He left his seven-figure banking career to sell bubble tea–today, his company brings in over $500 million a year

When Martin Berry quit his lucrative banking job in late 2013 to go all-in on selling bubble tea, his boss thought he was “insane.”

At the time, Berry was in his 30s and had spent much of his career working in senior executive roles, managing multi-trillion dollar balance sheets, he said. However, he found that over time, the big paychecks no longer fulfilled him.

“I realized after working hard for quite a long period of time that I didn’t really like the corporate system. I didn’t like its lack of entrepreneurialism,” Berry told CNBC Make It. “It was all about risk management, not risk taking.”

Today, he is the founder and chairman of Gong cha Global, an international bubble tea franchise. The company originates from a small tea shop in Taiwan opened in 1996 by a man named Zhen-hua Wu.

Before Berry joined, Gong cha was only in four countries across Asia. Under his leadership, it transformed from a regional brand into a global one, with over 2,000 Gong cha locations across 30 countries.