The artists ego - With Jeff Graham - 2 Be Better

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Look up, We've come all the things on the bottom.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Ah.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Wow, you you're my favorite view.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
But that's nothing. And we are back, guys, doing something
that we haven't done in a while. And it's just
me tonight. Peaches is not here. Jeff is sitting in
her chair. You know, it's been two years since we've
done a podcast together.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
It's been a while, you guys did you were still
really new into new podcasts when I did it the
first time.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
It's been two years. I looked it up before you
sat down, so I could see exactly how long ago
it was me and Angie. Yeah, so we are going
to be talking tattoo and this is gonna be something
that we're gonna be doing on like a bi monthly basis,
like every every like every two weeks for like twice
a month, and we're gonna change who interviews you. So
next time we do this, Peaches will be sitting there

(01:00):
and you'll be sitting here, and we're gonna do this
on a regular basis to talk about the tattoo industry.
I'll get the captain's chair next. You'll get the captain's
chair next time. Yep, yep, like that all right, So
what are we What are we doing? Jeff? Like we
we have a whole lot of I have a lot
of disdain for the tattoo industry, and as somebody that's
been in the industry since ninety seven, like I have

(01:23):
watched it shift from you know, like I know it's
not the golden days, but to me, it was because
of what it was at that time frame into what
it is now. And I actually can't stand it.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you're not tattooed that
much longer than I am.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I don't think. I'm not too sure. How long did
you tattoo? Uh? Well, I got in the industry at
ninety seven as a body piercer and started tattooing in
like two thousand and five or two thousand and six. Okay,
so I started.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
I started tattooing full time two thousand and nine, So
not too much longer then. I mean, you haven't doing
it too much longer than I have, right, And I
started that. When I started, it was still all the
old heads that you know you were working with. I
work with the guy, super old guy set named Solo,
and he was so old school he still reused his

(02:10):
old needles that's how old school he was. Wow, he
just had a mason jar. I said this on TikTok
the other day. Hit a little mason jar and then
that mason jar had holes in the top of it,
and he could do a tattoo. He'd just grab a
need a lot of that mason jar and then flick
all the stuff off of it. And he just had
some weird concoction that he had in there, like acid
tone and alcohol or whatever else barbasol, which whatever he

(02:33):
could put in there, and then he would just dry
it off like this, put in this tattoo machine tattoo,
and then when he was done, he put it right back.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
It's so crazy to me, Like I remember when people
were making needles, and I remember, like when that was
not an easy purchase, like buying tattoo needles at when
they first were pre made, they were expensive as fuck. Yeah.
I made needles when I first started.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
Yeah, I had to learn how to solder needles because
buying them pre made was crazy expense. We did all that,
sterilized everything, all that stuff. So I was there for it. Yeah,
you know what I mean. And the shift that it
is now, Yeah, it's we've shifted from a small amount

(03:14):
of tattoo artists that you know, held their territory pretty good,
to a large amount of tattoo artists and a lot
of a lot of ego. And that's what we talked
about earlier, is the ego is way different than it was.
And I don't know if it's just because of the
world that we live in right now, or if it
was if it's the social media and stuff like that.

(03:35):
Anybody gets a little taste of social media fame and
they're all of a sudden.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Better than everybody. It doesn't matter if you're good or
you're not good. You know.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
That's like that the aerial to Jesus girl on TikTok
you know who she is. Her name is synonymous for
terrible tattoos. Just if you say that name, you know,
terrible tattoo. But she's got seven hundred and fifty thousand followers,
so she thinks that she's the best. It doesn't matter
how many times somebody tells us she's bad. She's just

(04:03):
going to continue to believe that she's good.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah. We So when I came into the industry, everybody,
everybody thought they were rock stars. The tattoo industry was
the next step to like rock stardom.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
That's why I went to the tattoo inutry. I'm not
gonna lie bro right. People ask me all the time,
why did you go to get into the tattoo industry,
And I always tell them for the bitches, and they're
like what, and I'm like, yeah, they told you that
you were going to be a rock star, that you
were going to be, you know, the person that everybody
wanted to hang around, and you were. I think I
got the either I'm hit the ass end of where

(04:33):
that stopped happening, or I'm just you know, not very attractive.
I think because it never really worked for me. I
got Angie out of it. But I don't think I
got Angie because I was a tattoo artist. That stuff
never really happened, not for me at least.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, the rockstar mentality was because, especially if you were
a tattoo artist a small town, everybody who you were.
You couldn't go in to public without people trying to
talk to you, like bar scenes were a thing, all
of that. But I watched that ego shift from the
rock star mentality to that I'm better than you mentality
and that you know that wasn't the case. When I
was young in the industry, everybody thought that they were

(05:11):
better than the next artist like that ego was still
very much there, but they didn't. It wasn't like I'm
holier than now, you're gonna do what I want like that.
That came after ink Masters, Like.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah, I've seen that too, the ink that people say
the ink masters did it.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
I just don't. I just don't know that it did.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
I know that people want to blame ink masters for
the influx of tattoo artists, and I don't. I don't
know that that's necessarily the case.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
I don't think that's what caused the influx of tattoo artists.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah, I just think that's the easy how easily you
can get the supplies for it, and then how I guess. So,
I guess maybe a little bit. If I sit there
and think about the ink Master's thing, if you see it,
watch it on video or whatever, it looks like it's easy,
like we're just tracing some shit, you know.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
So I guess.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
You know, people think it's going to be an easy
way to make money, and I mean, if you're good
at it, then it is an easy way to make money,
you know.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
But with the ink master thing, I don't think it's
what's bringing people into the artists. I think the ink
Master's changed the trajectory of tattooing because it became mainstream.
Now we're tattooing soccer moms and fucking grandma's and shit like,
it's not you know, outlaws and criminals, drug dealers and
shit anymore.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
Right, And it's like back back in the time when
it was outlaws and criminals, you were perfectly okay with
going I'm not tattooing you, or I'm not tattooing that.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
You can, you know, get the bricks.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
But now that it has shift to the soccer moms
and the things like that, tattoo industry has went from
hard nosed people to you have to accommodate. Yeah, customer
service is massive. If you're not good with customer service
in this industry now, you're not gonna make it very long.
I know terrible tattoo artists that are so good with

(06:52):
their clients booked for a month, you know, and they're
just not good at tattooing, but they're good at handling
their clients. They're good that, you know, making their client
feel like they want them there.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Well, that's I mean, that's what tattooing is. It's an experience.
If you look at what tattoo originated as the ritualistic
size side of tattooing, there was a lot of meaning
and a lot of prep and a lot of things
that went into the actual tattoo. That's why we named
the shop Sacred rights, yeah, Sacred rituals. Yeah, but that's
I also think that that has changed too. I do
believe that it's still about cultivating an experience. The client

(07:26):
needs to feel like they're a part of something and
they need to enjoy being in the shop for eight hours,
otherwise they're not coming back. But back further just a
little bit. I want to go back to the ink
Master thing. I think that with the ink Master thing,
I think the younger people that were watching that show
as a kid that had a little bit of drawing ability,
maybe that did make them want to get into the
industry a whole lot more. But my shift in that
also went from people who could do everything that came

(07:48):
through the door to I'm only doing traditional or I'm
only going to do Japanese realism. I'm only going to
do this style, and you're you're six months into your
tatto apprenticeship. You don't get to make that decision yet.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
Like you definitely think that that tattooing means that you're
gonna get to do a list of things. You're gonna
be your own boss, independent, make your own hours, you're
gonna make a bunch of money. You're gonna get to
do all the art that you wanted to do and
be an artist and this, that and the other. And
for ninety nine percent of tattoo artists that's not the case.

(08:19):
You get none of those things. You're still gonna have
a boss, You're still gonna still gonna be I gotta
be there at this time and I don't get to
leave until this time. And then plus you've got all
the other stuff on top of it. You know, your
social media is you have to market yourself. If you're
in a tattoo shop that gives a percentage, then that
tattoo shop is the person that usually does all the advertisement,

(08:39):
Like sacred rights, right, they take a percentage, it's and
then they do the advertisement so that you the artists
don't have to do that. But we're moving towards a
lot of booth rentals. A lot of people are doing
booth rentals, and these newer kids don't understand that you
gotta pay for all that stuff now, everything the insurances
that you needed, which most of them won't even do that,

(09:02):
and that's going to bite them in the ass. Eventually,
they're not going to carry that insurance that the shop
carries to cover them, you know, and.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
It's gonna be a real rude awakening when they.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
Figure out that it's not as easy as they thought
it was moving to these booth rentals and things like that,
or the private studios and stuff.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
You know, there's no business mindset in that right. So
with the difference, like you were saying between booth rental
and percentages, is when you're paying a studio a percentage,
they're handling everything. You literally come to work, wait for
your clients to get there, do your tattoos, provide the
photos for marketing, and go home. When you are an owner,
or you booth rental or you private studio, you are

(09:43):
literally just renting the booth from somebody else. That's a
tattoo artists. That's not thinking long term. I don't think that.
I truly don't believe that anybody that's doing booth rental,
unless they're really smart investing their money, has a future
with a retirement in any way, shape or form, because
there's no there's no way to do that. Yeah, but
they're you know, the marketing aspect, Sacred spent just under

(10:04):
two hundred thousand dollars last year on marketing. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
Yeah, and people don't see it, you know, even in
the even in Sacred, they don't see it. They don't
see that you're you're doing the marketing the T shirts
and the stickers and all that stuff. They just see
it as little knick knacks or whatever, like it's like
it doesn't mean anything, and it does, it absolutely does,
and they would think about it and use that for
themselves as like something that I do is that the
shop pays for the for the shirts. But my clients

(10:30):
don't know that. They think I just gave them a
shirt because I don't. I don't just say, oh no,
the shop's going to give it to you.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
I don't do that. I give it to you.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
And and a lot of times, you know, the artists
there and doesn't matter how many times I tell them,
because they won't listen. They're young, they don't listen. I
take them up there and hand them the T shirt,
you know, go with them instead. They'll go, oh, you
can get a T shirt on your way out or whatever.
You know, it's just it's yeah, you gotta be You
got to make them feel like, you know, they're your

(10:58):
friend or they're your part of your fanamily or whatever,
or at least that you cared that they were there.
You know, after all that they paid your bills this week,
you know, or one bill at least, or fed you
or something. I really want to get into that aspect
of the conversation too, the client, but the.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
Money aspect of it, dude. We so I know that
like during COVID you went and got a moving job. Yeah,
like we shop was closed for a month. You went
and found a job and worked that month to make
sure that your kids and family was taken care of you.
So you got to experience what it is from going
to making tattoo money to going back to working regular
job money. And that humility and that humbling is necessary

(11:39):
because people don't realize that when people come and get tattooed,
if they're spending twelve or fifteen hundred bucks on a
single day, with the tattoo artists, it could have taken
them weeks or months to save that kind of money.
People in like the food industry, unless it's season where
they live or they're on a beach somewhere, they're not
bringing in that kind of money right like that. That
is a big ass problem for me too, all of this.
My minimum is two hundred dollars an hour, and all

(11:59):
I was traditional.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
Yeah, yeah, And a lot of times I don't even
mind if you have a large minimum, or if you
have a large hourly rate. I don't even care as
long as the work that you're putting out is justified,
is justified. And that's rare. But even in this little
town here, even in Port Charlotte, I think there's three
or four people that are charging two hundred and fifty

(12:23):
or three hundred dollars an hour.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
That's absolutely fucking insane. I don't charge that. I don't
charge that.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
And if I had to put myself in the hierarchy
of the people that are in this area anywhere close,
i'd be one or two.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
I don't think anybody in this town is worth three
hundred bucks an hour. I don't think, so I gotta
be honest. I wouldn't pay three hundred buck an hour
from any tattoo org. I would. I wouldn't. I definitely would.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
That's lawyer money, bro I would definitely pay it one
hundred percent. David Vega, I'd pay him his five thousand
dollars day rate all day and not blink if I
had it. Ralph Nonwiler one hundred percent. I'd pay his
five thousand dollars day rate if I had it, since
to me, I don't have it, but if I did,
I would pay it just because I mean, but you're

(13:06):
talking about those two are the best in the world
at what they're doing. There's not even an argument that
somebody is better than those two. Not one and it's
one or two. You know, some people say Ralph is
better because of his textures and such, and then some
people will say that Vegas better because of how smooth
and saturated his black and gray is. They but there's

(13:29):
no argument. It's one and two. They're the best in
the world. And that's not even They're not even charging
the most. I've seen the video on TikTok the other
day where they were going around to people at a
convention and was asking what their rates were and there
was somebody, there was some lady in there that was
five hundred and fifty dollars an hour, and then they
showed her work and I was like, what in the world.

(13:51):
And it stems from the social media following. You know,
if you get a large ohcial media following, you can
charge out the ask for these tattoos and people will
pay it. They'll come from forever. I got tattooed by
so and so off the internet, you know, I get it.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
We had somebody say that if we came back, if
I went back to the tattoo shop, I could charge
four thousand dollars a day and people would pay it. Probably.
It's fucking insane to me. Yeah, I have no interest
in going back to the tattoo shop. Like I want
to tattoo my friends when I want to tattoo my friends, Yeah,
but I don't want to get paid for it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:25):
So, yeah, you want to do it for the love
of it, right, and because one of those things you
get a lot of. I had somebody in my comments
the other day talking about I do it for the
love of it.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
No, No, if you did free, yeah, you'd be free,
or you'd be at home painting on canvas, so you
don't have to listen to a client tell you what
you need and need to do or what you can
and can't do. Now that you don't do it for
the love of it. There's fake skin.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
You could do it at home for free, and then
you could go and work at home depot on the
weekends or whatever you're doing.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
You don't need like that. That's a nonsense answer.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
You can love what you're doing and understand that you
still have to make money, right, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (15:01):
But a lot of them that's not that's not the case. Well,
not a lot. I shouldn't say a lot of them.
There are quite a bit though, So speaking, speaking on
the things that you've been seeing on the internet, what's
going on with this? Uh? You going after tattoo artists
on the internet.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
Man, I'm tired of the ego. I'm tired. I've seen
a video and I'm not gonna lie to The guy
even messaged me because he thought I took the video down,
but I don't take videos down. But I can't remember
his name right now, but he said that he's not
going to tattoo you unless it's something that he wants,

(15:37):
and I'm okay with that to an extent, right, But
then he said, I don't if you're if you bring
me an image that your kid drew and then tore
it up and we taped it back together, and you
still wanted that tattooed, then he's like, you're stupid and
I'm not fucking doing it. And that's when I was
like done. I'm done because I don't care who you are.

