00:00:00:00 - 00:00:07:06 Joey Hamilton You can't be an owner of a tattoo shop and a full time tattoo artist. And that's where I'm struck. That's because I still tattoo six days a week and I'm like.

00:00:07:06 - 00:00:10:11 Austin Spencer It's so crazy to me, dude. I'm like, super impressed by it, though.

00:00:10:13 - 00:00:17:10 Joey Hamilton It's held together by duct tape and a lot of fucking fingers trying to plug the holes. Oh my god. Yeah, it is difficult.

00:00:17:11 - 00:00:26:10 Austin Spencer Today on the podcast, Joey Hamilton, American tattoo artist, Air Force veteran, season three winner of Ink Master and co-owner of Revolt Tattoos in Las Vegas.

00:00:26:12 - 00:00:41:09 Joey Hamilton The pressures of continuing in this field is great because now you have to either grow with it. Yeah, or figure another way out. How can I get people to see my stuff? Yeah, especially out here. It's like it's harder and harder. Everything is harder to get clients in your chair. You know, like, yeah.

00:00:41:09 - 00:01:02:11 Austin Spencer We talk about the impossible balance between being a tattooer and running a tattoo business, how Joey manages multiple locations while still trying to focus on the craft, and why getting clients has become harder even after years of being booked months in advance. I'm Austin Spencer and this is support your local tattooer. What's happening? Everybody, this is Austin from supporting local tattooer.

00:01:02:13 - 00:01:13:21 Austin Spencer I am in the warehouse this morning. Maverick Supply Co, we are chillin with Mister Joey Hamilton. Winner of the, I don't know, the Ink Master. Season three.

00:01:13:21 - 00:01:14:20 Joey Hamilton Season three? Yeah.

00:01:15:01 - 00:01:21:16 Austin Spencer Season three. Yeah. You're local here to Las Vegas, owner of Revolt tattoos. We just kind of wanted to sit down today. Man. I appreciate you coming in.

00:01:21:17 - 00:01:32:17 Joey Hamilton Well, thanks for chillin. I know I've been wanting to get on here. I, I like a lot of the guys you have on. Oh, it's cool that it's, like you're saying, let's support your local tattoo artist. So it's. Yeah. Kind of cool to see some other guys.

00:01:32:17 - 00:01:38:10 Austin Spencer It's fun to like being in Vegas. We have so many people to pass through. So, yeah, it's awesome. We get a you little.

00:01:38:10 - 00:01:40:23 Joey Hamilton Yeah. Local means nationwide. Yeah.

00:01:40:23 - 00:01:57:17 Austin Spencer Yeah yeah yeah. But I like I like definitely supporting local dudes. And we have so much talent in our city and so many ridiculous types of tattooers to, you know, and different type like tattooers from just crazy different backgrounds too, you know? So, yeah. But I know you got an appointment today, so we're gonna make it quick.

00:01:57:17 - 00:02:01:07 Joey Hamilton Yeah. Early bird gets the worm, man.

00:02:01:09 - 00:02:12:06 Austin Spencer Yeah. Dude, I'm. I'm stoked, man. Thanks for coming down. I like I was doing a little research on you last night, and we were talking, and we were. We were looking over. You said. I thought it was ten years, but it's been 30 years since 13.

00:02:12:06 - 00:02:15:08 Joey Hamilton I don't try to keep track, but, yeah, I think it's around 13 years.

00:02:15:08 - 00:02:24:15 Austin Spencer 13. Dude, that's pretty wild. And you were telling me that now some of the like the you've kind of been receiving like a new boost because they put the show back on Netflix.

00:02:24:15 - 00:02:40:23 Joey Hamilton Yeah, yeah. Once it came out on Netflix a couple years ago. But once that came out, like, it was just like the ten year olds that are now 20 are literally like running a store. Like, I just saw you on TV that, you know, but then they make a joke like, man, you look so much older, you know, because it is 13 friggin years old.

00:02:41:01 - 00:02:41:23 Joey Hamilton Yeah. You know.

00:02:41:23 - 00:02:49:07 Austin Spencer That is really wild. Like, that shit kicked off, like, I don't know what was like the first reality show was hard in Huntington.

00:02:49:07 - 00:03:05:18 Joey Hamilton Or hard in Huntington. Yeah, yeah. Do you know I was on that show also with this little card North? Yeah. So I was on the second season. No. What's the whole reason I'm in Vegas? I ended up here because I was on vacation, came out here, and, I walked in to see if I could do a guest spot because it was the first show on TV about tattooing.

00:03:05:18 - 00:03:16:08 Joey Hamilton Oh, cool. And then I just, I applied, and my last day in town, they said, are you still here? So. Yeah. And I said, alright, you start tomorrow. No, that was it. Yeah. Holy shit. They moved it, sold my shop's house, everything over the phone.

00:03:16:08 - 00:03:17:22 Austin Spencer Really? So were you from the East?

00:03:18:00 - 00:03:25:10 Joey Hamilton I was from, Florida at that. Oh, okay. Yeah. I had a shop in Florida and Destin, Florida. Okay. I had the first shop in a small town, so it was pretty cool.

00:03:25:12 - 00:03:32:23 Austin Spencer What was it about? I mean, other than, like, I'm assuming, like, getting the exposure, like. Like you weren't intimidated or at all. You just, like, saw it as it,

00:03:33:01 - 00:03:52:17 Joey Hamilton You know, it's a lot of things. I'm all. I'm ex-military, so it's always helped out to, like, they could be like, tomorrow. You're going right here. Yeah. Three months. Yeah, yeah. So that mentality of, like, trying something new or going some new place was never I've never been against it, you know. And even when I started tattooing, I was trained by somebody 30 years ago that I've been tattooing six months.

00:03:52:19 - 00:03:55:03 Austin Spencer Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, yeah.

00:03:55:07 - 00:04:09:13 Joey Hamilton Think about that. So, you know, it was so, so hard to get into it. But I got, you know, it gave me Mickey Sharp's right away. Give me some good machines. So it was really cool. I got into it and then just, you know, it was kind of kind of crazy.

00:04:09:15 - 00:04:13:23 Austin Spencer Do you feel like the military background helped you progress in the world of tattooing?

00:04:13:23 - 00:04:29:18 Joey Hamilton I hyperfocus wise yeah, yeah. Focus wise. Yeah. I work exactly when you when it's time to go to work, you go to work. I'm not going there to do anything else I can. When I'm off, then I'll go do all the other things we're supposed to be done. Yeah, but when I'm at work, it's like it's timed. It's.

00:04:29:20 - 00:04:32:00 Joey Hamilton That's what I'm there for. I'm not there to do anything else.

00:04:32:00 - 00:04:36:19 Austin Spencer That's great. Yeah, that's what what kind of what? One of my military and, Air force.

00:04:36:19 - 00:04:39:00 Joey Hamilton Oh. Okay. The chair for surgery.

00:04:39:02 - 00:04:40:09 Austin Spencer Like. Oh, or.

00:04:40:11 - 00:04:45:16 Joey Hamilton I did ten years and years. Yeah, I did soap from, 86 to 96.

00:04:45:18 - 00:04:48:07 Austin Spencer And you jumped all around the States or,

00:04:48:09 - 00:05:08:16 Joey Hamilton The world, like, I literally got to go. I was a part of special Ops out of Herbert Field. So literally any place outside the helicopters with the guns on them, that's what I worked on. So anytime those were going somewhere, we would go like Saudi, Kuwait, Egypt, Turkey, Guam, Hawaii, Thailand, like I've been. Yeah, all over. But that was the funny part.

00:05:08:16 - 00:05:16:21 Joey Hamilton I never been to Vegas, so no shit. Like I literally circle back. I was like, I'm just going to go to Vegas for 30 days. And that's when I walked into Art in Huntington. And yeah.

00:05:16:23 - 00:05:19:04 Austin Spencer And we're like, single dude moved to Vegas or.

00:05:19:07 - 00:05:36:14 Joey Hamilton I was getting divorced. I was already but a year into being separated. Yeah, yeah. And, this one poker was going big and I'm like, I'm just going to go play poker, really, for, you know, 30 days. Me, my buddy came out from Florida and it was, I consider the last day in town. I got the job and and that was it.

00:05:36:14 - 00:05:37:06 Joey Hamilton So no.

00:05:37:06 - 00:06:02:14 Austin Spencer Shit then. Hey, quick pause before we keep going. True or false? Tattoo artists are particular about their gear. Obviously. True, right. Because tattooing already takes enough focus. You're thinking about the client, the design, the skin, the linework, the timing. The last thing you need is gear that makes the session feel harder than it has to be. Maverick's Supply Co was built with that in mind reliable cartridges, gear and shop essentials for artists who care about the details from people who actually understand the work.

00:06:02:17 - 00:06:18:08 Austin Spencer So if you've been meaning to tighten up your set up, scan the QR code on the screen. Use the link in the show notes. You can also use code built for 10% off. Now let's get back to the episode A jump. Right on. So you were on this second season, you said. And how did that go?

00:06:18:08 - 00:06:33:18 Joey Hamilton Like, you know, it was fun. You never think about it. Like when I came on there, I was all excited, and I'm like, man, this is so cool. Yeah, but now I could see it from the point of view of the other artists. Yeah, because they're bringing in this guy that they didn't. Nobody fucking knew. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:06:33:18 - 00:06:52:08 Joey Hamilton And they're just like, this guy's taking my money. This guy's whatever. So there was definitely I just came in excited and they're just like, probably secretly going, fuck this guy. Yeah, yeah, totally. So, you know, but there was a lot, you know, a lot of people I still talk with Lacy. I talk with Josh petty. Yeah. You know, I see Clark around town every once in a while, so.

00:06:52:09 - 00:07:00:00 Joey Hamilton Yeah, you know, of course, you know, just. But, yeah, I think we have the same birthday. Or really, are my son one of those? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.

00:07:00:05 - 00:07:08:20 Austin Spencer Dang. That's fucking rad. Yeah, I, I love that you just went for it to. Do you think that that was part of, like, like the writing of the show to, like, bring in the new guy to like.

00:07:08:20 - 00:07:22:20 Joey Hamilton Yeah, yeah. They were searching for somebody new because they had just they it wasn't working out with Thomas, I believe. I never met Thomas. Okay. Yeah. He was on season one. He was like the main guy on season one. Okay. So they were looking for like a not that I was a main guy, but a replacement character, I guess.

00:07:22:20 - 00:07:25:14 Joey Hamilton So, yeah. And it was cool. Like, it's.

00:07:25:15 - 00:07:29:01 Austin Spencer Young, handsome dude. Get talented. Get in there. And then.

00:07:29:03 - 00:07:39:00 Joey Hamilton What? I forgot what they said. Something, redneck rough, or they said something kind of funny about my look back then. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Oh.

00:07:39:00 - 00:07:49:04 Austin Spencer It's fun. And then. So you jumped right in there, did you? And you guys were real busy about the second season. Oh my God, first season. The shop was super slow. Yeah. The show or killed off like as the show.

00:07:49:04 - 00:08:03:17 Joey Hamilton Yeah. You're talking 30 to 50 people online every day. Yeah. As soon as you opened the doors, I was I worked so many doubles just because that's not. I'm not greedy. I just was like, if the money is there, you might. And you got people wanting to get tattooed. Why would I not a tattoo.

00:08:03:17 - 00:08:04:13 Austin Spencer And you love tattooing.

00:08:04:13 - 00:08:21:23 Joey Hamilton Yeah, I love it. Yeah, exactly. Like I can't imagine myself doing anything else. Like when people say it's a job. It is a job. Yeah. My whole body hurts from this job. Yes, but in my mind. But it's like I don't want to be doing anything else. I love creating every day and creating something different. Like, that's the best part.

00:08:22:01 - 00:08:37:06 Joey Hamilton I was, you know, when I first started tattooing was you're going to paint motorcycles or tattoo shit. And, I had a great offer to go be a motorcycle painter, from a huge by builder. And I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. So I was like, I just started tattooing. I was like, oh, kind of like this.

00:08:37:06 - 00:08:48:00 Joey Hamilton I love the idea of every day you walk in and you're doing something that's art based, but different styles. I'm a walking dialog. What do you want to get? Cool. Let's go.

00:08:48:00 - 00:09:06:09 Austin Spencer Yeah, let's make it. I know that's funny because I before I was tattooing, I was an apprentice and for a painter and we were doing motorcycles and low riders. Yeah. So I went from being in this like dusty dark shop and where no one spoke English around me. And they just when they did, it was just to talk shit, which I'm totally okay with, like getting roasted.

00:09:06:11 - 00:09:21:23 Austin Spencer But, then I had the opportunity to take on the apprenticeship because I'd been pursuing that too on the side with tattooing and jump into a tattoo shop and just. I was an illustrator ever since I was a kid, so just drawing and working directly with customers and making cash that day was like, Holy shit, this is cool.

00:09:22:02 - 00:09:28:05 Austin Spencer Yeah, and I was single, you know? So I was like, this is there's a lot of girls. I'm listening to music all day long. Yeah.

00:09:28:07 - 00:09:38:06 Joey Hamilton Yeah, yeah. It's like you're a mini rockstar. Almost like a sense of you. Especially if you're in small towns, because you could, you know, you go out and everybody's like, oh, I want to talk to this guy because. Yeah.

00:09:38:08 - 00:09:53:12 Austin Spencer Oh do we, we would go out and like walk by the hard rock who's playing it in the joint. And then I noticed that I, oh, I did a full sleeve on the front door. Guy. It's like, oh, you and all six of your friends can come in. And then, yeah, it was cool, dude. You know, and in my early 20s.

00:09:53:17 - 00:09:55:05 Austin Spencer Yeah. And now I don't.

00:09:55:07 - 00:09:58:12 Joey Hamilton Go out the same hook up for dinners. I'm like, yeah, I know that guy.

00:09:58:14 - 00:10:07:00 Austin Spencer I think I just, I saw on your blog or on your Instagram that you like just posting pictures with some chefs, and I don't know about you, but like, I fucking love tattooing chefs now. Oh yeah anybody.

00:10:07:01 - 00:10:15:15 Joey Hamilton That's who's carbon chef that's so awesome too. So you know I don't date anybody. It berries. But we just love berries like it's my favorite steakhouse.

00:10:15:17 - 00:10:25:02 Austin Spencer I do when you. Yeah. When you tattoo a chef and you show up and you get that like good table and all the food starts rolling out. Yeah. I personally feel like that's my favorite.

00:10:25:02 - 00:10:27:14 Joey Hamilton Yeah, that's the new rock star for us. Like oh yes.

00:10:27:17 - 00:10:31:13 Austin Spencer Yeah. I take my kids out to dinner to some shit and then really? Well that's fun.

00:10:31:14 - 00:10:32:02 Joey Hamilton Yeah.

00:10:32:02 - 00:10:37:02 Austin Spencer So then you jump from Hart and Huntington. Yeah. And you ended up jumping over to club?

00:10:37:04 - 00:10:54:03 Joey Hamilton Well, actually, I went to Starlight first. I helped Mario open that store. I didn't help him. I just work for Mario. But, yeah, at the beginning, it was me. Clean rock one, Jason Trenton. Like, there was a couple guys that we. Oh, yeah, there's maybe 5 or 6 of us. It was only three station, little shop, so.

00:10:54:05 - 00:11:06:05 Joey Hamilton But it was crazy. It was, you know, you think it was a bad spot because it's a that Mandalay. Okay, that was. Yeah, but the drop off for the escalator, like for the tram. Yeah, it was right there. So every day was doing.

00:11:06:05 - 00:11:11:06 Austin Spencer And people in the middle of the casino Caesars in this class box like. Yeah. How fucking crazy.

00:11:11:06 - 00:11:12:23 Joey Hamilton I went there for a year. So it's cool.

00:11:12:23 - 00:11:30:05 Austin Spencer Our city as far as, like a tattoo economy and a culture is so unique to anywhere in the world, I think. Yeah. First we had all the old school shops on the strip and downtown or off the strip and downtown. Then they opened. They started opening up near the strip. Yeah. And then they started opening up in the casinos.

00:11:30:07 - 00:11:35:16 Austin Spencer And that just created we have like we have a really unique world of tattooing.

00:11:35:16 - 00:11:59:02 Joey Hamilton Yeah. It's I mean, I've always considered a try 4 to 500 shops out here. Yeah. Yeah. So I always seen like we do have a lot of shops you know. So it's and with the, the casinos and stuff like that in the malls, like I'm in a mall like it's, it is, it's crazy to think that that we're on the strip and in, a huge mall on the strip in Las Vegas.

