Having Children Destroyed My Career

My career was on the up and up. I was a millennial star, my gross over-estimation of my talent and value and stereotypical changing of companies every year was working very well as a strategy. I was always more valuable to someone else, whether or not I was ready for the job. Finally the strategy caught up to me. I was making a healthy six figures and directing creative and social media for promoting feature film releases at 20th Century Fox. I was doing almost exactly what I had told my parents I wanted to do when I was 12, "Dad, I wanna be the guy that makes the commercials for the movies." I was a really weird 12 year-old.

I was charging hard, putting in 70+ hours a week, totally in over my head, but determined to fake it til I made it.

Then my first child came.

Everything went haywire. Because I was new I couldn't take any time off. My wife was taking on 95% of the workload that comes with a baby. I was getting requests from work at 11pm that were due by 8am, I was working until 2am every night and starting in again at 6am most days, including weekends. I was ducking out in the middle of church to handle requests. The dream of a big shot Hollywood job had become an absolute nightmare because of this adorable little girl. This adorable little girl who made me realize how miserable I was in my glamorous job, how incredibly unimportant my work was with David Fincher's 30th revision to move copy 1 pixel to the right on our Twitter profile skin for "Gone Girl," a script I actually despised so much that I never even watched the movie.

This little adorable baby girl absolutely decimated my career. I couldn't stay focused, I was dolling out excuses for lack of performance constantly, I wasn't attentive on conference calls and would get caught ignoring conversations red-handed constantly. I was exhausted. I was failing my employer and failing my wife even worse. My life was a disaster and I was missing out on all of my daughter's firsts.

Then I got fired.

Well, laid off gently and very courteously with a far-too generous severance.

It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Now that I had this magical human being in my care all I cared about was her. And I had 3 months of living expenses to figure life out. My friend Jake Larsen's business he started was taking off. He seemed happy and free. I wanted that freedom more than anything. I read the $100 Start-Up and realized I didn't need to start some massive company with investment money in order to provide for this little priceless treasure of a daughter.

I started an agency. I started calling everyone I knew offering anything that I thought they might want. Three months went by, my nest egg disappeared, I maxed out my credit card in month 4 when I got a client for a 3 month campaign. It was a miracle. Then a month later another one. It was as if everyone in my professional network was waiting to see whether or not I would tank. Then another client, then another, and at the end of year one, we made good revenue, and it was just me full-time and a couple partners moonlighting outside of their day jobs. It was working, they wouldn't make the jump, so we split. I hired a guy. And another guy. Year 2 we did even better revenue and were on a rocket-ship, doubling revenue quarter over quarter. Our work was getting featured on Mashable, Buzzfeed, Adweek, Forbes, I was speaking at events, this thing was actually working. I couldn't believe it. Work was coming out of nowhere from the most unforeseen of places.

And the best part? I didn't CARE about prestige anymore! I didn't care about my importance, my relevance, my title, my pedigree, all I cared about was providing for my sweet girl and making her happy, and that complete paradigm shift generated abundance and prestige that I never would have achieved in another decade of my glam Hollywood job.

In most of that time, yes I was frantic, but I rarely worked more than 50 hours a week. We traveled everywhere a family. I took my little Princess to the pool every day, I gave my wife a break to pursue her hobbies, we went to Europe for two weeks, we went to the Oregon coast, we went to Europe again, we went to Hawaii, we went to Disneyland almost every week. I became an actual decent friend and extended family member. I took my Dad and brother to Death Valley on a man trip.

Having Children Destroyed My Career, Having Children SAVED MY LIFE.

This gorgeous, hilarious, magical, mystical little treasure saved my life. She brought fullness, fulfillment; she was this giant wrecking ball that decimated the skyscraper that was my life and reformed it into a magical village full of abundance, friends, family, good health and tranquility.

If you think maybe it's time you destroy your career and save your life, maybe have a kid? Lolz.

Travis Chambers

Founder, Chief Media Hacker at Chamber.media, an agency that makes scalable social videos; large production videos run as ads on Facebook and YouTube that drive millions in sales.  

 Travis led distribution and content strategy for "YouTube's #1 Ad of the Decade," Kobe vs. Messi with 140 million views. He's worked with brands like Yahoo, Kraft, Old Navy, Coca-Cola, and Amazon.

He speaks on social video at conferences like VidCon, VidSummit, ad:tech, StartFestival, and Universities.