Marc Perry, a Trader Turns Trainer

Right as the U.S. stock market was coming off the rails in 2008, Marc Perry was poised to move up the financial food chain. He had received second and third callbacks from hedge funds larger than the one at which he worked as an analyst, Centurion Investment Group. But something nagged him, and it wasn’t the subprime crisis. It was the prospect he’d actually get one of those jobs, further entrenching him in a career that failed to fulfill his desire to help people more tangibly. So he quit it all and hit the gym.

A lifelong obsession with fitness—“I was always that skinny kid reading muscle mags,” he says—helped prep Perry, 30, to ace his personal training certifications; soon the Long Island native and Yale graduate had permanently shed his Zegna suits for sweats. The money he earned right away from his training business in midtown Manhattan financed his development of BuiltLean, a complete fitness and nutrition plan aimed at getting working professionals in shape through books and online videos. “I thought I could connect my insights into the urban professional lifestyle,” he says. “For the busy guy with a tough job, how can you stay in shape and eat well?”