Check Out Joey Hill’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Joey Hill.

Hi Joey, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
It all started in 2005, when I decided to break the mold of expectations that had been driving my decisions.
I was born in Greenville, South Carolina, and raised in the small town of Simpsonville, right in the middle of one of the most influential eras in sports, music, and entertainment. I was a basketball kid first, and a music kid right behind it, cycling through piano, drums, saxophone, xylophone, whatever I could get my hands on. I excelled in high school, but my dreams of playing NCAA ball quietly dissolved, and I ended up a retired varsity athlete instead. So I locked in academically and landed a scholarship to Morehouse College; still one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

I graduated with honors, president of my class, and walked straight into Deloitte Consulting. A few months in, I could already see the ceiling. Between projects, or “on the beach” as consultants call it, I kept waiting for the steady paycheck to be enough to quiet what I actually wanted for myself. It never was. After one too many condescending emails from a project lead, I planned my exit, without much of a parachute, and landed back home in South Carolina, working part-time jobs until a call came in from Kenny Johnson, one of the most consistent mentors of my career, inviting me to join his emerging marketing firm in Chicago called The Richmond Group. My onboarding was trial by fire: BMW, McDonald’s, Bombay Sapphire, Grey Goose, Universal Music Group, HBO, Def Jam. That’s where I first saw how the culture I grew up on in small-town South Carolina collided with the business of brands; and I was hooked.

I chased a law degree next, convinced it would “up the stock” of my credentials alongside an MBA. I made it through 1L before getting flagged for academic probation over a single course -Torts, if memory serves correctly, thanks to a brutal curve policy I’d never dealt with before. That summer, staying with my sister in Virginia, I made the call to pivot: MBA and a Master of Information Science at North Carolina Central University, betting that the coming digital shift would need people who understood both brand and data. I graduated in 2010, dead center of the recession, job hunting like it was the Hunger Games.

My mentor Kenny threw me another life-line, back to Chicago, this time as a Senior Account Executive at a new multicultural agency, where I learned media trafficking, celebrity talent negotiation, and brand strategy from the ground up. That company dissolved, so I landed at Commonground, working Coca-Cola/Sprite, Illinois Lottery, and Nissan, and learning how to actually dissect a brand’s DNA. When that work dried up, I got laid off for the first time in my career. I pitched myself for the experiential team afterward and got told I didn’t have the right background. History’s shown exactly how wrong that was.
That layoff lit a fire under me. I started betting on myself harder, launched my own shop, Fresh Goods Creative Partners, and taught myself Photoshop and Illustrator because I couldn’t afford to outsource anything. I wasn’t polished, didn’t have the art-school pedigree, and didn’t care. I knew I could move faster and truer than what I was seeing in the market. As a first-time entrepreneur I wasn’t ready for the pace of it, though, and after a few rocky months I moved back to South Carolina, for exactly one week, before a job offer pulled me right back to Chicago: Producer and Account Manager for the Nike Basketball “Chi-League” Pro-Am with Game Seven Marketing.

That second Chicago run was a career-best summer. I helped produce a national tour for LeBron James’ 13th signature shoe and pitched successful Nike x Beats by Dre activations for NBA All-Star Weekend in Toronto and a Kevin Durant event in Oklahoma. By year’s end I was recruited into a hybrid Account Supervisor / Experiential Marketing Director role on MillerCoors, directing Miller Lite’s “Tap The Future” national tour and pitch competition with Daymond John, and leading Coors Light’s “Full Court ReFresh” tour with NBA legend Kenny “The Jet” Smith. Somewhere in there I noticed I was leaning heavily on personal relationships to build every new program, which told me it was time for a bigger stage. I set myself a deadline: October 31, 2017, I move to LA.

That first year in Los Angeles humbled me fast. No full-time role, no safety net, just a consulting retainer, freelance design projects, a comedy show I’d started with a college friend, DJ gigs around the city, and a dwindling savings account. I even picked up a car sales job to stay afloat. I was mid-way through prepping a car sale when I finally got the call I’d been praying for, a Culver City agency offering me the Director role I wanted, after a friend in their Chicago office put my name in the right room. It paid more than Chicago ever had and finally justified the leap.

