My Job Gave me 104 Vacations in 3 Years

In the last 3 years my job has given me 104 trips in these places:

Hawaii 2X, Switzerland 2X, Italy 2X, Czech Republic 2X, Austria, Germany, England 2X, Iceland 2X, Denmark, Netherlands, France, Mexico, Canada, Moab, San Diego 2X, San Francisco 3X, Boston, Manhattan 3X, Dominican Republic 2X, Vegas 2X, Yellowstone, Sun Valley 3X, Park City 5X, Yosemite 2X, Jackson Hole 2X, Disney Land 50X (not exaggerating), Orlando, Death Valley, Palm Springs 2X, Couer D' Alene, Portland 2X, Denver 2X.

Most of these places I went to with my wife and kids, the others were for work combined with fun. The job that gave me this was starting my own company. I built a company with certain values and priorities that made this possible, one that's the antithesis of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Hollywood. 

I'm not sharing this story to boast, but to influence perspectives as powerfully as I can about priorities and work life.

Our business objectives have been the opposite of "grow as quickly as possible," "raise funding," leverage capital," "get acquired," "take on more projects," "maximize employee output." Our objectives have been "go on more walks," "have lunch with your wife," "play with your kids more," "take on fewer projects," "less is more," "keep the team small," "investors not wanted."

These limitations we've set for ourselves have been the cause of our success. Because our success is measured in overall happiness. 

We have developed a wildly profitable and impactful business model by staying hyper-focused, in a niche environment, and working smarter. But don't be mistaken. I didn't grease my butt and slide down a rainbow, it wasn't easy. There were sleepless nights, some 80 hour work weeks here and there, lots of doubt and fear. I faced all of that as an employee before starting my own company anyways. And still I am shocked how well it went in hindsight right from year 1.

So back to the vacations. We traveled as a family even when we couldn't afford it. I've never regretted one penny that we have spent traveling together. I grew up in a home where there wasn't a lot of harmony. I used to daydream about some fantastic job where I'd travel the world with my happy family and somehow work at the same time. I never thought it was possible, but it happened. I never thought I'd have the freedom, the autonomy, or the means to go to all these places. I wrote it down as a teenager and it actually happened. 

In my little family now, there's this happiness I always dreamed of. Ultimate bucket list item achieved. Nothing else matters now. Work is a means to that solitary end. I work to live. I don't live to work but don't get me wrong, I still work very, very, very hard. But the mindset is different than 99% of companies. We've carved out a company designed solely for this family purpose, to increase that love and time together. 

What would our world be like if this was the #1 business objective of all companies? Shouldn't it be? Why are we here on earth? Humans were just fine in the agricultural days, large happy families all working together to grow food. The agricultural lifestyle had such deeper and more profound meaning than the corporate lifestyle gives us. People had an infallible sense of purpose, belonging, and existence. Mental illness, addiction, crime, loneliness; it was all less common, less severe. The objective was simple. Wake up, spend all day sourcing food alongside your loved ones. 80% of all effort was focused on food. But now food accounts for less than 10% of our consumption.

There's all this other stuff we drive ourselves insane worrying about. All this stuff we don't need. Our families are smaller or non existent. We're disconnected, isolated, we spend more time with temporary associates than family and loved ones. Every day is planned for us, already decided, managed, optimized for someone else's objectives. Our work is wildly political; its ladder climbing, posturing, it's complicated and unrewarding. 

I've chosen to live in a smaller house, drive used cars, make a little less, and live a little more. And it's made all the difference.

When I was in the corporate world, I had two weeks off a year. I was chained to a desk, I wasn't important enough to anyone to travel more than a couple times a year. My whole livelihood depended on the rest of the office physically seeing me in a chair every day. If I'm not in the chair, I'm done, fired, laid off, downsized. 

But it is not this way for my team at my company. My team is not chained to a desk. We are focused on results, not structure. The outcome rules the process. If someone pitches a client online in their underwear, or writes a script on a ski lift, or optimizes ad buying while fishing, I don't care. We are collaborative, everyone is a hybrid, we are a single level team, not a top down hierarchy. 

Everyone is REQUIRED to take time off. At least 3 days a month. Preferably more. It's mandatory. It's literally in the contract. Someone could technically get fired for not going on vacation. Seriously. A few times a year the company pays for flights for vacations. Flights are a write off, why wouldn't the company do that!? It's a no brainier.

We just don't care about status, job titles, how many people we manage; we just care about time. Time to do stuff other than work. Because life is short and no one is offering time as compensation. Time is gold. It's our currency. You get paid as much in time as you do in money.

If you haven't found an employer that understands your need to thrive and be inspired, start your own company and give that gift to your team. (Start with a service, you don't need capital) 

It's about dreams. My partner and our head producer, Stefan Van De Graaff, had a life dream to make a feature film. So we are making a feature film.

That's what I'm striving to do. It's just the right thing to do. We are humans. 

People are, that they might have joy.

We are here to see the earth, to see how other people live, to share sunsets with loved ones, to foster life long relationships with others. We're here for a deeper purpose, a deeper existence, a deeper meaning.

We need more companies with this as the #1 objective. We need more people taking 30 vacations a year. We need more founders focused on compensating with the currency of time. 

Go get your freedom. 

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Travis Chambers is 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 at conferences like VidCon, VidSummit, ad:tech, StartFestival, and Universities.