(16:00):
I don't care how many follows you have. I do
not care. You're not that special. You're not as special
as that parent getting that picture from their kid.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
You never will be. It's just not possible. And for
you to say it's not.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
Cool and it's unoriginal is nonsense to me, and it's
arrogant as what it is. Nobody gives a shit right
if you think it's cool or not, that person does.
And it's the same thing with every single tattoo. Whether
I like the tattoo idea that you have or not
is fucking irrelevant because I'm not living your life and

(16:39):
I don't. I don't I've not had your experiences, so
I don't know what's meaningful to you. I said it
on a video too, It's like, I personally don't like
Pablo Picasso. I think that his art looks like high
school kids scribbling on a desk. I don't think it's good.
Is that a bad opinion to have? No, because it's

(17:01):
my opinion. Artists subjective for each person, and for an artist,
a tattoo artist, or any artist really a tattoo artist,
to say that your idea is stupid in itself is stupid,
and you're just arrogant and you think that you should
be able to do whatever you want whenever you want
because of this reason or the next. And some people

(17:24):
get away with it. Some people do there's no other
options for them. They live in a small rural area
and there's not many tattoo artists around, or they don't
have the money right so they have to go to
cheaper places, or they have to go to somebody that's
gonna treat them like shit, and it I can't handle it.
And then there's a back and forth with another dude
that's just the fucking worst, which, by the way, I
called him out. I've called him out twice now. The

(17:47):
first time, then he commented on a video and I
called him out again on that video if you haven't
watched it, you should go watch it.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
No, I sent it to you.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah, I sent it to you, Okay, and he's still
following me, like what are you doing? I thought for
sure this dude was gonna was gonna block me. He
was so upset that was making fun of his hair.
Was he really so upset he messaged you about it?
Or that was the comments? That was the comments? He
was so so upset. But I knew that going into it,
because a man of adult age like us, if you've spent.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
That much time.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
Growing your hair like that and you make it up
in front and center and every single one of your videos,
you're proud of it, and I'm gonna Oh my bro,
I know that. I know that that hair is your
entire existence.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
That if somebody shaved that hair off of you when
you slept, you would probably cry for a month. So
I knew that and I just poked at it. You know,
is that the right thing to do? Probably not, But
it's funny. It's fun. It's sometimes people need their egos
pops a little bit. But that's the problem. It doesn't
matter what you say, You're not going to pop their ego.
It doesn't it's just like with him. You know. Wait,

(18:55):
hold on, you don't think that the conversations like that
were people because people are soft, right, We're not used
to having people speak to us directly anymore. People be
around the bush. They sugarcoat everything and they don't have
somebody speak direct the way that you do. You don't
think that you speaking directly to them is gonna make
them think about that shit? No I do. They may
not admit it, but I guarantee you that that night

(19:15):
when they went to bed, they were layering there staring
at their ceiling thinking about everything that you fucking said
to them could be. But that very next day they're
gonna have all their yes men right behind them. Well
I'm sure you're.

Speaker 4 (19:23):
Cool, man, Yeah, oh good, your hair is beautiful whatever,
Like you should be in commercials like Troy Polamalu. And
he's like, who's Troy Polamalu, you know, and then you
hate him even worse because he don't know who that goes?

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Right, Sorry, if you don't know who that guy is.
I honestly think that because of my experience with the
comment section and being in the comment section, any creator
that I know that has a big following the haters
in their comments, being nasty them outshines the positivity. Yeah,
one thousandfold. I can have two hundred and fifty comments
in a video and one of them will be negative
and it will fucking break me apart. I will analyze

(19:56):
everything to say, try to find out there's validity to it,
Try to dissect my ego, to be like, am I
really doing this? This? This something being perceived. I guarantee
you that if he has any like sense of self
worth that's not like overbearing, he will be breaking that
shit down and thinking about it. That's probably because I
don't think of it that way. If you if you.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
Insult me or if you you know something like he
did there, try to check my ego, which I don't
have an ego, so, which I guess in itself is.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Kind of having an ego in it. No paradox so well,
I mean that speaks to ego debt.

Speaker 3 (20:29):
But if I'm all like I don't have an ego,
that's me having an ego about not having an ego.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
No, I don't agree with that, Okay, I don't agree
with that. If you were if you were being boisterous
and like that was like a thing that you said
all the time, not just in a conversation like we're
having right now. I would feel that way, but we
are speaking on ego, yeah, and humility goes a long way,
and and and again we can speak on ego death.
That's a whole other conversation and not really for tattooed conversation.
But as I have done my journeys with Aya and

(20:58):
all the things that I've done, my ego has dissolved
a lot. What is ayahuasca? Oh, the ceremonies that we've
been doing, I should have done that. I just never
heard it abbreviated. I guess, Yeah, anyway, I forgot. But
a lot of that has changed my perspective and my
views on a whole lot of things. Like I don't
want to get into that right now. That's a whole
other conversation. But yeah, So with with that guy in
that that video, uh, you said that there was somebody

(21:20):
that he had made a comment about a kid's five
year old drawing or whatever or for kids drawing.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
Yeah, they originated from a from a different creator and
he's got, like, I don't know, two hundred and fifty
thousand followers on Instagram, which on Instagram is a lot.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, you know, we've been fighting tooth and nail to
build our Instagram. I can't.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
I can't build Instagram to save my life. I've been
at like nine thousand followers for like two years. I
cannot do it. Let's be honest with ourselves. Though, that's
my fault. I have not I'm not as consistent on
it as I am on some of the other platforms,
so it is my fault.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
But I feel like I just kind of give up
on it. You need to pay for repurpose I owe,
and set it up so that everything that you post
to your TikTok goes to your Instagram just instantly, instantly.
I didn't know that. Yep, I rarely posted Instagram. I'll
post my stories on Instagram, but like all the videos
that are there, I'll get pulled from TikTok okay and
you can set it to go to your YouTube or
your Facebook, wherever you want it to go. Anyways, back

(22:16):
on the kid thing, when I was working at Level
five had to have been fifteen twenty years ago. It
was longer than fifteen years ago because the shop turns
fifteen next month, so it had to have been probably
eighteen years ago. Some dude came in and like, he
want me to do a big old tattoo on his
forearm and he had a little at the time. I
was like, it was a really shitty tattoo on his wrist,

(22:37):
and I was like, so, when we do this tattoo,
you want me to cover that little shit on your wrist,
like you want me to fix that or whatever, because
I could make that look a whole lot better, and
he like it. It immediately turned him off to me,
and I didn't realize like at the time there was
meaning behind it, but he was like, my five year
old son drew that and he's dead. Yeah, And I
was like, oh my god, dude, I'm so fucking sorry,
Like I thought that was a scratcher tattoo, Like I

(22:58):
wasn't trying to be insensitive to what's going on with you.
We can leave it, we can fix it whatever. But
like at that point I didn't even know what to say,
like because like he had like it wasn't like him
trolling me, right, yeah, he felt he got upset and
like it fucked up my whole chie Like I didn't
know what to do with myself that day. Yeah, but
it changed the way that I talked to my clients
after that. I never did that. Yeah, I don't do
it either. I never was like that tattoo sucks, I

(23:20):
can fix that for you. Like, that was never a
thing unless I knew the client really well. Yeah, and
I knew they didn't like the tattoo, and I was
working around it. I'd like, you want me to just
touch this up while I'm in here, and then I
would do my thing to it. But for the most part,
like that whole talking down on a client's tattoos, and
that falls into the other thing too. When people go
what would you charge me for this? My answer is
always do you like the tattoo? And they're like yeah,

(23:42):
And I'm like, then what does it matter what I
would charge You're happy with your tattoo.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah, it's just wild to me. Yeah, I learned not
to do that super super early. And I can't even
give you like a specific timeframe when I learned not
to do it, or even like a specific person.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
I just do.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
I'm not doing that, you know, because, as like I
said earlier, you didn't walk that path, and I don't
understand what led them to that. Tattoo, even if I'm
almost positive that that tattoo is just done in a
garage or something, and that has no centimental value, like
somebody's got some weird tribal that's half in their arm,
you know what I mean, Like you don't know if
their best friend.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
Did it and then immediately got hit by a car.
You have no fucking idea.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
So I don't unless I get in the express written
consent from the NFL, you know what I mean, Like
I need to know that you hate that tattoo one
hundred percent, or I'm not even gonna talk about it,
like I'm just gonna skim past it.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
You know.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
But most time, if you've if you've been with around
them for any period of time, it'll it'll come up.
It'll come up naturally instead of just trying to bring
it up. And that's what I mean, Like, you can't
pretend to know what somebody else's experiences are, or what
makes them feel special, or what makes them you know,
light up inside. What tickles their little brain wrinkles is

(25:02):
not the same thing that tickles my brain rink And
that same thing goes for all the tattoo artists that
think they they think they know you know, or they
think they're better than you. I think that's one of
those things. They think they're better than the client. The
client's paying your fucking bills. Dude, You're gonna go home
tonight to a house and you're probably gonna eat something,
maybe watch TV. God knows what else is you're gonna do.

(25:26):
And all that comes from the hard work of others.
But granted, you did work, you worked, and you earned
that money. But that person didn't have to give you
their money. They didn't have to pick you. I think
just the fact that somebody picked you to do that
and put that on them for the rest of their
life and worked all that time for all that money

(25:47):
to get it, and you're the person they picked, especially
nowadays when there's so many tattoo artists, they could pick anybody,
and they picked you. That to me is a compliment,
and they don't see that. They're just too they're just
too good for it, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Would you ever get to the point, like, if you
had the client base to only tattoo whatever you wanted
a tattoo, would you tell people no?

Speaker 3 (26:13):
I think that would really honestly depend the way that
I see it in the way that I do it,
Like right now the tattoo shop, I will tattoo anything
that comes to that door. That's been my motto for
my entire career, and it will. I still do Watkins.
It will continue to be my model for my entire career.
But I have people underneath me. Right now, I'm booked

(26:36):
and I make enough money to pay my bills right now,
But there are people in the shop that don't. So
will I tell them no, No, But I will try
to push them to another artist that needs that money,
you know what I mean. But if I'm sitting there
by myself, no I'm doing that tattoo, I will never
reach a point in my career or how good I

(26:58):
am to our I'm gonna think I am too good
to do your tattoo. It's never gonna happen, because again,
that little tattoo, that nonsense that you didn't like, or
that design that you thought was stupid, could lead to
an entire back piece that you're gonna get free rain on.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
You don't know that. That's how I built all my
big clients.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
Yeah, I built a lot of my clients like that
little small stuff, and then they come back, and they
come back and I'm currently doing a sleeve on somebody
underwater sleeve.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
This cave diver guy, which, by the way, he's out
of his mind. Who does this cave diving?

Speaker 2 (27:36):
Underwater cave diving?

Speaker 3 (27:37):
Oh my no, dude. He showed me a video other
day and it just I'm claustrophobic. I don't I can't
do that. No. No, I can't even sleep with my
head under the blankets. I can't do it. Okay, anyway,
no way. But it started with a little nonsense pocket
watch that nobody wants to do.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
Oh they've been done one hundred times. Everybody's going to
pocket watch. So what so what what car you driving
right now? How many people got that car? Bro right?
You know, what are you talking about? It's a stupid argument.
They don't say that. That shit about like the new
Jordan's or the new guitar that they want, right you know? Yeah, yeah,
So they're picking and choosing what it's okay to to

(28:14):
get that somebody else already has. Somehow, tattoos are too
cool for you to have the same tattoo as somebody else. No,
it's not, No, it's not. They'll go to home goods
and buy that print that everybody's got hanging up in earlier.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
Yeah, yeah, it's nonsense. That's the thought process there for me.
You just sit down and just think about it for
a second. Like, what are we talking about here, the
idea that you shouldn't do pinterest tattoos or whatever because
so many other people have those pincher tattoos. So what

(28:48):
that person wants that pinterest tattoo? If she doesn't care
or he doesn't care that ninety thousand people have that
pinterest tattoo, then it's none of your fucking business. It's
not my business.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
But how did that even become a thing because slash
right though, But like we like the Huck Spaulding flash sheets,
Cherry Creek, William Webb, William Webb, like Spider Web, like
all of those guys, like those Aaron Bell, all of
those flash sheets that were so big in the nineties
and two thousands and even into the eighties. Like that

(29:19):
was tattoo culture, and the traditional artists are doing the
same thing. It's just flash. It's not like they're drawing
new things. No, those traditional roses have been done hundreds
of thousands of times.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
I don't care if we changed the leaf a little bit,
but you're doing the same thing. Yeah, I had that.
That was in another one of the videos that I made,
and somebody told me that.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
What did I say?

Speaker 3 (29:41):
I said something about why.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
We're in the industry and stuff like that. Oh.