00:11:59:06 - 00:12:23:01 Joey Hamilton Yeah, but now it's common. Yeah. You know, it's. Yeah. So, yeah, it's so crazy. But with that being said, now every casino want to shop, every mall want to shop. And that's where this expansion of what's going on is, is difficult because I've got three within a two minute walk of me probably now. Yeah. You know, so it's, it's hard to compete with, with some of these people.

00:12:23:01 - 00:12:28:12 Joey Hamilton But it's, you know, it's still do your best and. Yeah. Hope they come back.

00:12:28:17 - 00:12:33:13 Austin Spencer Yeah yeah yeah yeah. No doubt it was something you jumped around. You were like over. You went to like you don't.

00:12:33:13 - 00:12:53:23 Joey Hamilton Want to be shopped. Yeah. That's a club. That's. I've always worked in a tourist style shop. Yeah. So even in Florida I worked on the Gulf Coast and Fort Walton Beach. It, tattoos forever. And literally that was like the spring break for Alabama. Georgia, like all these places. And they were just. So I've always been in that high trafficked tourist area.

00:12:54:01 - 00:13:09:03 Joey Hamilton So when I came out here, I'm like, yeah, what's the best spot I can work at? So then I went to club after Starlite and I worked a club for five years, like, okay, Sean and me were pretty good buddies and, you know, and I actually try to get them to be partners in revolt. Really? Yeah.

00:13:09:03 - 00:13:15:12 Joey Hamilton When I took all business plan to them and stuff and, Yeah, yeah, we had a meeting, and it's like it just didn't work out. But, you know.

00:13:15:14 - 00:13:18:13 Austin Spencer I've been conversing back and forth with him. I'm trying to get him on.

00:13:18:13 - 00:13:26:14 Joey Hamilton Yeah. No, he's. Yeah. I mean, we've had our differences and. Yeah. Yeah. Same with Mario. But it's all like now it's like, you know, hey whatever. Yeah yeah.

00:13:26:14 - 00:13:34:16 Austin Spencer Yeah, yeah. We're all getting through the world of tattooing and we're all artists and we're all sensitive at times and business owners and stressed and yeah, it's definitely anxious.

00:13:34:17 - 00:13:49:10 Joey Hamilton You never knew this, but I actually was if it didn't work out where I was at, like the I was going to come to your shop, really. I was like literally going, this is if I have to go off the strip. Yeah, I'm going to this shop. Yeah. This is because you have you back then you had a great reputation.

00:13:49:10 - 00:14:02:01 Joey Hamilton Yeah. You know what I mean. So I don't know if you would hire me, but I'm just saying I was literally hired you. That was my brain was like, okay, studio 21, is it if I, if I am not going to make it in, in, in one of those shops? And then I.

00:14:02:01 - 00:14:18:07 Austin Spencer Do I take great pride in our shop kind of. I've always kind of described it as like being a bridge for Las Vegas, for tattooers that are on the strip, that sometimes kind of had the tendency to get stuck. Yeah, and not build local clientele. But yeah, and they can come to us and then we can still provide them with a good clientele base.

00:14:18:07 - 00:14:38:03 Austin Spencer And then as they build their own local clientele, they obviously like move on or go to go do whatever. But that's kind of like it seems it's, you know how it is. It's sad to see someone go when they come and they work with you for years and you develop a friendship and sometimes emotions get flared or whatever, and it doesn't work out as perfect as it always should, but it's just the way it is, you know, and.

00:14:38:05 - 00:14:39:00 Joey Hamilton We just, I mean, I.

00:14:39:00 - 00:14:40:16 Austin Spencer Think.

00:14:40:18 - 00:14:55:20 Joey Hamilton Ten years or 11 years, I just say one. Yeah. And he decided to move on. And there's like, you know, some of the guys are like, oh, man, we're losing. Am I going? We've lost a lot of great guys. They they want to move on. Like that's why I've moved on from other shop. So I understand that mentality.

00:14:55:20 - 00:15:05:13 Joey Hamilton Like he wants to be pushed talent wise. So that's kind of you know where it's at. And yeah the best of luck to him. And you know if he needs it there's a touch up. Yeah. Oh yeah it's like.

00:15:05:14 - 00:15:06:03 Austin Spencer Oh my dude.

00:15:06:03 - 00:15:22:15 Joey Hamilton Like it was it was funny because when we first hired him we didn't even hire him. We were saying, we said go. Me and, Walter interviewed him and then we're like, hey, go away for a month and work on these three things. And he did came back and showed us and we hired him and and the kids just skyrocketed, like on talent wise.

00:15:22:15 - 00:15:23:16 Joey Hamilton So, yeah. Do you think.

00:15:23:20 - 00:15:37:08 Austin Spencer That military background help you deal with that type of stuff too? And, I don't know how to say just, you know, just like get you through those difficult times, be open minded enough to see that there's, like, value in what you're being taught, but keep your fucking mouth shut. Kind of like.

00:15:37:12 - 00:15:58:00 Joey Hamilton Or you just know I was secretly, like, hating. I was like, what the fuck? This guy's got no world experience, you know? And he's bossing me around, and. And I thought I knew better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I did have the respect for him to to keep my mouth shut to an extent. But me, my mean other guy, Jason Stefan was just like, every night strip club, like.

00:15:58:00 - 00:16:15:21 Joey Hamilton Yeah, he would, he would always time it like, okay, you guys can go home and there'll be about 30 minutes left. Yeah. And we'd haul ass over there and, you know, and he's always like, you know, this is the thing about our, you know, our craft industry, whatever is that. Nobody teaches you anything. No financial stuff?

00:16:16:02 - 00:16:16:08 Austin Spencer No.

00:16:16:08 - 00:16:34:00 Joey Hamilton I know how to how to how to, especially in these modern times, how to actually physically run a store, how to run a business. Yeah. Like there's so many things lacking in our experience. And like you're saying you're you're using AI or whatever tool to try and better yourself and better what you're doing for the rest of everybody else.

00:16:34:02 - 00:16:35:14 Joey Hamilton And in your store shop.

00:16:35:14 - 00:16:36:09 Austin Spencer Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:16:36:09 - 00:16:40:10 Joey Hamilton It's crazy that people look down on that because, yeah, there's no training.

00:16:40:10 - 00:17:00:01 Austin Spencer And they say some shit like, oh, you should hire somebody else. I'm like, okay, so I have a full time Google manager like Nads manager. And they use the same fucking tools I use. I have a coach that I paid to help me build and understand how to build my website more, to be more converting. And just like, yeah, I don't know how to do that shit like there is.

00:17:00:01 - 00:17:02:15 Joey Hamilton And we should, we should. I mean, they use.

00:17:02:15 - 00:17:03:17 Austin Spencer The fucking tools to.

00:17:03:17 - 00:17:14:23 Joey Hamilton Yeah. You know, I figure I, somebody said it best, but they were just like, you can't be an owner of a tattoo shop and a full time tattoo artist. And that's where I'm struggling. That's because I still tattoo six days a week and I'm like, that's so.

00:17:14:23 - 00:17:18:14 Austin Spencer Crazy to me. And I'm like, super impressed by it.

00:17:18:16 - 00:17:41:17 Joey Hamilton It's it's, held together by duct tape and a lot of fucking fingers trying to plug the holes. Oh my God. Yeah. It is difficult. Like, it is not especially being where we're at. We have four locations. So yeah, other states we deal with and just even that like knowing the laws or regulations in different states, the health shit, but just financial tax shit and or what is not is not finite.

00:17:41:17 - 00:17:42:01 Joey Hamilton What is it.

00:17:42:03 - 00:17:43:04 Austin Spencer Just all the tax stuff. Yeah.

00:17:43:04 - 00:17:49:22 Joey Hamilton Just different states and you're just like, oh I didn't know how to do that, you know what I mean? Like if we hire lawyers to do it, but yep.

00:17:50:03 - 00:17:52:04 Austin Spencer They it. Yeah.

00:17:52:04 - 00:17:52:12 Joey Hamilton Yeah.

00:17:52:12 - 00:18:09:07 Austin Spencer And then you need a CPA in every state and then need to know each business separately. Yeah, it's a lot dude. And yeah, I, I have my own insecurities with not tattooing a whole lot these days. But I'm also like realize that like, my bandwidth, my brain can't handle like, all these different types of things. Like, I don't even know how you do it with your four stores now.

00:18:09:07 - 00:18:13:08 Austin Spencer Yeah, yeah. And that's wild. But you have a partner that helps.

00:18:13:10 - 00:18:32:19 Joey Hamilton Manage like another managing member. And then I have a GM. Oh, I've always tried to get a really good business CEO and I thought I, you know, it's. Yeah, it's never worked out, I bet. And it's crazy because you think, oh, this guy sells himself as this person. Yeah. And then they come through and you're just like, what are you doing?

00:18:32:23 - 00:18:48:16 Joey Hamilton Oh, shit. Yeah. This happened like, twice. And then, and my GM, he he does a decent job. It's good. Like he's been was ever since day one. Yeah. So I appreciate what he's done but still, like, it's like he can do. He is not a you know business grads laws you know whatever I.

00:18:48:16 - 00:19:05:18 Austin Spencer Know and that and then I know I've had the tendency to get out sold by those type of people too, you know. But yeah. And like it's so easy for us as artists, you're like, I just want to focus on the tattooing. And then, you're then you're everything you're doing is you're you're learning all the time, every little step outside a tattoo.

00:19:05:19 - 00:19:18:00 Austin Spencer I mean, you're you're learning and tattooing too, but imagine like, yeah, like you, you're just going to learn how to run a business. I just remember the largest struggles for me personally were, managing people.

00:19:18:03 - 00:19:18:12 Joey Hamilton Yeah.

00:19:18:16 - 00:19:34:22 Austin Spencer Is incredibly difficult. Yeah. And then you go from your peers to. Then you're working side by side, and then now they work for you. Technically. You know, I always like, did like the word it like that, but, like, you're still working in my world. Like, these are my rules that I came up with. You agreed to them before you came on.

00:19:35:00 - 00:19:38:21 Austin Spencer Yeah, and it's fucking hard, dude. Yeah, I think people are comfortable and they.

00:19:38:21 - 00:19:59:09 Joey Hamilton Yeah, I think that's a problem with Vegas in general is because the casino shops heavily rely on somebody else to sell your stuff for you. Yeah. So when you're, you know, when you're getting into these other shops and you need to sell yourself, they kind of forget how to sell themselves. Yeah. You know what I mean. Just a little bit.

00:19:59:09 - 00:20:09:20 Joey Hamilton And that's where, you know, the traffic or you got to really like hey, let's the team part. Like, hey, come on guys, less people are walking in the door. Let's get it going. You know. So you go from.

00:20:09:22 - 00:20:12:21 Austin Spencer Tattooer to motivator manager.

00:20:12:23 - 00:20:14:06 Joey Hamilton Who will trying to motivate what is.

00:20:14:07 - 00:20:16:06 Austin Spencer Advertising work and how to.

00:20:16:08 - 00:20:42:17 Joey Hamilton That's what I'm saying. Those I've always really wanted to focus on the tattoo part and I've never I don't want to be the owner slash business guy. I don't want to be that. I love being the entrepreneur and thinking about like, yeah, what can I do? Like that's where this goal came in. That's where I had med tat, where I'm, you know, medical tattoo supply work, some great products, but I've never had the strong business guy.

00:20:42:19 - 00:20:49:00 Joey Hamilton You know, when I first opened revolt two, I was the before Instagram Live Facebook Live. We had seven cameras.

00:20:49:02 - 00:20:50:11 Austin Spencer I remember that, yeah.

00:20:50:13 - 00:21:07:23 Joey Hamilton So what a great marketing tool. Like they would come in and they would say like, I want to be on camera right now. Yeah. And so we would, you know, usually in the camera over and people, they could contact everybody they knew. Yeah. To watch them would get tattooed live like it was such a cool thing, you know.

00:21:07:23 - 00:21:22:14 Austin Spencer And you weren't, they weren't afraid. Like, I don't know, you know how just tattooers in the culture. Like, it just seems like there's so much pressure of you not to do anything different than other people are doing, you know? And when you do those things, you get this backlash.

00:21:22:14 - 00:21:38:19 Joey Hamilton That, yeah, I don't know if we got backlash from cameras, but I get it. But, because it was like something cool. And the next thing you know, like Facebook Live, nobody's like Facebook Live. Oh my God, look. Oh, yeah, I do all day. Yeah, but now it's just full circle. Now it's like constantly having to create content.

00:21:38:21 - 00:21:56:22 Joey Hamilton And that's where this huge divide is that in our industry is like, you know, I've seen, it's like almost daily somebody quitting of 20 years and you're just like, I don't want to do this. You know, the pressures of continuing in this field is is great because now you have to you have to either grow with it.

00:21:57:00 - 00:22:16:12 Joey Hamilton Yeah. Or figure another way out of how how can I get people to see my stuff? Yeah. How can I? The word of mouth is especially out here. It's like it's harder and harder. Everything's harder to get clients in your chair, you know, like, yeah, I was booked out six months straight, like six days a week. Yeah. So when somebody says, I'm booked out, like, what, three days?

00:22:16:12 - 00:22:30:13 Joey Hamilton I'm going out six days a week for six months? Yeah. Constantly tattoo on and, and now it's like, I have stuff open in two weeks. Yeah. You know what I mean? So the deal is here, but, you know, how can we. Yeah. Stay busy.

00:22:30:15 - 00:22:40:07 Austin Spencer Now, one thing I've found that, like, by forcing myself to step away from actually tattooing every day, it did give me. Although I didn't make any fucking money like.

00:22:40:09 - 00:22:40:14 Joey Hamilton

00:22:40:16 - 00:23:10:14 Austin Spencer Which everybody thinks are fucking rich when you own a tattoo shop. Yeah, we both know that that's not true. Yeah, I, I got to really, like, focus on and put myself in the, like, a front position to help all of the guys and gals, like, get people in their seats, and. And I couldn't have done both of those, you know, like, I'm stressed this week because I like on Thursday, I'm starting like a need ankle sleeve and I'm rusty lately, you know, like just sitting down and thinking about all the drawing I have to do.

00:23:10:14 - 00:23:21:06 Austin Spencer I'm like, laying in bed at, like 1:00 in the morning this morning. Like, fuck, dude, like, how am I going to draw this? And how am I going to do this? And yeah, like and I'm only two. I'm not tattooing much right now, but.

00:23:21:08 - 00:23:39:12 Joey Hamilton Do you like like that's what I used to do is I would, I'm really good at composition. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because I'm a realistic, basic artist. So it's like, typically OG. I'm just thinking in my brain, and that's what I like. The subject. How do I put this here. Yeah. That there. Yeah. And then I'll go find the reference that I want to use and then put it together.

00:23:39:12 - 00:23:58:17 Austin Spencer And I spend a lot of my time doing like, real like kind of scene driven, like story kind of telling of these cartoon characters, like skeletons. I call them Skelly dudes, like, in these weird worlds. So I would think more about, like, the details of, like, if the skeleton is going to be sitting here, can you have like a, a scorpion behind him?

00:23:58:17 - 00:24:02:02 Austin Spencer And can the scorpion be wearing a cowboy hat, you know, or something weird? I don't know any.

00:24:02:03 - 00:24:13:01 Joey Hamilton Illustrator like this. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just honest question. Like how many people, how many artists do you think are actual, like a true artist illustrator in this profession?

00:24:13:01 - 00:24:14:15 Austin Spencer Pretty minimal these days.

00:24:14:15 - 00:24:15:20 Joey Hamilton Yeah, I would say 1%.

00:24:15:20 - 00:24:21:16 Austin Spencer Yeah. I just did a video. It's true. Yeah. Right. Minimal. Right now the iPad itself.

00:24:21:17 - 00:24:23:13 Joey Hamilton Is still drawing the iPad. I mean, I'm not.

00:24:23:13 - 00:24:38:16 Austin Spencer Saying no no, no no. Yeah I guess I just mean like, yeah. I don't know, like the iPad. I feel like made a lot of people lazy. Right. It was too easy to grab a Google at Google Image and trace the shape of the skull instead of drawing that skull a thousand times and developing your own style and everything.

00:24:38:18 - 00:24:53:01 Austin Spencer I always had my own insecurities too, about my style. Like I had a lot of people talk shit about it because it was different and it wasn't traditional, but it wasn't new school. And I don't know, I just I just finally, like, decided I was just like, this is what comes out of me. This is what I think of in bed.

00:24:53:01 - 00:25:04:02 Austin Spencer So I'm just going to do it. And I became like super successful of it. And like you said, I was booked out. I think at one point in time, eight months in advance, at five days a week, you know, and sometimes six because.

00:25:04:04 - 00:25:05:08 Joey Hamilton I can't say no.

