5 Red Flags That Make Me Turn Down Clients

what's up everybody i'm james whithey and today we're going to talk about five red flags that make me turn down clients during consultations [Music] all right so at the time that i'm making this video in the year 2021 i feel like tattooing is maybe the busiest that it's ever been during my nine year career um i don't know why that is i don't know if it's because of like the stimulus checks or people have like um i don't know pent up uh urge to spend after being locked down so long in 2020 but yeah i feel like definitely right now we're at the time where the demand for tattoos especially good tattoos is quite a bit higher than what the supply is so it's getting increasingly more difficult for clients to get in with good artists and i feel like good artists are uh either closing their books up um if they're getting too booked out or they're being quite a bit more selective about who they tattoo them so um to kind of round about to my point of why i'm making this video is um i feel like you know with tattoo artists they have a pretty decent amount of people trying to get work done by them um we tend to get a lot more selective about who we take on as clients and who we choose to tattoo and in this video what i'm going to do is i'm going to outline five red flags that happen during tattoo consultations when i'm first like interacting with clients that make me um not want to tattoo them and essentially find an excuse uh to turn them away so i'm making this so that you can kind of like avoid doing these things um if you are a would-be tattoo collector and you're looking to collect from either me or just anybody else out there um that has like the ability to be a little bit more picky about who they tattoo and uh just try to educate some people on tattoo etiquette and maybe this will be useful for tattooers that are out there that have a hard time with difficult clients often and need a little bit of um like an outline on how to spot those difficult clients and uh make it so they don't really have to work with them and stress themselves out because let's face it anybody like me that's been tattooing for a pretty long time has had their fair share of difficult clients uh throughout the years and um when you have a bunch of clients that are cool which like the vast majority of mine are it makes it um really unenjoyable to work with uh people that are gonna just make your life more difficult and make your job harder unnecessarily and i feel like uh i've had other tattoos tell me that you know i get really lucky with all the cool clients or whatever a lot of it has to do with um like the read that i get on people during the console and whether or not they're gonna be problematic clients because it's not just enough to have um enough money to get a tattoo i feel like there's gonna be a lot of people that watch this video and they're gonna be like well if i have money then you should [ __ ] tattoo me and that's you know the customer's always right or whatever but that's not the case um when you start to get to a point in your career where like i said you have more people trying to get tattooed by you than you can possibly do and i feel like the problematic clients tend to almost like overshadow the good clients and how much effort and work it takes to satisfy them and make them happy and in my personal case i'd rather just not deal with them so um yeah in this video i'm just gonna go ahead and outline some things that are like red flags that um suggest to me that somebody might be a problematic client and uh you know those are the people that i end up choosing not to tattoo and we'll go ahead and get into that right now so the first red flag that makes me like totally turns me off and makes me not want to work with somebody is when they try to do a consultation through proxy and what i mean by that is like when they have someone else try to handle the consultation for them like somebody that's not actually going to get the tattoo whether it's like a family member like it's their parent or a spouse like oftentimes it's like a husband and uh you know they'll call into the shop or whatever and start talking to me on the phone about what their wife wants to get and uh you know where on the body and how much money she has to spend and all these different things what her timeline is and um you know sometimes they'll do it in person too where like a couple of clients will walk in and one of them is like the one that's going to get the tattoo but the other one is the one that's doing like all the talking in terms of like well this is what he wants and this is what um he was thinking and all that sort of [ __ ] and oftentimes they'll even pull out their phone and be like showing me pictures of like references or whatever and being like this is this is what he wants to get right here and the first thing that i think when somebody kind of comes into the shop or calls me on the phone with that sort of situation is like why the [ __ ] am i even talking to you like you're not the one getting the tattoo so i don't really understand um why you're here like almost like buffering this situation i want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth like in terms of what they want out of the piece because i feel like uh the tattoo should be a collaborative process between the person that's doing it and the person that's getting it and nobody else should really be involved and when it comes to like the situation where people will call in over the phone and like talk about how their wife wants to get a tattoo or like they email me or something and say hey my wife wants to get this or whatever um it almost makes me like think like is your wife even a real [ __ ] person or like is she like just some imaginary like being that you made up or whatever like i know that's a small possibility but that's like the first impression i get is like well um it almost makes it seem like this isn't a serious inquiry um and there's a small chance that maybe they're just [ __ ] me around and pulling my leg or whatever because there is no direct communication going on between me and the person i'm actually going to be doing business with so um when it's phone or email that's kind of how it seems when it's in person i feel like the reason it's a big red flag for me when somebody starts trying to do a consultation through proxy is because let me explain this first i feel like one of the things that makes me avoid working with any clients is if i feel like they're not going to be happy with the tattoo that i do on them um you know i only want to do tattoos that people like and people enjoy i want people to feel satisfied uh with the work that i do for them and um when i don't really like have that direct communication with the person that's actually getting it i don't feel confident that um like we're connecting in terms of our vision for the piece or whatever and it makes me uh feel like there's a higher likelihood that i'm just gonna do whatever this person wants that's not getting the tattoo that's