Hidden Gems: Meet Connie Cusick of THE HELLO LIST

Today we’d like to introduce you to Connie Cusick.

Hi Connie, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’ve always been someone who follows curiosity.

I spent years in corporate sales before becoming an entrepreneur, and over the last two decades I’ve built businesses, designed a jewelry line, worked as a photographer, developed brands, sold my work to places I once only dreamed of, traveled constantly, raised two sons and reinvented myself more than once.

But the biggest change in my life started about five years ago when I made a decision to start saying hello to things.

Hello to a place I hadn’t been. A person I didn’t know. A restaurant I’d never tried. An idea that sounded slightly ridiculous. A flight. A conversation. An opportunity.

That simple idea changed the trajectory of my life. I sold my house, began splitting my time between the U.S. and Quebec City, found love in Canada, became a dual U.S./Canadian citizen, and built a life that looks very different from the one I thought I was supposed to have.

Along the way, I realized that one of the most valuable things I’d accumulated wasn’t stuff, it was cultural capital. The places I’d been, people I’d met, things I’d learned, businesses I’d discovered, art I’d seen, meals I remembered, ideas I’d collected and experiences that changed the way I saw the world.

That became The HELLO LIST.

The HELLO LIST is built around a very simple idea: a more interesting life and often a more interesting business starts with paying attention and saying hello to more of the world.

Today I use everything I’ve learned from years of entrepreneurship, travel, photography, design, hospitality, business and simply being relentlessly curious to find the people, places, ideas and experiences worth knowing about and help other people build their own cultural capital.

I’m 58 now, and strangely, I feel like I’m just getting started.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road and I’m actually grateful for that.

One of my biggest challenges has been accepting that my life and career were never going to follow a straight line. I’ve built businesses that worked, had ideas that didn’t, made money, lost money, started over, changed direction and walked away from things that no longer felt right even when they looked perfectly good from the outside.

For a long time, I thought I was supposed to pick one thing and stay there. I’ve finally realized that curiosity isn’t a lack of focus. It’s one of my greatest strengths.

I’ve also learned that starting again doesn’t become less scary just because you’ve done it before. There are still moments when you wonder, What am I doing? But I’ve become much more comfortable moving before I have every answer.

The biggest lesson has probably been that very few decisions are permanent. You can change your mind. You can try something. You can leave. You can begin again. You can say hello to something new.

At 58, I’m much less interested in building a life that looks right from the outside. I’m interested in building one that keeps me curious, connected and awake to the world.

And in a funny way, all of those detours are exactly what gave me the perspective to create The HELLO LIST.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
The HELLO LIST is about building cultural capital, the things you see, learn, experience and discover that make your life, your work and your point of view more interesting.

I created it because I believe curiosity is something you can practice. You don’t have to completely reinvent your life or move across the world. You can start by paying closer attention to what’s around you and saying hello to something you wouldn’t normally choose.

Through The HELLO LIST, I research and curate the people, places, ideas, businesses, hotels, books, exhibitions, food, design and experiences that are worth knowing about. Some are around the corner. Some are halfway around the world. The common thread is that they make you look at something differently.

The HELLO LIST also offers three ways to work with me privately.

Office Hours is a focused 60-minute private session. You bring me the question, decision, idea or opportunity you’re working through, and we work on it together.

The 90 is a three month private creative partnership for someone building their next chapter in their business, brand or life. It combines creative direction, cultural intelligence, strategy, ideas and direct access to me over 90 days.

HELLO EDIT is for businesses and personal brands. I become a fresh set of eyes on the business, reviewing the brand, guest or customer experience and existing strategy, then identifying untold stories, creative opportunities, potential collaborations, distinctive experiences and ideas for what could come next.

What connects everything I do is curiosity and perspective. I’ve spent decades across entrepreneurship, sales, photography, design, travel and brand-building, and I’m constantly collecting information and making connections between things that might otherwise seem unrelated. That’s probably what I’m best at seeing something someone else hasn’t seen yet.

I don’t want The HELLO LIST to simply tell people what’s cool or what’s trending. I want it to make people more curious about the world and give individuals and businesses ideas they can actually do something with.

Build your cultural capital. Say hello to more of the world.

What makes you happy?
Discovery makes me happy.

My sons. The person I love. A long dinner with people I adore. Being in a city where I don’t know exactly what’s around the next corner. Walking into a tiny shop and finding something incredible. A great hotel. A flea market. Art. Taking photographs. Making something with my hands. Getting on a plane. Sitting at a café in Quebec City and watching the world go by.

I love that feeling of finding something I didn’t know existed an hour earlier a place, a person, an object, an idea, even a completely different way of thinking.

I’m also happiest when I’m creating. I’ve realized I don’t necessarily need to be creating the same thing forever. Sometimes it’s a business. Sometimes it’s jewelry or a photograph. Sometimes it’s an idea for someone else. I just need to be making, discovering and connecting things.

And increasingly, freedom makes me happy. The freedom to change my mind, go somewhere new, spend time with the people I love and build my days in a way that feels like my own.

I think that’s ultimately why hello became such an important word to me. Most of the things that have made my life bigger started because I was willing to say hello to something I didn’t know yet.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thehellolist.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehellolist_
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conniecusick
• Other: https://www.tiktok/thehellolist