00:25:05:10 - 00:25:06:04 Austin Spencer Can't say no.

00:25:06:04 - 00:25:09:01 Joey Hamilton You know, you're my buddy. Let's go. Yeah, I'll get you on my birthday.

00:25:09:01 - 00:25:29:16 Austin Spencer And I did that for a really, really long time. And I got, I got to the point where I was only doing my style of illustration. So super grateful for that. But then Black and gray had its boom dude. Yeah. Like mid, mid 2000. I don't know, like ten, 12, 15 or something. And it seemed like all of my clients like started showing up with like these black and gray realism portraits or black and gray this.

00:25:29:16 - 00:25:51:19 Austin Spencer And I was like, oh fuck, I don't know how to do black and gray, you know? And then I saw my clientele kind of drop like big time. So that's kind of also the time when I decided, all right, like, I should be taking the knee of this bit of slow time to focus on my business and trying to figure out how to learn and grow and build that, you know, and I still only have one shot, but I take great pride in the fact that it's like.

00:25:51:21 - 00:25:52:12 Joey Hamilton It does a nice job.

00:25:52:12 - 00:25:54:23 Austin Spencer It seems to be run well, you know, like we.

00:25:54:23 - 00:25:59:02 Joey Hamilton Have some of the artists are great. Like I said, we've always had to have known a couple of those guys for a while.

00:25:59:06 - 00:26:16:07 Austin Spencer Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've turned down opportunities to open shops in the casinos. You know, we had an opportunity to open up one in the MGM at another time. And the Treasure Island reached out to us, and I don't know what it was. I just fucking chickened out. Like at the last second, I, I was too afraid of, like, having.

00:26:16:13 - 00:26:17:22 Austin Spencer It's two different worlds to.

00:26:18:03 - 00:26:27:13 Joey Hamilton Like, two do a lot of money. Like people don't realize, like you're not going to open. I opened my first shop for $12,000. Yeah. That's crazy. And now the shops are 250 to 500. I thought.

00:26:27:14 - 00:26:28:00 Austin Spencer Yeah.

00:26:28:02 - 00:26:29:23 Joey Hamilton And you're just like. You're just like.

00:26:30:01 - 00:26:35:02 Austin Spencer And the casinos want you. You pay all the build out. Oh, yeah. But you don't own anything and you don't fucking like them.

00:26:35:02 - 00:26:50:14 Joey Hamilton I give you 30,000 for the build out, but it's nothing. It's nothing. Yeah. You know. And you'll get to, you know, you're starting in a. Yeah. That was what I liked about my first shop was like you literally such a low entry level. And then day one, you're making money. Yeah. That was like, this is awesome.

00:26:50:19 - 00:26:52:09 Austin Spencer That's why I got into tattooing, though.

00:26:52:09 - 00:27:08:00 Joey Hamilton And then you come out here and it's like, oh, it's, you know, the builds $400,000 and now it takes you two years to even break, even if that's if you're lucky. Like it's. Yeah, this it is not, like this big thing that people know. You know.

00:27:08:02 - 00:27:23:18 Austin Spencer I our first shop, we, we spent like, 30 grand to build out, you know, and then and that was full contractors came in and built the walls and fucking even had an architect lay out like some squares, you know, we did it regular shit. But. And then our second one was just through the fucking roof, like almost 300 grand.

00:27:23:18 - 00:27:25:19 Austin Spencer Oh, damn. No. And then and then I.

00:27:25:19 - 00:27:26:14 Joey Hamilton That's off the strip.

00:27:26:14 - 00:27:37:11 Austin Spencer So that's even crazier. Yeah, I paid myself 50%. Or just because I felt like I was just pay myself the exact same as my artist. Yeah. And I did that for like seven years. Yeah, I did.

00:27:37:11 - 00:27:47:04 Joey Hamilton It for the first five, a revolt. I paid myself just a little bit more than what I was paying anybody else. Yeah, but they could actually I did a sliding scale bonus stuff. They worked hard and got.

00:27:47:06 - 00:28:04:14 Austin Spencer X amount a week or whatever. You get more exact stuff. Yes. You did. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. It's it's not fucking easy to do that. But yeah for everybody out there that, that you know, thinks that it looks glamorous to, you know, at a youngster like you, you think to like, oh, opening shops is slowed down a little.

00:28:04:14 - 00:28:07:04 Austin Spencer I mean, we're seeing a lot of them closed, but, I don't know.

00:28:07:06 - 00:28:09:09 Joey Hamilton Hard to say. Yeah, I know, I spend.

00:28:09:09 - 00:28:09:21 Austin Spencer All my time.

00:28:10:00 - 00:28:27:14 Joey Hamilton With me, break off and go open their own shops. Yes. Yeah, yeah. You know, most people when I leave my shop, they'll move out of town because I'm pretty easy to work for. Like I don't dictate anything. Like literally I've had guys walk in and two hours later walk out on their shifts, like, you're just like, hey, see you tomorrow.

00:28:27:16 - 00:28:28:03 Joey Hamilton You know.

00:28:28:05 - 00:28:30:16 Austin Spencer How's how's that, that inner struggle.

00:28:30:16 - 00:28:31:14 Joey Hamilton Because. Oh, it is.

00:28:31:14 - 00:28:42:21 Austin Spencer It's very tough. Yeah. You know, you're finding that fine line of, like, learning how to communicate. Yeah. In those tough time. Like, artists are just notoriously not good at it. I think most humans aren't.

00:28:42:21 - 00:28:43:19 Joey Hamilton Yeah.

00:28:43:21 - 00:28:44:11 Austin Spencer It's it's.

00:28:44:11 - 00:29:02:18 Joey Hamilton Very our, our field of art. Our artists are definitely they're artists. So they're going to be fickle. They're going to be you know how you know how to say you the most are great. Most are pleasant to be around, but some are not. You know, just like you. Just as the mentality got to just get through the day and get a job, you know.

00:29:02:18 - 00:29:19:12 Austin Spencer Yeah, I've, I've worked with some very difficult humans in my day. Yeah. Especially a youngster to like I opened up my shop when I was 23 years old. Know those hiring guys when they were 35, 41 tattooing way longer than me? Yeah. And just like day one were just they wanted the to work with you because they knew you.

00:29:19:12 - 00:29:34:06 Austin Spencer They can make money at your shop, but they didn't want to respect you. And I'm like, I'm not like an egomaniac. I'm not looking for like, crazy respect. I just like you said, I just just can you please just show up and, like, just be kind of kind to the customers? I'm more concerned with, you know, you could be rude to me, but.

00:29:34:11 - 00:29:51:02 Austin Spencer Right. Just don't be rude to the customers, dude. Like, we're still we're trying to, like, we're trying to break the mold, too. We opened up in 2003 here. We're kind of trying to break the mold of the old school type shop, you know, and bright and fun and clean and friendly and and we got a lot of shit for that to, you know.

00:29:51:02 - 00:30:00:01 Joey Hamilton To me, like, you can never win. I guess you could be like, the cutting edge guy, or you could be like, yeah, I think you're cutting edge. But then everybody hates it because you're cutting edge. Yeah. You know.

00:30:00:02 - 00:30:12:06 Austin Spencer Then if you're following the form of what, everybody tells you to do in your community, like, are you really ever going to stand out? Are you ever going to do something like when you are trying to push and trying to learn and be.

00:30:12:06 - 00:30:27:01 Joey Hamilton I've never been there. I don't think you're that guy. I'm not that guy. Like I want to be. I don't want to be. I don't need my face to be on everything. That's. Yeah, the misconception I've heard about myself is that I wanted to be famous. I wanted to be this and that. Am I never. I'm okay with it.

00:30:27:02 - 00:30:32:06 Austin Spencer You saw opportunity? Yeah. You were just like, you showed up and you're like, oh, cool. I like to tattoo. I'll fucking work with you guys.

00:30:32:06 - 00:30:39:03 Joey Hamilton There's no pressure on me personally. Like, I can handle a camera right here in my face, and I'm not going to get wavered by it.

00:30:39:07 - 00:30:50:19 Austin Spencer When you're also, like promoting your business, you're promoting something that you put in work on and got exposure from. So I always thought, like, I have a buddy who's, he won, Hell's Kitchen nice.

00:30:50:19 - 00:30:52:10 Joey Hamilton And he helped me too. Yeah.

00:30:52:12 - 00:31:00:07 Austin Spencer Here's this little tiny fucking shop. And he has no information about himself and his accomplishments. And I'm like, it's not bragging, dude.

00:31:00:07 - 00:31:03:10 Joey Hamilton It's like there's a to use it for marketing. You don't get me wrong. Yeah. Because I.

00:31:03:10 - 00:31:05:01 Austin Spencer Think. Or why. What is your.

00:31:05:02 - 00:31:07:17 Joey Hamilton Yeah, it's a visual,

00:31:07:19 - 00:31:09:09 Austin Spencer Association, you know, like.

00:31:09:11 - 00:31:25:09 Joey Hamilton The way I see it. Oh, my. Yeah, I just for years I never put up a banner with my for. Yeah, I did for years I never put up a banner with my face on it. So I mean, oh, so maybe two years ago I put one up forward facing them all. Yeah. Yeah. And now daily. Oh, shit.

00:31:25:09 - 00:31:29:07 Joey Hamilton Walter was on there and Joey was on there, and they came on the store. Yeah. So it was just the two weeks.

00:31:29:07 - 00:31:47:11 Austin Spencer Them feel comfortable as customers and like you and and they now see it as an opportunity to kind of maybe even like especially being in Vegas like come in and see something, you know, they're from a lot of people from the Midwest or whatever. And they've never really been exposed to, like, anybody that's been on TV or some shit, you know, and they just get comfortable and they're like, cool, I want to come in and check it out.

00:31:47:11 - 00:31:59:21 Austin Spencer Like, that's what you need. Like as a business owner, you need to take on any and every opportunity to get someone just to walk in your store, correct and be grateful for it, and then treat them with respect. And then that's like the formula for success.

00:31:59:21 - 00:32:11:07 Joey Hamilton Hopefully like always. Like I always use this line on people when like, why would you open in a mall? And I said, because it's a bigger strip mall. Yeah. All tattoo shops are in strip malls typically. Yeah. So now we're just in a way bigger strip mall.

00:32:11:07 - 00:32:21:04 Austin Spencer Totally. And there was like this weird, stigma too, about tattoo shops being in malls back in the day, you know? So like, yeah. How did that work out? Like, how did you end up in.

00:32:21:04 - 00:32:26:11 Joey Hamilton That in fashion show? They actually came to us, okay. Because we had to shop off the strip and oh yeah.

00:32:26:11 - 00:32:27:02 Austin Spencer You're from the.

00:32:27:02 - 00:32:37:06 Joey Hamilton Heartland for five years. Repression, hard rock. Okay. And, that was such a good spot, really. But it was 4000ft² with seven, seven booths. Yeah, it's so silly.

00:32:37:08 - 00:32:39:23 Austin Spencer That's a whole new question to you about mismanagement of space.

00:32:39:23 - 00:32:47:19 Joey Hamilton And so, I mean, I didn't want out there like, yeah, I don't know if I would have put 20 guys inside of there. But yeah, I mean like seven I thought was a lot. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean.

00:32:47:19 - 00:32:49:06 Austin Spencer So that's the most I've ever had.

00:32:49:06 - 00:32:52:01 Joey Hamilton But yeah, it's, it was I don't know where I was going to go with.

00:32:52:01 - 00:32:53:13 Austin Spencer Oh, so they came to you and they. Yeah, they.

00:32:53:14 - 00:33:11:22 Joey Hamilton Came to be the actors to to go to Meadows Mall first, which was kind of like, well, let's, you know, okay, we'll try it out. And we went in there, but there was an uphill battle with that because the zoning, we actually got everything approved. And then the zoning primary says you're not even zoned. So it took us a full year to get the zoning in.

00:33:11:22 - 00:33:13:14 Joey Hamilton It causes the next $100,000.

00:33:13:20 - 00:33:18:02 Austin Spencer Yeah. And everybody who's listening like a meadows mall is just more of like a old Roman law. Like.

00:33:18:02 - 00:33:20:23 Joey Hamilton Yeah, they call it Ghettos Mall for a reason.

00:33:21:01 - 00:33:35:14 Austin Spencer And the deciding show mall is like a massive, it was like one of our first, like, outside of a casino. Major shopping districts on the Las Vegas Boulevard. Yeah, right across from the Wynn. So, you know, you have a fantastic location in the Venetians right there.

00:33:35:14 - 00:33:53:06 Joey Hamilton Yeah. Yep. It's all surrounded right there. Yeah. But, and it all it's kind of funny because once we even opened up that and we once we opened fashion show, they literally came to us and said, the mall company then said, how, like, where do you want to go? Yeah. Like there's no, no financials brokers. No nothing. Well, that's.

00:33:53:06 - 00:33:57:15 Austin Spencer Something that you even knew existed like that. Multiple malls are owned by the same companies.

00:33:57:15 - 00:34:16:19 Joey Hamilton Like not really. Yeah. I, I knew Simon Malls because Simon Malls is huge. But I was never like looking to like just target them. But then I was like man what the traffic in these malls. Or if as long as it's an A-plus mall I could travel is crazy. Yeah. Like you're getting a lot of, you know, you just you're paying the rent, but I call it rent slash marketing.

00:34:16:19 - 00:34:18:00 Joey Hamilton Yeah. Thousand because. Because you're.

00:34:18:00 - 00:34:19:04 Austin Spencer Location. Location. Exactly.

00:34:19:04 - 00:34:30:10 Joey Hamilton That's we're getting people walking in the door every day because of where we're at. Yeah. And I don't have to pay that even though we have we've paid thousands of dollars for marketing on the side. Also just to try and compete with some of these people.

00:34:30:10 - 00:34:37:21 Austin Spencer But yeah. So you jumped in and then, you went into the fashion show and then you later went into, well, the mall.

00:34:37:23 - 00:34:42:01 Joey Hamilton Yeah. Well, no, Meadows was first. Oh yeah. They said go again and.

00:34:42:02 - 00:34:42:12 Austin Spencer Didn't go through.

00:34:42:12 - 00:35:00:11 Joey Hamilton Yeah. And prove you can do it and then we'll let you open fashion show. Oh okay. So that was then. Then we did fashion show. And then Walter wanted to move to Salt Lake. So we opened a store in Salt Lake City, okay. And then we had a store in Lake Tahoe. This is crazy to like things just I don't want to say follow my lap, but you put out the good energy.

00:35:00:11 - 00:35:15:17 Joey Hamilton Yeah, yeah. Good stuff comes back. Yeah, I was, I just my biggest belief and, And we got an email from the hard Rock Casino in Lake Tahoe. Hey, you guys want to open a store? Oh, cool. And I went out to a lot of people, but we took the opportunity for $3,000 rent next to the check in desk.

00:35:15:21 - 00:35:16:11 Austin Spencer Oh, shit.

00:35:16:11 - 00:35:33:15 Joey Hamilton So they had to walk past our shop to get to it. So, long story short, there, the the one of our best guys was from Houston, and, and, they sold the casino. The casino kind of tanked, so we couldn't really there's no traffic. So we closed that shop. But that guy went back to Houston and he was like, hey, let's open a store in Houston.

00:35:33:17 - 00:35:55:11 Joey Hamilton And the mall had five A-plus malls in Houston. Yeah, and Houston's are fourth largest city. So it's like, okay, let's open one. And then we opened the second one, hoping that it was as good as the first one. But it's kind of been the Debbie Downer one a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's it's all marketing. Like, if you have the dollars to spend on marketing in Houston, you would kill it.

00:35:55:16 - 00:35:57:13 Joey Hamilton We just don't have the marketing.

00:35:57:15 - 00:35:59:12 Austin Spencer So it's like big cities. We have our like.

00:35:59:12 - 00:36:01:06 Joey Hamilton Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the same as here.

00:36:01:09 - 00:36:02:13 Austin Spencer Too in Houston too.

00:36:02:13 - 00:36:07:13 Joey Hamilton In Houston too. But there they're like literally an hour. I mean they're not I'm not trying.

00:36:07:13 - 00:36:09:19 Austin Spencer To Houston is a monster. I'm from the Americas.

00:36:09:21 - 00:36:12:22 Joey Hamilton Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. Meadows Mall and Woodlands Mall okay.

00:36:12:22 - 00:36:14:23 Austin Spencer Yeah. Dang. That's wild.

00:36:15:01 - 00:36:15:07 Joey Hamilton Yeah.

00:36:15:11 - 00:36:19:22 Austin Spencer And so now you're managing this. You're managing your full time career.

