Don’t Let Success Cost You Your Life — Mark Bonham

What does it take to become exceptional at what you do—without allowing your career to consume everything else that matters? Today on Discover Possible, I’m joined by Mark Bonham, a Harvard-trained attorney who built his career at Wilson Sonsini, one of the world’s leading law firms for technology and high-growth companies. Mark was drawn to technology before personal computers were even commonplace—building a primitive computer with his father as a teenager, studying economics at BYU, attending Harvard Law School, and eventually landing in Silicon Valley just as the technology industry was beginning to explode. Over the course of his career, he worked with companies including Novell, WordPerfect, Sun Microsystems, Octel Communications, and many others—helping entrepreneurs form companies, raise venture capital, go public, and navigate multibillion-dollar acquisitions. But what makes this conversation especially powerful isn’t simply what Mark accomplished. It’s how he thought about accomplishment. Mark talks about the enormous responsibility that comes with advising leaders when the question isn’t simply, “Is this legal?” but, “Is this right?” He explains why great lawyers have to be right far more often than most professions allow—and why raw intelligence alone is never enough. And perhaps most importantly, he shares a decision he made early in his career: that no level of professional success was worth building a life he wouldn’t ultimately want to live. We talk about excellence, integrity, family, faith, hard work, and the difficult challenge of reaching your potential while becoming a well-rounded human being. This is my conversation with Mark Bonham.