It began as a question.

Hilltop Collective Co. didn't start as a business plan. It started as something I kept coming back to:

What would it look like to build something that connects faith with ordinary life?

Not faith as the thing we do on Sunday. Faith as the thing that shapes how we live, love, create, dress, gather, serve, and treat the people in front of us.

The name came before almost everything else.

I was drawn to the idea of a city on a hill — a light that can't be hidden. When that name wasn't available, the search led somewhere better. Hilltop kept the picture. Collective left room for something larger than a store.

In October 2025 I bought the domain and started building.

I spent twelve years learning how to sell things.

A merchant for the largest retailer in the country. Learning what makes a person stop, pick something up, and decide it belongs in their life. Learning margin. Gross profit. How a process holds together when the day comes apart.

That job ended this year.

It left me with a skill and nowhere to put it.

So of course my first instinct was a shop. Clothing, home, jewelry, journals, mugs — all the things you'd expect. But the more I built it, the less that felt like the point. I didn't want to put a Bible verse on something for the sake of calling it a Christian product.

The products could be part of Hilltop. They didn't have to be Hilltop.

What I know how to do hasn't changed. Where it's pointed has. Stewardship instead of quota.

So the question changed.

I stopped asking what Hilltop could sell, and started asking what Hilltop could represent.

That answer was much bigger.

Meeting downtown to serve. Collecting clothing for people who need it. Volunteering. Partnering with churches. Gathering to study, to eat, and to talk honestly about what we believe.

A community of people who don't only profess their faith — they practice it.

It isn't a place for people who have it together.

I don't want Hilltop to be a perfect place for Christians. I want it to be a place where people gather, eat, talk honestly, and figure it out next to other people doing the same.

It should be fun. That part matters to me.

The message is simple.

Be a light wherever you go. And that light is Christ, who lives in us.

Everything else — the products, the photographs, the gatherings, and one day a place with coffee and books and music and room to sit — is built around that.

THEN THE QUESTION CHANGED

THE ROAD, STILL GOING