About Rich
Hi, I’m Rich – Internet marketer, web designer, SEO specialist, writer, & traveler. My wife, Kathy, and I have been traveling and working on the road since 2010, and this website is a log of our travels. For my business site and to hire me or contact me please visit RichKent.com.
I’m a Gen X’er and grew up in Massachusetts in a small town near the Quabbin Reservoir. I went to Northeastern in Boston and majored in BioChemistry, but left after the first year. Dissecting eyeballs and pickling frog legs wasn’t for me.
As I felt stuck in a rut in New England in 1998, I moved to California with Kathy, and flailed around a bit looking for some purpose. Purpose found me in the form of a web-based retailer, and I spent 8 years getting a thorough education in advertising, marketing, SEO, PPC, print media, web design, graphic design and business.
During this time I also got a dose of the Southern California lifestyle. I drove a BMW, bought a ‘modest’ $600K house, and spent plenty of weekends in Vegas. I had a great time – but like most aspirationals I was over-extended.
Fast forward to 2006. I woke one morning and had a moment of complete clarity. I realized I wasn’t living the life I wanted at all! Expensive house, cars and life wasn’t really my style. I felt that everything I had was built on sand, and I knew that it could all come crashing down at any moment.
I convinced Kathy to sell the house (right before the market crash of 2006) and we began our life simplification process. This wasn’t without some false starts – I have a stupid soft spot for fancy cars, but we pushed onward and by the time the ‘great recession’ hit we’d managed to dramatically reduce our overhead.
This was helpful as in spite of my best efforts the company I worked for went Bankrupt in 2008 and I lost my job. Kathy was laid off shortly thereafter, and the job market in California went straight to Hell. I looked for work for a while, but as the months ticked on I decided that I could do better than simply finding another job.
The turning point for me was reading the 4 Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. Kathy and I decided that instead of going back to work for ‘the man’, we’d create a web-based business and travel – something we love to do!
This is when I first discovered Affiliate Marketing – sending targeted traffic to sales sites and earning a commission when someone makes a purchase. I learned everything I could while working as a freelance designer, and began building an affiliate marketing business of my own.
We struggled at first, but finally learned enough that we make a good income from affiliate sites. In fact, we left California in late 2010 and have been on the road ever since – and I’m writing this from a rental a block from the beach in the Mexican Riviera.
To learn more about affiliate marketing you can visit my business site RichKent.com.
Also, I love to take photographs and most of the pictures on this site were taken by me. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed taking them!
We’re happy to have you along for our travels, and we hope that you enjoy reading about our adventures, struggles, and triumphs. Thanks for trekking with us!
About Kathy
Hi there. I’m Kathy – artist, writer, web marketer, entrepreneur and traveler. I believe “life is adventure, and travel is adventure at a different address!”
I’m a born traveler, which started when my dad took me on a cross country journey at just 3 years old. I’ve visited 48 states multiple times and have a love for the deserts of the West, as well as hiking National Parks. I’ve also been abroad – including Egypt, Germany, the Caribbean, Israel, Mexico and Canada – and this is just a start!
Like Rich, I grew up in Western Massachusetts. But also lived in Southern CA during my formative years. Therefore, I’ve always thought of myself as ‘bi-coastal’.
I raised my daughters in Massachusetts, and stayed there until 1997. On the business side, I’m a risk-taker and I always have tons of ideas brewing. I launched a sign company and a display marketing firm back in the day, which sustained the girls and me for 10 years. Over time I learned a few important business lessons, too, and eventually closed them.
In 1997, after I’d been dating Rich awhile, we took a trip to Orange County CA and decided to move there. As Rich mentioned, we tasted the SoCal lifestyle, and I found it to be a really great place. We enjoyed lots of hiking in the sage-filled deserts, snorkeling off Catalina Island, and trekking around the beautiful regional parks. It was then that I started painting my fine art collection, Western Trails.
While I enjoyed so much about the ‘O.C.’ lifestyle, I also felt tied down to the high overhead and the lack of flexibility it represented. I was working 60-70 hours a week, so I agreed with Rich that we should bring it back a notch. We began streamlining our lives to create opportunity for travel.
The year we launched our online business was tough for me. I’m normally a quick study, but I struggled to reinvent my skill set between fits of fear. I read voraciously, took seminars, learned from Rich, and wrote over 100,000 words. I put my paintings online, and adapted my writing, business and marketing skills for the web. Finally, it all came together, and our online business began to sustain us.
I have a passion for living by design, and I have a clear purpose – or vision, for my writing, art and web marketing skills. First, I serve as an Environmental Artist by promoting eco-awareness, through the messages in my paintings. Secondly, I serve as an Advocate for Holistic Living by writing about topics and products that promote holistic, or balanced living. Check out my blog on KathyShute.com to learn more.
We’re happy you checked out our trekking site! We designed it as a way to share some travel tips and ideas, to showcase Rich’s great photography, (I’m a fan!), to keep loved ones updated on our journeys, and finally- to give would-be vagabonders a peek into our lifestyle.
Happy travels to you!
