Mike Yorkey: Crafting Compelling Stories That Resonate

About Me

I thought I was going to be a sportswriter growing up in La Jolla, California.

I started writing for publication during my junior year at La Jolla High School for the hometown newspaper, the La Jolla Light, covering the exploits of the high school football and basketball teams. I thought a fun way to go through life would be sitting in the press box at San Diego Chargers and Padres games, eating a free hot dog and taking notes about what happened on the field.

I decided to attend the University of Oregon because of its top-notch journalism school. After graduating, however, I couldn't find a reporting job, so I gravitated to Mammoth Lakes, California, home of Mammoth Mountain, a ski resort in the Eastern Sierra.

While in Mammoth, I met my future wife, Nicole, who was a ski instructor from Switzerland. We fell in love, got married, and moved to Switzerland, where we lived in Geneva for one year and Zurich for six months. That was a fabulous broadening experience for me, seeing that part of the world and trying to learn French and Swiss-German.

Feeling like I needed to start my journalism career, we returned to Mammoth Lakes, where I got my start at a small weekly resort newspaper. Children arrived: Andrea, followed by Patrick. Then in 1986, I received a huge break: I was hired by Focus on the Family, a Christian ministry founded by Dr. James Dobson, to be the editor of Focus on the Family magazine.

I enjoyed eleven fantastic and satisfying years at Focus on the Family, living in the Los Angeles area as well as Colorado Springs, Colorado, before moving back to San Diego to start a freelance career as an author, editor, and collaborator. I've written more than two dozen books under my own name.

My professional and personal highlight has been coming alongside Fred Stoeker for Every Man's Battle, which was released in 1999. The Every Man's series—nearly a dozen books in all—has more 3 million copies in print, but more importantly, the impact in men's lives around the world has been mind-boggling and humbling at the same time.

Throughout the years, I've collaborated with other amazing people:

• •Jordan Rubin of The Maker's Diet fame
• •Casey Diaz, the former L.A. gang leader who had a miraculous conversion experience
• •Dr. Nick Yphantides, a San Diego physician who lost 267 pounds
• •NFL football stars Colt McCoy and Rolf Benirschke and NFL wife Cyndy Feasel
• •Eric LeGrand, paralyzed while football playing for Rutgers
• •Tennis stars Michael Chang, Roscoe Tanner, and Betsy McCormack and tennis chaplain Fritz Glaus
• •Baseball pitcher and cancer victim Dave Dravecky and hitting guru Steve Springer in Spring Time
• •Joe Sweeney, a networking all-star from Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• •Evangelist Luis Palau
• •Pop singers Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr. of the Fifth Dimension
• •Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind series
• •Frank Sontag, former talk show radio host in Los Angeles
• •Green Beret Ryan Hendrickson in Tip of the Spear
• •Entrepreneur expert Allon Lefever and former US Congress medical officer Dr. Mark Johnston
• •Men's ministry speakers Pete McKenzie and Phil Van Horn in Cracking the Man Code

I'm a blessed man, indeed.