From Health Insurance, a Fictional Island to America’s Longest-Running Tattoo Convention: Meet Jesse Smith

Uh, you've got the Loose Screw Tattoo Studio, right? And you've got the convention.

So what are the things that have stood out for you as a shop owner over the last bunch of years?

Man, it's a, I mean, I'm sure Chico can attest to this, is, uh, it's a tou- it's a tough...

Running a tattoo shop's tough because you've got this kind of balance thing that you're trying to do because, you know, tattooing is not like what you would consider a job, you know? And, and a tattoo shop is not what you consider a business, but if you try to run it like a frat house, it'll just, it'll just implode on itself.

But if you try to run it too corporate, then you've got, you know, nobody's gonna wanna work at your shop, you know? It's, because it just becomes too sterile.

And I've found that as a business owner, but also as a consumer, I much prefer to go to, to very professionally ran mom-and-pop places, you know? And that's how I try to run my shop.

I like to run my shop like it's professional, it's organized.

Uh, you know, when you, when you, uh, get, uh, an appointment with a tattoo artist, you can be sure they're gonna show up, be on time, and ready for you.

Um, however, I don't want it to be so corporate where I don't even under- I don't even know the people's names at my shops anymore, and I think that as soon as humans start turning into numbers, that's when I lose interest, you know? And it's like you hear, you hear the word scalable a lot, you know? A lot of people want to create scalable businesses, and I've, I've, I've realized that that's not me.

I'm not interested in creating a scalable business.

Um, I wanna create a business that's ran well but also still has like a little bit of that human touch to it.

Um, and I think that, you know, once you get too big, you kinda lose that.

What do you think the difference is from when you started owning shops till now, the difference in the employee, or should I say the artist?

I mean, it's, it's crazy.

So, you know, when I, when I hear people say employee, I think, 'cause I have, I think seven or eight employees, and we'll call them like admin employees, and then I have like 12 tattoo artists.

Um, and so, and then all my tattoo artists are actually W-2, so they're employees as well.

Uh, but you know, I, I kinda talk about them differently because they hold different positions.

But yeah, I, I would say that, you know, when I first opened my shop, I think the minimum wage was like, I wanna say it was like $8 or something like that.

Uh, that was a, uh, a decade and a half ago.

And what I, what I could, what I could pay someone $8 an hour to do back then, I can't even get for $20 an hour now, which is crazy.

I mean, the, the employees would work a lot harder for the most part.

Uh, you know, and I got great employees now, so I don't wanna, you know, throw any of them under the bus.

But throughout the years, I've had these people come through and it's just like, it's crazy how much they want for little work at all.

I've, I always wondered why people would shut down their shops over time.

Uh, and what I realized is, you know, that the longer you run a shop, the more iterations of that shop, you know, come to be.