He wrote an “escape plan” to quit his job and move to an island. Now he’s there generating nearly $300,000 a year

In 2007, Marla Bainbridge Martinez went on a vacation that changed her life.

She visited Isla Mujeres, a five-mile-long Mexican island off the coast of Cancun, and fell in love with it. She returned for regular visits, met other Americans who had moved there, and began thinking, “They can live there. Why not me?” Her answer was her job: she was a consultant at a tech company and she couldn’t just quit and move to an island.

To make this big change in his life, he needed a plan. So she wrote one: She called it The Escape Plan—”my detailed, step-by-step plan for how to quit my job and move to a Caribbean island,” she says.