00:36:20:00 - 00:36:31:04 Joey Hamilton Well, I don't say manage because I'm not. I don't want to take credit. I am like guiding as much as possible. Yeah. Mean like asking questions to my GM and going okay, what are we doing on this? Yeah. How are we doing that. Yeah.

00:36:31:04 - 00:36:32:05 Austin Spencer You're still working with.

00:36:32:05 - 00:36:43:11 Joey Hamilton It because I'm trying to micromanage. But you know, he's doing all the paperwork, all that stuff. But I'm just like, you know, trust me, if I was doing all the work he's doing, plus I would, I would go crazy. Yeah. Like, it's.

00:36:43:12 - 00:36:45:18 Austin Spencer The little old grade hair. Yeah. And I am right here.

00:36:45:19 - 00:36:49:21 Joey Hamilton I just my wife made me dye my hair. So.

00:36:49:23 - 00:37:07:01 Austin Spencer That's awesome. Damn. So then, Yeah, that is, that is just mind blowing to me. I was, like, super excited just to talk to you about that and like, the process of that and obviously there's been some ups and downs with it all and everything. Yeah. Do you have goals to continue to expand the revolt brand?

00:37:07:03 - 00:37:27:14 Joey Hamilton No, not right now. Like we're just trying to stay status quo right now and just yeah, yeah, see where this goes. Like that's really where we're at. I this is a good question because I've always had goals like, that's how everything in my life has worked out is like when I first started tattooing, I was like, I want to be known in the state of Florida.

00:37:27:16 - 00:37:43:20 Joey Hamilton Oh, cool. So I started doing all these conventions and, you know, Dino Cook was doing my forearm. I had my mom's portrait. She had passed away, and, he was doing my portrait at a show in Tampa, and prick magazine came up and was like, yeah, do you know, we got to do an interview with you? And this is so cool.

00:37:43:20 - 00:38:06:13 Joey Hamilton And and then they didn't even pay attention to me, you know what I mean? I won't be tattooing maybe five years. And then I won by five awards, like, back to back all portraits. Yeah. So yeah, they literally come right. Chuck came right back by. Hey Joey, we need to interview you also. So I was like, cool. So that was, you know, this this thing of motivation and drive and goals.

00:38:06:14 - 00:38:20:19 Joey Hamilton It's lacking in our thing, you know, in our industry, you know? So I feel like I've always had that and I always want that to succeed. But right now do I have a goal. The goal is to survive. Yeah. Yeah. And that's it. You know, and still these last couple.

00:38:20:19 - 00:38:22:07 Austin Spencer Years especially dude.

00:38:22:07 - 00:38:42:15 Joey Hamilton I know I had the last two years, I had my best two years. Really. That's all I really good you know personally. Yeah. As a business. No. But personally yeah I'm like I it's, it's hard to. And maybe that's the balance. I gotta learn better like yourself as like how do I step back and and focus on other things besides tattooing my family?

00:38:42:15 - 00:38:45:21 Joey Hamilton You know, that's it. My my family in tattooing. That's the two things that I know.

00:38:45:21 - 00:38:50:00 Austin Spencer I just say I don't really have any friends. Like, like, other than my people. I work with them. I just got to.

00:38:50:01 - 00:38:53:08 Joey Hamilton Dinner sometime because, dude, I'm telling you, we'll get some hook ups and.

00:38:53:10 - 00:39:02:08 Austin Spencer I would love that, actually. Yeah. So then your newest project you've been working on is the app. Yeah. So the internet work? Yes. And yeah. Tell us a little bit about that.

00:39:02:08 - 00:39:19:03 Joey Hamilton So, I'll just I'm going to draw this out for a second. So the whole point of it was because I was paying so much money for marketing. Yeah. Like I literally thousands and thousands of dollars a month. And I'm like, the people couldn't really tell me how I was getting my leads. That was my leads coming from all this stuff.

00:39:19:05 - 00:39:44:00 Joey Hamilton So, you know, in my shop we have iPads that you just sit there and you look through people's portfolios and I'm like, how can I recreate this nationwide or worldwide and make it where it's a tool that artists can use to get bookings, like literally just get consultations or whatever. So, I started thinking about it, has the meetings form the company, and then I brought boxes on board.

00:39:44:02 - 00:40:04:01 Joey Hamilton Really good friend of mine and his wife are really good friends, so but she's also tied into Tassel Eternal, like all these brands, which I'm actually sponsored by a lot of them too. Yeah, but I was like, you know, because it was a two faceted thing where I wanted to give the artist as much as possible, give them discounts on supplies and give them, you know, visibility.

00:40:04:05 - 00:40:21:18 Joey Hamilton Yeah. So we just created, a swipe based system, almost like Tinder, where somebody would just download the app. They're in a town, they look at the app, and then it would populate artists in the area first, and you just swipe through it. If you liked your stuff, you click on it and then that's it. You could direct messages.

00:40:21:18 - 00:40:27:16 Joey Hamilton The artist okay, hey, I'm in town. I want to get this, and and that's really what it's for, like a.

00:40:27:16 - 00:40:30:16 Austin Spencer Nice, easy to use directory. Just doing a.

00:40:30:16 - 00:40:50:15 Joey Hamilton Nationwide portfolio database is what I call it. Like it's like a Angie's List slash tender slash Pinterest. Yeah, it's not Pinterest. But that was another reason too, is because if I googled traditional Rose right now on Google, it never took it back to the artist. Okay, you know what I'm saying? It's Pinterest is the same way. Pinterest is.

00:40:50:17 - 00:41:12:13 Joey Hamilton And I wanted to want you wanted to go back. Yeah. To I wanted to go back to the artists that did it. So that was the whole point was now I'm directly looking at tattoos and there's no roundabout way. It's like, that's the guy that did it, okay, this is the guy where he's at. So the artist would create a bio, you know, and it'd be transparent with their pricing because that's a no.

00:41:12:13 - 00:41:27:17 Joey Hamilton I'm trying to create the hottest lead possible. So if we're transparent as much as possible, what I want to do, how what I like to do, how much I charge, you know, here's some examples of cost per tattoo. And then when they're looking at the when they contact you, they already know everything about you. I think it's a great idea.

00:41:27:17 - 00:41:44:12 Joey Hamilton When people look at it, they're like, holy shit. Like I've had some info like not influenced, but put some people in the, you know, in tattooing that they're high up and some companies that are just like, holy shit, this is this is one that can work. You know, there's there's actually there's more and more coming on every day of similar stuff or whatever.

00:41:44:15 - 00:42:01:11 Joey Hamilton Yeah. But ours I think looks the best, acts the best, and we're still working on what's a better experience for the shops to be involved so they can kind of control stuff for the artists. I can control the messaging because we know that there most of them don't like to interact.

00:42:01:11 - 00:42:01:21 Austin Spencer Yeah.

00:42:01:21 - 00:42:12:17 Joey Hamilton So yeah, but yeah, that's so that's really the gist of it. You know it's a it's been about a year. I've got some good influencers involved. I got just in that danger not only involved.

00:42:12:19 - 00:42:14:21 Austin Spencer See the do with the big mustache. Oh yeah. Tell you about.

00:42:14:22 - 00:42:15:21 Joey Hamilton Him. Yeah. The big oh.

00:42:15:21 - 00:42:18:05 Austin Spencer He did had a beard. And then. Yeah. You changed enough recently?

00:42:18:10 - 00:42:20:01 Joey Hamilton Yeah. Now he's got the mustache.

00:42:20:01 - 00:42:23:06 Austin Spencer Yeah. How who is he in? Like, He's a sucker. Yeah.

00:42:23:06 - 00:42:36:13 Joey Hamilton He's so it was crazy. I how I met him because he was on his way to Vegas and we found each other on social media, and I just. I saw I was coming to Vegas. That dude swing by the shop, and he's like, bet. And he came by the next morning. And then it literally I said, where are you from?

00:42:36:13 - 00:42:51:17 Joey Hamilton He goes, Dustin, I'm like, no shit. I was like, I'm was, yeah, I had to shop. And and then I said, a military Amex military goes, I'm going to military too. And I said, okay, what's your job? Because ammo. And I said I was weapons because Amazon weapons always give us other shit. Okay. And it was that was it.

00:42:51:17 - 00:43:11:10 Joey Hamilton And then we became buddies. And he goes, hey, can you can you try and fix this tattoo? And then that turned into now I'm doing this whole other arm. Yeah. But it was like in the beginning steps of the app, but I was showing him, he goes, dude, I'd love to be involved. What can I do? And then that's kind of transformed into now, this weekend at the Hella Tattoo Expo, he's going to his first convention.

00:43:11:10 - 00:43:16:04 Joey Hamilton Oh, cool. So okay. But he's super cool. Like it's like what you see.

00:43:16:06 - 00:43:16:23 Austin Spencer Is what you get.

00:43:16:23 - 00:43:40:12 Joey Hamilton Is what you get. But it's also even crazier because he doesn't film a lot. He films enough to do stuff. But like, I've done a couple events in Florida at the Bike stuff, and I mean, he's on like 12 hours a day. I just 100%. And you're just like, wow, dude. And yeah, yeah, but you see, like, I've been around people on that type of stuff before and you just see the drain sometimes and you're like, you're like, Holy shit.

00:43:40:12 - 00:43:50:16 Joey Hamilton Yeah. Because I'd be like, I'd be so like wore out, like having to be on like 24, seven. Like I'm, you know, I get 30s like, hey, I suck an ink master. Am I going, yeah, cool. You know.

00:43:50:18 - 00:43:51:20 Austin Spencer This guy's like.

00:43:51:22 - 00:43:55:10 Joey Hamilton You know, salon in the wall, but just super nice guy.

00:43:55:12 - 00:43:58:05 Austin Spencer He's funny. I was watching some of his videos with my wife last night.

00:43:58:05 - 00:44:00:17 Joey Hamilton Yeah. Know he is. He's awesome with that dude.

00:44:00:17 - 00:44:13:08 Austin Spencer Like, I'm always preaching that shit. Like the fact that you just reach out, you just throw it out there, just put that energy out there. So many people are so shy and like, feel like they're intruding. And I don't know if that's. I'd. Imposter syndrome. Yeah. A lot of us have. I don't.

00:44:13:08 - 00:44:18:02 Joey Hamilton Do that a lot, honestly, I but it was just one of those things I saw he was coming, so I was like, yeah.

00:44:18:06 - 00:44:19:18 Austin Spencer Sure. He felt it. So, you know.

00:44:19:18 - 00:44:42:15 Joey Hamilton I mean, it's it was almost like I said, it was a the military connection. It's almost like tattoo and connection. Like military connection when you're in this, you've served. Oh yeah. You have that kind of bond. And that's why I do charity work for Veterans Inc. I do, you know, I do I, I'm part of a regiment which is, online gaming for veterans that or even active duty that, they, it's suicide awareness for veterans.

00:44:42:15 - 00:44:56:17 Joey Hamilton So, so they have a lot of bonding between camaraderie with the with the gamers. It's a pretty cool that's all. I try and see what I can do. Yeah. Give back wise, but, But yeah. No, Justin is, I can't wait for this weekend. Yeah. It's gonna we're gonna have a full booth. That just.

00:44:56:19 - 00:44:58:00 Austin Spencer Right? Nonsense.

00:44:58:01 - 00:45:16:15 Joey Hamilton He said he's going to go around to try and do, like, street interviews. Okay. And I, I mean, this is the I hope are the, the the artists understand what he's trying to do. Yeah. And help out. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, that's the weird part is like, this could go great. Or they could, you know, you get, well, who the fuck is this guy?

00:45:16:15 - 00:45:19:08 Joey Hamilton Was the name. I go on, he's got 21 million followers.

00:45:19:10 - 00:45:21:15 Austin Spencer His riches seem to shy to a.

00:45:21:15 - 00:45:38:04 Joey Hamilton Billion as a reach. Like if he wants to put you on camera, you want you can do it like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get out of your comfort zone for half a second. Enjoy with the process. Yeah. And then do it like I don't like to process it but I, you know, I'm like okay do it.

00:45:38:04 - 00:45:52:06 Austin Spencer You know was it you know I mean I don't know. That kind of just brings up total back to like being on TV for you. You was it intimidating as hell at first and quickly got more comfortable or was it for being on TV? Yeah. Or hard?

00:45:52:08 - 00:46:08:23 Joey Hamilton Yeah. I don't mind the cameras. Like, we can sit here and talk. All I can do this all day long. My issue with any TV show is. And I almost felt like. I hate to say it, they were grooming me to do something else. Come was because season two, Tommy Home had his own show. After my show, I did like probably 2 or 3.

00:46:09:03 - 00:46:25:10 Joey Hamilton I did a Taco Bell commercial. Really commercial for him. No shit, I didn't. I did all this stuff on. Yeah, they came to this to revolt and, like, was looking around to maybe do a show. Yeah, but I'm not good at Joey. We need to just say this. We need you to do this exactly like this. Dude, I.

00:46:25:11 - 00:46:41:22 Joey Hamilton And I'm not that guy. I'm not like, a verbatim. I'm a free thinker. Like, flowing. Like we can talk all day. Yeah, but. And they saw that on camera a couple times. When they're doing the live finales, they're like, okay, they're going to say this to you. What are you going to say back? And then that became a dialog.

00:46:41:22 - 00:46:43:03 Joey Hamilton Yeah. And I'm like.

00:46:43:04 - 00:46:45:13 Austin Spencer This is all crooked and unnatural and just.

00:46:45:13 - 00:46:48:12 Joey Hamilton Fucking that become. But they ask you, what would you say?

00:46:48:12 - 00:46:49:00 Austin Spencer And then they.

00:46:49:02 - 00:47:02:14 Joey Hamilton But no, they don't try and twist it as long as you they agree what you're going to say, that's what you're going to say. But then it comes this verbatim dialog that I have to try and memorize. Like they're going to say this, I have to say this back. Oh yeah. Being a.

00:47:02:16 - 00:47:04:05 Austin Spencer Fucking actor. Exactly.

00:47:04:07 - 00:47:13:20 Joey Hamilton Exactly. So that's why that's my only thing. I felt like I didn't ever go past what I did with them. You know, I went back and did other things. A guest judge to coaching. Oh, yeah.

00:47:13:23 - 00:47:14:17 Austin Spencer Yeah, it was just recently.

00:47:14:17 - 00:47:33:11 Joey Hamilton Yeah, yeah, D.J. kills it, right? Yeah. I mean, Ryan, actually kills it because they're very good at so good what they do. But. Yeah, but it adds I've a much respect for that job because I know it's, to critique somebody else's work. Is, is it could be fun at some times. But also then you get the backlash of, yeah, yeah.

00:47:33:11 - 00:47:46:15 Joey Hamilton You know, and you we saw that with DJ with, with him critiquing Freddy. Yeah. You know, he was like, man, I'm getting so much backlash. And you're like, you know. But at the time when you're saying it, you feel like that's the right thing to say because you're critiquing.

00:47:46:21 - 00:47:48:02 Austin Spencer Your job is a critique.

00:47:48:02 - 00:47:49:17 Joey Hamilton Yeah. You know, so yeah.

00:47:49:23 - 00:47:51:15 Austin Spencer Now Freddy works for him, right? Yeah, yeah.

00:47:51:18 - 00:48:08:06 Joey Hamilton Oh, yeah. That was all plan. Yeah, yeah, I think it was all like, hey, I'm going to, you know. Yeah. This is the funny part. When I first came to heart and Huntington, I told them, I said, you should be really trying to get the heavy hitters across the US and make this like the Yankees. Oh, I said that to me.

00:48:08:09 - 00:48:28:21 Joey Hamilton I said, you sure? And I, I got Jimmy lit walk to move out to Vegas. Yeah. I literally had Jimmy come to Vegas. This is a great spot. You'll get some visibility and that's when I was like this. You should be getting anybody like anybody at that level. Joe, Kevin Bianco, whoever else like you could get in the door to say they worked there just so you had got this crazy talented crew and I've always tried it.

00:48:28:21 - 00:48:34:14 Joey Hamilton That's my mentality is try and get the best ones, you know? But, but they didn't listen. Yeah.

00:48:34:14 - 00:48:59:06 Austin Spencer No. Yeah. Dude, we did like, so remember when Orange County Choppers was a big thing, you know? So my dad and I owned our shop together, and we opened in 2003, right when the, hardened Huntington kind of shit was kicking off and the Miami stuff was kicking off. And so we ended up being under contract three separate times with different production companies and pitching reality shows when all they wanted us to do was be just like fucking Orange County Choppers.

00:48:59:06 - 00:49:19:18 Austin Spencer And I was like, it was so fucking hard to own a business with your father. And your mother anyway. And we came in all as equal partners and, and the fact that they just wanted to, like, light fires and get people. And I didn't think that I was emotionally, emotionally intelligent enough to know how to navigate through that without letting you know, like, do.

