Season 2, Episode 5: there are no shortcuts

Listen to this episode here. Transcription below.

To start out this episode, we’ll begin with two stories, one from years back and one from just a few weeks ago.  Different stories, same theme.  About 8 years ago now, I had started my first tattoo studio with a beloved business partner.  We opened up in a small town on the southern border of central Massachusetts.  And when you first open a new tattoo studio, things tend to be slow, simply because you’re new, people don’t know who are yet…and so as an artist, you can get a little “hungry” so to speak.  You cater to anyone who walks in the door - we call those walk in clients.  And when you’re new, you literally live for walk in clients because, well, those impulsive tattoos are what pay your bills.  Typically walk in tattoos are relatively small, or they’re done from pre-drawn designs called flash that are usually lining the walls of any tattoo business.  It’s kind of impossible to give someone a huge tattoo as a walk in simply because it takes time to draw, let alone tattoo, and for big stuff like full sleeves or backpieces, you usually have to do research, planning…I’m sure you can imagine.  Plus, big tattoos almost always take a bunch of sessions…you can’t do them all at once.  I mean, I don’t really know anyone who can sit for 20, 30, 40 hours in a row, getting tattooed…and yes, that’s how long some large, full body work tattoos can take, even more!

So, I’m at my new shop.  I’m hungry for appointments.  It’s a Saturday, and I’ve got nothing on my books.  I’ve posted on all the socials, just hoping someone comes in.  And yay, this random guy pops in.  He smells like cigarettes and dirty laundry, but honestly, I don’t care because I want to pay my bills this particular day.  And he says, hey, I’m here to get a tattoo.  Cool, I’m down obviously, and I ask him what he wants.

He says: Oh, I want a full tribal sleeve.  (and before you think it, yes, people do still get tribal tattoos, and they pay exactly the same as any other tattoo)

So I give him my spiel - oh, that’ll likely take a bunch of sessions.  We can take the deposit today and start planning it out!  I’m down.  But he gets angry because he wants it done RIGHT THEN, all at once, that day only...and for $200…because that’s what he’s going to spend.  Yup.This isn’t uncommon.  I get that not all people realize how long tattoos take, let alone how much they cost, so I’m good with explaining the same things over and over again patiently to clients.  That’s no problem.  But what isn’t common is for someone to get angry like this guy did.  Fast forward to a few weeks ago - same thing.  I typically book several months out on my calendar at my current shop, where I’ve been for exactly 6 years as of today!  I had a client message me on a Saturday, telling me hey, I’m going to come in today for a half sleeve.  One - I was booked, and two - I generally can’t do a half sleeve in a day.  It’s not physically possible usually.  I patiently explain to the client - who I had tattooed before - that I generally can’t take walk ins but she’s welcome to go through the booking process and we’ll get her scheduled in the coming weeks or months.  Again, like the guy with his tribal piece, she’s angry.

Another aspect of this human tendency can also be illustrated through another thing I see with clients all the time.  They think that if they just buy the right product it’ll make their tattoo heal faster, or their tattoos will look better in time.  It’s kind of the magic pill approach to life.  No, it doesn’t work that way, and speaking as a full time artist for over 16 years now, most tattoo aftercare products are simply a waste of money.  Your body knows how to heal itself.  When I tell clients this, a lot of times they’re mystified, because they think there’s some great secret beyond their immune system.  One of the craziest things I ever saw was a guy who coated his fresh tattoo with Chapstick - he was one of my first clients when I started many years ago. I have no idea where he got that idea from but he was absolutely convinced he needed to do this to make his tattoo heal.

Beyond that, there are companies marketing products to make your tattoos look fresh again.  And that’s total snake oil.  Because a tattoo lays in the second layer of your skin, there’s no way to topically refresh it with a product.  You have to get the tattoo redone from scratch.  That’s just…fact.  Biology.

