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Blake Martinez had a perfectly solid career in the NFL.
The Green Bay Packers selected him in the fourth round of the 2016 NFL Draft out of Stanford. He became a full-time starter at inside linebacker in his second season. He played five more seasons after that, including stints with the Giants and Raiders.
But then he retired, suddenly, and at the age of just 29.
Why?
Well, there wasn’t a particular health reason. And Martinez still had plenty of suitors. But he didn’t need to keep playing. Because he had Pokemon…
Yes, you read that right. An NFL linebacker retired because he decided to sell Pokemon cards instead. And he’s had immense success doing so!
Martinez solid over $5 million worth of cards in just seven months recently.
He opened up about the seemingly unfathomable business venture in a recent interview with Zak Keefer of The Athletic.
“I just asked myself, do I want to keep starting over from ground zero with football, and keep destroying my body, or do I want to start over from ground zero here, and do something I can actually sustain for a long time,” Martinez said to Keefer. “I loved football. But what I found out was I loved building and running my own team even more.”
The decision has turned out to be the correct one for the 6-foot-2, 240 pounds Tucson, Arizona native.
“His first stream on Whatnot? It was the one he kept mentioning to his teammates in the Giants’ locker room. It netted him $108,000 in profit,” Keefer wrote.
Martinez now runs a company called Blake’s Breaks.. He employs nearly 20 full-time staffers and they host 16 hours of live streams in total per day.
Good work if you can get it.
Martinez’s decision would’ve been unfathomable 25, or even five years ago. But it’s working for him now. And it’s working in a big, big way.