"I'm really risk adverse. I had built my career as a journalist for twenty years. It was really scary to suddenly leave that profession." Shani Raja was an editor at The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Dow Jones and Bloomberg News. Shani left to build a passive income, teaching non-journalists the skills he'd learned throughout his career. His online writing program, Writing with Flair, is one of the most popular classes in the world with more than 350,000 students. Coupon: ESCAPEARTIST

"To my dying day I would have regretted not giving it a go." Sir Martin reflects on the turning points in his career and the difficulty of balancing career and family. Sir Martin built his career Saatchi & Saatchi which he left at the age of 40 to do his own thing. He then made his fortune, valued at $500M dollars, by turning WPP, a manufacturer of shopping baskets, into a global advertising network. At 73 he departed WPP. But rather than retiring he is now doing it all over again with...

"Every day I was told this is a man's world. You don't belong here." Reese had a rock star career as a creative in the publishing industry for 19 years. However, what seemed amazing from the outside did not reflect how she felt inside. Reese was battling depression. One day, she walks into a boxing gym. The coach did not want to train her. Not only were there no women in boxing at the time, she was also overweight. Today, Reese runs Women's World of Boxing, the first female boxing gym...

If you live in the Western World you probably have never heard of James Alofs. If you live in China, however, you know him as a an actor who starred in 14 TV series, 7 movies and host of a prime time TV show, He started his career at Procter and Gamble in Canada, but then met an intern in the elevator who changed his life... 2 years later he sat on a plane to China, having not the slightest clue that his crazy decision would lead to phenomenal success. How did he do it?