00:49:19:18 - 00:49:35:14 Joey Hamilton You don't want that. Yeah. You don't want it. It was just remember, all I wanted to do is tattoo. Yeah. There was a show that came when I worked at club. There was a show that came through that was trying. They were. They filmed a pilot. And and thank God they went somewhere else because it was like, that's what they wanted.

00:49:35:16 - 00:49:54:08 Joey Hamilton They literally were were okay with people coming in and fuck this place and throwing all the shirts off the rack. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, dude, you don't want this in your store. No. Because then people think you're the thing. That's the common place to come when your store your dog people and trash it. Because most.

00:49:54:08 - 00:49:57:16 Austin Spencer People believe what they see on TV, they think that's how it's really so.

00:49:57:16 - 00:50:15:14 Joey Hamilton Crazy. I probably they were like, Joy, we want you to go back like you're mad and slam this door. I probably did that 20 fucking times. And I'm like, how loud can I yell fuck off and slam the door? Yeah, like I don't. I was like, I don't want to be part of this. Like, that's that was the line, I guess for me was that when it got to that point, you're just like, who?

00:50:15:15 - 00:50:32:18 Joey Hamilton This is too weird. Yeah. I don't want to be. This is not who I want to be portrayed as. I'm okay with being portrayed as how I do. I got it on Ink Master. Like being more quiet guy that just let my work speak for itself in a sense. Yeah, you know what I mean. Do good tattoos and stand up there and take your lumps.

00:50:32:20 - 00:50:44:15 Austin Spencer I kind of worry about that sometimes. Like with, I don't know, it's just nerve wrecking kind of still, I don't have as much hard time about it these days, but putting yourself out on social media, essentially, you're you're your own publication. Yeah. So you. But what is.

00:50:44:20 - 00:50:51:16 Joey Hamilton Right. I need some that for me you want to do it? Yes. You do a good man I trust me. I'm like going that's I that's what I'm saying. I don't want to be the guy on camera.

00:50:51:18 - 00:50:56:12 Austin Spencer Yeah, I don't either. I just want to not.

00:50:56:14 - 00:50:57:04 Joey Hamilton But you got it.

00:50:57:04 - 00:51:07:00 Austin Spencer I want to exist. Yeah, you know what I mean? And, like, that's all we talked about earlier is, like, you basically don't exist in the ethos of tattooing. If you're not, you.

00:51:07:00 - 00:51:08:13 Joey Hamilton Got to put yourself out there. Yeah.

00:51:08:13 - 00:51:31:16 Austin Spencer You know, like, and you just got to find your voice and get out there and try and figure out. And you know what I say? Find your voice. Like you got to figure out, like, what am I passionate about? What do I want to talk to people about? And at this point in time in my life, I'm incredibly passionate about just the business of tattooing and learning more about it and marketing and understanding like how people gain exposure.

00:51:31:16 - 00:51:54:11 Austin Spencer Because I feel deep down that it's a great responsibility of mine to get people to know about my shop so my family can eat and my people, my tattoo artists, get exposed, you know, and that can make a great living. And by the fucking car they want or by the house, like, I just don't take that lightly. So yeah, I, I do sacrifice a lot of my personal time and interest in art.

00:51:54:11 - 00:52:01:23 Joey Hamilton You creating your own show. That's exactly what it is. You're sharing yourself on social media to get to the same point that a show will give you.

00:52:01:23 - 00:52:07:03 Austin Spencer And so and that's what social media is right now. It's turning into exactly your own, right. You're a media.

00:52:07:06 - 00:52:10:18 Joey Hamilton Brand. You people will buy your merch. Buyers.

00:52:10:19 - 00:52:24:07 Austin Spencer People are going to love you. People are going to hate you. People are going to talk shit. And that. Would they do that in real life anyway? So you just kind of fucking be you and just try to have fun and like, talk to people and be okay with, like, learning and failing in front of people. Yeah. You know.

00:52:24:09 - 00:52:39:13 Joey Hamilton That's where the difference is I can do this all day long. But as soon as I'm holding the camera on myself. Yeah, yeah, I don't want to do this. Yeah, I know I can do this all day. I ghost is fine for me. It's there's no pressure. But as soon as I put the camera and you're just like, hey, hey, this is Joey.

00:52:39:19 - 00:52:42:07 Joey Hamilton Yeah. I'm like, this is I hate that. Like, I don't want to.

00:52:42:07 - 00:53:01:14 Austin Spencer I know, it's weird. I just did one last night by myself. Like I was making dinner and there was some. I had a moment and I was like, I need. I'm trying to like, get into the habit of just sharing and things that I'm happy about, you know? And I got to build this coil tattoo machine last week with one of my favorite machine builders, chef Mike, for flying irons.

00:53:01:14 - 00:53:17:12 Austin Spencer And he, he let me in his shop, and we just. I watched him build a machine for me from scratch, and it was super cool. Something I never had done before. I'm tattooing for 26 years and never built a tattoo machine. I just didn't have anybody around me ever. Yeah. So anyway, I got to do that and then I was like, I have this machine I'm super passionate about.

00:53:17:13 - 00:53:27:08 Austin Spencer I so I just did this like, am super thankful for Mike for like sharing this. So I'm like when I say find your voice. I'm just trying to figure out like that feels.

00:53:27:10 - 00:53:29:11 Joey Hamilton Yeah, it's real how it feels. Right.

00:53:29:12 - 00:53:30:12 Austin Spencer Exactly. It's kind.

00:53:30:13 - 00:53:36:15 Joey Hamilton But to get the traction like that's what just until makers. Dude, you got to start doing this. You guys post three times a day.

00:53:36:20 - 00:53:37:20 Austin Spencer Oh my God, I know that.

00:53:37:21 - 00:53:53:07 Joey Hamilton And I'm like, am I? Go on. As you can see, if you look at my social media, I don't post. I post once a fucking day. Yeah, I tattoo every day and I love my tattoos. Yeah. And sometimes I'll just do my today's jam in my story. But I'm like, I don't, I'm an artist. So when I go home and look at it, I'm not going.

00:53:53:07 - 00:53:58:07 Joey Hamilton I don't like it. I swear to God. Like, it's like that's so common for me to go.

00:53:58:09 - 00:54:00:23 Austin Spencer Like I'm scared to share it and yeah, yeah.

00:54:01:01 - 00:54:20:13 Joey Hamilton Or or the same. I'm like, I, I don't I'm not on the, the tech side of like how to even put it together too much. Yeah. So I'm not doing the panning shots and doing the eight different shots. Are you wiping on the lube and all this other shit? I'm just like I always thought, like, I'm going to show you my tattoo and you can look at it if you like, come get tattooed by me.

00:54:20:13 - 00:54:22:07 Joey Hamilton Yeah, but now it's like this direction.

00:54:22:07 - 00:54:23:00 Austin Spencer Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:54:23:00 - 00:54:26:10 Joey Hamilton It's like the entry level shot, and I'm. I'm just like,

00:54:26:12 - 00:54:43:04 Austin Spencer I don't think you have to do it like that. Like I thought you did too. And right now it seems like everything just wants it. They want it to be more raw. Yeah. Which is easier for me to comprehend because I just get these little microphones. I just pop them on my shirt, and then I just talk. I don't even introduce myself anymore or anything.

00:54:43:04 - 00:54:47:20 Austin Spencer No, I just talk about what I'm like, and I'm not good at it. I can just.

00:54:47:22 - 00:54:54:15 Joey Hamilton Do any good. Like, that's just so you can sell like that's the best part. You can see yourself grow. Yeah, I'm getting better at the.

00:54:54:15 - 00:55:14:07 Austin Spencer People watching you. That's what they enjoy it. They enjoy that journey of like, watching you because they're fucking terrified to do it. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Whether like, it's scary. Yeah. You know, I just got like, I've had multiple shit thrown at me since I started doing it. And it's it's it's weird how people forget that you're a human, you know, like, I, like, I do have feelings, right?

00:55:14:09 - 00:55:28:15 Joey Hamilton You know, that's the best way to go. But going back to being master, like the people critiquing you. Yeah. You work, you're just like, I'm not getting paid by you to do this, so you don't need to critique me. I don't, you know, then I go look at their page and it's like 100 cat photos that are my.

00:55:28:19 - 00:55:29:20 Joey Hamilton And shut the fuck up.

00:55:29:22 - 00:55:50:20 Austin Spencer Exactly. And that's how it always works out. So you just, you know, and then, you know, what's funny is like, the real nice, normal humans, they don't get into the comments. Right. So they're the ones that are texting you on the side, like, hey, dude, I think you're doing a great job or whatever you know? But I'm like, at the same time, I think we should all, yeah, help each other out and get in the comments, say something at least positive or.

00:55:50:22 - 00:56:08:14 Joey Hamilton That's you don't have to circle back to the school. I hate the fucking the idea of the school, but I had multiple people reach out to me on the side that are heavy hitters. Yeah, literally were like, keep it up. Like, don't fucking quit. Oh good. Yeah. In it, you know? And I'm just like, I'm like, well, do you want to jump on board you I'm kidding.

00:56:08:15 - 00:56:10:05 Joey Hamilton Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I wasn't.

00:56:10:05 - 00:56:11:07 Austin Spencer Even fucking thinking over.

00:56:11:09 - 00:56:27:23 Joey Hamilton There. They would come through and do it like that was a good part. Two is I would bring in artists that and do like a week of their style. Yeah. So they could kind of do lettering. Yeah. But, yeah, but it was like, you know, there is the, the ones that are close to you will root the loudest personally.

00:56:27:23 - 00:56:45:14 Joey Hamilton Yeah. But sometimes you need them to root verbally across the platforms also because that give you validation for what you're doing is not just like, yeah, the people that hate it, there's a lot of people that like what what was going on or the same with you. Like you need your friends to go, man, good job. Yeah. Like the day you're getting slammed for.

00:56:45:14 - 00:56:57:04 Joey Hamilton I like, you know, hey dude, I use I all the time and it's not nothing you can always do. So many statues, David. There's only so many pictures of a tiger or a lion or whatever. Yeah. You know.

00:56:57:07 - 00:56:58:08 Austin Spencer Now you can like.

00:56:58:10 - 00:57:18:04 Joey Hamilton Bro, I'm not Dino could going out in the ocean and fucking swim photographing turtles. I mean, I love the guys in my portraits, like, so. Yeah, but you know that that's not everybody can do that in my time frame. Is is limited. So. Yeah. You know, I use the tools that are going to make my job easier and more proficient.

00:57:18:06 - 00:57:22:01 Joey Hamilton Yeah. So, you know, it's not like you're going to trace six fingers.

00:57:22:03 - 00:57:42:03 Austin Spencer Dude, especially when you're at. And be be aware, get a little older. You dude. I did a six finger praying. Hands on somebody one time purpose when I was a youngster, dude. And I, you know, I did those like on my stencil. I had the dotted, lines for where I wanted the shading to break and stuff, you know, and I just fucking hard lined it nice.

00:57:42:03 - 00:57:58:22 Austin Spencer And I was intimate. I. I didn't even notice it then. Yeah. The dude was this huge Samoan dude, and I'm like, this skinny ass little fucking kid. And he came back like two days later. Was super cool about it, but it was right in front of my boss. He was like, hey, you notice anything about these praying hands?

00:57:59:00 - 00:58:16:13 Austin Spencer And I looked at him and I was like, they look like they're healing. I'm good, you know? Like, so just. Yeah. Oblivious. Yeah. And he goes, count the fingers. And I was like, fuck. One, two, three. Fuck right there. You know, he was a hard ass. And I was just like, I can fix that for you, you know?

00:58:16:13 - 00:58:29:00 Austin Spencer And that's like, yeah. One of the beautiful things I've learned in tattooing is it's taught me how to think in my skin and taught me how to fucking work on the fly. Right? And problem solve, like, you know, and not show face.

00:58:29:00 - 00:58:45:09 Joey Hamilton Yeah. You know. Yeah, that is hard. Because, like, there is times where you're just like your mental inside is screaming like, Holy shit, I just did that. Like, I've done that before. Yeah, I did that, revolt a couple times where you just like in the middle of it and you either the kid's name was fucking misspelled and they didn't catch it.

00:58:45:09 - 00:58:46:05 Joey Hamilton I didn't catch it.

00:58:46:05 - 00:58:47:11 Austin Spencer Yeah, you're just terrified.

00:58:47:11 - 00:59:03:09 Joey Hamilton And I was like, mid fucking line and shit. And oh, that's fucking misspelled. And my brain just exploded. Yeah. I'm like, oh my god, what am I going to do? And then Walter walks over calmly and goes, okay, you got a shade right here. Yeah. Take this out, drop the name down an inch, and I'm like, okay, cool.

00:59:03:09 - 00:59:05:19 Joey Hamilton Thanks. Yeah. You know, so it's always good to have.

00:59:05:21 - 00:59:07:06 Austin Spencer That help from the homies.

00:59:07:08 - 00:59:09:12 Joey Hamilton Yeah, yeah. It's always good to have.

00:59:09:14 - 00:59:27:00 Austin Spencer Yeah yeah. That's good. Well fuck. Dude, I want to keep you too long. I know you got a tattoo today, but, Yeah. Cool. Man, I like I just greatly appreciate you. It's it's it's really cool to sit down with people that we know in the industry, and we we never really get that time. So that's one cool thing I found about the podcast is like.

00:59:27:05 - 00:59:42:17 Joey Hamilton It's a it's a mutual respect because you've done a lot, you know, I don't want to I've done plenty of stuff myself. So. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's cool to sit down with like minded people and just talk about stuff. It doesn't need to be negative or positive. It just needs to just give you a talking about stuff.

00:59:42:17 - 00:59:46:17 Joey Hamilton Sometimes I'll get stuff out in the open where it's like, okay, there's a dialog. Yeah. You know, and.

00:59:46:22 - 01:00:00:18 Austin Spencer And hopefully people can learn from a younger tattooers or older tattoo. Anybody that may be listening like, I don't know. I just were just genuinely just trying to do this to have fun and chase and like, I'm really reaching out to people that I just respect and admire and want to sit down.

01:00:00:20 - 01:00:07:00 Joey Hamilton So. Yeah. Well, I mean, thank you for that. Thank you. Sam connects if you want to just if I know some artist you don't or you want to. Yeah. You know, if you.

01:00:07:00 - 01:00:10:04 Austin Spencer Yeah, yeah. Some people. Yeah. And then, we'll do some dinner sometime.

01:00:10:04 - 01:00:13:13 Joey Hamilton Nice I know. Yeah. Berries or carbon. We'll see.

01:00:13:13 - 01:00:16:07 Austin Spencer Which is, is bomb. Yeah. And carbon I mean I haven't been to carbon.

01:00:16:08 - 01:00:25:12 Joey Hamilton No, just, you know, just seen it. Berries. I don't so his wife is a cat from McMaster, works at Robert shop.

01:00:25:14 - 01:00:26:10 Austin Spencer Oh. Okay.

01:00:26:10 - 01:00:29:11 Joey Hamilton Yeah. Yeah. Small. It's like such a small world. Women.

01:00:29:11 - 01:00:30:03 Austin Spencer Okay. Yeah.

01:00:30:05 - 01:00:31:18 Joey Hamilton Yeah, yeah, I walked in there, and I need to.

01:00:31:18 - 01:00:34:01 Austin Spencer Reach out to Robert, like. Yeah, yeah, I would like to get him on.

01:00:34:07 - 01:00:44:09 Joey Hamilton Yeah. Oh, yeah, he'd be good. I just I thought you said he's never been on here, so. Yeah, there's no no no. Yeah. Yeah. The Our Town is so heavily talented dude.

01:00:44:11 - 01:00:52:07 Austin Spencer It's I, it's that's what I'm saying is like hard to think about. And then some people I reach out to and they're just I'm shy dude. Like, what if I say something dumb and I'm like, dude.

01:00:52:13 - 01:01:02:04 Joey Hamilton I like 15 shops that are world class, you know what I mean? Why? Just to have that one town of 2 million people. Yeah, is is crazy.

01:01:02:08 - 01:01:19:05 Austin Spencer That's what I yeah, I keep kind of talking about it is like the our little ecosystem here of in the world of tattooing is wild. Yeah. It's really crazy with some of the biggest like, manufacturers of tattooing and, you know, products like all that, like, all right, out of here, dude. Yeah. That's cool. I like, if anything, I've.

01:01:19:07 - 01:01:25:04 Austin Spencer I've just been such a I'm grew up here. I'm in love with the city. So I'm excited to share it more. Yeah. It's it's yeah.