Speaker 3 (29:46):
The dude said he was in the industry because of
the history of it, and I told him it was nonsense,
that he wasn't in the industry for it. And he
mentioned some people like Tony Ciavarro, Jesse Smith, people like that,
and he said he wanted to be like those people.
And I was like, those people did the same thing, bro.
They came up tattooing Cherry Creek, they came up tattooing

(30:10):
Flash Dude, and then they were just sprinkling their stuff
for a little while until they got a client base
and could do just their style. Jesse Smith does the
little googly eye things. Paul Booth does the creepy stuff.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
You know.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
Tony Ciavarro is the new school guy, you know, And
they weren't. I guarantee it, Man, come at me anyway
you want to. These people were in this industry to
make money, and they just happened to build that clientele
into their name was synonymous with what it was they
were doing. And the reason that they got so popular,

(30:45):
and the reason that they're synonymous for that is because
they brought forth something that nobody had seen before. Paul
Booth was doing stuff in the early two thousands that
would make your brain pop, you know, and people the
things that people thought we're never going to be possible.
Paul Booth was doing, and Jesse Smith bringing forth this

(31:05):
different style, and he pushed it and pushed it and
pushed it until he finally got it to where this
is all I do. And it's not because that's all
he wants to do, or that's all because you know,
he'll say I'm not doing it. It's because he built
it that way, that's what he wants, you know. And
but before that he was doing Cherry Creek Flash and
he was doing it for the money. We're in this

(31:28):
ultimately to feed our families. If you don't have a family,
you're in it for whatever cars and whatever else you
need money for.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
Right. And the idea that because you think.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
You're artistic or you got into it for the history
of it, you're better than anybody else's nonsense, because you
didn't or you'd be at home painting on canvases. If
you were doing it just for the art, you'd be
painting on canvas and you'd be doing what you want.
And I was a client wanted, I would have to
listen to you. And even the people that paint on
canvases if they want to make money painting on campus

(32:00):
says guys who have to listen to customers. The customer,
What the fuck are we talking about? It's every doesn't
matter what job you have. It does not matter what
job you have. Eventually that job becomes sales. Yeah, every time.
It doesn't matter what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
Okay, So then where does that? Where does that stop?
Because there's a difference between customer service and sales. I'm
not a salesman. Yeah I can be. I've done sales.
I've done you know, I owned a telemarketing room for
a while. Like I can sell, I refuse to do it.
I don't want to be a salesman. I don't want
to because sales is making you believe you need this thing.

(32:41):
Because I believe that you need this thing, and I
don't fuck with that. Like that feels slimy to me.
I call it snake oil. Salesman, and I view everyone
like that. So there's a difference between providing service and
good customer service and then sales. So where is that
for you? Where does that? And because you just said
that eventually all jobs become sales they do, I mean

(33:02):
eventually all of them, do they all? They all do?

Speaker 3 (33:04):
You have to try to sell yourself or to somebody else.
You've got to become a salesman. If you want that
promotion at your job, or you have to sell it
to your boss that you deserve to have it. You
are a salesman. Congratulations, you know what I mean. You
didn't make direct monetary funds from being that salesman. But
if you can't sell yourself, you're not gonna go anywhere.

(33:26):
You're gonna stay right where the fuck you're at. You're
gonna stay right at the bottom. You're not gonna climb
that ladder. You have to be able to do it.
Nobody wants to hire somebody that's impersonable.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
Nobody will.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
You know what I mean, You're not gonna get crazy
high up on the ladder. If you smell like cat piss,
it's not gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
Well, I mean I think that that would speak more
to the quality of the character of the individual, the
way that they conduct themselves. It doesn't necessarily have to
be a sales tactic. I think it is, do you
I do. I think it's a sales tech I think
everything we do you're trying to sell something. I'm trying
to sell to you that I'm this person I'm trying
to sell to the next person. You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (34:03):
You're not trying to say like each person is trying
to sell something, whether it's themselves personally, whether it's a
service they have.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
If you go out to the bar and you're trying
to pick up a chick, you're trying to sell to
that woman that you are that person.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Yeah, I guess in that context, I can see that.
I think that there's a lot of but that falls
right back into the sales aspect. That's slimy to me.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
It is, It absolutely is, and it's still it's the
way it is, though, you know that's the way it is.
You have to be able to sell yourself tattooing. Tattooing
I think is like thirty percent art seventy percent sales.
If you can sell yourself that you are that that guy,

(34:46):
then you're in.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
You're good. So do you think that that the customer
service aspect then falls under the sales department. Yeah, see,
I would have separated those two. I think that the same.
I think a good salesman has great customer service, right.
A good sale knows what's best for you, knows how
to meet his bottom line, and knows how to make
money and make the sell, and he also knows how

(35:08):
to get you to come back. Is you need to
come back right, unless you're doing high volume stuff. I
need somebody to come back, right, So you need to
know how to sell that person and make them happy
with the product that they have so they come back.
I don't disagree with you, I just don't like the term. Yeah,
because again I don't like salesmen. What do we call
it them? I don't know, because I do it. So

(35:31):
like right, Well, I've seen I've seen you interact with people,
and I've seen people frustrate you. So like, I know
the two sides of Jeff in that aspect. But there's
a difference between being a salesman and having good customer
service or good people's skills. Yeah, So like when I
view a salesman, I think of like a nineteen eighties
used car salesman, right when I think of somebody that

(35:53):
has good customer service, that has good front desk capabilities,
that knows how to talk to clients and deal with
a client, they're coming in already with what they want. Yeah,
so you're not selling them on anything other than maybe
an upsale, which yeah, but that that does make sales,
but that's normally based off of like we're trying to
give them something more than they're getting, right, But I

(36:16):
don't see that as the same nineteen eighties used car
sales And.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
I still think even if they know what they're getting,
even if they know what they want, like, you still
have to sell it to them, right, I still have
to present myself in a specific way to make them
comfortable with, you know, giving me that cell.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
They can go somewhere else. They don't have to sell
it to me. I think that most of the time
that when clients come in the door, once they're in
the studio, they're getting tattooed there, yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
For small stuff, And as long as somebody doesn't treat
them like absolute shit.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Right, well, then that comes down to the front desk service, right,
because I think I think it's one and the same.
You ever see that guy that this is an old video,
super super old video. The guy's selling a.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
Cleaner and he's going door to door and he's thought, oh, man,
I cares I could remember any of that stuff.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Man.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
He was such a good salesman but also really great
with the people. He even like blew up on YouTube
and he's even had like a spot a couple of
places on TV because of this thing, were selling some
kind of a cleaner and he was like, this will
get spots out, Like Michael Jayson, Oh.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
I know who you're talking about, the guy that would
make jokes the entire time they're selling shit. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
Yeah, So that's great salesmanship and it's great customer service.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
At the same time, somebody in the chat said that
a lot of artists now don't just hang out for walkins.
It's appointment only. I want to touch on the appointment
only versus the walking thing. If an artist is booked
and has to work by appointment only, like you are,
unless there's a no call, no show, it's very hard
for you to take a walk in. Yeah, but you've
cultivated a client base for yourself that keeps you booked

(37:52):
out a few months at a time, weeks at a time,
whatever it is, you know, depending on season or not. Absolutely.
I worked in the industry where the first person that
got to the counter was taking that tattoo. Yeah, me too,
And like I know, now, the young this, I gotta
I gotta be honest. A lot of the issues that
I have with the industry is the younger generation, and
I think it's more of their their frailty because they're

(38:13):
very frail, easily hurt, yeah, easily upset. Right, Yeah, I'm
trying not to call them little bitches. Frail is the
only thing I got, and the little bitches came up,
so I stopped. It's good. But those those situations where
you have four or five artists that are doing nothing
and the other guys in the studio are booked out
for weeks or months at a time, those four artists

(38:34):
that got nothing going on should all be at the
front counter just trying to take everything that comes to
the door. The problem is is other people that are
are sheepish won't get up and talk to people, and
then they don't make any money and then they quit. Yeah,
and good, right, well, and that's how I feel, dude.
It The reason that we have the system that we
have now is because when Nicole was there, she had
made it very clear that there were a lot of
very unhappy people because of the way that other artists

(38:55):
came up to the front desk. James Armstrong is a
buddy of mine that works in Georgia. He worked for
us for a little while and he would run from
the desk where Javier sits at the very back, which
used to be my desk. He would run all the
way around the wall, sprinting to get to the front desk,
and if he was tattooing, he would stop tattooing and
start engaging over the wall. And he was making more
money than everyone in the shop, and people fucking hated

(39:17):
him for it.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
When I first started tattooing, I worked at a place
called dream Time Tattoos. This place was terrible, okay, but
I don't care. I sat in the folding chair right
in front of the front door. Somebody walked in, I
was up out of that seat and in their face
before they got all the way through the door.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
Like facts, because it is a dog eat dog world.
If you didn't do it.

Speaker 3 (39:38):
You weren't getting it period, and I understood that, and
a lot of people don't understand that, and they want
it handed to him. And the more and more it goes,
the more and more they get it. But you are right,
they're very frail, and you get they get upset really easy.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
All their sharking clients or this, that and the other.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
We'll get your ass up and do it the If
there's a place where there's only appointments only, that's where,
like the apprenticeship model works. The best people right now
are hating on apprenticeships because oh it's two.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Years, you're not making no money.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
You got to do all the work for the shop.
I'm slave labor of this stuff. And that you know
what I mean, which is not it's sweat equity.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
Right.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
You don't go to college for anything, or any trade
school and not pay money. But an apprenticeship least, the
way that I do them, and the way that they
were done for the majority of time was you paid
for your apprenticeship because I don't want to sweep the floor.
So you do that and in exchange, I'll tell you
how to do it. That's where this model works. I

(40:48):
get up here where I'm only doing walk ins or
only doing appointments, but I need somebody that does walk ins.
So you train that person, they do the walk ins,
and then they gradually get better. Then you another person,
and then that person that's lowest on the poll does
the small walk ins while everybody else is booked, and
nobody sees it like this anymore. Everybody that comes into

(41:11):
the tattoo industry thinks that they should be making one
hundred thousand dollars a year from day one. You're lucky
to make thirty grand your first year. If you make
thirty grand your first year tattooing, then I commend you.
You're awesome. The Sacred Rights, I think most of the
apprentices that we've trained, which now I'm at nine from

(41:32):
Sacred Rights, make their first year somewhere around thirty five.
That's pretty awesome, right, that's great for your first year tattooing.
They would make more if their if their customer service
was better, though, yeah, if they would assert themselves, they'd
make a lot more. I made more than more than
that my first year tattooing, and that that was a

(41:53):
very different timeframe. That was when the dollar was valued
a whole lot more, you know what I mean. I
want to touch on that the apprenticeship thing, because so
many people will charge for an apprentice like, if you
want an apprenticeship, it'll be twenty grand, and the kids
will find ways borrow the money from their parents or whatever,
get into the studio, and the shops will fire them
through their apprenticeship and they'll keep that money.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
So I'm the same way that you are with that.
I don't believe in charging for apprenticeships. I believe that
the sweat equity that goes into that does two things.
It makes them work off their time in the studio
so they're not actually paying for it, and it teaches
them to respect the shop. The more that they're taught
to look at the floors and look at the walls,
and look at the desks and make sure the sharps
containers are not full, or that the biohazard binds are

(42:35):
not overfilling, that repetitious behaviors, wax on, wax off, broke,
and as they learn that, it's instilled in them if
they see a mess on the floor, to grab the
fucking broom real quick and clean it up so that
clients don't see that. Yeah, just training it. You're just training, absolutely,
and it is absolutely a mister Miyagi thing, a wax on,
wax off, It's absolutely what it is.

Speaker 3 (42:55):
But people, there's a lot of it comes from. There's
a lot of predatory people, Yeah, that are doing exactly
what you said, charging somebody twenty grand and then finding
some cockamami reason to fire them. Oh, you didn't do
your job right, you're fired, and then they pocket that
twenty grand.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
I've seen it happen a lot, so have I. I've
seen it happen quite a few times. I don't want
your money, I want your time. I want you you
to pay attention, and I want you to care. Right,
that's it, That's all I want. Right. We're also not
bringing on a prentices for people that we don't want
to work in the studio, no, right, And that's another

(43:32):
thing that comes into the apprenticeship aspect. If people are
doing your apprenticeship and then send you and sending you
out into the wild and they're not offering you a
job afterwards, that time that you're learning the tattoo, you're
not going to see everything that you come across, right,
And it's the same thing with body piercing all these
little fucking schools that have opened up that teach you
the basics and send you out into the world. There
are going to be things that you are going to
have to troubleshoot in real time. And if you're not

(43:53):
doing continued education after that, where you're not working under
someone and you don't have somebody to ask like, hey,
what is going on right here?

Speaker 3 (43:59):
You are fucking screw Yeah, you're done. Yeah, and it's
gonna be bad. It's gonna be that. Schools are the
same way right now. Tattoo schools are the same way.
Do I inherently think a tattoo schools are bad? No,
I don't, but in their current fashion, their current model
is bad.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
Right now it's a three four week course or whatever.
They go two times a week, you know, for seven
hours a day or whatever, and then they send them
off in the world. The good thing about it, apprenticeship
is what you said, You have a built in job.
When you're done, you have a place to work, and
then I'm still there as your mentor. If you have

(44:35):
a problem, I'm there, right, you can come and talk
to me. But a school you don't have that, I
don't care if they are going to give you lifetime.
You know, calls or whatever. Call is, no bro, You're
gonna email them, call them one hundred times. Are not
gonna answer the phone. You're gonna email them in three
days later, you're gonna get an answer to your question.
It's not gonna work the way that people want it

(44:57):
to work, and the schools are given people the idea
that once you leave, you'll be able to do it professionally,
which I mean, I guess technically you could do it professionally.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
When you find anybody that's looking for an artist bad
enough and to hire somebody, then yes, yeah, Or you
could you know, get a loan from Grandmammy and open
the tattoo shop.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
It's not that hard. It's not hard to open a
tattoo shop. There's no regulations on it. Which is the
more and more we get into the schools and regulations
of tattoos, the harder and harder it's going to be
to have a tattoo shop. They're going to start cracking
down on regulations.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Well, we're seeing that already. I am so, I'm one
of you. We've talked about this. I want to own
studios all the way up and down the west coast
of Florida. But I've also looked because I have friends
in other states that want to own a shop, and
I have the financial resources to put them in business
for a percentage. That's the goal, right mailbox bus. But
I've looked into other states. In every state that I've

(46:05):
looked at has different requirements for them to have a studio,
and Florida is one of the more lenient ones. Yeah,
Like in order, I might have been Nevada or Tennessee,
maybe even Montana, I don't remember. One of the states
that I looked at had Two of the states that
I looked at had regulations where you had to apprentice
under somebody for a minimum of six months at a

(46:28):
studio before you even apply for an apprentice license.