Again, there are no shortcuts.  With tattoo healing, the tattoo just goes through a process where the top layer of your skin scabs up and then falls off.  There’s no workaround to that.  It’s again, biology.  With freshening old tattoos, you can exfoliate, sure…but to really make an old tattoo look new again, you have to get the tattoo redone.  End of story.

Can you start to see where I’m going with this? This is the topic for this episode, and I think these stories are a great metaphor - there are no shortcuts in anything we do in life.  Anything worth doing takes time, commitment, effort…and in the case of tattoo sleeves…it takes a financial investment.  (just for illustrative purposes, each of my sleeves took well over 30 hours per arm!).  And on the other side, we’re looking for the magic pill that’ll make everything better quickly.  We all want shortcuts and hacks.  And influencers and authors and self help gurus promise these quick fixes.  Just follow my method and you’ll be able to only work 4 hours a week!  This kind of stuff.  There are whole industries based on these ideas.  One current example is the popular new industry of lengthening your life.  I keep seeing articles about this tech millionaire spending all the money on getting young, we’re talking millions of dollars a year, and he’s doing crazy stuff like getting blood transfusions from his teenage son. 

That’s an extreme example, but to a degree we all do things like this.  We look for ways to make stuff easier.  We expect things to happen now without putting in the effort.  We think we’ll just get the one system or pill or prescription or life coach and that’ll be it - boom, life is great.  We simultaneously are impatient while we unnecessarily over-complicate matters.  And we can get obsessed with looking for answers.  The root problem?  Life is about growth, and it’s about a journey, specifically about what we learn along the way.  And if we get so obsessed with hacking our way to a better future, constantly searching for the next best thing, we miss out on the beauty of the moment right in front of us.

So what are some lessons to be learned from all of this?

One - the best solutions are usually the most common sense.  I tell clients all the time, hey, the best solution to tattoo aftercare is the least sexy, keep it clean, leave it alone, and your body will heal itself.  Again, common sense.  What would you do with any cut or scab on your arm?  Would you coat it in Chapstick 8 times a day?  Nah, you’d probably wash it off and leave it alone, right?  OK.  Point made.  But, hey, it’s like this with pretty much everything.  We want the fancy special solution that requires the least amount of effort.  For example, I see financial and investment influencers giving advice on saving and so on.  What really needs to happen for most folks?  Simply spend less than you make and save the rest.  Again, common sense.  Not sexy.  No bells and whistles.  Beware of anyone who promises you the magic pill.  It doesn’t exist.

Two - there is no real such thing as a shortcut.  Here’s an example from tattoo clients, I get asked all the time about numbing creams for a tattoo.  And sure, some exist, and they may take the edge off, but the fact of the matter is when you get tattooed there’s a needle piercing your skin usually in excess of 100 times a second.  That…is going to hurt.  Doesn’t matter where it is on your body, or if it’s over the bone, whatever…it’s a needle on skin.  Ouch.  It’s the same with anything else.  Want to change careers?  You have to do the training.  It might be laborious and intensive, but how else can you get from A to b?  Want to run a marathon?  It’s going to be hard, you have to put in the miles in training because if you don’t, you’re really going to hurt in the end.  Literally.  You just have to resign yourself to the fact that we all have to put in the effort from time to time to progress, and pain, as a human, is something that’s simply inevitable.

And three - Everything takes time. Progress is measured in years - even decades - not in days or weeks.  Going back to the tattoo example - it may take 5, 6, 10 sessions to finish that tattoo sleeve.  Going back to the saving example…it may take decades before you see real returns on your retirement investments.  Going back to the changing career example…new job training takes time, doesn’t happen overnight, and then you’ve gotta start over from the bottom up.  Hey, it took me years to transition out of full time college teaching to full time tattooing and studio ownership.  And last, going back to the marathon example…it takes time to put in the miles to be able to do one. 

Nothing happens overnight.  Nothing happens by magic.  The more we can accept this, the more we’ll start to find joy in the journey along the way.  I promise you, putting in the effort will always be worth it in the end.