We recently connected with Jose Perez Jr and have shared our conversation below.
Jose, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?
Being a small, family-run business has been wild. Finding the right employees to help me manage my time, my clientele, and keep me on track is always a little tricky. I have a hard time trusting people so it’s always made sense for me to have some close family on the team. I know I can trust them with the books and with helping me shape the business and my image.
I’m an artist first and foremost and with that comes a lot of scattered thoughts and a perfectionist mentality. Every team member is vital to the business. I’ve always had a personal assistant to help me with everything. Finding the right person for this role isn’t easy. I know I can be a lot to handle – haha. I always look for someone who is organized and great at communicating. They don’t have to be an artist or even have an interest in tattooing. They just need to be prepared for a lot of changes, last-minute plans, and be open to learning about a lot of different things. I hope to one day be more than a tattoo artist. I’d love to create a business in the music industry or something international. My assistant’s role comes with a lot of hats.
When interviewing, I value honesty above all. I want people to be themselves and bring humor and patience to the team. We’re laid back here. It’s important to me that everyone feels safe and comfortable and gets along. Most of my current team members have been with me from the beginning. They helped with everything – and I mean everything. From marketing to client correspondence to designing the studio to organizing the books… I couldn’t do it without any of them. I may create the tattoos, but my team creates the environment for me to do so.
If I started today, I would want the same people by my side. They share my vision and have the drive to make it into reality. There isn’t much I would do differently when it comes to building a team. We’re cohesive and mesh really well together.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I’m a self-taught tattoo artist with about 25 years of experience under my belt. I made my own tattoo machine out of a guitar string and the motor from a Sony Walkman when I was just a kid. Obviously I didn’t use it to tattoo other people but I used it to practice with for awhile haha. When I first got into the industry, it was still very taboo. There weren’t a lot of companies out there providing products for tattoo artists. The biggest challenge was trying to figure out what we were able to use to help create our art. You hear stories about how artists used to use deodorant to get stencils to stay on the skin. Now there are special products specifically designed for tattooing, stencil making, etc.
When you first get into the industry, you learn pretty quickly that it’s both a community and a competition. Like with a lot of fields, there is some pressure to “be the best”. But there are so many different types of tattoo styles. So, you decide what style resonates with you the most and what style you think will set you apart from everyone else. I’ve always leaned towards realism. In every art medium, realism can be the most challenging to perfect. A realistic tree, for example, has a lot more “rules” than say an abstract tree. You have to consider where the light source is coming from, how to create perspective and depth, and you need to make it as authentic and realistic as possible: To convince the human eye they are looking at a photograph rather than a painting or a tattoo.
At the beginning of my career, I’d see a lot of traditional tattoos. You know, the anchors or the hearts, the tribal stuff. I wanted my art to be representative of what I value: truth. Over time, I developed my own signature style which can be seen between the main subjects of my artwork. It’s the way I connect the pieces of a project. I figured out a way to use movement in my projects in order to give the whole thing the appearance of breathing. It adds to the realism aspect of it. When you look at one of my pieces, I want your eyes to play tricks on you. If you look at it straight on, you see one thing, as you look closer, you see more things, if you look at it from an angle, you see it almost move to remain realistic. The twists and turns of the human body and muscles play a huge role in how and where I place certain subjects.
The most important thing to remember as an artist: your craft never stops evolving. You don’t get to reach a point and say, “this is as far as my art form goes.” No – there is always more to learn. There are new tools and products that change the way I tattoo. Artists nowadays are so incredibly talented and as new artists join the industry, they get to start out with all the tools they need to succeed. That means they all have a serious head start when it comes to creating their art. I’ve been in the game for a long time, but it’s easy to lose relevancy when everyone else is just as good at what they’re doing. You can’t get too comfortable in your field. You have to move with the changes around you.
What I’m most proud of – while my art has always evolved I like to believe that my core beliefs and personality have stayed the same. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the party scene of the industry. There are a lot of late nights, parties, conventions, etc. I’ve always stayed focused on my art and my business and just kept on grinding. Being a tattoo artist is a lot of fun but it’s a lot of work, too. Most people don’t realize how hard it is to get in the game, stay in the game, and be taken seriously as a professional artist. It’s cool to see how tattoos have become so acceptable and widely spread these days. I’m proud that I was able to start where I did and see how everything has changed over time. And be a part of those changes, too.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I’ll go ahead and keep it recent: the pandemic. That was a seriously challenging time for so many businesses. My studio was not allowed to operate for awhile. I lease my building so while the clients stopped coming, the bills didn’t. I know a lot of people share how truly terrifying this experience was. While the whole world seemed to go into a hibernation, my business suffered terribly. There were plenty of days that I didn’t know if we would ever open our doors again. We did qualify for a few government grants and we somehow made it through to the point of reopening. But to this day, we are still trying to make up for that lost time. One of the hardest parts of the whole experience was trying to maintain the marketing aspect of the business. How do you sell a product that people aren’t allowed to buy? How do you advertise a business that’s shut down indefinitely? And then, as things slowly began to reopen, most people weren’t looking to get tattoos. They were trying to fix their own lives and their own businesses. It was chaos and I pray the world never has to struggle through something like that again. It breaks my heart to know how many small businesses couldn’t make it back. And it really humbled me and reminded me that no matter how long you’ve been doing something, how good you get at it, how many people know your name, you can’t ever be caught unprepared for a crisis that could destroy your business. Luckily, we’re still here. I still have my studio and my staff. But that chunk of time that almost ruined us will always cast a shadow.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
The internet! Social media and online exposure has been HUGE in building my clientele. What a crazy world we live in where one of my photos can reach people on the other side of the world. Most of my clients are from out-of-state. They found me or my art on Pinterest, Google, Instagram, Facebook. It’s become the easiest and most effective marketing tool out there. And it’s been a great way to showcase my progress on projects and to connect with people who are interested in what I’m doing. I love when clients say things like “I saw this on Instagram and knew who I wanted to do my tattoo.” It’s so cool how simple is it to get your brand out there and noticed.
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