Speaker 3 (46:31):
Yeah, so that's Missouri is like that, Oklahoma is like that,
Wyoming is like that, and then there's one more.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
It might have been Nevada, So it was probably Nevada then,
but knowing that that's a thing, and then after that
you have to prove that you're an apprentice for a
minimum of two years, and then you still can't get
licensed unless you're working in a shop. And Florida the
only requirement is that you work in a studio to
get your license. Yeah, but they also have it set
up in Florida that if you get tattooed, if you
get caught twoeing out of a house, now it's a

(47:02):
up to ten thousand dollars fine, they will revoke your
license indefinitely and you could potentially be charged with a felony.

Speaker 3 (47:09):
Sure, so Illinois is pretty close to that. Illinois doesn't
license an individual. They only licensed the studio, right, so
that was us about seven years ago. Eight years ago,
they just licensed just the studio. The individuals don't get licensed,
and the only requirement to get a license for the
studio is an inspection on the property to make sure

(47:31):
that you have warm running water, an adequate light.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
That was us.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
Yeah, that's it. So six hundred bucks later you got
a tattoo shop. And if you think that's super lenient,
Texas doesn't have any of that, really, no, none. They're
One thing about about Illinois that's wild is that there's
no parental consent in Illinois. Like there is here, you
can sign a consent form your kid can get tattooed.

(47:56):
In Illinois, there isn't. And if you get caught tattooing minor.
Not only are you going to jail for it, you
get to come out as a registered sex offender because
they call it the penetration of a minor. Like Illinois
is wild when it comes to tattooing minors, but when
it comes to tattooing in general.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
This this is so, this is gonna can lead into
a whole other topic. But I I so in Florida,
it used to be before they started licensed artists. Like
licensing artists, you would have to do a doctor's letter.
You would have to pay a doctor to write a
letter saying that your tattoo studio is up to standards.
And those letters would run you when you're from six
hundred to two thousand dollars a year. Yeah, and there

(48:38):
were only like five doctors in the state of Florida
that were doing it. Those guys were fucking banking off
of tattoo shops. So that would be it. You would
get your letter, you would provide it to the health department.
They would come in and make sure that that your
studio met regulations. The floor was not carpet, you know,
you had good lighting, good hot water, that you didn't
have pet like fish tanks at artist stations. No, no
animals in the studios, et cetera, et cetera. But was

(49:00):
no artist's license. Once the studio was good to go,
you could just run. But body piercers in order to
get licensed through the state had to do a body
a blood worn pathogen cross contamination course, which was kind
of a joke still is. Yeah, well it was way
worse before. Really, yeah, it was way worse before when
the Health Department themselves were doing it was a fucking mess.

(49:20):
And now they're outsourcing it to other companies that actually
do that. But I wanted to what were we talking
about before I just said that about the courses. I
don't know.

Speaker 3 (49:31):
I'm stuck on the we're talking about animals. My first
tattoo shop in Illinois had animals in it.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
Yeah, so on the Illinois thing about the difference in
the shops, there's a part of me that doesn't think
legally we should have to have any of that shit.
There's the other part of me that's worked in the
industry so long that I've seen the infections and the
horror stories that come out of people tattooing that don't
know what they're doing, and understand why there is regulation
for it because it could fuck somebody up and potentially
kill them. But the like the freedom lover in me

(50:01):
is like, I shouldn't have to ask anybody for shit
grown up, you know what I mean. He definitely should
be regulation. Let me make my stupid decisions and if
I die, I die. You know I'm with you on
that one.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
But no, there definitely needs to be some kind of
regulations for sure. Like my first tattoo shop in Illinois,
they don't care. I had a pond inside it, like
a full on pond with a waterfall and three foot
coy fish in it.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
We could do that in the lobby. It was in
the middle of.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
The tattoo shop. Well, like you could make a wish
from the station. That's funny, you know what I mean.
I had big birds in there, like I had used
to bring. I had a harlequin McCaw. I used to
bring Titan. His name was Titan. I used to bring
with me all the time. I had a post driven
into the wall that he could stand on. He could

(50:53):
walk along anywhere he wanted to in the wild. And
they don't care. They do not care as long as
they get their six hundred year doesn't matter. Fucking crazy,
it does not matter.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
They don't care. Desk Clan said, coming soon, Sacred Rights
of Texas. I do. I really want to invest into
other tattoo studios. The problem with all of that is
you have to have the right staff in order to
make it work. And even though you can build a
nice shop fro under seventy thousand dollars, if you don't
have the right person to run the studio, you will

(51:28):
lose seventy thousand dollars in that first year, absolutely, and
it will not turn a profit and you'll end up
closing your doors. The amount of people that have written
into the podcasts that are tattoo artists that are telling
me that they're not making one thousand dollars a week
as a tattoo artist, I'm like, blows my fucking mind. Dude.
You're either really shitty like as an artist, your customer
service really sucks, or you don't understand social media.

Speaker 3 (51:49):
Somebody said that they needed to be an industry, or
every industry needs a community for teamwork and problem solving.
We have that, Yeah, but again, you're they're all better
than you, pretentious people. Like every time I see anybody
talking about it, or anybody that's from it or in
part of it, just thinks they're better than you. I'm

(52:10):
part of this thing, I'm better than Oh yeah, you know. Like, no,
you're not better than me because you're a part of
some nonsense group. You may you paid a fee, Yeah, congratulations.
You know it's like somebody that has a check mark
that they paid ten dollars for. Get the fuck out
of here. Bro, You're not cooler than me because you
gave Instagram ten dollars a month. Like, if anything, I'm
cooler than you because I didn't. You know, I'm not

(52:33):
paying them or whatever. You know, twiters that way.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
I pay for my blue check mark on Facebook. Shame
on you. It's one hundred and twenty bucks a month.
I don't figure. Why would you have to pay for that?
Because if I don't pay for that, there was over
one hundred fake to be better accounts. Oh and they
wouldn't verify you. They would not. How I had to
so they wouldn't verify me. I had to pay the
fee and then submit articles of incorporation, fictitious names, and

(53:01):
a whole bunch of other shit. It took me like
seven months to get that blue check mark. Wow, but
now to be better. Is so protected on Facebook that
every time a fake account pops up, I send one
email and that bitch is removed. They do not fucking
play around with that. So for me, that twelve hundred
bucks a year is worth every penny because we have
one hundred and sixteen thousand followers on Facebook.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
It's like nine fake accounts of mine right now running
around messaging.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
People on Facebook or on TikTok. TikTok. Yeah, we've got
thousands on TikTok. We can get them removed, but it's
it's a whole lot harder than Facebook. Really.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
Yeah, they always tell me, no, they haven't violated the
community guidelines. I'm like, scamming people isn't violating the community guidelines.
So you can't talk about feet. I can show you
how to remove those. There's a link that I can
send you. So the way that it works is they
have to steal your content. Yeah, so if they make
a fake profile and post your videos, you can get
their entire account deleted. If there's three videos on it,

(53:51):
they'll just delete the account. Oh so and if they're
using like your logo, like I would you get your
your Jeff Graham logo copywritten or trademark, apply for the trademark,
and then they're also in trademark violation. So on TikTok,
when I flag an account, I flagged the main account,
and then I upload my articles or my trademark agreements

(54:12):
because I have three different trademark agreements, and then I
also send them a picture of our main account, and
like dude, they'll I get an email at least two
or three times a day saying that this account's been removed.
This account's been removed because the people on our discord
will post a link to those accounts and I'll just
go and remove them, and those accounts, when they create
the accounts, will block us after they've cloned our account,
so I can't even see them when I search for them,

(54:33):
but they can.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
So but that's cool, you got the discord coming and
say that day.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
I got a lot of people that do it for
me too. On TikTok.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
I don't have a discord, but I have a lot
of people that you know, report them and commented send
me the pictures of them.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
You know, hey, we need money from you or whatever.
I think that I think the ego is where we
were going. Yeah, I was just going to bring it
back to that too. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
I think that ego is what's destroying the industry. I
think that people that think they're too good to treat
somebody else like a respectable human should treat somebody is
destroying the industry.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
And I don't mean.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
On the ground level, individually, each individual shop. I don't
think that's what's destroying the industry. I think it's the
people that have a large following that are doing it right. So,
like the people I'm arguing with right now and TikTok,
both of them have a large following, and both of
them spew this nonsense retique, is that the right word, etiquette, etique, rhetoric, rhetoric.

(55:40):
Spew that rhetoric out and then they just get this
weird little It makes other people think it's okay to
act like that, Right, That's exactly it. And then it
gets more and more and more. And that's why they
call you an influencer, because you're influencing others to do things,
to buy something, to you know, go to this place,
whatever it is, eat this food. You're in fluencing that person, right,

(56:02):
and when the people that have large followings get on
the Internet and publicly shit on their clients. Then they,
the young people in the industry, think that it's okay
to do that because that guy that's got all this
status is publicly shitting on his clients. I think that's
what's ruining it because it trickles down and now all

(56:24):
those newer tattoo artists that want to be like that.
Tattoo artists are treating their clients like shit because they
think it's okay. It was just like the the fox
thing tattoo gate, where you didn't get any of that
tattoo gate stuff. Russ Abbot do you know who Russ
Abbott is? Okay, So russ Abbot had this course about

(56:45):
how this is how you make money as a tattoo artist,
and it was convoluted, Like I'm telling you, it was
the most ridiculous shit I've ever heard. Thousand dollars deposit
to draw it, four or five hundred dollars to redo
the design, and once it was crazy, it was crazy.
And so some lady up in Canada or somewhere got

(57:07):
a tattoo of a fox and uh spent an ass
ton of money on it. It didn't get the tattoo,
or did I don't know, it doesn't matter. And when
she came in to see her design, it was just
this horribly put together, like sloppy sketch that you couldn't
even hardly tell the thing was a fox. And this

(57:27):
girl's already already like two thousand dollars deep into this
fucking thing, and she's like, this is what I was
told to do, right, And this woman lost her tattoo shop,
her name is destroyed, she can't go on the internet anymore,
and so she's lost her career, lost her tattoo shop,

(57:48):
lost being able to go outside because of the Internet,
just destroyed her. And the whole time, this was something
Russ Abbott told her to do, like, And Russ Abbott
is a staple name in the tattoo industry, right, So
if somebody that's that big in the tattoo industry tells
you to do something and you're new in the industry,

(58:08):
if you're smart, your ass is gonna do it. I
would have done it if I wouldn't have been already
in the industry. If it had been me and I've
been the same shoes, I'd have followed Russ Abbot's advice
and done what he said, right, But instead she's the
one that loses her career. Why russ Abbott still gets
to collect money from this stupid fucking school that he
is doing about how to.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
Doesn't he own Procreate? Also? No, the're not pro create
the tattoos now, the stamp one the tattoo website, that's
russ Abbots. He has a tattoos sie. There's a tattoo site.
I don't know what it is though, but they make
the stamps for procreat. Yes, yes, he owns that tattoo.
Was it tattoo?

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Now?

Speaker 2 (58:44):
No, that's not right. Anyways, I don't know him and
Pony lars and are in on it. Okay, So but anyway,
like that should be russ Abbot's fucking problem now, right,
But he gets on the internet after it all comes
out that she's using his system to scam people out
of money, and you know it's gonna make himself look

(59:04):
better by giving the girl her tattoo for free. Congratulations, bro,
You need to give her back tattoo for free and
give her her money back, and then you need to
properly train the poor girl that you destroyed her career.
And it's okay because it's Russ Abbott and he's got
a huge following and this, that and the other. When
tattoo Gate was going on, I felt like I was
the only person calling out Russ Abbot, like this is
his fault? When did this happen a year and a

(59:27):
half ago? Okay, that explains why I wasn't. It might
have been two years ago. I was still pretty new
in TikTok, I had like ten thousand followers. I wasn't.
I hadn't been doing it all that long. I don't
so real quick. I agree with a lot of the
things that you're saying with the ego thing, the so
what do you think the answer to that? Like how

(59:47):
do we we change that? And I believe because I've
been thinking about this all day because I knew were
going to have this conversation tonight. I think the only
way that the industry changes is with the client base. Right,
if we were too, can cotinue if we do this
podcast every other week and we do this for two
years and we hit half a million people a year, right,

(01:00:08):
and that half a million people listen to what we
say and realize that they have the power when it
comes to getting tattooed. It changes the way that the
artist is able to treat the client. If the client
realizes that customer service matters, they realize that the ego
from the artist is not something they have to tolerate.
That somebody out there would be glad to do that

(01:00:29):
feather turning into birds right, Like, they have the power
to leave the studio. The more that they take that
power and they implement it into their lives, the less
these arrogant artists that follow the bullshit influencers will be
able to do the things that they're doing. And I
think that's where the ego in the industry itself has
to change. I think it starts with the clients. I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:00:51):
I think that if the client just stands up for
themselves and says, go fuck yourself, I'll go get it
somewhere else, then it will be felt in the artist's pocket.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
And bad reviews, Oh yeah, sure, bad reviews. Leave bad reviews.

