Having founded a hugely success video game company from his box room in Bolton, Lee Chambers had already achieved more at 21 than most do in a lifetime.
But when a terrifying health turn caused him to lose his mobility, the dad-of-two decided to re-evaluate his priorities – choosing to swap the seven-figure business for more time at home with his children.
Lee, now 37, created PhenomGames after losing his graduate job at the Co-operative Bank due to the financial crisis in 2008. The company launched as an e-commerce store, sourcing and selling video games direct to consumers through marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay and Playtrade.
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Initially trading from a tiny room at his parents’ house in Breightmet, the business quickly grew – soon operating across Europe.
But everything changed a week before his 29th birthday. Business was booming and Lee was excited for the birth of his second child when he suddenly became unwell in 2014.
What started as a swollen wrist turned into swollen legs. Before he knew it, Lee was confined to a hospital bed unable to walk. “My immune system failed,” he told the Manchester Evening News.
“I couldn’t look after myself. At that point, my wife was six-months pregnant with our daughter. I was laid up in hospital unable to look after myself. It was humbling.”
Lee remained in hospital for a month before being allowed home, later discovering he had autoimmune arthritis, causing his muscles to stiffen and his limbs to swell.
He spent 11 long months learning how to walk again through intense hydrotherapy. “I felt like my insides were on fire,” Lee, who lives in the Ribble Valley in Lancs, added. “The scariest thing was thinking I wouldn’t be able to run around with my children.”
Determined to get back on his feet so he could take his first steps along with his then newborn daughter, Annabel, Lee made the difficult decision to step back from work to spend more precious time with his children.
“I made a decision that had people questioning if I had lost the plot,” he said. “I decided I wanted a different life balance and put my business on the backburner to spend all day with my two children. A colleague called me a loser, but it was the best decision I ever made.”
Reducing the size of his company, Lee’s wife returned to her job following maternity leave while he worked on his business for a few hours in the evening to keep it ticking over. PhenomGames was eventually sold to a Danish company in 2020.
“I knew other people who had said once their kids started school, they barely saw them and they wished they had spent that time with them before they did.
“It’s all good having a business, but my kids aren’t going to be bothered when I take the foot off the gas as they will be teenagers. They won’t be interested in spending time with me.
“I just thought, you know what, I need to stop investing time into my business and and invest it into my kids – and the bond I have with my kids is amazing because of it.”
After being a stay-at-home dad for four years, Lee later went on to create Essentialise Workplace Wellbeing, a company that helps promote wellbeing in the workplace to improve performance advancement.
It works by delivering workshops and coaching on sleep, nutrition, mindset, movement and habits, interconnecting small compounding changes.
“I was there for all their firsts,” he continued. “It meant I got to take them to parent and toddler groups and I was meeting a lot of mums. That helped me shape the business I have today. I heard from mums about how they’ve been treated in the workplace.
“It’s time that no amount of money later down the line can give you. It’s the memories. I have the moments we’ve shared and how close we are. It’s made me a better person; it’s made me a better entrepreneur. I’m more patient, I’m more present and I’m a better negotiator.”
Lockdown was ‘catalyst for change’, with men now choosing to spend more time with their children, according to recent research.
The number of stay-at-home dads in the UK has increased by a third since before the pandemic, with experts saying a cultural shift has brought on the change.
One in nine stay-at-home parents are fathers, up from one in 14 in 2019, figures by the latest Office for National Statistics show. The number of dads who had left the workforce to look after their family rose 34 per cent over the same period.
Adrienne Burgess, a joint CEO of the Fatherhood Institute, says Covid restrictions were an extraordinary catalyst for change in working fathers’ lives.
Their analysis shows that the amount of time all fathers spend looking after their kids in Britain has increased by almost a fifth (18 per cent) since 2015, from an average of 47 minutes a day to 55 in 2022.
Adrienne said: “Giving fathers the chance to spend more time at home is absolutely key to achieving more gender-equal sharing of earning and caregiving.
“Now we need stronger action to make parenting leave and flexible working policies more father-inclusive.”
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