Interview With a Healthy Home Business

Introduction:

Jinjee and Storm Talifero are a husband-wife team who publish health ebooks online. Their niche is the Raw Vegan Diet a way of life that has become increasingly popular in recent years. The couple work entirely from home and earn their income from their website TheGardenDiet.com which last year brought them in over $200,000. Besides running their home business they also have four children and home-school! The Talifero's live in a small village in the Los Padres National Forest north of Los Angeles.


How did you decide to launch your business?

Well it wasn't really a decision it just sort of grew organically. We were working for dot-com companies doing public relations and marketing. And we lost our clients when the dot-com bubble burst. Years before we had put up a three page website about our family and our raw vegan diet with a few of our recipes. It was just a personal homepage to share with people who we chatted with on the raw food bulletin boards. Around the time of the dot-com crash we realized that our raw food site was getting a lot of traffic. So we started writing ebooks about the raw diet and selling them on our site. And then its that age old story of an interest becoming ones business. I feel very lucky now to be doing work that I'm truly interested in and passionate about.


What are the benefits of working and living so far from the city?

When the Internet arrived we were doing graphic arts and we realized we could now work from home thanks to email and file transfer protocol. We were living in Santa Barbara a beautiful but very expensive city. We suddenly looked up and realized we didn't really need to be there! So we moved to Vancouver Island in Canada for five years and worked for US dot-coms from our home in the northwestern rainforest. We were able to rent a beautiful 5 bedroom executive mansion with an indoor swimming pool for less than we had been paying for our Santa Barbara one bedroom apartment.  We then started selling our ebooks and music CDs from our raw food website. And we moved back to Southern California to put on raw food retreats. When we were looking for a retreat center to rent online we found one in a small village tucked into the mountains at 6000 ft. above sea level just an hour and a half from Los Angeles. We just loved it, so we stayed. We've been here for three years now. Its small, very quiet with no crime, has lots of great hiking, and the housing is as reasonable as you can find in southern california. Its just a great place to bring up kids. If we need to go to the city its only an hour drive. People sit that long in traffic every day even if they live in the city. Up here we have clean air and peace and you can see the stars at night!


How did you learn to do internet marketing that works?

I think I started doing better when I stopped listening to advice and started thinking for myself. At first you study what other people do and you imitate it. Then you start having your own ideas and trying them out. I try small adjustments, changing a graphic, changing prices, different specials, and bigger changes like adding a news page. I love being able to do all this without going to meetings to get the ideas approved.


Why do you do the website on your own now?

Its so big. Most people suffer from burnout if you work with computers. That's why you have to do what you love for your online business. You also have to know about taking breaks, doing yoga at your desk, drinking water, putting crystals and candles on your desk, playing peaceful music, breathing deeply, and staying in touch with spirit. Or you have to find someone young to maintain your site but then they don't have the experience. I love my website, digging into it with my hands every day. Its my garden.


So you're a believer in doing what you love and the money will follow?

If you love your business chances are other people will too. If the subject is something you love passionately then chances are that other people love that subject passionately too. And if not then at least you will be unique! Also if you love your business you will stay with it for the long haul. You'll put your heart into it which increases your chances of being successful. You'll also be happy which is the true measure of success.

The poor spammers I really feel sorry for them. I had a client who wanted to spam once. But dealing with the companies that actually facilitate spamming feels like swimming in putrid excrement. They charge huge dollars like over $100,000 to do a basic spam email campaign and they have no real contact information. They have to be completely un-traceable. And so all these people spending money on spam are just being hustled. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't really work at all. I mean I crunched the numbers and I just don't see how anyone could break even. And I get hundreds of junk emails a day. Most people filter them out now. And I just delete them in blocks. I hope the word will get out there that spam doesn't work and spammers are just being suckered by these charlatans who send out the emails.

I definitely believe that there is no easy money. Life is hard no matter what you do. So you might as well be doing something you love, something you feel passionately about, or something that is your gift, your calling.  


How can people find their calling?

Just look into your heart. Figure out what you love. What do you enjoy doing? What do you do in your spare time? What would you do if you didn't need to make money? Is there anything you'd like to see happen in the world? If you don't know start trying to pay attention to yourself and your life. Try and discover what you really enjoy, who you really admire, who you enjoy spending time with, what moves you, what kind of music, what kind of passtimes, these kind of things serve as clues to who you are and what you are meant to be doing. Make lists of these things. What is unique about you, your life experiences up until now, and what are you doing now? Make lists of these too. Take time to daydream and fantasize about your ideal life. These are keys to your purpose.


How do you go about getting the funding to start a business like this?

You can transition gently from your current job into a new one by putting a few hours a day into your new work. Or you can risk everything and just do your new work now today. You may go broke but you'll come back. And your life will have more meaning for it. Either way is fine. It depends on your personality type.


Why do you homeschool?

We have such an alternative diet that it would be hard for our kids in school. We also believe that you learn through life. The important things in my childrens lives are to learn how to get along with eachother, how to contribute to the household, how to live in harmony with the world, how to become responsible, to be creative, to play, and to grow into healthy happy people. You can't learn these by sitting at a desk and reading from a textbook. We integrate learning into our everyday lives. My original plan was to find a homeschool curriculum and teach regular subjects. But when that plan didn't pan out and I noticed that my children were learning all the normal subjects and more through everyday life I just went with it. I always felt a little guilty until someone I met told me that I was "unschooling". Yes, there's a whole philosophy of education that talks about exactly what we're doing. Helen Keller was a big proponent of this way of learning.


Why did you choose home birth?

I've always had a fear of hospitals. My big sister died having her tonsils out. So to me it was just more comfortable. That's another thing I always felt guilty about until I learned that the mortality rate of hospital births is four times higher than that of home births. I've learned so much birthing my four children at home. It is natural for mammals to shut down their labor if there is any interference. So its no wonder so many women have problems in the hospital. Many people are now doing husband/wife unassisted childbirth like my husband and I did. It is extremely bonding and the freedom to be sexual and sensual during labor comes so naturally that way and acts as a pain-killer. The best one!


Do you foresee more people working like this in the future?

I think so. Definitely. We needed the big cities during the industrial age. But now in the technological age we can spread out again. Cities are dirty and overpopulated. When rats are overpopulated half the males turn into serial killers and the other half become homosexual. I think a lot of the problems in the cities are because having so many people living right on top of eachother creates huge stresses on a cellular level. I envision a future in which people live out of sight of eachother in gorgeous architectural homes that meld into the natural environment around them. Every home will be powered by solar, hydrogen and wind and be off the grid. Communications will be via satallite. We will have solar powered pollution-free flying cars to get around in. People will have gardens, orchards and green houses and be able to live on what they grow at home. People don't know you can live on just fruits and vegetables. In fact you can live much longer and better on just fruits and vegetables. That's what our website TheGardenDiet.com is all about.


contact:
Jinjee and Storm
info@thegardendiet.com
phone: 661-242-1479
http://www.thegardendiet.com