Speaker 3 (01:01:03):
Yeah, if you're not comfortable, I'm about it, bro Like,
if you're not comfortable with me, I welcome you to
leave a bad review, please.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
Do right, Well, that's how we improve. Yeah, So on
the review thing, guys, the Google review system. Yelp is
a scam. Did you know that? No, Like, because Yelp
they reach out to us every year and try to
get us to pay for their professional services and shit like. Yeah,
there's a hustle, and like, if you're not part of
that thing and people leave you reviews, they stick it
in the other reviews thing unless they're bad, and then

(01:01:32):
they put the bad reviews up to get you to
spend the money. It's a whole ass thing. Yeah, at
least from my experience with them, that's the way it's been.
I can't say that it's like that all the time,
but that's been my experience, so I'm not speaking hyperbably.
This is my experience. Yeah. Google reviews, on the other hand,
are very forthcoming because your clients can leave them unhappy.
Clients can leave them. Like And if you guys think

(01:01:53):
that Google reviews don't matter when you go on vacation,
what's the first thing that you do? Food near me?
Oh this has got five stars, let's go check it out. Yeah,
the Google reviews fucking matter. And if you live in
a military town, a college town, or a tourist town, yeah,
your Google reviews have to be on point because if
they're not at the studio in the town that is good.
That's where everybody goes.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
People are gonna look for the amount of reviews and
then nominy stars you have. The more reviews you can get,
the better off you're gonna be. But it definitely needs
to start, needs to start there. But that's even if
even if tomorrow every single person decided they weren't gonna
listen to the nonsense anymore and would just tell that
artist to eat shit, it would tell it would still

(01:02:32):
take years to fix it. I think I wholeheartedly believe
that it would take years for it to equal itself
back out.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
Probably. I mean, it took us years to get to
where we are now. And again I do believe it
started with ink Master. Those TV shows gave the people
the idea that they could get a back piece in
the day. Well true, right, Like, there was a whole
lot of things that went into that, and there was
a lot of ego in that show, and it showed
the younger up and coming artists that that's the way
they can act.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
Yeah, that's true that the artist is all bitching about it. Oh,
this person thinks they can have this, this, that and
the other and blah blah blah, which is you know
they obviously they're going to do that. You know, they're
not selling who's the best tattoo artists? You know, otherwise
clean rock Wood in the one, right, because that dude
is middle of the road at best, Like legitimately he
won it three times. So they're they're they're selling you

(01:03:18):
a popularity contest and drama, drama, right, so they got
to create that drama. So not every single client that
walks in the tattoo shop is all, like, I need
a unicorn inside of a crystal ball riding the seal. Like,
not every client does that. As a matter of fact,
it's very very rare that you get somebody that comes
into a tattoo shop with some wild idea that isn't
going to work. And if it, even if they do,

(01:03:41):
if you can't figure out a way to make their
wild ideal work, you should still be able to express
them in a manner that doesn't belittle them into feeling
like an idiot because they asked you, you know what
I mean, you should be able to at least do that,
and a lot of them can't. And I think that's
one of the like why I'm in it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
Why.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
That's why I'm in so hard right now on all
the arrogant people on TikTok is because the client doesn't
deserve that kind of treatment.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
You just don't think they do. Someone in the chat
said the fact that people can delete the negative one
angers me. You actually can't delete your negative reviews? Yeah,
not on Google. No, you can. You can report them
like we got. We got a review one time that
said they have pictures of their ugly kids hanging in
the tattoo shop. Yeah. I was able to get that
taken down because that has nothing to do with our business.

(01:04:33):
That's you just being an aggressive fuck. Yeah. But the
ones that are on there where people are like, you know,
they were rude, this and that, this and that, like those,
those reviews don't come down, they stay up, and we don't.
We don't even try to report those. We try to
report the bullshit reviews, just because there are people that
will get on there and leave negative reviews.

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
Do it like leave negative reviews about a person that
hasn't been there in six years, right, or it's never
worked there at all. We get that all the time too.
People think that we're a different shop than we actually
are your sacred or arts. Yeah yeah, something people can
pay for the good reviews had the actual bad reviews.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Yeah yeah they. Google's gotten pretty good about that too.
The bot review thing is the bought thing in general,
is a problem across all platforms. I read something the
other day that said that people believe that the Internet
is at least forty five to fifty percent bots at
this point, that more people are disconnecting and spending less
time online, so bots are taking over to make it

(01:05:26):
look like we're.

Speaker 3 (01:05:28):
They're still running through websites and stuff like that, so
people can still get their advertising dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
How is the shop able to grow without negative reviews?
I mean, do you do the best that you can
to keep that person and that that client happy, Like
you're gonna make sacrifices that you don't want to make
in the first couple of years of owning the tattoo shop.
You're gonna, I don't know, bend over backwards and stuff
like that. If you wanted to succeed, if you don't care,

(01:05:54):
and you you know it makes it or don't make
it type shit, then do whatever the fuck you want.
But that first year is the most important year that
you're going to have, and the better you do that
first year, the better off you're gonna be. So could
you get through opening a brand new shop not getting
any negative reviews?

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
Yeah? Probably, it would probably be hard. But we actually
didn't get any negative reviews our first year two in business. No,
we started. We hired somebody that was a bad hire,
and that was when we first got got our first
negative review. We got a couple of them where the
shop that we worked at previously had tried to give

(01:06:34):
us a bad review, Like the owner of the previous
studio that we were at tried to review us. Like,
I don't count that because that was a vendetta ship.
Yeah right. But I also did a lot of shit
the first year that we were open. I had we
had enough artists in the studio that I pierced full
time and I only tattooed when I want to. But
I would post up shit for free, and I would
tattoo for free, like consistently, because you know, it was
my shop. Yeah, I was making percentages, making the money

(01:06:57):
from body piercing, and I was building a community. And
the bigger your community, the more people that are advertising
and pushing your business and your brand better. You're the
better you're gonna do. Yeah, we came out of the
gate swinging. I did everything right with Sacred I definitely
got a bad review. My only bad review the first
year was from a racist and I refused to tattoo
a racist symbol on him and he was so mad,
and he was like, it's not a racist symbol, and

(01:07:19):
to be fair, it wasn't until you put it next
to the racist symbol he already had, right, So when
he came and made the appointment, he wanted the iron cross.
The iron cross in itself not a racist symbol, right,
could be are thing, It could be a whole lot
of things, a whole lot of stuff, right, not a
big deal. But the second you stick it next to

(01:07:40):
a swastika, you're a racist, right, And I'm not tattooing you.
Get out of my tattoo shop. And I didn't know
this when I made the appointment. He just wanted the
iron cross, and I was like sure. And he came
in that day and he wants on his chest and
he takes his shirt off and he's got a swatstick cut,
and he's like, I want it right there, And I
was like I want you out the fuck there, like

(01:08:00):
not tattooing you. Bro. He called the Better Bidiness Bureau.

Speaker 3 (01:08:04):
On me and the Chamber of Commerce and everything else
and said that I refused to do service with him
because he was quote unquote a racist. And I was like,
you are a racist and you don't belong in here.
Get out right to refuse service? Yeah, yeah, it was crazy, man.
That was the only batter review I got my first
year opening either. But I bent over backwards for people.

Speaker 2 (01:08:25):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
I gave people discounts, and I gave him gift cards,
and I gave him free lunch because they sat with
me for a couple of hours, and T shirts and
you know stuff like that. And I lost money, lost
money my first year. And that's okay, you know, but
because I built a good sturdy base there, now I

(01:08:47):
didn't it didn't go back to Illinois for like four
years to tattoo, right to tattoo, and then what was
it last year, I went back and tattooed. I opened
my books to tattoo, and thirty five minutes later I
was booked solid for a week and a half. Thirty
five minutes and I hadn't been there in four or

(01:09:08):
five years.

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
That's awesome, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:09:10):
But I built that community there, and I worked my
ass off to make sure that everybody was happy and
to make sure that I did good work, and I
you know, good customer service. And I'm also good at sales.
There's a reason I'm constantly doing big tattoos. And it's
not because I'm just some awesome tattooers. And it's not
because I refuse to do anything that's small. It's because

(01:09:30):
I'm good at selling people, and I'm good at getting
them to get a bigger tattoo. I'm good at convincing
them that it's okay to get the thing that they want.

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
Right. See that that is a sale that I can
agree with, because I don't see that as a slimy thing.
I have never in my life, honestly, never in my
life had a client come in and say, I wish
this tattoo was smaller. Never. No, it's always I should
have done it bigger. I don't know what to do
this weird gap now, like yeah, so yeah, I always
push the bigger tattoos, but I also explain this somebody.

(01:10:00):
You don't hang an eight x ten photo in the
center of your living room wall and call it a day.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
Yeah, you do that too, you know that too? Or
you're not going to put a square picture in a
round frame, are you?

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
You know? Things like that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:10):
My favorite, my favorite one is they'll be, you know,
fighting with themselves on whether they think they should spend
a certain amount of money, Like they know, I know
that they want to they want that cool one, and
I just put it in like this perspective.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
I always say, you ever bought a car before?

Speaker 3 (01:10:24):
And they're like yeah, And I'm like, did you go
to the car dealership and ask them for the car
it has no air conditioning or you know, power windows,
they'll crank windows out, did you And They're always like no,
And I'm like, then, why would.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
You do this any different? Yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 3 (01:10:36):
You're not why would we do this any different? Just
spend the money. It's okay. And a lot of times,
if you can learn to talk to people, I think
a lot of what's wrong with the industry is that
people don't know how to talk to other people.

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
They can't do it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:53):
And if you can't talk to people without I don't know,
getting upset. That's something they said. Somebody could I'm right
in here come in to the tattoo shop tomorrow and
call me a piece of shit, and I'll be like, well,
it is what it is. I'm not going to get
angry about it too.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Me.

Speaker 3 (01:11:07):
People think emotionally instead of thinking rationally and rationally, If
somebody comes in tomorrow and tells me that I'm a
piece of shit, I want to know why, what did
I do right? And can I fix it? But that
maybe that's the way I was wired. Maybe it's the
way I was raised. I think that's why we get
along so well. I don't know what it is, but
I think that I want to know what I did wrong.

(01:11:29):
And a lot of people don't care what they did wrong.
They just oh, I'm the piece of shit. Fuck you, buddy,
And you know, they become real, super defensive, and they've
got to push the blame somewhere else. I am the
last I do not push the blame anywhere, nowhere else.
If the shop has a bad day, it's my fault, period.

(01:11:49):
You know, there is no well, well they weren't doing this,
or they weren't doing that. I'm not playing that shit.
It's my responsibility. So if the shop does bad it's
my fault.

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:12:00):
If I do bad at something, it's my fault. I'm
not blaming the client because they wanted a weird tattoo design.
I'm not blaming the client because they couldn't sit good,
needed to take fifteen breaks or or whatever. And while
we're on that subject, why the fuck do you care
if they take fifteen breaks? We've seen this on TikTok
so many times? Is that all the clients they got

(01:12:21):
to get up, move and I'm just trying to do
who you get paid by the hour?

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):
My guy?

Speaker 3 (01:12:25):
Why the fuck do you care? That doesn't matter if
he gets up and he wants to take a two
hour lunch break, I'm gonna let him take a two
hour lunch break. Not my problem. He's paying by the hour, Like,
so are you? Why are you like this? I don't
get it. Well, a lot of times I won't even
charge him for all of that time, but they take
I'll take money off.

Speaker 2 (01:12:43):
You know. I was just about to ask you, so
what do you say to about the clients who are
like you didn't tattoo during that time?

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):
Yeah, a lot of times I'll take I'll take money off.
But that's just me being me, and I don't have
clients that do that. I have never had a client
do that, not one time, Because again, I can communicate.
I tell them the things that are absolutely true. I'm
one hundred and fifty dollars an hour, all right. With
that one hundred and fifty dollars an hour, I've baked

(01:13:08):
in the time it takes me to make your stencil,
place this stencil, set my station up, a five minute
break every hour and a half or something like that,
and a lunch break. I bake that in to my
hourly rate. If you want my undivided one hundred and
ten percent attention the entire time. You want me to

(01:13:28):
piss in this chair because I have to go to
the bathroom, I'll do that. But you're gonna pay me
more hourly, right, period, Right. And they know that I'm upfront,
I'm honest. I'm not beaten around the bush. I'm not
sugarcoating things. I'm not trying to hide something behind some
bullshit wall. I tell them from the beginning this is

(01:13:50):
how it is. And as long as you do that
in an assertive but kind way, people are insanely receptive
to it. They understand, right. And also that comes into
the customer service aspect or being able to.

Speaker 2 (01:14:06):
Talk to people.

Speaker 3 (01:14:08):
If you can make that person feel like they're your
friend or feel like you want them there, then they're
gonna be way more receptive to your ideas. They're gonna
be way more receptive to you needing to take a break,
or you being hungry, or whatever it may be. You know,
they're gonna be like, oh no, it's cool, bro, it's okay,

(01:14:29):
because they feel like they're part of something.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
I've been preaching that for so long.

Speaker 3 (01:14:33):
It's if you want, it's an experience. If you want
to do only the stuff that you want to do,
the first thing you got to do is learn how
to make somebody like you, and you got to do
it fast. Science says it takes one thirty second of

(01:14:54):
a second to find somebody attractive or not. How nutty
is that thirty second of a second. You can't blink
that fast, right, That's how fast it takes. And we
can prove it to you. Have you ever been scrolling?
Maybe not you not recently at least, but in the past.
Probably ever been scrolling through something and you're as fast
as doom scrolling, right? And then you stop and come

(01:15:17):
back and there's a hot chick there.

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):
Yeah. That's that's how fast it is, right, So you
know that that works more than just with attractiveness. We
read that fast. Yeah, like our brain, we we actually
only take in like a third or thirty percent. It
was less than that of like what comes in data wise. Yeah,
but subconsciously we pick up all of it. That's why
subliminal messages and TV shows work, right.

