In 2008, Johnny FD was 27 years old and living in California, earning about $50,000 a year working in business-to-business sales.

"The highlight of my day was driving to and from work, just because those were the moments I had an excuse to listen to music and not think about how little my life was going anywhere," he remembers. "It wasn't even that I was unhappy. I was just so unmotivated."

When the company he worked for was sold later that year, he was offered a choice: stick with his position, or take a stipend and be laid off. He chose to go.

After spending a few months blowing through his savings with friends in Los Angeles ("I'm lucky I got out without too much debt — my friends all have $20,000 of credit-card bills they're still trying to pay off"), he turned his sights on somewhere a little farther from home: Thailand.

"When people travel, and they go to another country, it's always mixed," he says. "They say it was fun or good, but Thailand was that place that no matter who came back, they said it was the most incredible trip of their life. Everyone talked about it like this paradise."

In his first seven days, he took seven different tours. The last one was scuba diving, and he was so thrilled with the experience that he spent the next few years going from zero dives to nearly 1,000, traveling the world teaching diving and searching for the perfect place.

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