Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jucebox. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jucebox, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Earning a full time wage as a creative is always an interesting thing to achieve. Anything creative is so subjective when it comes to art so while some people might love what you’re making, some people might absolutely hate it, so it’s hard to gauge how much it’s worth to the consumer of your creative endeavors. I am fortunate enough to be able to make a very comfortable living off of being a creative, but it definitely didn’t happen over night. Specially being in the tattoo industry. It’s sometimes very difficult to stand out in an industry that’s so saturated. For me I found that my success grew and became amplified when I really just focused on all the art and making even the smallest of details as perfect as i could. I feel like with creative industries a lot of people focus too much on money and a dollar value of what they create rather than just creating to the best of their ability. If you work hard on the art you create and focus on that before anything people will notice and the money will come. Focus on putting everything into what you’re creating with the art in mind and not the money. The money will come if you take the time to study and practice and stand out above others. I’ve also found that in my industry just creating isn’t enough. Learning to interact with clients and curate an awesome vibe that makes people comfortable in my shop and in my presence goes equally as far as doing the actual tattoo for them. It’s incredibly important for return business to be able to interact comfortably with a client so they go tell their friends how awesome their experience was. Word of mouth has been a huge contributing factor to my success.

Jucebox, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I kind of became a tattoo artist by accident. I was always an artist growing up. Whether it was painting or drawing or building I was always doing art. I had some friends who were tattooers and always encouraging me to get into the industry and one day one of them put a tattoo machine in my hands and turns out i wasn’t too terrible at it. Fast forward over a decade later and now I have so many awesome clients and fun projects. I see a lot of tattoo shops around this time of year being slow and not getting much business and it’s so strange to me, and I think what it comes down to is a lot of people settle for just getting by. Being an ‘Artist’ has become super trendy lately and a lot of people I feel are getting into it for the wrong reasons. You have all these people trying to become a tattoo artist but they don’t draw or paint and don’t realize that being an artist is a huge prerequisite to becoming a tattoo artist. If someone isn’t an artist why would they want to pursue a career in art? The tattoo industry is very sacred yet very harsh and if you don’t do everything you can to make it work for you it will chew you up and spit you back out to the streets without a second thought. It takes a lot of time and energy away from other things and it’s very self sufficient. I don’t have a boss telling me what my schedule is or what my work that day is. If you don’t do everything you can to make money then you don’t eat. And just human nature makes it a lot easier to procrastinate than to work hard. So it’s easy to get caught up in this industry.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Honestly the best part of being a creative to me is watching my clients reactions and the joy they get from having a tattoo. Tattoos are such a deep window into who someone is. A lot of tattoos are more than just an aesthetically pleasing picture in the skin of the person wearing it. Tattoos are memorials. They’re changes. They symbolize a journey. They hide old memories whether visual or emotional. They can help people remember, or forget. They boost confidence. And the joy and happiness my clients experience, and even just the fact alone that someone can come to me and allow me to permanently alter their appearance is so humbling and incredibly rewarding. That’s my favorite part of tattooing.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Oh man, I’m not the best at social media. It took me a while to build up my following and I feel like a lot of it comes from how… odd of a person I am and people enjoy watching my silly little life and not only what I create but the person and motivation of why I do what I do. I feel like the biggest success for me on social media is just through networking and consistency. If you don’t stay in peoples face it will be easy for them to forget you exist.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @jucebox

Image Credits
@strawberryshoots