I’m glad that that this topic is discussed. There are so many new tattoo artists that want to take 5 steps forward, get the “rockstar attitude” and no knowledge. A true apprentice in a real tattoo shop will teach you how to respect the craft. Watching your mentors tattooing for the whole day, see how their process looks like, Walk-ins teach you how to be quickly creative, cause you can’t be picky, just do your own designs, you gotta do everything, every style…another lesson-how to treat your clients with respect so they can come back and lots of other things. A lot of people ask me about apprentices…I tell them to send me their drawings. After that is mute…but sometimes they do and Then I ask for 3-4 tattoo designs in specific tattoo styles. No one sends them. And my advice was for free 😂

I just recently started looking for an apprenticeship and doing a lil research trying to find discussions about the realities of what to expect the tattoo industry. This podcast has quickly become my number one resource 🙌thank u guys for real

I just discovered your podcast and I’m fully subscribed. It seems like there will be great topics. I like how many tattoo artists will be on the show and we get different perspectives. Thumbs up ! ✨

I loved this, and the subject matter made for a great first episode; talking about your origin stories a nice parallel to kicking off the podcast. Tattooing isn’t the only field where an apprenticeship model is used (or abused), but like the world of tattooing, the average person likely wouldn’t know about it unless they had lived experience in the industry. I apprenticed to a costume designer for a long time, and I worked in some amazing places like City Opera and Juilliard, but I also ran around like a lunatic; picked up the lunches and coffee and dry cleaning, swept and mopped the costume shop, oiled and threaded the machines, hand sewed tiny sequins on shit until every finger cramped up beyond recognition, and got screamed at by sopranos past their prime. It was a fantastic learning experience, but it was a brutal process for a while… and I still wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. Every second of that awful stretch served me well in the long run. 16:00 Miami Ink really was the catalyst for a shift in mainstream culture, and you are so right about people starting to change their thinking about what kind of people get tattooed or make tattoos. Now you even see tattoos on commercial models; wholesome types wearing khakis in a Target flyer or on a billboard over the interstate. 35:00 There’s a distinction to be made between legitimate hazing, which can cause lasting psychological harm, and putting someone through their paces with a few practical jokes or some trash talk or a little grunt work. Razzing your apprentice thickens their skin and prepares them for difficult clients, and things like soldering needles (as in your earlier example) adds to their technical expertise. There’s nothing wrong with putting someone though a rite of passage where they can come through to the other side feeling like they’ve crossed over into being a full fledged member of the crew, knowing they survived something that everyone else on that team has at some point in their career. Because there’s a difference between making someone answer phones and pick up pizza and hiding the stencil material on them, and being cruel and belittling. I can’t wait for the next installment!

Love those talkings! Thanks for sharing all this!

I’d like to hear your take on Ben Fisher’s Tattoo Method Pro online course

Guys, you need to stop promoting apprenticeships because it is really misleading to people. Most "apprenticeships" are working for free with no purpose, being harassed and possibly even getting into trouble if those shop owners are drug addicts etc. Real apprenticeships with good mentors are so so rare! People who come from lower income families have also the right to dream of being a tattoo artists, but how can someone real broke afford to stay 7 days a week in a spot and not get payed anything?! Just rich kids and privileged people can afford this time waste!! Which keeps low standards of the industry to continue. Also, those rich kids are not good material for being artists. The tattoo industry has been making itself look better then it really is in the public eye. It is also the duty of those tattooers who are visible in social media and appear in interviews and have podcasts to take those issues seriously and take a real stance against it. Not just laugh it off as a joke. There is the problem of growing number of studios and tattooers compared to the amount of clients. But this a problem that the tattoo world has created for itself trough this low practices! On top of that a pandemic and then inflation. The tattoo industry has no tools to survive this! Bravo. That's what you've created. Who is gonna clean up this mess now? Right now the tattoo industry is over. Let that sink in.