01:01:25:04 - 01:01:32:19 Joey Hamilton It's growing like crazy. The hockey team, football team, baseball team, baseball team. Yeah, yeah. And we had nothing like 20 years ago. It was just like the casinos with it.

01:01:32:19 - 01:01:44:02 Austin Spencer So and we're here to like, you know, that's even cool too. And his shop brings in so many people. Brett, that Rose Tyler came on here. Yeah. But, yeah, I'm just trying to get I'm trying to get down here, too.

01:01:44:02 - 01:01:46:13 Joey Hamilton Yeah. No, I'm sure he's he's he's a sweetheart.

01:01:46:13 - 01:01:48:03 Austin Spencer Yeah. Yeah, he's he's nice to me.

01:01:48:07 - 01:01:54:00 Joey Hamilton Yeah. That's good. He's always nice to me too. He'll stop by if he's in the mall I'll stop by. Yeah. That's the best part to be about in the mall. So I know.

01:01:54:00 - 01:02:12:10 Austin Spencer For sure, because that's how I started. Did you know? So your your stores right next to. We got to go here in a minute. But, your store is right next to the van store and I always park on the back side of the mall to go to the van store. And I walk by your shop. When we started Maverick, you were the first person that I like cold called, like I call it.

01:02:12:10 - 01:02:35:16 Austin Spencer I walked into a tattoo shop. Even though I've been in the industry forever, it was still so intimidating. And I specifically remember going in, you were tattooing, and I was like, hey Joey, I just want to increase myself and just say hi. And I had some samples and I gave you. And I remember my mouth was dry and I was nervous, but like, so, I don't know, I thought, I don't you never knew that, obviously, but I don't know if it showed on my face, but.

01:02:35:18 - 01:02:54:03 Joey Hamilton I do the same thing right now because I'm still for the app. I'm going to local Las Vegas shops. Yeah. And walking in their door. Yeah. And it's like that. It's it's. I don't want to say it's intimidating because we're all tattooers. We all total same thing. But to to go in there, you're pitching something anyways. I always that's the hard thing because like I'm trying to sell you.

01:02:54:05 - 01:03:07:23 Joey Hamilton Yeah. And it's, it's free for artists to be on board. Just so you know. Yeah. There's no charge for artists. So I'm really trying to get them just to participate in this. Yeah, yeah. This ecosystem. But, but yeah, I get a weird feeling. I get that like, hey.

01:03:08:01 - 01:03:10:05 Austin Spencer You're like, yeah, I'm a grown ass man. I'm like, I'm Joey.

01:03:10:05 - 01:03:15:19 Joey Hamilton I own revolves, you know? Oh yeah. Oh, you know, so it's it's cool sometimes. And then there's also.

01:03:15:19 - 01:03:32:17 Austin Spencer Like the old school like it wasn't a thing back in the day, you know, like, if you owned a shop, you didn't go into another shop, right? If you were, tattooer at a shop, you had to secretly kind of communicate on the side with your friends at other tattoo shops, or because your owner was you didn't generally, like, insecure and angry or whatever.

01:03:32:23 - 01:03:47:08 Austin Spencer Yeah. So I guess, like a lot of that, she was still in my head. I'm like, yeah, okay. But you know, you can't fucking not do it, dude. Right. You know, like no one's going to give a fuck if you don't give a fuck. Like, you got to go in there and say hi and introduce yourself to people and not be shy.

01:03:47:10 - 01:03:50:14 Austin Spencer You can still be shy. You just can't do it, you know? Yeah, I just think it's just yourself.

01:03:50:14 - 01:03:52:10 Joey Hamilton Exactly. Just for yourself out a little bit.

01:03:52:12 - 01:04:01:00 Austin Spencer Yeah, yeah. Nothing like drawing your, you know, your first ten tattoos are incredibly intimidating. And then this still intimidating.

01:04:01:01 - 01:04:12:23 Joey Hamilton I just circle back but I, I literally that's how I got when I got taught how to tattoo, I did one orange and then I started tattooing people. Yeah. Like I literally I had no fear. Yeah.

01:04:12:23 - 01:04:13:23 Austin Spencer Yeah, I just working in.

01:04:13:23 - 01:04:22:15 Joey Hamilton My small shop. Yeah. That had two people. And so I was expected to do whatever walked in that door. So. Yeah. Yep. Wasn't the right way.

01:04:22:17 - 01:04:26:14 Austin Spencer Yeah. Fuck it, I don't know. You're here where you are today. You've accomplished everything.

01:04:26:16 - 01:04:37:05 Joey Hamilton I don't have any fear because of that. I think because, like you're saying, you have to get past like, okay, I got to just do it. Yeah. And that's I got past that. I've been past that. Like it's time to just do it.

01:04:37:07 - 01:04:50:11 Austin Spencer Tattooing is wild, man. It's not taught me so much. Like I've just learned so many life lessons through tattooing and my experience in tattooing. Like, that's kind of lately where I'm like, I feel like I want to talk about that more. I don't know if anybody cares about it, but.

01:04:50:15 - 01:04:51:20 Joey Hamilton Yeah, no, it's how.

01:04:51:20 - 01:05:03:17 Austin Spencer I'm feel. And like, I want to try to share, you know, it's like sharing your own style of illustration that's completely different. And people make fun of you forever. Right? But you got it. It's like it's cringe until it fucking works, you know? And it will.

01:05:03:19 - 01:05:22:03 Joey Hamilton If you find that niche like, that's, you know, the guys that come to work for me and they say, I want to do only this. I say, okay, then put together for binders of all the stuff you want to do. And then when somebody comes in, you keep showing them that stuff. Yeah. And then that's how I know guys like Chad.

01:05:22:04 - 01:05:33:09 Joey Hamilton That's not Chad James, but the other Chad, just literally that's how he blew up. Yeah. And then he's only doing what he wants. And that's how your the story is like, yeah, you got to do the work to get to where you want to go. Yeah.

01:05:33:11 - 01:05:34:14 Austin Spencer And there's no fucking easy way.

01:05:34:16 - 01:05:37:14 Joey Hamilton No not not usually.

01:05:37:16 - 01:05:52:05 Austin Spencer Well we'll let you get out of here. Yeah. For sure. Thanks so much, guys, for listening and watching YouTube. If you're watching it on YouTube, consider subscribing. Yeah, apparently it helps. I'm still learning it all this shit. But, thank you so much and we'll see you soon.

01:05:52:06 - 01:05:57:06 Joey Hamilton Download the app on Apple Store and Google Play. Here we go. And come check me out at Revolt Tattoos.

01:05:57:07 - 01:06:01:10 Austin Spencer Yes. Stop in and say hi anytime. My fucker keeps tattooing. I'm trying to get him. Slow down a little.

01:06:01:12 - 01:06:04:22 Joey Hamilton I know I'm getting old, man. It's like 30 years. Oh, all right.

01:06:05:03 - 01:06:09:10 Austin Spencer All right, guys.

Cashed in our 401ks everything that we had saved up until that point in our life and we just said let's just throw this at the wall see if it sticks yeah it was a big ass Hail Mary here's what I'm excited to talk about today we have a really long history together personally I'm super intrigued to hear some of the old stories of us starting to tattooing you starting to tattoo the origin story is pretty fun and interesting you didn't have any tattoos before zero tattoos yeah so what was your some of your first like exposures to tattoo and tattooing and stuff and like fun little story that I was riding I had been riding motorcycles most of my life I think I started riding motorcycles when I was 15 16 years old yeah but I was riding at this point when we moved to Nevada pretty much Harley's exclusively I had gotten through all my dirt bike riding and all that stuff and was riding Harley so Becky and I used to go on these poker runs and so we would meet all these people from all throughout the Las Vegas Valley some of them were you know with uh Outlaw motorcycle clubs and stuff like that and then some of them were just Christian clubs all kinds of you know uh veterans clubs yeah we'd get together on it seemed like it was one Sunday every month we'd have what they called a poker run I don't know if everybody knows what that is but you'd get uh you'd ride from bar to bar and you'd get a a card when you arrived at the next bar until you got a poker hand and somebody would win I

forgot the exact details of how it works but that was the where I started seeing you know people take their jackets off and almost everybody I saw had a tattoo and I was like whoa that's I've never run around with tattooed people in I worked in uh civil engineering for 30 years so I didn't meet a lot of tattooed people so I was like oh that's kind of cool started looking at tattoos and started asking where where do you get your tattoos and everything led to this one shop um called Studio tattoo on Boulder Highway and that was like the place to get your tattoo at least from all the biker types that I was talking to so I don't know you know that was where my influence was coming from so um I went and got my first tattoo and I don't remember if you went with me when I got my first one I think it was the second one that you went with me yeah I went and got a tattoo of U an image that I always liked that my grandma had a picture of on her wallet was called all is Vanity super famous most people know what it is if they see it the skull with the lady looking in a mirror yeah her head is like the eyes of the skull and then all the perfume in the bottom or the teeth teeth yeah and so I went to this lady and I took her this image and asked her if she could could do it she did it came home we all looked at it and talked about it and we decided it needed some more stuff yeah and so the next time I went um we decided to put some Flames around it some skulls you went with me and you were

10 years old I remember very clearly that I was like I don't know I guess it's okay to bring your kid to a tattoo shop nobody said couldn't so you came along you watched the process we talked about it uh while we're talking to her and on the way out of that uh shop after I got my Flames added we stopped in the parking lot and um it we were I think both of us were you even you at 10 years old you're probably already thinking hey this would be kind of a cool thing to do yeah I remember asking her a lot of questions uhhuh and I looked at you and I said we should we should tattoo together and you were like yeah and it was like that was a long you know that was 80 it was 90 probably 9091 pretty early on in the 90s yeah yeah after we moved out here so that kind of then then I started I decided to add another tattoo some months later and I let you design it for me and it was a cool I got 54 Buick from Gilla which kind of faded out right now but look at the line work how sweet it still looks Flames all those used to be color anyway that was uh my second third session of getting tattooed and and then Austin went along I you went with me several times yeah I remember I don't remember what else you got from her I don't know I remember being there a couple times for those yeah this was that first one with the everything had had Flames back in those days if you didn't have Flames there was one time that I was with some Hell's Angels at a party and they had a guy in a corner that had a

tattoo machine and a setup and uh I would never forget walking in there Becky and I rode all the way over to Henderson off Boulder Highway somewhere a lot of bikers out there yeah and we'd been invited to this party with a friend of mine Clancy and we walked in and I had a really heavy leather jacket and I'm in a room full of real intimidating looking bikers and stuff and uh they had a hall tree where you hang your coat yeah and I hung my coat and it fell over in the middle of everything everybody's kind of like whoa I was like I'm sorry and then the guy tried to tattoo my head he wanted to Flame my head and I was like I thought about it for a minute and I never flamed my head I'm so glad I didn't I think I would have probably reg good that

I don't look I don't look I don't look as fast as I to used to so I don't need flames on my head a full head of hair then so that's yeah yeah I had a long ponytail and stuff uh yeah you had no facial hair I had maybe a mustache long ponytail kind of a Leonard Skinner look back in those days yeah yeah yeah before I uh before I got robbed by some gangsters and shaved my head and grew a beard so I could change my look so then from there we went on to basically starting to kind of like cruise around and check out other tattoo shops in town venture out of that one yeah and then um trying to remember like all over those years yeah I think we kind of put that on the back burner for a while obviously you were clearly too young to be into tattoo and

wasn't until you were in high school you were drawing some tattoo designs for kids that were getting tattoos Yeah well yeah so I remember I definitely remember you bringing home tattoo magazine tattoo industry magazine I I can't remember which ones like uh and then I started looking at those and just drawing all of that stuff out of there anyway and then we slowly yeah then like in high school I personally started getting kids asking me to draw their tattoos for them um and then I remember one day in like my sophomore year in class this kid came in and he was like Hey I want to get a tattoo I'll give you 50 bucks to draw me something and I literally took that I took that 50 bucks and sat down and Drew through that whole entire class and completely ignored the class and I gave it to him and then he came back the very next day with this Jester tattooed on the side of his leg that I drew and I specifically remember thinking like damn that is like I mean I remember seeing my tattoo or my drawing on you as a tattoo but being I don't the fact that you made money at it for the first time yeah it was like a different kind of experience and the fact that I I got paid 50 bucks and that's usually what I would work a full shift for like tips after school and I just did it during school and so what were you getting tips for where where well yeah just busting tables at M or something you know a little bar and then um but anyway I I remember specifically being like so pumped that I got

paid 50 bucks to draw that and then it turned into like oh my other friend told me that you drew this and you know then I drew a tribal arm band for Tony a good buddy of mine and he got that tattooed on him and then I just started going and I was like can I go to these shops with you guys and I would just go in After High School and like there weren't that many shops in Vegas at the time and they were pretty rough and we went to let's see docs was down on the Strip where the Pawn Stars is now yeah they leveled that shop and then there was one on Spring Mountain where Dave who apprenticed us eventually yeah I can't remember desert in desert no desert Charleston yeah but there were only there was probably less than 10 I would say seven tattoo

shops in the valley at the time yeah not much I don't definitely remember remember there was like one called tattoos are us and that's where like kids and my co-workers and Friends started co uh going down there to get tattooed and that PL place was hella sketchy yeah but may have gotten uh burned down or something by remember doc used to or somebody yeah make tattoo shops eliminate the competition I guess they called it but then where did we shortly go like like in high school yeah I started watching them get tattooed and then I it kind of took a break there for a little bit and then uh like 18 or 19 I started going with a couple of my buddies up to this shop that was near us called uh Pricks tattoos and I went in there and watched them get a couple of tattoos and and started like talking that was the first shop I went into where I felt like oh I can talk to these people and they're they're like nicer to me and that's where I met my mentor Dave but but Trey was first remember we yeah we both tried to Apprentice under Trey and he was surrounded by some interesting people and we just didn't feel comfortable yeah and we moved on to Dave yeah and then Dave like Dave asked you to offer him or something but he wouldn't he wouldn't like give me a tattoo apprenticeship until I got tattooed and then I was like oh okay okay well I want to do this so I want to like so then I went to the library and I got all did all this research on the uh God of uh I don't even know I'm forgetting

it right now the elephant uh oh the Ganesh the Ganesh yeah yeah which I can't even remember the details of it but that's how bad my memory is but anyway I just really was just attracted to I was drawing a lot of elephants Hindu yeah some awesome stuff and uh so I did uh some a bunch of beautiful drawings of the ganes and and and I brought them into him and he was like let's do this and I was like okay cool he goes like right now I was like oh okay um yeah all right and I just remember getting all clammy and like super nervous and scared and then I got up in his chair and he freaking shaved my leg and I just remember like I don't know why I specifically remember that like wow I've never shaved my legs before like that's so feels super weird uh and then he was nice and approachable though like some of the people we were meeting weren't that approachable and you know almost like a it was a thing to intimidate people when you were a tattooer back when we started that was like the way tattooers felt like they I don't know if it empowered them somehow but I heard that from many tattooers they enjoyed intimidating people yeah it just wasn't seemed weird to us we like I don't know why would you want to intimidate somebody I was like a nerd from the suburbs I always said and I just like I just wanted to draw and too so that's all I wanted to do so what we did from there is like we kind of we made that connection with Dave and it was awesome and uh he offered to teach me how to tattoo

and his goal was to like open up his own shop so then from there it just turned into this like fun crazy adventure where you started coming up away asking hey when you're done teaching Austin can you teach me and he was like absolutely yeah because at the time if you remember there were so many people waiting in line to get tattooed there was a serious shortage of tattooers yeah I think that's why we had a real easy not easy entry but um easier than you would today for and a few of those shops like Tre uh they started really like opening up their doors to a more in a more friendly manner kind of you know and like throwing parties and doing events and promoting themselves so it was but it was also flash too when we started it was all flash yeah when we started tattooing Dave and Aaron delova were probably only two guys in the valley that actually designed a tattoo and Drew it on somebody I don't know maybe a few at least one to but we we worked in a Flash shop our first Pricks was all flash remember yeah all the walls were cover in Flash and um that's what we did you'd crank out how many tattoos did we do a day I don't know I used to do like a dozen a day Cory Miller Flash and all the um uh what's Cherry Creek the fair the girl that did the fair yeah K Bar um yeah a bunch of like real fun Old School artists and they would come through that shop actually got to meet a lot perfect Flash and yeah that was one of my favorite flash artists we didn't we didn't at the time know

about Phil luck but um yeah there were so many really good flash artists around back then nobody realizes that now the Internet is just flash it's just come off the wall and now it's on your computer you know no but still you're still copying images that other people have done so nothing's original you know yeah so then from there we started getting let's see I I went with Dave he he decided he was going to open up his own shop so we left there and I went over with him and learned how to tattoo and what was the name of that shop uh mach five originally though oh accents and art accents and art we called it accidents and art because so many weird things happened in there yeah it had like a weird rumor back in the day of this they had an artist that the guy with Bob Bob was really nice guy who owned it but he I guess his son was a little wild at the time and nodded off during a tattoo and just literally drew a line down this person's back while he was doing this tattoo and I always heard that story and years years later I randomly ran across this guy he's like oh I I got tattooed on that weird shop down on Charleston or whatever it's like it's a different now you know and uh I was like oh really what you know he's like yeah my artist like fell asleep on me and you met the guy yeah and I was at a party or something never know that and I he turned around and pulled up his shirt and sure enough he had this shitty half-done tattoo and this line that just turned into dots like

jamming down his back that was just an end of his back piece and he just kept it yeah he never got it cover yeah so anyway that place got the you know hence the name accidents in art which was pretty funny the owner of Bob was cool he was the one he he took me in and when he fired son I think that's when Dave got his spot in there I think so because that's he needed to hire other artists and stuff so uh yeah so Dave got in there and then brought us and it was a small like maybe 12200 squ foot little rectangle space that had six artists in it that rotated in and out of like three booths but there would be like four or five on duty and they would all be smoking in there not on duty but you know just hanging out Wai playing with handguns smoking cigarettes in there so like it was so NY in there it was so nasty smokiest place ever um yeah so that's where I did my Apprentice ship I just remember all these it was like Tattooing in a bar I remember w i remember this Tater that would never change wash his hands and he would just put new gloves on and we wore powdered gloves back then so he would pull them off and then just uh slowly pick off all the caked on Powder off of his hands all day long and put it on the floor I'm not going to mention his name like somebody we still know yeah I was like that's most disgusting things I've ever seen but oh I know who you're talking it was some awesome I know who it was never mind long haired long hair Matt he was cool as hell man he he

they call him low rider Matt he was he did all black and gray stuff and had long hair L went all the way down past his ass and he was he was super sweet but uh yeah so we we hung out there right for a while and and then we ended up there's like I don't know why I'm forgetting like went from accidents in our to to um Mach 5 yeah okay so he bought bought it he ended up buying Dave ended up buying that shop and then transforming it into Mach 5 then that's when we were we were full-time tattooing by then yeah that wasn't very long it was early 990s still right I'm sorry but I still had a job late 90s wasn't it yeah because I was like it was like 99 98 was when we started apprenticing yeah so we were full on tattoo in part sometime in 99 yeah at

