hello & handshake existed as a concept in my mind—and on a Pinterest board—for nearly a decade. But my passion for this project and for all things card, kitsch, and handwritten started way before that. And like so many small businesses borne out of love, it owes its existence to a lot of people who may not even realize it.

At its core, hello & handshake brings together some of the best tools and products from across the world to enable and empower people to elevate their daily routines. And knowing the importance of having the right implement for the job is no doubt owed to my dad Todd and the hours I spent spinning on his shop stool while he drafted and redrafted plans for our next big project. Sometimes he was solving a problem for me, other times we were putting our minds together to solve a problem for him. Other times, I had no idea what we were doing, but he needed an extra set of hands. There was always something to learn, a tool to master, a project to complete, or something to fix. 

And if you’ve been here before, you know that hello & handshake’s tools come in the form of stationery sundries and ephemera, a passion that my mom Suzanne modeled for me from a very early age. She also helped to inform the ‘handshake’ part of the hello & handshake brand, but more on that later.

My mom always came prepared with supplies to keep me occupied; on the bus to one of her volleyball games (she coached for most of my youth), along the third base line at one of my brother’s baseball games, or on an airplane. There were crayons, markers, and colored pencils, plus activity books with mazes, word searches, and other puzzles, and I could usually talk her into a game or two of “Hang Man” or “Dots.” She taught me how to draw a droopy-eared puppy dog: start with an upside down heart, draw two arches for eyes and simple sock shapes for ears. (It wasn’t until writing this that I realized just how much these drawings resemble my 14 year old basset hound, Luna.) And on the mornings that she left before we woke up,  she would always leave my brother and me a handwritten note reminding us of the day’s activities and telling us she loved us.

It’s safe to say these early memories eventually led me to work at a gift and greeting card shop in Broad Ripple, Indiana called Chelsea’s (yes, really). And while this little shop, which sat proudly on a picturesque corner for 30 years, is no longer around, its owners David & Ellen taught me so much about how to run a small business, and they helped shape the superior standards of practice for hello & handshake’s operations. They’re probably also responsible for my Pavlovian response of looking up at the sound of a door opening or bell ringing to say “hello.”

I got further lessons on the power of a greeting when I worked for a formidable woman named Valerie, owner of a restaurant called Zest. My now mentor Stevi got me the job so that she could spend more time with her new beau (and now husband of 11 years), and frankly, I needed the money at the time. Zest was the place for weekend brunch, and people would wait hours for a table. Shortly into every opening shift, Val would breeze in through the double swing doors from the kitchen and onto the floor to fill in where needed, chat up tables of regulars, and loom over the hostess stand to ensure we weren’t double-seating stressed out servers or overwhelming the kitchen. From here, she observed me welcoming every single person that walked through the door with a smile and some sort of greeting: “Hello ladies!” “Hey guys, welcome to Zest!” “Good morning, folks!”  Once, after I answered a guest’s question with a “Yes ma’am”, she swooped in and swiftly issued an assertive directive: “The answer is just ‘yes.’ Not ‘yes ma’am'. Women don’t always appreciate being called ‘ma’am,’ and they certainly don’t want to be called ‘guys’. It's just yes, no, and hello.” 

At the time, I thought it was the most absurd correction. But I came to realize that this guaranteed every single person the same, consistent, high caliber experience day to day, shift to shift, hostess to hostess.

A ‘hello’ says so much, but a handshake can say even more.

During my time as a teenager, my mom continued to coach volleyball, and I had the pleasure of playing for her for many years.  I won many awards due in large part to being last person in the gym; pretty easy when the coach is your only ride to your house miles and miles outside of town. It was very important to my mom that I possessed a quality handshake when receiving these awards, meeting elders, etc. She made me practice with her, showing me all the wrong ways to shake someone’s hand: too firm, too flimsy, too short, too long. She loved to shake my hand in front of people and tickle the palm of my hand with her index finger, making me smile and squirm in front of a crowd but knowing that she trained me well enough to never pull my hand away. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, she prepared me for something much more important than receiving an 8th grade volleyball award for “Most Aces in a Season.” 

And so here I am, ten years into a concept and vision that all of these experiences led me to.

hello & handshake has come to life through a series of pop-up shops across the Central Indiana. Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know when and where we’ll be popping up.