Tara Richter was born on September 11th 1977 in Kearney Nebraska to Karen and Harold Richter. They were in a bowling league at the time when Karen’s water suddenly broke. Tara being the second child of theirs, wasn’t waiting around to see the world. They hopped in the car and rushed to the hospital in the small town of only 30,000 people. Running red lights and tearing through town, as this baby wasn’t waiting to come, they got pulled over. The officer seeing the situation, then escorted them to the hospital. They ran into the room but it was 9PM at night, nobody was there in this small town. Karen was on the hospital bed, legs up in the stirrups, the nurses were yelling at her not to push because there was no doctor in the room yet. She screamed back, “I’m not! But this baby is coming!” Medical staff was frantically running around trying to get things in place. She panicked thinking this baby was going to pop out on fall on the floor. Then finally the doctor got there and boom, Tara was born.
To this day, that’s how Tara gets things done, quick and fast! 🙂
She grew up in the Midwest and received a degree in Electronic Imaging and Graphic Design, but knew it was not the place for her to live forever. She wanted warmer temps so she moved to California after graduation and secured a job a Kinko’s in the Silicon Valley as the technology specialist. She was 21 at the time yet she was the rep for the store in her area and got to work with Apple and Google doing large volume jobs. Which was great experience at the time. However, California proved to be too expensive even back in the 90’s to live. So she moved back to Nebraska.
One of her girlfriends from Nebraska had moved to Florida. Ms. Richter had never been to Florida before, so she decided to visit during the summer time. OMG was it hot and sticky. “How do you guys live here?! Your makeup sweats off as soon as you walk out the door!” Tara never thought she would ever live in Florida, even though the beaches were gorgeous. The humidity was not. However, then winter in Nebraska rolled around. One day she got in her car to drive to work and the plows had not been through her neighborhood yet. She pulled out in the street and kerplunk! She was high centered in the middle of the snowdrifts. Tara got out, plopped down in the snow and had to start digging the cold chunks out of her wheels with her bare hands. At that moment she made the decision, “I am moving to FLORIDA!”
Twenty years later, Ms. Richter still resides in sunny Florida and has never regretted her decision. The beautiful sunshine state has provided so many opportunities that would have not been available in other areas. Since being a small child, Tara has always had a love for writing, drawing and the arts. She used to make her own books with crayons, rubber paste and bind them with ribbons. Her favorite classes were English and art in school. She always knew she wanted to be an author, but never really thought it was a possibility to come true.
At 30 years old she ended up getting married to whom she thought was her soulmate, but instead was a narcissist, sociopath. With the help of a therapist she finally broke free of that marriage. As she was putting back the pieces of her life and trying to figure things out and work through the pain, a friend told her to go to the gym and beat it out on the gym equipment. So she followed that advice. After about five minutes on the treadmill, once the adrenaline started flowing and the thoughts started accumulating, she realized the way she had always dealt with emotions was by writing. The light bulb moment clicked and she jumped off the treadmill jumped into her car and drove home as fast as she could. She opened up her laptop and started typing. Her fingers couldn’t go fast enough. It was as if she was just word vomiting onto the pages. The more she typed the more that kept coming into her brain. It was so liberating! She typed 10,000 words that day. It didn’t really make a whole lot of sense. It wasn’t organized, but hell she felt great! Just to get all that emotions out of her head and onto paper. She forgot this is who she truly was. Her higher self has always known this, even as a small child. We may forget it, we may shove it away and put on a different face and play a different role just to pay the bills. But it is always there, waiting for us to find it.
Tara wrote four books in order to get the first one done. Because she had no idea what she was doing. She just knew she had to do this. With her skill-set in the print world in her early twenties she was able to self publish it. Her first book was titled, “10 Rules to Survive the Dating Jungle.” She used her painful divorce and relationships to create a fun, witty dating advice book. To help herself and others that were going back out in to the dating world. After publishing that first book then she had to figure out how to market it. With that first book she was then featured on CNN, ABC, Daytime TV, FOX, SSN, Channel 10 News, USA TODAY, Beverly Hills Times and radio stations all over the world.
Ms. Richter then wrote and published four more books in the Dating Jungle Series which also became Amazon Best Sellers. She then started to have people in the Tampa Bay Area ask her how she did it. At that time she also joined an entrepreneurial bootcamp and that is where she met Kevin Harrington from the Shark Tank. He was a mentor for the bootcamp. During that bootcamp back in 2012, he approached her along with Anthony Amos to help them ghostwrite and publish their own book. It was at that moment her publishing house, Richter Publishing was born.The Florida based company took off like wildfire and grew so fast. Now 10 years in business, they have published over 100 some books with 40 bestsellers.
When Tara isn’t writing and publishing books, she enjoys traveling the world. She has visited 45 countries and lived in Asia for four months prior to Covid. She has one older brother Troy who lives part time in Nebraska and part time in Florida. She is now expanding her business to combine both of her passions with writing retreats, writing books with exploring the globe.