MCH five yeah and then from there I went up I left there because I really wanted the tattoo full-time and I still had a full-time job so I went from there up to Pricks because Pricks they had some guys leave or something and I went back to the shop where we started hanging out at at the very beginning to do our I remember tattooed at tricks and I well I remember when we were apprenticing we had to draw all the that was how we kind of learned to draw some of the we would customize some of those flash pieces or um Jesse girl and you and I were always back there drawing little pieces for people and I guess that's kind yeah so that that's like where I went full-time there and um I was really excited because I was tattooing all the damn time that shop was super busy the guy Trey was a great promoter uh wild ass Human but he could promote the hell out of the tattoo shop people would wait six hours to get tattooed yeah no appointments you just walked in and waited everybody would just smoke out front and hang out and drink or all the time there's always different people answering the phone and hanging out in the shop like there was lots of crazy transactions we'll call it going down and there then a lot of cops too and a lot of weird interesting yeah yeah yeah so I don't know so then like when you one one unique thing about you is like you obviously didn't start at a young age you started tattooing like I was about 45 yeah you and you had already had a full career as a as a land

surveyor so you worked in Houston and uh out there in the Sun for a long time so a lot of the I remember a lot of the decisions that came into play for you uh getting out of that career was to was because of the skin cancer sun exposure so you had some pretty gnarly surgeries go down and uh you ended up kind of like just kind of spontaneously deciding yeah my oncologist told me if you don't stop working in the sun it's going to kill you and I was like I have another option yeah and then that's what when I had already started I remember uh I would go to work surveying at 5:00 in the morning I'd get off at 1 I would drive to Pricks and I'd work from about 1:30 1:45 until 11: or midnight and then do it over and over yeah we did it every day almost you know Trey ran like a really tight ship he was definitely like a guy who pushed me I look at it now and in such a good way to like never turn down a walk in you always were you like if your shop closed at 10:00 at night and 9:45 a tribal arm band walked in you better sit down and do that tribal arm band back in the day a tribal arm band would take me three hours you know I was like very slow and meticulous and uh we did a lot of late nights long long days yeah we did a lot of that stuff there which is really great and super fun um so then from there you kind of you know you decided to go full time so you you quit there and then you came in to there full I went fulltime at uh I I don't remember why we deci oh Dave opened up so then

he asked if I wanted to come down there because I he knew I was not doing yeah I wasn't doing bad there but I just didn't I felt the smoke and that the parties and stuff I kind of wanted to get focused on the tattoo thing and not so much the party do we I love how we can't remember sh really then we ended up back at like Maverick or I mean Maverick at um at Muk five so there was funny cuz we kind of had these these two shops this is kind of funny two shops that we had our our relationships with tattooing or intro relationships were just between these two shops and we went back and forth and the ownership changed yeah on one tattoo shop the ownership changed like three times of me working there so three completely different people were there

running it accid art Mach 5 Bad Apple yeah whatever but it's still bad apple now yeah so um so that way that was kind of wild because then we bounc back and forth there and then it just like there was like always like some owner kind of turmoil between both of them so we ended up just decided like all right we just just got to go do our own thing um and you know it was not like a you weren't supposed to do that back in the day no we we were we were only like 3 years in at that time I think two and a half years before we opened up our own shot which is was a culturally a big no no and still kind of is a big no no or whatever but like nowadays I guess it's not but everybody's do that like yeah you open up a shop in a second you learn how to tattoo um but and our adventure you know if you could make it work it's not a bad gig yeah and like our the whole reason why we did that is just CU we didn't have like a healthy space like a place where we were like that we felt it was like as healthy as it could have there were times when it didn't even seem safe no for sure we saw lots of violence and craziness yeah over those first few years first three years yeah so then we kind of like went into kind of survival mode and we're like all right well there's no other place that I would and be interested in working at because there was no options yeah so we decided to open up our shop and we opened up a little tiny space so that back then like the zoning wasn't wasn't like yeah before we

opened up remember the what we were talking about earlier about the naming it I thought that was an interesting story yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean we sat down in your living room and came up I think everybody wrote like 50 plus names down and I feel like I kind of walked in and we were all just sitting there discussing just frustrated we just had so many stupid names and at that time everybody was naming their shops like really Rand yeah yeah Chrome donkey or whatever and like silly all the names were so weird yeah they were real off thee wall so I just was like all right I don't I don't seal any that like we need to do something that stands stands out we being in Vegas we there was like a number that always popped into our heads that was like culturally is just a big number was 21 you know you gota you gota pretty much be 21 to live live the life of of that Vegas provides and gambling Blackjack and everything so 21st century it was the beginning of the 21st century yeah 21's everywhere yeah so I was like why don't we just call it Studio 21 and then we just it clicked immed you like push your away from the table I remember we were all frustrated you just went let's just call Studio 21 and you were just like almost pissed and we're like yeah that sounds great yeah and it was just like a real simple I don't know I didn't like at the time we made fun of all these other shop names that had a little catchy weird characters and stuff it was like too easy to make fun

of them I was like I mean I don't you can't really make fun of Studio 21 it's just blah like not blah but it just is like at the time my favorite shop name was Avalon down at s Diego I just love the name of that shop and I love the vibe of that we we did we both did we got T down there we like great shop that was like I mean kind of jumping all around but like back to that was like a big part of our youth and intro into tattooing was our trips to San Diego because like you ended up getting your sleeve Ouran tour was close with Aaron delova they both had tattooed out of Vegas or did their apprenticeships here in Vegas I think so then uh Aaron moved out to San Diego and we were introduced by him from Dave and I was just like so incredibly impressed with both of their tattooing super nice guys super talented individuals yeah so then we started like we get tattooed by Dave and then we were like Dave did most of your left lead right and then we started making trips to go to San Diego and you started getting your sleeve your other sleeve done out there yeah so that was back when he was at Avalon on in Pacific Beach there on Garnett and then later on he went working for Patty Kelly was that shop and there was so many legends that in that shop she was the of moose Kelly who was like a super famous artist back at the you did album covers oh that's cool know that rock and roll artist she was big time she was a badass though and then um but anyway so back to so we kind of like back

to Vegas we uh where were we at open in the shop we were talking about yeah talking about stud one yeah and then so we picked out a small little location we looked all over and we were having a lot of trouble with u any property managers tattoo sh um so we kind of settled on a place that was down like in between two casinos and uh it was on a main D called light industrial remember you had to you had to be in light industrial so you're around strip warehouses and strip clubs oh yeah and at that time none of those were desirable places to tattoo after dark yeah massage parlers and stuff and yeah it was like a a heavy cab cab thr or whatever which all ended up working out great for us because we got a ton of exposure we were right off the strip and all the cabs use that road to cut through Off the Strip so then it would Expos us to like a lot of tourists and then they would always bring people to us we were super busy we opened up in 2003 just the two of us but we built out uh four four booths or the two up front we had the two three in the back and two up front one was the mom's office yeah so that was like a whole another thing my mom was actually she still had her full-time job and uh she was a graphic designer and illustrator she came so once I came up with name then my mom we we sent it over to her to get all the logo done and she's the one that really like led us on and educated using branding and uh clean legible logo and really like elevated us as far as other tattoo

shops at the time on a professionalism and the way that we U you know ex not exposed ourselves but you know just like just our ourselves yeah she was really good at the obviously she's still still is really good but uh yeah she was certainly an integral part in both of our shop so she brought the logo and then and the name and was there and then we just basically needed to build out our shop and we had I think you had sold a couple of Harley at the time uh I decided that it wasn't worth the risk if I crashed and broke a hand or something yeah it was not a good time sold those and used some of that money and Becky and I cashed in our 401ks everything that we had saved up until that point in our lives which was we had worked a lot of years before that yeah we were 40 we were in our mid-40s and we just said let's just throw this at the wall as see if it sticks yeah it was a big ass Hail Mary it was scary as hell like I luckily was like a pretty you know I uh you know I was like well networked and I had a lot of young friends and stuff too that all wanted to get tattoo so I jumped right in there um well Vegas at the time and I guess it still kind of is it's like small town like everybody knows everybody once you get a circle of friends going that know you and trust you they send people to you yeah when when I was tatto when I just like I just started tattooing there was only like one other young person that was learning how to tattoo that I knew of in the whole entire city yeah

there was my circle became huge you know like everybody's a friend of a friend of a friend came in and we were we were so busy and I started tattoo and like six seven day well we did seven days a week for like the first like nine months I think that was our goal was to do the first year and we worked 12 hours a day seven days a week and we made it seven to nine months we didn't make a year but hell that was so take it like one day off each you know to where there' be like one person would be in the shop basically worked our tails off we were just had Tuesdays off or something like that it was cool but um and then we brought in an I brought an inance pretty quick which which was again probably shouldn't have that we had to we needed help yeah we needed help and you couldn't hire anybody so you had to teach somebody yeah and all the guys that were coming in were pretty rough and ra really wild yeah um so the stories that go on with that go for days about like just our initial like we were our shop was right and when you walked out of our shop there was a freaking tunnel at this giant water drainage tunnel that was full of homeless people and the homeless people criminals hiding from other law in other cities and it was insane they would all just basically crawl out of this cave and walk into your shop and just ask you for or try to sell you stolen goods I had I'm just standing there like treating everybody like a great customer when they walk in there I remember two women

walked in and they were like yeah we want to get tattoo I was like oh cool right on uh you know here's what we want to get like cool I can do that I can draw this up for you and I was like that it'll be about like $250 and they were like $250 like what you like how about you get some of this for free and they both lifted their their dresses up over their head butan I was like what in the what is going on so they closed their they I was like no AAL day that's not how we operate around here so you know have a good day like a normal day at Studio 21 thanks for the offer um the the crackheads and like the the rattlesnake Tamer guy don't were him he got bipped he was just this weird homeless guy I don't know if he's homeless or what but he looked like it he was a Desert Rat yeah he got bit by a rattlesnake and told came come in to tell me the craziest stories about most disturbing he ever did with his thumb you always had your your video camera ready and fil all that footage because I I'm not sure we should even tell some of those stories there's a lot of stories out of the early Studio 21 yeah we you know should repeat yeah we did bring like Aaron Jackman did a super good job he was our first Apprentice yeah he was a manager at a skate shop and just did like these real small Doodles but he did them like really clean and very accurate so good job ride in and he was a hard worker a real smart dude reliable yeah so he came in and he stayed with us for years uh before he left

and then oh over those years and we developed new new relationship of new people and we ended up like that was 2003 to like 2005 we started getting to the point where we were outgrowing that little shop and we started working with uh somebody that kind of like motivated us to make some bigger decisions and we decided we wanted to build out a big shop that had six stations and everybody had their own booth and we had this very very detailed idea of how we wanted to be done and we wanted to have the nicest shop in Las Vegas we went from, 1300 square feet to 2600 square feet yeah just double the size of our shop hired an architect hired an architect borrowed a ton of money borrowed a ton of money it's been built out and what Las Vegas hadn't seen any shop I'll never forget the the day our opening day we've been anticipating for I a long time six months and the health department notorious for being uh bullies I guess you could say they sent five inspectors to inspect our shop on opening day and they found like a paper towel rack wasn't in one of the booths and wouldn't allow us to open and we had people waiting outside Becky's running around looking for a paper towel rack said let's just get the thing screwed on and they would they just didn't want us just open up easy so they they made it interesting for us it was it was a great exciting day but paper towel rack really come they were also flattering Us by like they had never seen plans like that done for a tattoo shop that came

through so then they wanted to also like share with everybody and they kind of turned us into of this like oh okay well these guys do it like this now I don't know if they raise their expect or what but we had to like we had to do more it was almost like oh okay well then you're going to have to do this like the salons do or something I don't know whatever we had to they they got Becky to write uh the safety manual for tattooing which the health department made everybody have in their shot going forward we we could yeah I don't even think they do that anymore we had to hire somebody to produce that we also what else did we have to do they they had us jumping through hoops just to get open but we were the largest um tattoo shop in the state of Nevada for several years after that yeah around that time was a really interesting time too because like right when we opened up in 2003 at our old location 2003 2004 har and Huntington opened up their tattoo shop inside of the palms and launched a TV show like at the same time I think Miami at was but anyway it was like I don't know if it was the first or second that's how we were able to expand once they open the zoning changed in yeah uh Clark County and we were allowed to be in C2 zoning no longer in um you know light industrial C2 zoning is The Strip Center um that was the beginning of a big change which we kind of saw it coming we knew it was going to happen yeah I said to Austin one time when he was pretty young I said there's

going to be one of these shops on every corner it'll be like nail salons and here we are yeah you know 25 years later yeah we got they're everywhere yeah so that basically but like they got a lot of overflow from there too if you remember like there would be like all these like Canadians at that time were tourist heavy so they would put in there they're like oh we want we don't want to wait like four hours in like the prices and the prices so then they randomly would we were just happen to be right there like all can can I tell a story about the girl we put in there is that okay one girl a girl that worked wanted to work counter for us we didn't we didn't give her a job a little blond ha girl so she got a job at AR Huntington and we gave her a a box of 500 cards and she ended them out oh to like all the Overflow i d remember that if somebody didn't like the price of the tattoo she would just go here's check these people out and it was just all day she sent us business which I'm sure they had plenty of business Carrie I remember him saying after they opened up he's a t-shirt business you know he's more of a brand I don't think he was that into trying to compete with the tattooers in Las Vegas he just wanted to build a brand yeah which they did and they're very successful at it yeah so then like see so it's was like 2000 back to like 2003 2005 we yeah or 2003 we no I'm sorry 2006 we opened up our new shop yeah and then that we were still kind of like having some interesting

run-ins with like different people in the area like some biker groups would come by and they didn't like our that we were opening up a nice big shops tried to intimidate us like all back their bikes up in front of our shop and then walk through the shop and like just go beyond the front counter and into the booth and I was just you know like I don't know kill with kindness attitude so I just sit there and like oh hey guys yeah thanks for coming to check out our shop you know like cool you know all right and then you never would never say to me for some reason because like a skinny ass kid and then they would just turn around and walk out then I would like hyperventilate and just decide to go back to my tattoo do everything we could to keep the doors open no that was the last time we ever it was 06 we didn't have any problems with anybody after that no at that point in time it was like now we were tattooing like soccer moms and um lots of firefighters and tons of uh industry was like huge at the time so like you know people were making a ton of money in Vegas and the casino industry coming in you know dealers and freaking nightclub people how wide open it was going to be but you could kind of feel it you know at about the time that we opened our first shop you knew it was going to get way bigger than it was yeah you could just tell because people that did like you said like nurses were getting tattooed it wasn't just gangsters and really like in that short amount of time we

