Who Is John Hill? How the Skater Built Progress Daily
By The 11ish Collective · October 6, 2026
If you want to know how a skater from South Carolina ends up with 1.1 million YouTube subscribers, his own skateboard company and a shelf of children’s books, start with the baby onesies.
Before John Hill was a pro skater, he was pressing designs onto white onesies with a heat press and selling them on Etsy, eBay and Amazon. He wasn’t in love with it. That was kind of the point. The onesies paid the bills, and that freed him to make skate videos with zero pressure for them to pay off. Ten years later, the videos are the business.
I think his path is one of the best examples out there of something I’ve believed for a long time: you don’t have to quit everything to chase the thing you love. You just need something else paying for it while it grows.
Who is John Hill?
John Hill is a professional skateboarder for Revive Skateboards, a YouTuber, and the founder of Progress Daily, his skateboard and lifestyle brand. His own site lists more than 1.1 million YouTube subscribers and 278 million views. Under the Progress Daily name he sells a $100 complete skateboard, a 37-lesson online skate course, and a series of children’s books starring characters he drew himself.
He grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, and was the first kid at his school to ride a skateboard. Nobody else at school skated. “I was the first one. And it was because of the Tony Hawk video games,” he told Justin Odisho on his podcast in 2017. He already felt like an outsider, so he leaned in: “I’m going to take it the extra mile and do something that alienates me even more.”
Before: years of skating for nothing
John did what skaters who want a career do. He moved to California, got on a skate shop, and worked his connections. And he watched the pros around him work just as hard and get paid very little. “You don’t do art to expect to make a lot of money, you just do it,” he said.
He’d been filming and editing since he was a teenager. By his count he had about 300 short skate edits on YouTube before he ever started his real channel, some of them getting 400 or 500 views. Most people would call that a failure. He called it practice: “400 people took the time to watch this thing.”
The turn: onesies paid for the dream
His YouTube channel started in May 2015, while he was living in Long Beach. At the same time, he was building the onesie business, and he treated it as all or nothing. “It was my only job,” he told Sara Dietschy on her podcast That Creative Life in 2018. He got a heat press, did a little marketing research, and found that new moms were the biggest group of buyers he could sell to. So: baby onesies.
Here’s the part I love. He picked it for the market, not the passion:
“It wasn’t something I was super passionate about. So it was very easy for me to be cutthroat about it.”
He studied which designs already sold, put his own silly spin on them, and ended up drawing roughly 500 designs, working 15 to 16 hours a day. It made good money, so he hired someone to run it, and as of 2017 that person was still running it out of Portland. “That is what allowed me to run around at first with YouTube,” he said. In the beginning there was no pressure for the channel to become his job: “It was just skating, skating, skating.”
Not everyone thought YouTube was a smart move. A friend warned him: “If you’re going to do YouTube, do not expect a career in skateboarding.” A lot of skaters saw it as a cheat. Then Revive Skateboards, a company run by people who make YouTube videos, saw him and turned him pro. “So ironically, going the route of avoiding becoming a pro, I became a pro,” he said. By early 2018 he had three decks with his name on the bottom, which he called “what I wanted to accomplish since I was a little kid.”
Where the name Progress Daily comes from
The brand’s name comes from something his dad told him as a kid: at the end of the day, look back and ask whether you were better off. “Did you contribute to the planet at all? Did you take away?” From then on, John tried to do one thing a day that made life a little better, even if it was just picking up a piece of trash.
And his buyers weren’t who he expected. “It’s not the skateboarders who really buy my products,” he said in 2017. “It’s people who seem to be into the idea of entrepreneurship and creativity.” A guy who thought nobody outside skating would understand him found out artists were wearing his shirts.
What John Hill’s business looks like now
As of October 2026, progressdaily.com is a full product line built on one audience:
- A complete skateboard for $100. “My goal was to design the most affordable, professional level skateboard complete and I think I’ve done it!”
- Skateboard Boot Camp, 37 video lessons from the ollie to boardslides.
- The Squad Bots, four mascots that “started off as 4 mascots to the Progress Daily brand” and grew into children’s books about anger, sadness, jealousy and fear ($15 each). His words: “These are the books I wish I had as a kid.”
- 50 free phone wallpapers, his characters plus a one-line motto, no email required.
Back in 2017, his idea of investing was already about the business, not the stock market. “I don’t really have $5,000. But if it takes that much to start this easy business and hire someone for a month, then I’m going to do that. And that is what I would call an investment.”
The move you can steal
- If you love something that doesn’t pay yet, build a boring engine next to it. John’s onesies were picked for demand (new moms), not passion, which made it easy to be ruthless about what sold.
- Hire yourself out of the engine. Once it made money, he paid someone to run it, and his hours went back to the thing he loved.
- Practice in public, even at 400 views. His 300 edits before the real channel were the reps that made the channel work.
My take
Here’s what the poker player in me sees. The onesie business was John’s bankroll. If you’re playing a game where the payoff is years away and most players go broke (and pro skating is exactly that game), you don’t put your rent money on the table. You build a separate stack that can’t be wiped out by one bad year. He did that, and it meant his videos never had to be desperate. You can feel that in the work.
The product manager in me notices the order he did things in. Audience first, products second, and every product sold to the same people: the deck, the course, the books, even the free wallpapers. That’s a real moat. A skate company can copy his $100 board. It can’t copy ten years of people watching him try to make every day a little better.
The risk is the flip side of the same thing: everything runs through John. He saw it himself back in 2017 when he said he wanted Progress Daily “to be beyond me.” The Squad Bots look like his answer. Characters can keep selling books on days he’s not on camera.
His own advice, from the end of that 2017 interview, is still the best summary: focus on the passion before you focus on making money from it, “because that’s what people appreciate.” And if you feel insecure, “just try to become the hero that you wish you had.”
Quick facts
| Name | John Hill |
| Does | Pro skateboarder (Revive Skateboards), YouTuber, founder of Progress Daily, author and illustrator of the Squad Bots books |
| From | Columbia, South Carolina |
| YouTube since | May 2015 (first videos filmed in Long Beach, California) |
| Before YouTube paid | Ran a baby onesie business on Etsy, eBay and Amazon |
| Links | YouTube · progressdaily.com |
Your turn: what’s your onesie business? Tell me in the comments: what’s the thing you don’t love that could pay for the thing you do?
More people who turned a passion into a career are on our People page.
Disclosure: 11ish has no relationship with John Hill or Progress Daily. No payment, product or favor was received. John hasn’t reviewed this piece; if he or anyone spots an error, we’ll fix it and note the correction here.
Sources: The Justin Odisho Podcast, #14: “How to Be a Pro Skater & Progress Daily – John Hill Interview” (October 27, 2017); That Creative Life with Sara Dietschy, “John Hill – Pro Skateboarder / YouTuber” (February 14, 2018); Progress Daily skate lessons, shop, Squad Bots and wallpapers pages (checked October 5–6, 2026). Quotes are transcribed from the podcast audio.
Written by Steve. Edited by Steve.