We were lucky to catch up with Valerie Nieto recently and have shared our conversation below.

Valerie, 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?

I opened my tattoo shop “ Blackbear Tattoo and Design Company” last May. I opened it on a whim, because another friend suggested I do so . I was humbled by the support that i received from friends. My shop was pretty much all word of mouth and its my friends and family spreading the word. No ones asked me for discounts, I have regular customers. If it wasn’t for my friends I think my shop would be dead in the water.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Valerie Nieto. Ive been a professional artist a couple decades now and a tattoo artist better part of a decade. I am not really sure what my tattoo style is. I enjoy doing all of it and try to push myself to get better at all styles. I named my shop the Blackbear Tattoo and Design company because I have this spirit connection to bears. So I figure what a better thing to name a shop. It’ll look out for me. I offer appointment only tattoo services as well as limited salon services. I think Whats sets me apart is how family oriented my shop is. People come all day just to say hi and I think that’s cool. I think what I am most proud of is most my clients are repeate clients they keep coming back. Im told they enjoy the work and the atmosphere and that makes me feel good as a business owner.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Being scared to fail is the lesson I had to unlearn. Failure is just as much a teaching tool as success. We actually, n my opinion learn more from failure than we do from sucess. It humbled us, makes us slow down, recalibrate what we are doing .

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I got really sick and thought I wasn’t ever gonna be able to tattoo again. So i dont know if it illustrates my resilience but it does illustrate that when you love something and are that passionate about it no set of circumstances will keep u away , you will find you way back to it.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: blackbeartattoo86
• Facebook: blackbeartattooanddesign