Business Conference is ImpactIL, and YTA is one of our projects. Great place.
Lilach: When I first made aliyah I was able to keep my business. I was still speaking and travelling, I still had my agency and my staff, and I thought it would work seamlessly. Then COVID hit and it massively changed everything, not in a good way. I could no longer get anyone featured in publications, because so many publications either had staff on furlough or were only dealing with COVID news. So the PR agency took a big hit, and I was still paying my staff and could not get help from the UK or Israeli governments. I was trying to do the right thing but it hit me hard. Eventually I pivoted into coaching and consulting, which I had always done on the side but never promoted. So did the whole world, and I was suddenly competing against everyone. Then my back problems started, and it was very hard to do as much work. Since COVID I have pivoted countless times.
Host: That is a sign of an entrepreneur: we learn to pivot, either because things are not going in the direction we wanted or because we have a new idea we want to pursue.
Lilach: Throughout all of this I have been fortunate that I have my website. For the last 10 years I have made a passive income from it, and it was an amazing fallback that basically saved me during COVID. At one point it had over 600,000 visits a month and it has over 1.3 million organic backlinks.
Host: Share the URL with our viewers.
Lilach: It is lilachbullock.com, just my name.
Host: You are your brand, so it makes sense that it is your name.
Lilach: I went into the sponsorship model as well and tried to get as many sponsorship deals as I could. And here is some advice for your viewers. When I launched my podcast, before the war, everyone said, you cannot get sponsorship on a brand new podcast, you need to give your numbers, no one is going to do it. If someone says you can’t do it, no one else has done it, just ignore them.
Host: Davka, then go and do it, after you have researched and checked that it is the right thing.
Lilach: Yes. I had to try, because a podcast is a lot of time, work and effort and I like to be rewarded for that. I raised about $30,000 in 10 days with no numbers at all. That sounds amazing, but what people don’t realise is that I did an outreach campaign and sent around 2,500 emails. The majority were ignored. The next group said it sounded amazing but asked for numbers and said they would be interested once the numbers were up. And a very few took a punt on me and believed in the podcast. I was always good at finding opportunities and monetising them.
Host: It shows the entrepreneur in you. Now let’s talk about October 7th, which affected every single one of us, directly or indirectly. As many of our viewers know, this podcast was started one to two weeks after October 7th to give exposure to Israeli business owners and nonprofits who had taken a hit, and to inspire and motivate. Share with us how October 7th affected you, with a following mostly from abroad, especially the UK. I think you said you had 100,000 followers on Twitter who unfollowed you. Is that correct?
Lilach: Yes. I still remember the morning. The evening before I had been out with friends and I think I even said we had not had any issues for ages. The next day, my daughter, who was in the army at the time and thank God has now finished, was calling and calling and I did not pick up. Finally I did, and it all unfolded. I remember being in total shock and really struggling with it. I decided to stop everything I was doing and dedicated the first three months of the war to using my network. I had a very large audience online, and a large non-Jewish audience, and I pivoted massively and all I did was share the truth about what was happening. I received death threats. It was very hard. But what I found hardest was the silence. I have a really large network online, and it killed me that colleagues, people I had spoken with and worked with, were not reaching out. It was very hurtful and painful.
That is also why I had to lose weight, because in those three months I was already heavy and I put on another three stone, around 36 pounds, because I was not coping. Some people drink, some do drugs; I went to my drug of choice, which was sugar. The death threats were not pleasant and there was so much hate, because my audience was predominantly non-Jewish. I was invited as one of the influencers to New York and met the American influencers who were promoting Israel and helping. That was the year before last, and it was an amazing opportunity to go and support and fight as well. It was a tough period for everybody, but I found it particularly upsetting, and I was in shock at the beginning. Ironically, people are more supportive now because they realise it is happening in their own countries.
Host: You discover who your true friends are. There is one thing having followers in business, but when it comes to the crunch you find out. Moving forward, because this podcast has a specific time span, share with us the today: your vision, what you are looking for, how people can connect with you.
Lilach: We could talk for hours and it has gone so quickly. Right now I’m pivoting again. I miss the team, I miss collaborating, and I’m at the next part of my chapter where I want to use my skills, talent and expertise where they can make a bigger difference and help businesses grow and scale. I’m really excited about this. It is a little different and a little scary, but really exciting, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it evolves.
Host: If it is scary, it means it is good. As entrepreneurs we know that when we feel that itch of nervousness we are pushing beyond our comfort zone, and that is where growth and real change take place. What is your ideal position, or the ideal type of client you would like to work with?
Lilach: Such a good question. When you have been an entrepreneur and worn many hats: I love building relationships, I’m obsessed with business, I can look at a business and spot problems quickly and solve them. I’m very open and flexible about where I can add the most value. I just want to use my skill set and make a difference.
Host: Besides lilachbullock.com, how can people reach you?
Lilach: I’m on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on pretty much every social network. There is only one Lilach Bullock in the world, so you can Google me and I come up.
Host: Lilach Bullock is a very unique name. However much you may have disliked it, and the antisemitism in your younger days, it helps your branding because there truly is only one of you. Any final words?
Lilach: Just be yourself. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. You can pivot as many times as you like; the only person judging you is yourself. Be authentically you. I know a lot of people are struggling right now, and I would say that life is like a river, it flows both ways. Good times, bad times, nothing lasts forever. So cherish and be grateful for what you do have.
Host: I love that comparison to a river. Thank you so much for being my guest on the Monday Motivation Spotlight. I’m Lesley Kaplan. Please check out our channel and our other amazing speakers making a difference in the world. Thank you to our sponsors, Egert and Cohen Insurance and Lalis Flower Boutique in Jerusalem, and we will see you next week on the Monday Motivation Spotlight. Every Monday a new episode drops. Thank you again, Lilach, it was a pleasure hosting you, and I look forward to seeing what your new future brings.
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