I recently read an interview with Lord Kirkham, the founder of DFS and an Iceland investor, in which he talked about how a stay in hospital gave him a fresh perspective on what really counts in life. He said while he lay in a hospital bed his flash Mercedes, bulging bank balance and Gucci underpants quickly assumed their real status. Compared with his health, freedom and independence they scored nil.

This is a lesson many people never learn, or they learn it very late once they have lost their good health or most of life has passed them by.

As with anything, you have to strike the right balance for you.

I think hard work and ambition is both healthy and fulfilling and makes your life richer in many ways. It creates value and growth for you, it adds value to society and it sets a good example to those around you.

I think the fact that my boys see me working hard, see how much time I spend in my office, see how much time I spend reading and educating myself is a valuable lesson for them to get.

However, next to entrepreneurs like Imran Hakim or Doug Perkins my level of ambition is small. To want to build a company with 200 plus quasi-independent opticians is out-sized ambition. To want to conquer the optical industry in countries on the other side of the globe is out-sized ambition. I admire grand ambition and there are many lessons to learn from it, but I also understand there is a huge price tag attached to it. Everything in the world comes with a price to pay. Both Doug and Imran willingly pay a high price for their level of success. But there is always great sacrifice.

For two extreme examples, read ‘The Everything Store’ biography on Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon, and ‘Steve Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson. Neither Bezos nor the late Jobs could you describe as well-balanced by any stretch of the imagination. They were extreme in everything they did and paid a huge price every step of the way. Jobs worked himself into an early grave aged 56 years, leaving behind the world’s most profitable company but little else. Relationships with his family and children and friends were all sacrificed along the way. Jobs used to say when he was younger that he had no interest in becoming the richest man in the cemetery, yet unfortunately that is what he became.

There is no right or wrong way to live your life. You are the only one who can decide that. Only you can define what success means to you.

Personally, I’m very much a lifestyle kind of entrepreneur. I enjoy working hard but I also want to be here to while my family is young. I want to live in a place I love and not spend my life commuting. I want down time every day to be with my family, walk the dog, go for a run or head out on my bike. I only do high value work I enjoy and find stimulating. I only work with clients who appreciate and see the value in what I do and who will happily pay for that value. I only work with clients who are ‘well-behaved.’ That’s a short list but it very clearly reminds me about what I’m NOT prepared to sacrifice for money.

Coming up with a list of things you are NOT prepared to do for money is an important exercise to do. I have this list and it guides what I am willing to do with my practice and with Optical Success Academy.

I recommend you give your list some thought. My businesses are a huge part of my life but they are not the be all and end all. They come a distant second to my wife, my kids and my health and well-being.

Don’t misunderstand, none of this means to take a laissez-faire attitude to your practice nor does it mean you should install a hammock and start to take it easy.

You have to be a bit schizophrenic.

I push my team hard at work, always striving for better and instilling in them that everything is ‘life or death’ important. But as soon as I see them start to show signs of cracking, I remind them to…

“Relax. Keep things in perspective. 90% of everything we do is amazing. And there is more to life. We have our health and our happiness. No one is going to die.”

Schizophrenic, I know. But it’s important for you to figure out this unique blend of work hard, play hard.