We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Toney Plugz. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with toney below.

Toney, appreciate you joining us today. How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?

At first it was hard finding a way to ask friends and family to support my small business. A couple of years ago I had a stroke and every single one of them stepped up and supported me and my family by buying merchandise to help out with bills that wouldve otherwise stacked up and would’ve made it near impossible for me to keep up with them. With their help, including my wife and immediate family, I was able to bounce back and get back to drawing and resume normal activities. I still have a hard time coming out directly and ask for help, but they always step up by referring their friends and family to shop and spend their money with me and my wife who is also an artist. All of this has changed my perspective on how to market myself and that in turn allows me to create more freely. I am very grateful for my family, clients, and prospective customers.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve been an artist from a very young age, sometimes I feel like I was born creating. All throughout my schooling I was drawing and creating, on paper, canvas, sculpture, and many other forms of art. When I graduated high school I went on to attend f.i.d.m. for 2 semesters, during that time I started getting visibly tattooed. The artist who was tattooing me ended up being my mentor and gave me my apprenticeship in tattooing. From him I learned how to build tattoo machines, application of tattoos, sterilization techniques, and everything else that helped guide me in the proper direction to being the tattoo artist I am today.

Fast forward 25 years and I finally decided to apprentice roxy roo and tech her everything I have learned over the course of my career in this industry. She is now working with me at a private studio located in san diego california. Together we provide artistic services to the community in a positive, clean, all inclusive art studio. Clients, new, and old can count on us to create custom artwork that is meaningful to them, in the most respectful way, so that they are truly satisfied with their experience.

I am very proud to provide all of my artistic services to the surrounding community, and try to give back to local small businesses. I truly believe in shopping local and helping out in any way I can. These are just some of the reasons I encourage people to trust us with their ideas and have us bring their artistic dreams become a reality.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

This was a long process. I started collecting books, tattoo machines, art in general, and all the supplies I needed to always be well stocked and always be able to provide services. This made it a lot easier to be able to start a small business because I didn’t have to come up with all the money at once to get started. I also have to thank a good friend of mine for allowing me the opportunity to start with minimal start up money. All of this combined made it so I could start this business.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Well I have many of those, but the one that comes to mind first is the stroke I had a couple of years ago. It came very unexpectedly and severe. I had a left frontal lobe bleed, they told my wife that it was unlikely that I would ever be the same and even the possibility of me dying. I had to have emergency surgery in my brain to stop the bleeding, and a tube to keep it draining. The doctors had to intubate me, and put me in a medically induced coma for 3 weeks. This was a very hard time for my wife and family. My first memory of waking up from that was me trying to pull the tube out of my head. I then slowly started trying to draw and write, I wasn’t able to speak due to a combination of the stroke and intubation. Still I persisted and never felt like giving up. As soon as I felt like I could, I stood up and walked myself to the bathroom and kept trying to write and speak normally, this was tough. When they finally let me out of the hospital I followed through with every type of therapy they would offer, speech, physical, occupational, and would go 5 days a week. I didn’t want the stroke to win, so I fought and always stayed positive that I would win. And to this day I feel like I have won, not just against the stroke, but the odds.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: toney plugz @plugziedinero
• Facebook: toney plugz
• Other: Google “3rd realm custom art studio”

Image Credits

All photos taken by me.