just saw like I guess just TV helped to like kind of bring to everybody's uh I don't even know when that Miami or something was first one that drove a lot of business to that was all pre social media too so everything we were doing everything pre- Yelp preg gooogle reviews like we had no online pres I mean we did we we built a website remember like we put a ton of money into like hiring some guy to come over and build us a website we put like 15 Grandin or on a website which you know not anybody was doing that at the time too so that helped us out a lot with um I don't think a tattoo business could afford to throw that 15 grand for a website anymore yeah maybe I don't know but just like our security system whever we we had a security system

there cost us 10 grand for a security now it's you buy cameras for at Costco and put them up yeah so yeah lots changed there which is really funny but uh I know this the the we're like then we also didn't we only dealt with like the Great Recession all of a sudden we were just crashing it and then 2008 we got through some disasters remember we when we first started it was Y2K and we were only like two years into tattooing and this everybody's like oh the world's going to end everything's going to shut down power is going to go down we won't be tattoo made it through that and then we went through 911 yeah and 911 drove a lot we it did exactly the opposite you would think well we did a lot of patriot iotic tattoos after 911 tons of yeah and that just increased our business instead of what you know costing us business yeah but the Great Recession was another story that kicked our Bots we were we were doing really really good and we decided um I don't know I don't remember really what was going on I think we tried to invest in some other stuff and then just everything took a so then he had to like clean house and just really get down to the nitty-gritty and like show up and work every I mean at that time we were always still working every day but that was a pretty tough time we through a tough time a lot of ters sitting around with nothing to do and everybody gets tends to get like pretty antsy and you feel guilty if you can't can't keep somebody busy you know it's still that

way I mean it's like yeah if you're not keeping these guys busy it makes you feel you know not it's not a good feeling you want you want these people to come work with you and make money and yeah that's one of them that's probably the hardest part of the tattoo business or maybe that's anys any business I mean you know you feel this great sense of responsibility or you should when you you know open a business and you bring people on you tell somebody you're gonna they can make a living working with you and then you can't help them yeah it's an awful feeling but we've gone through many yeah well the Great Recession and then we went through covid which was the first time in our lives we'd ever had anybody tell us we couldn't come to work yeah

the government just shut us down like everybody you know but that was a weird weird time and a very panicking time pain right around when I started Maverick Supply Co and we had just invested in all of this product and it just got here and then I launched my website in January and I got a couple sales in January and then February came around like couple more sales and then March and it was Zero the whole entire industry shut down which was terrifying terrifying you know so yeah then it was like all right cool well I guess I'll just hang out in my house and DM people and this time Instagram was you know kind of still strong and stronger than ever I guess when everybody was in the country was sitting around doing nothing so I remember I putting up to like 18 hours a day dming people yeah just on trying to get them to like educated about havick and yeah and so then Co but who knew that people were going to save up all so much tattoo money while the lockdowns were going on because we came out Gang Busters after they opened us back up most insane two last two years ever yeah so and then now it's like the driest slowest winter anyone has ever seen so so we're you know full circle so yeah it's just like a cycle here we are it is life is like a roller coaster yeah and I think it's probably always been that way for tattooers from as far back as you can go yeah we've met some of the old ass tattooers from you know historical taters like phph Eddie bow Stan Philadelphia Eddie those

guys have been through so much they're they're gone now but they were super influential and uh to the whole tattooing industry yeah in this country in the world Philadelphia EDD has started the tattoo conventions and we actually got to go do conventions with him which was really fun and educational I thought yeah I had yeah really good we get to have lunch with Philadelphia Eddie and uttle we got we I think we had lunch with was there we're all sitting around the table we're in Vancouver Washington Vancouver Washington having a brunch and Lyall Tuttle he always had a cane at that time he was getting pretty old he was like 85 he sat out at the table and he was talking to us all he goes you guys want to do some lines and we all looked up and went no that dude was still and Chase like super hot young girls yeah same with Philadelphia Edie every time my girl that I was with at the time would like hum her out he just wouldn't even pay attention to me he would just stare at her and talk to her same with your sister they they always yeah we remember the time that uh we we had some ads and some tattoo magazines and we had Courtney in know like a kind of a outfit yeah my sister wasn't too racy but it was racier than we didn't realize how racy it was until we realized that uh tattoo magazines were going to prisons yeah and uh we had prison ERS contacting us telling Courtney that when they got out they were going to come to the shop and meet her so we had to pull all our ads because

we're like they were leaving messages on our machine that of how hot she was and I'm like what the is going on so weird we've had some super you just learn as you go you okay didn't that didn't really come into my mind I thought tattoo magazines okay nothing wrong with prisoners look at tattoo magazines but they'll put your daughter in there yeah kind a racy outfit what what some of your favorite like stories of working in that first shop back in like 200 jez I don't know you know just like I mean I I don't know about favorite stories but I I think I laid on the floor with a 911 operator probably a half a dozen times for I remember one time I got off the plane I flew to Denver for some reason and I got off the plane and Y Becky called and there was a truck had driven his truck up to the front door and had you hostage inside the shop I don't know what that was about I don't remember either I do remember that though yeah and remember a lot of very uncomfortable moments with people in the store and then them like being drunk at like after hours demanding that you tude them or what whatever and their friends were all there and then it turning into this real hot situation where trying to like I don't know I've always been kind of good talking people out of being super violent and angry and somehow and the total opposite I just get right in their face and trying to talk people down and I'm like come on yeah yeah we had some fun times there at that shop though like that's when we

were throwing some really crazy parties and that was when there was like no rules man we would throw like a Halloween party and I decided I wanted to come up with you know I was I was pretty Corky with some promotional ideas so we I decided all right it's Halloween and I went around and I bought like 75 pumpkins and I took this my uh roommate up to time him with a drummer and he had a drum stage it was just a basically it was like 2et of plywood and I put a blowup pool on there and I gutted 75 pumpkins and threw all the guts in the pool and it surrounded the pool with uh all the pumpkins and then we had a pumpkin gut wrestling contest where with a bunch of strippers yeah these you know very nice young ladies that were my clients and we had guys we had ramps guys like on mini bikes jumping or doing stunts and yeah there was a bar next door called The Royal and they open their front and back doors and let us race through with the minibikes through the bar I don't know if they let us do that or we were just doing that I think they liked it it was oh they never had anybody in there and then all of a sudden there was like 500 people in there I'm not sure if they wanted anybody in there yeah there was something going on over there we can't talk about yeah but then we had some we did some fun promotional shows though we had this trucker hat art show where we had an 18-wheeler uh pull up out front and I don't know it was a client of ours like yes and then we distributed like 150 um

trucker hats to artists all over the country and they sent them back to us and we had them all painted and then all displayed in there we did a um a silent auction so they were all uh auctioned off at 100% of the proceeds charity we did a lot of Charity stuff too which is awesome that was remember everybody being really drunk at the end of the night there we had a space behind that shop that was a big parking lot and it was off you couldn't see it from the Main Street so we could do anything we wanted back there so I had a friend that was an electrician that um lighted the uh convention yeah yeah he would bring out all those we'd bring towers of lights and generators and just make that place so cool back there it was a lot of fun yeah we had numerous events in the early days we did piercing so we had this guy Kane FZ and he was a he was a street bike stunt dude like back when that didn't even it wasn't even like a thing yet and uh he ended up coming and being a piercer at a shop for like two or three years two about two years or whatever until I we ended up having to let him go cuz he was he was obviously like needed to pursue what he wanted to do with the street bike stuff but anyway he had some pretty crazy stories where him and all his friends we would all come up and then we would block off the street which is like a five Lane Road and block it off with cars and then have like 10 street bikes doing stunts like burnouts and wheelies up and down the street till the cops

would like raid it and then they would all just take off and run from the cops and there would be like smoke and burnout everywhere we would just go back in and act like we're just like yeah that was just our day you know I don't know who those kids are we tattooed a lot cops too so they kind of let us get away with some stuff it was pretty fun yeah we had the trucker hat art shows the the Halloween things we we just did a lot we had a grand opening too there the first party where Ben remember uh Ben dos Frank yeah who's now do Frank yeah um he was our MC and we had uh Kelly and Andrew who had oh yeah there were sword swallowers they were Sideshow people so they would be hanging out they were so good at entertaining and I remember I had to get up on stage and drink a cocktail through uh Andrew's head like he threaded a hose through his nose brought it out of his mouth yeah of course cleaned it put it in a drink and I stood there and drank a drink on the stage threw his head grossed everybody out I thought it was well even grosser is he would drink a bag of his own urine through his own head so he would put the straw through his no came out maybe he did that on the stage no I don't know about on the stage he used to do that weird urine drinking like at the shop he would bring it by you got a video of his wife drinking his yeah he had where they would shreded ears and he stuck his penis through the hole in her ear pissed in a cup and she drank it and he yeah I am all that on

video so if we can get a hold of that that would be real sweet that's some crazy times yeah nothing like that happens in Studio 21 anymore assure you yeah that I know yeah he used to hang himself from his chest big hooks in his hang himself from the stairs right in front of the shop and like I used to help Kane do the piercings for that that was pretty gross I'm glad do that he talked to to get your nipples pierced too yeah he did yeah I never would do that hurt yeah well he was having a bad day he was grumpy because he wasn't getting any tips and I'm like well I I guess I numerous times I I actually did took one for the team I guess you I said okay just pierce my nipples I don't have anything else to Pier yeah that hurt yeah I remember Mom

uh so my mom at that back this was back in the 2003 to 2006 era my mom uh still had a full-time job she was a graphic artist and uh she had this young guy that worked for her for a little bit and he was obsessed with getting his penis pierced and he kept coming to our shop and like I don't know why that's like around the time I specifically remember like I'm not even into piercing like why do we even have this here and this is weird now mom's co-workers are like coming in and getting their wieners pierced and I'm like does do I want the Spencer family to be like known for getting your wiener pierced no fence pies but I'm like I just it just wasn't my gig yeah so and uh we also had some weird ass we had her accountant from her work ended up doing some accounting work for us and he came in and we had to fire him because we caught him photocopying all of the penis piercings out of the penis Port uh portfolio or the port and then we a bunch of the penis portfolio porn on the on Becky's computer he was doing our books and downloading porn at our shop on the computer we're like you gotta go dude yeah we we can get somebody else to count the money yeah I'm not yeah looking back I'm like why why was our account even in the store yeah I guess he was doing it on the side or something and do our for us it was weird we learned a lot over the years from those kind of experiences our new shop was much more tame than our first location yeah I think the whole industry is more tame than it

was yeah thousand per yeah tell was more tame I mean we didn't we don't have nearly as many people that would do the things that they would do in the old shop now yeah I mean the exhibitionists and the you know we that symbolism yeah remember poor all Phil luck having to do a consultation I sent him out there to talk to these people I knew they were gonna be characters and I knew something freaking weird was going on and they had brought a portfolio in of pictures of like his wife's genitalia and close-ups and they had drawn all these pictures all around like little detailed floral designs all around her genitalia and they just came in and they just wanted to show this to a tat to get an idea of how much it cost would and then make Phil extremely uncomfortable and then they basically I don't even think they had any interest in getting the tattooed she did it and in the booth that is now adults not yeah a Pidge pides yeah yeah sorry Pidge just went blank for a second there Phil luck had to tattoo that girl and he said I'm only going to get so close to your butthole and then that's it I'm not going to go any closer but he did that tattoo and she laid there spreading will Buck Naked for about 4 hours while people are walking by and he goes I'm going to go have a smoke you can get up you can cover yourself up and she would never get up cover herself up we were like weird characters people out there yeah yeah yeah that was like what we were talking about earlier too is just the

getting to know people in the most intimate long form kind of content way tattooing provides you like just can sit down other than barring those kind of stories uh the fun part of tattooing I think what I like most about it was meeting people and talking to people from all over the world we had people from everywhere and just the conversations and the things you learn from people about how they live where they are I I really enjoyed that I've never been a super big traveler but I I traveled through them you know to learning about them I thought it was pretty awesome to still I mean we still being in Vegas our our audiences worldwide so get some very interesting folks in there yeah tattooed billionaires I've tattooed you know fourstar generals and all kinds of people yeah that you would tattooed an astronauts sister one day um Astro Kate was her name her sister came through on the way to Florida to pick her sister up when the U uh space shuttle or landed they're going to get her out there and she told me she would be sick for about two weeks so she was getting some sort of tattoo to commemorate that wow that's pretty crazy CRA to talk to somebody who's going to get her her sister with on the space station and she literally was showing me videos of her talking to her sister I think she actually called her while I was tattooing her and I'm talking to an astronaut while I'm tattooing her sister on at m space station weird it's the you get these kind of opportunities that

other people just don't get industry yeah well I mean in tat Las Vegas too I mean I remember just having the weirdest like I'm you know a client that's like I'm a dolphin trainer you're like Is that real I didn't know that that's a thing or a l you know I work with the lions at the zoo at the you know the tiger SE show and stuff so had a lot of professional athletes and actresses and actors and yeah musicians which kind of brings me up to into like also like we've done some interesting things like we never had a um TV show take off but we have been under contract with multiple uh production companies and filmed multiple Pilots over the years like we go back to like TV taking off we were getting hit up weekly by people like production companies and stuff they were like whoa a father son and then my sister ran the front counter for seven years so then and then my mom later on she quit her full-time job and and came on with us like around 2006 or something like that the m a little bit Yeah but uh so yeah we did some really interesting like we went out to LA and got to like sit down with Kat Von D's agent at these big ass tables this big beautiful& History Channel all those we did like seven we pitched to like seven different networks all and uh I think at that time we were kind of that was like towards the tail end on that specific pitch but we were just kind of tired and didn't really think that it was they they want to to do drama we're really not drama people yeah it's

hard enough like obviously working with your family and you know running a small business so the last thing we needed was like people like throwing gas on yeah yeah so we did do a I think the biggest television thing we did was The Biggest Loser we did an episode of The Biggest Loser yeah yeah yeah I never forget the day that occurred I was tattooing somebody and the I saw a man and a young lady behind him with a clipboard walking through the shop and I I saw them meling around and I was like what's going on there you know and finally the guy came to the door and tap tap tap excuse me it was uh I I have a television show called The Biggest Loser and uh I was wondering if you guys might be interested in letting us use your shop and film here

yeah and I looked up at himone I said I'm not sure I want to have anything to do with the something called The Biggest Loser you know it doesn't sound I didn't know anything about it and he goes I have 13 million viewers on Prime Time CBS or whatever it was I was like hang on a second took my gloves off and the next thing know we're on the biggest lizard was pretty cool yeah which we had for years like people coming in we saw you the Biggest Loser oh people would bring me they I stuck this card on my fridge eight years ago that thing created business for a long time Biggest Loser and then we had a bunch of other shows uh Becky and I were going through some old pictures and I was like oh we did we were on some sort of a West Country West L show I remember walking into Best Buy one day and you were tattooing on all the TVs because you did we did that poker there was like a poker show and it was part of a bet where they lost a v yeah and then you had to do a tattoo on somebody or something like yeah there was some super famous poker players like those guys were called the Young Guns of Poker and we had them all in there yeah were fun yeah we did a lot of that was a good show so we're still open 200 um what's what's this month or this year 20 24 we're going to open 21 years this year this is our 21st or yeah this is our 21st year yeah so are you still tattooing much uh not very much but U I'm still willing to but you know what happens when uh somebody comes to me and wants to

get tattooed if someone else can do it I give it to them because we want them to be busy so as long as I can filter My Tattoos to them that's good is there anything out there that you'd be more apt to say yes to I like to do chest pieces if somebody comes to me for I I've always thought those are some of my best pieces my chest pie yeah just big like orc you know I like I like the symmetry of it I like you know traditional chess pieces let's yeah keep it traditional style or neoc um but fism too I don't really care to do anything bigger than that hurts my hands too much I think I'm old yeah so well cool I think that's about it I think we'll wrap it up but um I think what is to date yeah that's about it we're up to date and if you have any tell all the stories we got a lot of more stories we'll we're gonna do some more stuff we'll do so some back stuff but yeah so anyway thanks for having me yeah yeah yeah thanks Dad thanks for coming it was fun but anyway uh yeah stay tuned and we're going to have some more fun guests coming up and we are super excited to share this with you so have a good one thank you so much bye