Speaker 3 (01:15:41):
And if your brain just filters out what's important and
what's not important. But it's that fast boom, just like that,
in under sixty seconds, somebody can decide whether or not
they would want to spend an extended period of time
with you. It's very fast. Eighty percent of what we
say is nonverbal. Yep, it sounds like you're listening to
our podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:16:02):
I've been preaching the shit for three years. Everything that
you've said over the last twenty minutes. Yeah, even the
accountability thing, it's all shit that I've been preaching on
the podcast since we started.

Speaker 3 (01:16:10):
Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. I don't really watch it
though I know it's okay. I don't get time if
it's not I'm drawing or I'm doing something. I don't
have time for it. I'll get six kids. But the
human mind is so fast and it picks up on everything.
You have to believe that you want that person there.
And if you don't believe that you want that person there,

(01:16:32):
you cannot fake that emotion. The other person is going
to pick up on it. They're going to understand that
something's wrong, and then you've lost it. Then you don't
get to do that fun tattoo you want it, or
you're not going to upsell that tattoo, which is I'm
good at up selling tattoos. You come in, you want

(01:16:54):
something small, I'm good at getting you to get the
bigger thing right. And I'm good at that because I
understand how to make that person feel comfortable and it's
not that damn hard, right, be grateful that they're there.

Speaker 2 (01:17:09):
Well, it speaks also speaks to your counterhelp, right, like
the person that greets somebody in the moment the door opens.
Like if somebody comes in and nobody talks to them
for the first five seconds during the studio, even if
it's I'll be with you in a second, that little five, ten,
fifteen seconds is enough for people to be like, I'm
not welcome here, that feeling of I'm not wanted is immediate.
It's immediate. And then you factor in like having a

(01:17:30):
counterhelp from a shop owner side. You have your counterhelp,
and then you have the artist. If the person that's
working the front counter is in a great, positive, uplifting mood,
and then they go get the artists and the artist
is the exact opposite. That polarity is now way worse
because you have somebody that's very uplifting and positive and
what was a person now looks like a negative fuck face.
And it's bad.

Speaker 3 (01:17:50):
It's bad because the contrast is so hard, right, and
it's vice versa too. So if somebody greets somebody and
then I have to go out there and clean that mess,
it so much harder for me to get that person
back on my side, so hard. So the first five
seconds that they're in that building are they're so important.

(01:18:12):
Companies everywhere know this, you know, they all know that
they're trying to get an impression on to you right now.
This is why companies Disney does this. Uh, they do
everything they can to make sure that when you walk in,
you feel welcome. Do you feel welcome? So does BUCkies
the gas station so it does. Mo's the fucking welcome mos.

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
All of that. I'll do it every dude. They've spent
some of them so much money on that.

Speaker 3 (01:18:35):
Some of them like Disney pumps and smells, Subway pumps
and smells, they really Walmart pumpson set smells and colors.
The colors of these places are designed to mess with
your psyche. Walmart is what color?

Speaker 2 (01:18:51):
Blue?

Speaker 3 (01:18:51):
It's blue. Blue is a very inviting color. It invites
you to stay a long time. It's calm. McDonald's is
what color? Same with Target and yellow. They want you in,
they want you out. Then why did Target pick red?
I don't know, you.

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
Know that Targets Actually, when Target first opened and it
became a big chain and like it was at the
height of its career, everything in there was bright colored. Yeah,
it was very in your face, bold advertisming. And over
the last like five years they've removed a lot of
the color. Targets become very bland. Yeah yeah, yeah, But
these companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on research

(01:19:27):
to figure this shit out, to figure out what they're
supposed to be doing, right, Yeah, I did so when
I own I owned a telemarketing room. For a while
when I was younger and before I owned that room,
I worked at another telemarketing company that was owned by
a scientologist based thing. And in order to get into management,
you had to take a class in dianetics. It was
a mandatory management class through scientology for this business. And

(01:19:49):
even though it was not true scientology, it was very
scientology leaden like heavy, and they do a lot of
the study of the brain shit, And that was one
of the best courses that I'd ever taken on management.

Speaker 3 (01:20:02):
And I like imagine trying to sell somebody on scientology.

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):
Right, they got to be good at that, right, Well,
the amount of money that they spent on it. Like
they owned they own almost all of downtown clear Water.
So when you go out to clear like if you
take golf to Bay or sixty out to Clearwater Beach
and you look that past the main highway there, all
of those big skyscrapers that are on clear Water near
the beach is all Scientology. They all down there. Clear

(01:20:28):
They have they own apartment complexes out there, like they
own the entire complex for the missions, right for people
who want to go and live and like give their
money to the church and stay in those those apartments. Yeah,
that's a who last thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you imagine
trying to sell that. I know I couldn't. That was
really good management.

Speaker 3 (01:20:44):
Yes, yeah, that's an incredible sell right there. I don't
think i'd be able to sell that one. People used
to tell me all the time that I could sell
a catch up popsicle to a woman in white gloves.

Speaker 2 (01:20:55):
I haven't heard that. Yeah, it's funny.

Speaker 3 (01:20:57):
People use to something that tell me that all the time.
Money I don't know, and that I have bad days.
Everybody's gonna have bad days. Everyone can have a bad
Dare's gonna days where I cannot, for the life of me,
figure somebody out or I cannot figure out what I'm
supposed to be saying. And the more I get into

(01:21:18):
my head about it, the worst it gets. So the
way that I find to get around that is to
just not think about it. I have to tell myself
that you want them here, you need them here. They
are the most important thing. And I tell myself that
every day. Like there's a thing about if you do
what you love, you never work a day in your life. Bullshit,

(01:21:41):
you are going to work. I don't care how much
you fucking love it. That is work, right, but you
can learn to love that work. And that's just you know,
you can't get yourself into this like weird hole where.

Speaker 2 (01:21:57):
You hate it, you know what I mean. And if
you do, you need to make it until you make
it that legitimately works. Yeah, well you're manifesting at that point.
This comes. You can even say that this comes into
hermetic principles and the whole as within, as so within
as without, or as within so without. But that's one
of those things of manifesting, you know, mentalism. There's a

(01:22:18):
whole lot that goes into all of that, and I
agree with all of that. But on the the thing
with people not working a day in their life, there's
a difference between selling your soul for a job and
doing something that you love and getting paid for it.
And in the tattoo industry, over the years, what I've
seen is I've seen people that come in as an
apprentice that think that this is going to be the
most amazing thing that they've ever get to do, and

(01:22:39):
that first year they're so fucking pumped and excited, and
then that year one ego hits the Dunning Kruger effect hits,
they think that they're hot shit, yeah, and then they
start to fucking resent the job. And like we've had
to remind people all the time, remember at one point,
this was your dream, Like you were currently living in
that space that you had dreamt about, and now you're
bitter about it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:57):
Why every single a year and a half ago, two
years ago, you were praying that the next infinity came
symbol came in, that you got the tattoo, Like, legitimately,
where'd that go?

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
How do we forget that that fast? I don't. I
have no idea.

Speaker 3 (01:23:13):
I'm not a fan of the tattoo industry. Like I
love the industry, but I'm not a fan of it.
Does that makes sense? I think I love what it was,
and I still love the fact that I can do this,
but I'm I don't love the industry. I think the
industry is just full of arrogant pricks and a bunch

(01:23:35):
of people that I don't know, are scared to death
that their job's gonna get taken by the next.

Speaker 2 (01:23:44):
Or something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:23:45):
Like, if you're good enough, you're not gonna get You're
not gonna lose money. If you're good enough, you're not gonna.
I'm not losing money. I'm still tattooing. I've slowed down
a little bit. We're in the middle of slow season.
We've slowed down, but I'm still consistently booked. Yeah, September
and October is the worst of it. So I'm not
losing anything. And I brought in, like I said again, nine.

(01:24:07):
Now you've realized that nine of the people that have
worked for Sacred I trained. There's only right now three
people at Sacred that I did not train, and that's
Peter Wrath and Javier.

Speaker 2 (01:24:19):
It's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. I don't know. I fuck
with the apprentice thing. Like I believe that the apprentices
coming in are the next generation of tattoo artists. I
believe that they are going to be the ones that
continue this craft. But I don't fuck with is the
ego and the attitude that comes along with it. Like,
I just don't get it. And you know, there's also

(01:24:40):
a whole lot of like people, you guys don't see
this shit, so the client should never see this. But
there's a lot of backstabbing, there's a lot of vindictive behavior.
There's a lot of ugly on the backside of the
tattoo industry, whether it's from other shop owners to artists
or other artists to artists. There's a lot of scarcity mindset, yeah,

(01:25:00):
and a lot of that comes down to their ego.
It comes down to their inability to be good with
a client. I've said it over and over again. You
can be a mediocre tattoo artist and make a lot
of money if you have a good personality. That's sales
if you want to call it that customer service of
that whatever. But I believe that the better you are
with your customer, it doesn't matter how good your tattoos are,

(01:25:22):
it really doesn't. You could be bottom of the barrel
in your town. But if you have a good personality
and people want to be around you, they will sell
it for you. And you don't have to do it anymore.
You just have to be excited that somebody's there for you.
And I also think that people who are like that,
who do get excited because they get to tattoo every
day knowing that they're not very good, they don't get
to the ego as fast.

Speaker 3 (01:25:41):
No, so no they don't, But you can't. There's something
I don't know, whether there is a disconnect somewhere where
people lose it. And I don't know what point it
is that they lose that excitement that somebody picked them.

Speaker 2 (01:25:52):
It's within the first year or two of them tattooing,
it always is. But why what is it? Because somebody
hasn't kicked them off their pedestal yet? Yeah, somebody is it?
I guess they do. And I would do that all
the time with people. The moment people would start catching up,
I'm too good for this, I would rip their tattoos.

Speaker 3 (01:26:07):
They start thinking they know more than they actually do.
It's legit like a sixteen year old boy or fourteen
year old boys, and not everything. It's Kruger effect, a
dunning Kruger effect. I used the dunning Krugar effect the
other day.

Speaker 2 (01:26:17):
Again.

Speaker 3 (01:26:18):
We're going right back to TikTok. You guys, I live
my life on TikTok Okay, don't judge me, all.

Speaker 2 (01:26:22):
Right, that's all you got time for. You got six kids.
All my experiences come from TikTok. And plus I've been
trying to be more on TikTok but like post war
and stuff. But to do that, I've had to like
force my TikTok to show me a bunch of tattoo
stuff and oh, I'm just oh my, it takes it

(01:26:44):
out of me because there's so many, there's so much
of it. And I got into the big argument the
other day about whether or not you should put ashes
ashes in your tattoos stuff, you know, and and this
guy made a video after I said you shouldn't do it,
and this is why, right, and I gave the scientific

(01:27:07):
reason why, because none of it stays in your body. Okay,
so what are you doing? The majority of it goes
in the trash. What are you doing? Right?

Speaker 3 (01:27:16):
And then it also they don't clean the crematorium. Okay,
it doesn't always get cleaned. So you're gonna get some
of your great aunt and some of somebody else's mammy.

Speaker 2 (01:27:27):
That's the facts. Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:27:28):
So I did all that later, all out, and this
guy got on TikTok and made a video stitching my
video and said that I was a terrible tattoo artist
and I was stupid and ignorant, didn't know what I
was talking about because ashes are made from carbon. And
then I had to get on TikTok after I was

(01:27:50):
ratioed and explained to these idiots that no ashes are
calcium phosphate, not carbon. Carbon's made a completely differ different way. Also,
after the cremation process, there's not really ashes. There's some,
but not a lot. It's all taken to a grinder
and then grind into a find a fine, finer, sand

(01:28:13):
like particle. There is no ashes. It's all bone, it's
all cassium phosphate. It's not carbon. They all think somehow
it's carbon. They No, that's not how it's made. That's
not how any ink is made. Ink is made by
taking all the air out of out of a drum
and then getting that drum crazy crazy hot, and then

(01:28:36):
collecting the soot that comes out, and that soot is
what we make black ink out of. And most pegments
aren't even made that way anymore. Matter of fact, in
case you guys were wondering, if a company is saying
that their pigments are vegan friendly, they're using plastic polymers
to make their pigments.

Speaker 2 (01:28:54):
I think almost all companies are doing that now.

Speaker 3 (01:28:56):
Almost all of them are doing that. They're not using
carbon anymore. We don't use iron oxides in the red
pigments anymore. That's another one. I guess we could probably
do that a different day. But these are things that
people should be educated on that they're not educated on.
But people get a little bit of an education about

(01:29:17):
something and they think they know everything about that subject.
And do I know everything about cremation, No, but I
know enough to know that it isn't carbon because your
bones are calcium right right. The human body has like

(01:29:38):
eighteen percent carbon or something like that, and then after
cremation about one percent carbon is left. So no, you're
not using carbon from cremation, so you know. Anyway, they
I had a full on argument with like ten people

(01:30:01):
about it being carbon, and they just won't come off
of it. And even after I'm like, no, you guys,
here's the proof that it's not, they still.

Speaker 2 (01:30:11):
Ten toes deep, Bro, it's carbon. People don't want to
they don't want to backtrack themselves. The internet has this
weird thing about never changing who you are or changing
your opinion. And I think that's why our podcast does
so well, because there's shit that comes up that came
up in year one that has come up in year
three that is very different for us. The more information,
the more data that I have, the more likely I

(01:30:31):
am to go I was wrong. Oh I love it.
I have no problem being like, hey, I was way
fucking I was wrong. It was me right because I
have new data now, I have new understanding, new information.
The more information I get, the more proficient I'm going
to be at everything that I do. But if I'm
stuck on that one thing that I knew ten years
ago and you can't change my mind, I'm still stuck

(01:30:53):
ten years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:30:53):
I'm stagnant. I want to be wrong. Yeah, tell me
I'm wrong, and I tell you why. I want to
know why, obviously, or at least that i'm wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:31:02):
Prove it right.

