A Brief History
From a young age, I was always interested in tattoos. I grew up around them, both my parents had them and all of my idols that I followed were covered in ink too. I saw tattoos as a way to creatively express yourself through the markings on your skin.
I was always a creative person, I enjoy drawing, thinking of random products that could solve a problem, playing video games and programming. I feel that programming is a great way to get your brain thinking from a problem solving perspective. You always have to try and figure out all the possible ways someone might use your program. When I was 10, I developed my first text based adventure game by using the Salesforce platform. This is something that I haven’t seen anyone else do as no one has thought of using a platform that’s often used by marketers and other business people to conduct their business.
This problem solving and creative thinking is what gives me my ideas for my designs. All of my hobbies also help to inspire me when I’m drawing. I play a lot of fantasy video games and see some crazy monsters and themes that I transfer over into my drawings.
Business Philosophy
Having a personal business philosophy is important in how you progress and improve yourself in the business world. It helps define you as an employee and what you are willing to do in order to gain more experience. My past experiences have helped to define my own business philosophy and I will be able to transfer that into my future entrepreneurial endeavors. My vision is to create the best tattoo shop that everyone will feel comfortable visiting. This isn’t something that I can achieve overnight and I will need to work in the industry for years before I have the knowledge and skill set required to run my own tattoo shop.
The relationship with the customers is essential for any business venture, the customer is what allows your company to grow and expand. I feel that they are even more important in the tattoo industry. You need customers to keep the doors open and they need me for tattoos. My personal business philosophy will also affect how the customers see my shop as my ideals will come through in the designs and will be present in every tattoo I do. If the customers don’t like that they won’t want to get tattoos at my shop.
My personal mission statement is to create a tattoo shop that will have longevity in a volatile marketplace. I know that I will be able to do what ever it takes to make this a reality. I’ve learned how to work hard through my past experiences working in kitchens. I’m willing to put in the hours and learn any new skills that I may need in order to be successful. When I hit a roadblock, I won’t back down and I will figure out how to overcome it.
The vision of my company is to create a large, loyal following of customers that will keep coming back for tattoos for years to come. I want to create a legacy that will continue for decades to come and be continually revolutionizing the tattoo industry. This will be very difficult to achieve but with enough dedication, I know it will be doable.
Experience in College
So far I’ve had a pretty good experience at Durham College. I am currently in the Small Business and Entrepreneurship program and I have met a lot of great people. I feel that I have learned a lot about business and this knowledge will help me in the future. One of my favorite classes thus far was the Entrepreneurship class. In it, myself and some group members created a company and started selling a product on campus. We decided to sell reusable straws on campus. I was in charge of managing our social media page and the design elements of the company. On the right, you can see the logo that I created for our business. I also created shirts and a banner for a table for when we were selling our product.
I’m looking forward to my next semester where I will get to learn about law in relation to businesses and more about digital marketing. All these skills that I am learning will help me greatly when I am starting up my own business. While it will still be a while before I can open my own tattoo shop, that won’t stop me from starting other businesses. I’m always thinking of innovative new products and you never know which one might be the next big thing.