As Experiential Marketing Director there, I helped lead McDonald’s largest African-American consumer market campaign in sixteen years, won new business from Nestlé, and supported go-to-market work for Lexus North America. But after watching less-deserving people get promoted over me one too many times, I stopped trusting the agency had my best interest at heart. After I left, I locked in L’Oréal as a client, one I’d carry into my company Hill + Co. Creative. In February 2022, I gave my two weeks’ notice and bet on myself one more time.

A month later, an ATV accident in Medellín, Colombia turned my life upside down. Eight surgeries. Two years on crutches. Every dollar I’d saved to grow the company, gone to medical bills, specialists, travel, and recovery housing. By 2024 I was learning to walk again and rebuilding what I called my “new normal.” In the middle of that recovery, I landed a full-time contract on Amazon’s global cross-channel marketing team and quietly kept building Hill + Co. Creative one project, one referral at a time, alongside it. That same stretch is when I launched Hillmatic Films and Productions, to finally develop the concepts I’d been sitting on for years, and grew “A Dope Comedy Show,” the monthly show I co-produce, into a residency at The Comedy Store on Sunset.

These days I’m fully in “Joey The Creator” mode: pushing Hill + Co. Creative, developing projects for Hillmatic, and taking on speaking engagements and podcast features whenever they come.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Not by a long shot; and I wouldn’t trust the story if it were.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Hill + Co. Creative (with Hillmatic Films and Productions as our production arm) helps forward-thinking businesses cut through the noise with bold brand strategy, design, and elevated experiential marketing that drives real growth. We work with startups and established brands across tech, entertainment, film, fashion, and consumer goods, building immersive, cross-channel campaigns that actually connect with today’s audiences. With 20+ years of expertise and a personal, tailored approach, we deliver the kind of results, and turnaround, that big agencies can’t.

If you’re tired of all the AI noise flooding the marketplace right now: the errors, the em dashes, the fake quotes, the glitchy content … come talk to Hill + Co. Creative instead.

We specialize in:

Brand Strategy Consulting
Graphic Design
Speaking Engagements
Content Development (via Hillmatic Films and Productions)

We’re known for authentic brand design, commissioned graphic work, and culture-inspired storytelling built through events and unique partnerships. What sets us apart is our willingness to tell the truth through the work: lived experiences, with a real read on brand-to-consumer psychology, and the curiosity to show up differently, both in the room and across digital platforms.

We are proud of our ability to stay true to our morals while telling other people’s stories. It’s genuinely hard for a brand to hold up a mirror and honestly face how it’s seen, by the consumer, the client, the loyalist, and the person still sitting on the fence. Helping brands do that without flinching is the work I’m proudest of.

Do you have any advice for those just starting out?
Trust your instincts, they’ll lead you to the niche that’s actually built for what you offer. Your lived experience has value and your point of view has merit, but nobody pays for either until you package and present it properly. Be as critical of your own output as a total stranger would be. And remember: as a business, it’s not always about you. That’s a hard one for creatives, because we work off instinct and emotion, but sometimes you have to set the ideals aside, while staying morally intact, and give the client what they actually need.

Also: consider narrowing your offering before you try to widen it. You’ll attract more, and scale faster, when people know exactly what to come to you for, “specifically”. Your portfolio won’t always support your full range early on, so get consistent in one lane first, then build out from there.

When starting out I wish I really knew how much sacrifice, luck, and time it actually takes to make it as a multi-hyphenate creative. Don’t idle. Be ready to execute at all times. ”Staying ready” isn’t a cliché, it’s an evergreen practice for staying relevant and competitive in a market that never stops moving.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://hillcocreative.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joeystaysbusy/
• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/joeyhill3
• Youtube: @HillandCoCreative