Speaker 3 (01:31:03):
You're just going to Uh, it's not proof that I'm wrong, right,
Prove to me that I'm wrong. And if I am wrong,
I want to know because that's gonna make me grow, right,
I think for me, like, what pushes me to continue
to get better at tattooing isn't that I love tattooing
so much I just got to be good at it.
It's because I want to know. I want to be better, right,

(01:31:27):
I want to be better at this. I don't know why,
but I do. And every time somebody tells me I'm
wrong about something and tattooing, and they in their right,
I have learned something and I get better, So tell
me I'm wrong. But people cannot take that. They cannot
be told that they're wrong and not just have an

(01:31:48):
all out hissy fit about it.

Speaker 2 (01:31:50):
All right, I want to go back to one thing,
and then I want to wrap up because we've been
on for over an hour and a half. Oh my,
the you said you cultivated your TikTok to show your
tattoo stuff that you you know, and you were clearly
disappointed in what you're seeing. I have not interested every
tattoo thing that comes up, and every time I hop
into one of your lives where I interact with you,
it starts showing up on my feet again. The tattoo

(01:32:10):
industry on TikTok is fucking disgusting to me. Yeah, and
I mean that with the like true venom in my
speech when I say disgusting, the amount of like you
need to tip me, or or like the way that
people treat the client when the client comes in trying
to be funny even though they're just straight facing, stoic
or rude or like dude. It bothers the fuck out

(01:32:34):
of me. And like, at one point I was like,
you guys, are setting a really bad example. And like
when I was a small creator, I would always respond
to those people and I would get in their comment
sections and I would do that because I was also
still in the tattoo industry. And the moment that I
was no longer at the shop and I didn't have
to deal with that shit anymore, I stopped all of
the tattoo talk. I don't talk to artists anymore. I

(01:32:54):
don't unless I can vibe with the artists themselves, because
I don't want to talk about their art. Yeah, And
like I have a hard time seeing up and coming
artists and trying to give them criticism or trying to
help them with their career because I've done it already.
Like my shop is super successful. You know, it was
super successful before I walked away from it. And I
know the industry and I know art enough that I
can tattooing technically, I know better than art, right, Like,

(01:33:17):
if we're having a conversation of art, you should all
over that. I get it, Like you're a much better
physical artist than I am. But I still understand things
a lot more than most people get in their apprenticeship.
So when I see up and coming artists, or I
see people on Facebook or Instagram and they're you know,
they're being humble and they're being cool. I'll jump in
their comment section and try to help them out and
give them pointers and shit, we have quite a few

(01:33:38):
tattoo artists in our discord.

Speaker 3 (01:33:40):
Oh bro, if I call somebody out or if I
do something like that, and like today was a great example,
somebody messaged me and said told me to quit hayten.
What they said was quit haytenunk. And I was like, oh,
I've made it to the unk. I'm old, right. I
don't think that's what that was. That's what it is,
what it is, I don't think that's what that was. Yeh,
Because he said it was I got it from his uncle,

(01:34:02):
and so his old uncle that's the same thing or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:34:04):
It doesn't matter. There are phrases that I don't tolerate. Okay,
either way.

Speaker 3 (01:34:09):
He told me that I was I was a hater,
and then I explained to him how I wasn't being
a hater and that he just misread it or he
understood it wrong, and he came back with okay, I understand.

Speaker 2 (01:34:22):
Now, my bad.

Speaker 3 (01:34:25):
I followed him back, right, I gave him the follow
low small creator trying to build a name for I
gave him the follow and was like, cool. You know,
if you can't have an honest conversation or a civil
conversation with me without getting butt hurt, then I don't
want to have that conversation. I agree, I just don't.

(01:34:46):
There's no reason to get in your feelings about anything.
If I tell you that you're doing something wrong, I'm
not directly attacking your livelihood. You know what I mean?
If I tell you that you're wrong about a subject
that I'm not directly attacking you. I'm attacking that one thing.

(01:35:07):
I'm not even attacking it. I'm just trying to help you.
But when you come at me sideways, oh like, I've
lost some popularity in TikTok recently, and I think it's
because I've had to reel back me who I am,
because I've got a bunch of strikes on there and
they're gonna take my account away. But I am really

(01:35:29):
good at hitting you where it hurts, So I'm good
at figuring that out right, I'm going at figuring out
what's going to bother you, and you're just gonna give
it to me anyway. They all do. They all give
you the AMMO that you need. Why because they're thinking emotionally,
not not logically thinking. It's just like the the arguments

(01:35:49):
that I'm having currently on there. They get upset, they
let me know what they're upset about, and I poke
at it, you know, until until I'm bored with it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:00):
Okay. So if you could change three things on TikTok
when it comes to tattooing, what would it be? The
three types of content that you see around tattooing on TikTok, Well,
if you could get rid of it and make creators
stop doing it, what would it be?

Speaker 3 (01:36:11):
Oh? Man, you make them stop doing it? I would
Speeding videos up would be one thing. I don't like that.

Speaker 2 (01:36:22):
Like it or not?

Speaker 3 (01:36:23):
Okay, people look at your videos of you tattooing to
try to find something that they're doing right, there's something
that they can do better or something like that, and
let's speed the videos up. And then people think that
we're tattooing at that speed, so they try to do
it and that is going to that's stupid.

Speaker 2 (01:36:41):
Why would I care about that? I don't know. Well,
I don't think that I think that that's fair because
you are in your live streams. If you guys don't
follow him, you should you go live every time you tattoo. Yeah,
during your live streams, you're actually giving tattoo advice, yes,
which it gets you hate in itself.

Speaker 3 (01:36:59):
Yeah, by people you wouldn't expect to get hate from too.

Speaker 2 (01:37:02):
Right. Well, dude, when I when I was learning, I
taught myself just like you did. Yeah. I was in
a tattoo shop, Like, I had already been scratching for
years before I got my piercing apprenticeship. So like I
had to learn by watching other artists in the shop
do shit. I didn't have people to talk to. I
was buying DVDs because YouTube wasn't even really a thing. Yeah,
So like now you have, you know, artists Patreon and
YouTube and TikTok, Like, there's a lot of advice out there.

(01:37:24):
You don't need an apprenticeship. If you have an art
ability and the desire to learn, you can figure the
shit out for sure. But so the speed up thing,
because you are so adamant about trying to give people
advice and teach them how to do things, that's probably
why one of those things bother you, because there's going
to be people out there that see you going like
this with a needle, yeah, and things that that's what
you're supposed to be doing.

Speaker 3 (01:37:44):
So I think that if you're going to try to
teach somebody what they're doing, you should have to disclose
how long you've been doing it, you know what I'm saying, Like,
somebody can just pick up a tattoo machine in a
year from now and then start get on TikTok or
a month, right, be tattooing for a month, get on
TikTok and give tattooing advice, right, and people that don't
know any better see somebody holding the tattoo machine doing

(01:38:06):
tattoos are going to take that advice. The amount of
terrible tattooing there is on TikTok is mind numbingly astonishing.
It's so so much terrible, terrible advice that people give
and there's no way to combat it. And that's why
I'm like, man, I don't know, because I'm a huge
believer in say whatever you want, do whatever you want.

(01:38:29):
You can do whatever you want. I don't care. As
long as it doesn't directly impact my life or my
people around you, Yeah, then I don't care. It's not
my problem. It doesn't matter to me. As people ask
me all the time, don't you get mad about the
scratchers and this, that and the other. First off, I
have a different definition for scratcher than most do, and

(01:38:50):
that is My definition for scratcher is somebody that sucks
at tattooing and refuses to get better. You could be
tattooed in a shop for fifteen years and still be
a fucking scratcher. Okay, I don't care what licensing you have,
don't care how long you've been doing it, you can
still be a scratcher.

Speaker 2 (01:39:05):
I agree with that, right, But.

Speaker 3 (01:39:06):
Instead it's become this derogatory term for anybody that's not
good at tattooing. But somebody that's not good at tattooing
trying to learn at home like I did, but they're
trying to better themselves, not a scratcher at that point,
they're a student.

Speaker 2 (01:39:23):
Well, so okay, So all of that comes down to
scarcity my mindset also though, because the idea of everybody
hating scratchers and people that are tattooing out of their house.
The only reason why you should hate on somebody tattooing
out of their houses. Is hygiene purposes, sure, because blood
worm pathogens and cross contaminations, staff can jump the species barrier.
There's a whole lot of things that is not taken
accounting for in a home. Yeah, anything beyond that get

(01:39:47):
tattooed out of a house because when you need that
shit fixed, we're gonna charge you three times the amount
to fix it then what you would have paid to
just get the tattoo. Yep. So like I'm here for that. Yeah,
I have no problem with that shit now. When I
was struggling as a tattoo artist in the very beginning
and I didn't know any better, I did have a
problem with it because I finally got my foot in

(01:40:07):
the door, And now my foot's in the door and
I'm a shop and I'm doing the fucking professional thing.
Like now, I have a problem with the people that
were doing the same shit that I was doing before.
But I was also realizing that those people were not
charging the same amount of money I was charging, and
I felt like they were taking clients from me. And
I had one artist go, you need to change your
mindset because all of those people that are sucking up
those people's tattoos. It's going to be your job to

(01:40:27):
fix and the better you get to cover up some
more money you're gonna make. Yeah, And I was like,
you're right. And then somebody else was like, bro, you
were doing this two years ago. I'm like, I know,
but I wasn't doing that, and they were like, there's
no difference. Yeah, no difference, right, And so what you're
saying is is the difference is somebody that's trying to
become better. They're a student and not a scratcher. Yeah,
that makes a whole lot of sense. Yeah they're not.

Speaker 3 (01:40:46):
Yeah, but there are people can be scratchers, and the
industry still yeah, absolutely absolutely. When I never had that viewpoint,
I have never thought one time negatively about a scratcher
or whatever people tattooed at home, or kitchen tattooers what
we call them a kitchen cossions. Yeah, we never had

(01:41:07):
I never had a problem with it, not one time,
because I was that person. And if there's something that
I hate more than people chewing with their mouth open,
it's hypocrisy. And I am not a hypocrite. I learned
that way, and I am not going to look down
on you for learning that way.

Speaker 2 (01:41:26):
A lot, a lot of really big name artists that
are in the industry right now, we're all self taught. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:41:30):
You look at people like Jeff Gogway, Ye, he's self taught. Yeah,
I mean sounds there's a lot. There's a lot of
people like that. They didn't have traditional apprenticeships, just taught
themselves or went and hung around tattoo shops and watched
and things like. There's a lot of them like that.

Speaker 2 (01:41:47):
You know how much faster their career would have would
have taken off though, if they would have actually done the.

Speaker 3 (01:41:52):
Dude, if I'd have had a real if I'd had
somebody apprentice me like I apprentice my apprentices I'd be
right now ten years ahead of where I'm at. But
it took me sixteen years to get where I'm at,
and I'm still not that good. But if I'd had
a real apprenticeship, and it wouldn't have taken me all
those years of trial and error just to figure out

(01:42:13):
the basics, I would be light years ahead of what
I was. It did, no doubt about it.

Speaker 2 (01:42:20):
So there's definitely value in the apprenticeship. Still. Oh yeah,
So I want to touch on the three things that
I don't want to see on TikTok anymore. And the
first one is the tattoo artists that are bitching about
getting tipped. Yes, I've seen tattoo artists making videos showing
other tattooartists how to manipulate clients into giving them tips,
any tipping anything. I don't want to see any of that. Yeah.
The fact that these people are spending their money to

(01:42:41):
get tattooed by you. You don't fucking deserve a tip.
That is a gracious thing. Sure, I've enjoyed our time together.
You did a really good job. Here's something extra. That's
as far as that needs to go. Yeah, and fuck
all of you that are in the industry that think otherwise. Yeah, agreed,
I mean that. The other thing I would like to say,
see the second thing is the videos of people making

(01:43:03):
fun of their client to their client. Have you seen
a lot of that, Like people will come in and
want to get a tattoo, and oh you really want
to do that? Like all of that, like very slow speaking,
you can tell they're not into it, Like it's just
very monotone. You're talking about as a specific artist, you're
talking I am. There's a couple of them that do it, though,
I've seen because that one guy got big and then

(01:43:24):
a lot of other tattoo artists started mimicking it, which
just means that you're not an artist, right. If you
have to mimic other people shit to try to get views,
you're not a creator. You're not a creative, You're a
fucking duplicator at that point, Yeah, whole the conversation. And
then the third thing I would like to see is
I would like to see them like people that are
getting matching tattoos or a couple tattoos or name tattoos.

(01:43:46):
I would like to see that stop getting shit on
on yep.

Speaker 3 (01:43:49):
Yeah, dude, Okay, getting your significant others name tattooed on
you is not why your relationship fell apart. No, no, okay,
not a chance. You got that tattoo when you were
in the midst of an oxytocin high In case you
guys don't know what that is, it's the love hormone, right.
You got that tattoo then when you thought you were

(01:44:09):
gonna be with them forever and ever and ever, and
you didn't even know that motherfucker or you were getting
that tattoo to try to save the relationship. Some people
have babies. Some people get tattoos. That tattoo did not
jinx you. It is not a bad thing. And even
if you got that tattoo and everything went wrong and

(01:44:30):
now you've got a tattoo is some chick's name or
some dude's name on you, that marks a moment in time. Ye,
that is a memory, because I don't give a shit
what went down, except for like extreme cases. All right,
I'm gonna get shited on for that one. Most of
the time you had good memories with that person. Less
as humans, we like to lean on the bad memories

(01:44:53):
and forget that the good ones happen.

