On Sunday night the email landed in Mike Foss' inbox: He had
been named to Forbes' "30 Under 30," the business magazine's
annual list of rising stars younger than 30.
Mike Foss, the soccer player from Springfield, the kid who
had been home-schooled through 12th grade. This sent Facebook
abuzz: boldfaced evidence that home schooling actually works.
Once the announcement was made on the first Monday of
January, inquiring minds began lobbing questions at Mike's
mom, Elizabeth. How did she do it? What curriculum had she
used? What colleges did she recommend? What was the exact
formula of devotions, multivitamins and Mozart?
"Y'all," she wrote on her blog that Friday, "I have no idea."
But when pressed, the mother of nine reflected on her
news-making firstborn, a 26-year-old Catholic. "Michael
learned his most important lessons at the dinner table. All I
really did was cook the meal. His daily repartee on Twitter?
Totally sounds like banter among my boys. His brothers are as
much behind that award as I am," Elizabeth said. "Iron
sharpens iron."
She credited her husband, a sports broadcaster and mentor,
and mused about "the effect of having nursed (Mike) in nearly
every college sports venue up and down the East Coast,"
elaborating: "We hung together. The lot of us. Every day. All
the time. That's being educated by his real life."
Mike's first post-college job brought him to USA Today. He
was working as a senior social media editor when he began
developing a new sports website intended to be an entry point
to the paper's main website. During a coffee-fueled period of
eight months, he hired 10 people, reserved some 20 web
domains and got married.
"It was insane," Mike told me. "I don't remember sleeping."
The vision was to create a site with a delicate mix of
original sports features and aggregated articles -
journalistic standards plus blogging agility - chronicled in
a more earnest voice than the average sports story and aimed
at a broader audience.
"For The Win" launched April 22, 2013, and became one of the
fastest growing mobile websites in history. In February it
elicited more than 16 million visitors.
"We won," Mike said, "big time."
He believes his entrepreneurial spirit was fostered by the
countercultural decision to home-school (why do things like
everyone else?) and the freedom to customize his education.
He's now a sought-after tech star and, for better or worse, a
serious contender in the frenetic pursuit of online
popularity.
"There's always a score in terms of performance," he said.
"I'm competitive."
That results in long work days perched behind a 30-inch
computer monitor with an iPad and iPhone at his side and a
flat-screen TV mounted above, alternating between CNN and
ESPN.
The blinking, linking 24/7 digital world can render the mind
a hamster wheel. Mike tries to counteract it by unplugging
every evening. He loves comic books and C.S. Lewis and has
just finished his fifth read of Mere Christianity.
The twin pillars of his life, faith and family, keep his ego
in check.
"I don't get absorbed in any of it. That plays into family
unit," he said. "You sit around a table at a Foss family
dinner, and it doesn't matter who you are: We roast each
other."
Attending Mass, he said, quiets any pressure to continue on a
headline-making career path: "You listen to a homily or look
up at the cross, and it puts things in perspective. It makes
it easier to be present in the faith and to be present in
your life."
And if you ask his mom, who became a grandma one year ago
when Mike's daughter, Lucy, was born, her son's over-30 work
will be even more significant.
"He's only just begun to answer God's call in his life," she
says.
Capecchi, whose website is readchristina.com
readchristina.com, is a freelance writer from Inver Grove
Heights, Minn.
Foss, whose website is elizabethfoss.com, is a
longtime columnist for the Catholic Herald.