Speaker 2 (01:44:55):
It's the what have you done for me lately? Thing?
And I am not have my wife's face tattooed on me.
You know that that changes over time? Though, what's that?
So when the this is this is actually a really
studied thing. When we look back at our life and
we look back at the people in our life and
we think about the things that we are doing, we
tend to lean into the fond, positive memories. When we

(01:45:18):
have the fuck you thing going on and the vindictiveness
and the hurt, it's negative. Yeah, So like if somebody
is like coming into the shop after a divorce, like
a week after a divorce, and they're hurt and they
want their name covered up. It's very different than if
they were coming in four years later and they're doing
it because there was somebody new went now and the
new person doesn't want to see it. But when you
look it back at your life, you are more likely

(01:45:39):
to find the positive, good things that happened than you
are to find the negative because you don't want to,
like like when you die and your life flashes before
you're basically when you're older, right, Yeah, when you're older,
you have a different thought process.

Speaker 3 (01:45:53):
Yeah, because those little things don't bother you as much
that you know that you've got a certain once you've
figured out that this is all you got, that this
is it, which happened to me about two years ago.
But two years ago is when I realized I could
die tomorrow and it's it, that's all there is, And
that two years ago is when I started doing TikTok.

(01:46:16):
Two years ago is when I just started It's time
to get off my ass and get my shit together
because I could die at any point in time, and
I'm gonna believe in my family with a bunch of debt.

Speaker 2 (01:46:26):
I'm gonna be doing this, that and other.

Speaker 3 (01:46:28):
You start thinking differently the older you get, when reality
hits that you're not immortal.

Speaker 2 (01:46:34):
When we're young, we're immortal. You know. Do you think
that that speaks to mentorship and the failing of the
people that came before us? No, I don't think anybody
has that. Like, I think that's a Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:46:47):
It doesn't matter who raises you unless you're like coming
up in like a Buddhist temple or something like that.
You know, you're still not gonna You're not gonna you're
gonna think you're invincible. Everybody thought they were invincible when
they were young. Right, you would do take more risks,
do dumb shit, you know, unprotected sex, all that stuff. Right,
you did all that stuff when you were young. But
the older you get, the less of the risk you're

(01:47:08):
taking because you have more things to live for.

Speaker 2 (01:47:11):
Right, you're more calculated.

Speaker 3 (01:47:12):
Yeah, you pay attention more, and therefore, since you're paying
attention more, you're understanding more about what you do have
instead of what you don't have.

Speaker 2 (01:47:20):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:47:21):
Sometimes, even still, I'll get caught up into what I
don't have and forget about what I do and I have.

Speaker 2 (01:47:27):
To talk myself out of that.

Speaker 3 (01:47:29):
I have to tell myself, Listen, ten years ago, five
years ago, you'd have given anything to have what you
have right now, right now, you have it and you're
not satisfied. And then so that's a cycle that I'll
go through. I don't know what it.

Speaker 2 (01:47:43):
Is that's we're taught that. See, this is why I
asked you that, because we're taught from from the time
that we learned to start crawling. We're learning to crawl
to prepare us to walk, sure, and then we're learning
to walk so that we can learn to run. And
then we're learning to talk, so that we learned to
community and can you convince and manipulate and do all
the things that we do with our speech, And then

(01:48:04):
we get ready for elementary school so that we can
get ready for first grade, to get ready for second
and in middle school and high school, and then get
ready for a career college. Our entire existence is the
what's next mindset, and eventually the next thing is going
to be our demise. I am hard on this right now.
It's been for the last year of my life. I
don't want to live in then, and I don't want
to live in what's coming. I want to live right now,

(01:48:25):
right now, and that is where life is actually happening.
It's happening now. I'm trying to build so I can
live in right now. You can live in right now,
I mean you can. I mean I could live in
right now. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:48:40):
Sure, I could go and do this things and do
this thing and do that thing. But if I do
those things, I'll have to deal with what happens tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:48:48):
Okay, Well, so that's perspective. Well, I mean the perspective
is I got kids, defeat. No, the perspective is that
you're like, your perspective of living right now is going
and doing these things that you were just mentioning doing.
You are You get to do tattoos every day with
new clients, you get new interactions. You are living if
you are if you are in the moment doing that,
you are living right now. You are still planning for

(01:49:10):
the future and still want to have success. I see
what you're saying, but living in that moment of this
is the first time I'm ever doing this tattoo on
this client. This is a new experience, and you live
right now. You are living your life instead of stressing
over the past or the future. That right now mindset
changes the way you live.

Speaker 3 (01:49:29):
I get what you're saying. I kind of skip in
and out of that. I kind of skip in and
out of of that because sometimes I'll know I have
to do this right now or I'm not being going
to be able to do that, you know what I'm saying.
So sometimes I know that. Sometimes I don't know that.
Most of the time I try not to. But I
am absolutely building for tomorrow. I'm really I'm building for

(01:49:53):
in case I'm not here tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:49:55):
I get that.

Speaker 3 (01:49:55):
That's my whole life right now. Is what happens to
my family if I'm not here tomorrow. That's it. That's
my entire mindset right now. Because as a tattoo artists,
we don't get a retirement unless you start it right early.

Speaker 2 (01:50:15):
You're not you're not taught that. You're not taught.

Speaker 3 (01:50:17):
I wasn't taught to tattoo. But nobody coming up said hey, bro,
you need to start, you need to start putting in
for a time.

Speaker 2 (01:50:23):
Yeah, they didn't get to that. I didn't start my
wroth until I was forty yeh see, so we started
hers right away. Yeah, so I.

Speaker 3 (01:50:30):
Don't I don't have the funds, the extra funds to
start the wroth right now, but I'm working towards that.
I want to do it. I need to do it.
I get that, but I haven't. I haven't got to
that point yet. So I'm working towards that point. But
I'm right now, I'm thinking every decision I make is
a decision on if I do this, is it going
to affect what happens.

Speaker 2 (01:50:53):
Tomorrow if I'm not here? You know what I mean?
Every dollar I spend is a dollar away from Angie
and the kids I don't know going back home if
I die tomorrow. Right, every single cent is a little
bit that I'm taking away from them if I die tomorrow.
It doesn't exhaust you. Yeah, it's wild, it's wild.

Speaker 3 (01:51:18):
But when I say, when I say that, that the
realization that I could die at any point in time
and that I would be leaving them with an amazing
amount of debt and no way to get home.

Speaker 2 (01:51:29):
Well, your your debt when you die is your problem.
I get that. How old is Angie same as me?
So you should at least set up a ross for her,
even if you don't set up one for you, Because
if you did die tomorrow, that money is still compounding
until she retires. Yeah, and you can put up to
six four hundred dollars a year into it. And you
can do that from your taxes. Yeah, so you don't

(01:51:50):
have to have a monthly debit. You can just reach
out to the money guy and be like, right, take
this money right now.

Speaker 3 (01:51:54):
I do have a couple of things that I've put
already into practice, Like if I if I die tomorrow,
the bank will pay off Angie's car, so she'll get
her car. The rest of the cars doesn't matter luck yet, right,
But because like every car that that that that's at
my house is in my name, right because I bought

(01:52:16):
all of them, all the cars and all that stuff.
But I would want Angie to have that. And what
I mean like that is if I spend a bunch
of money frivolously and Angie is just can't make it
back home, I don't want her stuck here in Florida
by herself, right, I don't want her to do that.

(01:52:36):
I would whether he be somewhere, if she's comfortable.

Speaker 2 (01:52:38):
Well, you have my word in the event that something happens,
if Angie's not taking care of I won'll get her back.

Speaker 3 (01:52:43):
I appreciate that. I appreciate that, But that's what that's
my my whole thing. They got to bury me. They
got to do this, They got to do that, you know,
And I'm still young. I don't know why I'm thinking
about it, but something I don't Something happened, and I.

Speaker 2 (01:52:57):
Know what happened. Everything that's happened since you left your
shop and have come to Florida until you worked at
Sacred is what's happened. Dude. When you started working for me,
you were driving an old ass car, like you had
to get a co signer to buy a used minivan. Yeah,
you're not at that point anymore. So you had that.
I was on top, I was doing really good and
I fell back down and I had to build back up.

(01:53:18):
And now that you've had to build back up, you
don't want that to happen again. Yeah, I fucking get that, dude.

Speaker 3 (01:53:23):
Well, I came from Illinois, Yeah, and I made I
was making one hundred and twenty thousand a year in Illinois,
and an Illinois hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year,
it's like two hundred thousand dollars a year here.

Speaker 2 (01:53:32):
Yeah, it's a.

Speaker 3 (01:53:33):
Lot of money, and I came in here and went
to the other side of the state and that fell through,
and uh, I lost a car, and you sold a
bunch of her stuff, a bunch of her dad's old
firearms and antiques and stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:53:51):
Just to keep us afloat. I was at the bottom.

Speaker 3 (01:53:55):
I lived in a car for two weeks just so
I could get enough money to rent a house and
get the ki and bring them over here. I was
at the very bottom. I did go from I'm king
shit two I am nothing, and I'm begging for work basically,
you know what I mean. And then here I am again.

(01:54:15):
Like you said, I couldn't even It's because I had
lost the cars, you know, defaulted on credit cards and
defaulted in the car and this that and the other,
and it destroyed my credit and it just really destroyed everything.
And now, like you said, I when I first came
to Sacred, I had to have a co signer.

Speaker 2 (01:54:34):
You did that was.

Speaker 3 (01:54:36):
To say that cass did that got us a car.
And now what I've been I've been at Sacred almost
five years now, and I can go to the dealer.
I went into the dealership a month ago and bought
three cars and didn't even have to prove income because
I have such good credit and I have a good

(01:54:57):
standing with that with that company, and I bought the cars.
In case you guys are wondering why this guy needs
three cars, I have a lot of kids and they
were all hitting driving age at the same time, basically,
so they all needed cars. And the top two that
I had already bought cars for needed new cars. Not really,
but the bottom ones needed cars right So, uh, Angela

(01:55:21):
and Dylan, they're gonna get their driver's license soon. I
need cars for them. So the top two that I
already got cars for junk cars I bought off the marketplace,
they got new cars, and then the old cars go
to the next that are coming up so they can
drive them. The point is that I bought all those
cars and didn't even have to show income. So I'm

(01:55:42):
back to that spot again. I'm not I'm not blind
to that.

Speaker 2 (01:55:47):
Yeah, I understood that, that fear of having to go back,
like I know. I know that if I had to
start over right now. I've started over so many times
that I've got so much knowledge now that's starting back
over to get back to where I am would be
very easy. I would maybe have to max out a
credit card or borrow money, but it would take me
six months and I'd be right back to where I
am right now. Yeah, because I've done this so many times. However,

(01:56:08):
I also know how shitty that was to live like that,
and that fear of falling back to that and losing
all of this scarce of the fuck out of me.
I don't even care if if it was me, I'll
live in squad right. Well, it's not you, it's not right.
Everything that I do I do for her. Yeah, so
I get it. That's what I'm saying, Like I fucking
that's that's that fear of like, yeah, I didn't even

(01:56:29):
ready for him to have to worry about it.

Speaker 3 (01:56:33):
I don't If one of them wants a soda from
the gas station, I want them to be able to
have that soda from the gas station. And there was
a point in time where it was like, no, yeah,
we don't have the money for you, so you can't
have anything. You want to stick a gun, No you
can't have it. And that's terrible for me at least,
because I grew up with nothing, you know, except for

(01:56:57):
when I went to Grandma and Grandpa's or or whatever.
Mom did her best, but we didn't have much. We
didn't have anything.

Speaker 2 (01:57:08):
So well, we're two hours in at this point, people
listening to Yeah anyway, Well, we did this at seven
seven thirty at night. So normally when we pop up
a YouTube live for Patreon, there's between seventy and one
hundred and twenty people watching. Yeah, we've been between seventeen
and twenty five because it's so late. Yeah, and it's
a Sunday night football football? Is that a thing right now? Yeah?

(01:57:28):
Sunday night football. I have no idea.

Speaker 3 (01:57:30):
First week I don't sports. Yeah, so it's the first
week of Sunday night football. So gotcha.

Speaker 2 (01:57:37):
Well, I would like to wrap up. I definitely want
to do this again. I enjoy just having conversations with people. However,
next week or the next time we sit down, not
the time that you sit down in Peaches, but when
you sit down with me. I think I'm going to
have a list of things that I want to talk
about so that we have a structured thing to go through.
Tonight was very much about ego, but I want to
talk about other facets of the tattoo industry and like

(01:57:58):
young people coming up into the work for in the
business aspects of things and try to really provide actual
information for people that's not Yeah, like I said, I
want to do that seminar. Yeah, I want to do
that seminar. Well, I'm I'm willing to support that. However,
we got to support it. We've gotten emails for it.
So I want to see this seminar on how I
deal with clients. How do you get that client to

(01:58:18):
spend that money, How do you get that client to
get that big tattoo, How do you get the client
to do the tattoos that you want to do that
make you excited, things like that?

Speaker 3 (01:58:27):
How do you do that? I want That's what I want.
Everybody's doing seminars about how you tattoo, right, But that's
just one fast of the industry. I think you need
to do. The personable stuff is step is the most
important one.

Speaker 2 (01:58:41):
Well, get it together. I'll push the shit out of it.
Like I said, We've already gotten emails for it. So yeah, okay,
we just gotta put together and we gott wrote down.
I just gotta organize it. Yeah, I might have AI do. Yeah,
it's chat GPT as a motherfucker. Oh it can help,
but it can also We all have to get to
get into the conversation of AI in the industry. Also

(01:59:02):
will be another episode for sure. With that being said, guys,
thanks for tuning in and we will see you the
next time he decides to grace us with his presence.
That's whenever they decide to let me have good guys.
I see you, guys,

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The artists ego - With Jeff Graham

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The artists ego - With Jeff Graham