talking to me and that when i actually do the piece on the person that's getting it there's gonna be some sort of like a miscommunication and i might end up um you know not knocking it out of the park the way that i want to because i didn't hear it directly from them like what they actually want and uh i don't know if that sounds weird but i just you know don't want there to be like a situation where it's like one of those telephone games where like one person tells something to another person that person interprets it and then goes and tells it to another person that's how it feels it's like the person that is giving me all this information that's not actually given the tattoo it's going through their filter or whatever in terms of their style of communication and them expressing um desires or whatever that maybe the other person's told them or maybe they just made up out of their own [ __ ] head and then i'm going to interpret that and then i'm going to go ahead and turn that into a tattoo on this person and it might end up being a situation where [ __ ] gets lost in translation and uh yeah i just really don't feel comfortable in that sort of situation and um at the same time it almost feels like you're a grown ass like woman you're a grown adult or a man or whatever it is like if it's a mom speaking for their 21 year old son or whatever like you're a grown up so you should be able to handle this on your own and if you're not confident enough or not mature enough to do that then it makes me i don't really i can't get an idea what kind of person you are if somebody else is speaking for you all the time and matter of fact if i do get an idea what kind of person you are it's just that you are um immature and incapable of handling adult things uh by yourself such as scheduling a tattoo appointment and uh getting a tattoo which obviously is a pretty fairly serious thing so um yeah definitely i try to avoid those type of um situations and when people have um you know recently hit me up uh with that style of consultation or communication i just straight up tell them like hey i don't do consultations through proxy if your wife wants to get tattooed have her send me an email have her give me a call i have her come into the shop and talk to me directly because the reality is there really doesn't need to be any other person there besides her okay so the second red flag that i want to talk about that like instantly turns me off and makes me not want to tattoo somebody is if their primary concern during the consultation or like initial uh interaction is obviously price and uh you know before i get into this let me preface it by saying like i understand tattoos are expensive and i understand that um you do need to have some sort of a ballpark estimate to understand what you're getting into uh you know so you can weigh all the options financially and i'm not talking about just like trying to figure out how much a tattoo cost i'm talking about when like they just keep on circling back to that over and over or maybe even start like trying to haggle with the price and like try to get me to come down from whatever estimate it is that i've given them or maybe even do a tattoo that's not the best i can do but it's just something that's cheaper within their price range a really common example of this would be like when a client asks me how much a tattoo would cost and then i'll tell them how much it's going to cost and then they will tell me that they know somebody else that will do it for cheaper or they can get a better deal somewhere else or something like that and my response to that is always like well if you can get it done somewhere else cheaper then go and get it done by that person like i really don't give a [ __ ] um who you get tattooed by so not only is this uh kind of i don't know disrespectful to a tattoo artist to say hey i can go get it done cheaper somewhere else um i mean because we obviously know you're full of [ __ ] otherwise you wouldn't be standing in front of me asking me to give you a tattoo or whatever not only that but it's not like an apples and apples to apples type of comparison like every tattooer has like a different style that they do every tattooer you know has different skill levels or whatever so if you ask me for like i don't know um a tiger portrait or something like that on your outer upper arm and i say yeah that's probably going to cost you like 1500 bucks or 1800 bucks or whatever to get that whole half sleeve done and they say that somebody else will do it for 900 or a thousand that doesn't necessarily mean like their tattoo that they do isn't gonna look like the tattoo that i do um and i'm not saying that it's gonna be worse necessarily [ __ ] maybe they just don't charge a lot of money and they're better than i am or whatever but like it's a unique thing that each tattooer will produce um that's pretty much like a one-off even if it's a realistic reference or something that's done by the from the same exact picture it's going to look different when i do it as opposed to when somebody else does it so comparing what i charge for my work doesn't really make any sense um if you're trying to compare it to what somebody else charges for their work you know so when somebody's coming and getting a price quote from me they're asking me how much it would cost if they got it from me and i'm telling them that and that's pretty cut and dry in my opinion you know so when people start acting like they can go and get it somewhere else cheaper actually the reality is no you can't you can't get a tattoo from me from somebody else cheaper because the only tattoos that are done from me are done [ __ ] by me right so um saying you can get us done somewhere else cheaper definitely is like a huge red flag um trying to price shop or like trying to i don't know circle things back around in the conversation during the consultation to like what if we did it this way would it be cheaper what if we did it that way or we shrunk this down or made this smaller could i get it done cheaper you know if it's just like one or two questions like that then of course i'll oblige and sometimes i do try to work with people's budgets especially if like they're younger or they have the type of job where they do have to save up quite a bit for the tattoo so i'm not like totally um against uh like some sort of discussion about price or how they can make it more affordable for themselves but if that seems to be the primary concern it circles back around to that over and over and over then what it does is it kind of makes me think that maybe you just can't afford the tattoo and that if i schedule the appointment with you and you're not the type of person that's managing your finances correctly it's a very high likelihood that you're going to end up like no call no showing or just like rescheduling constantly and just being one of those problematic clients that kind of [ __ ] up my workflow so um you know i try not to deal with that too often maybe another example of that would be like if the client comes in and uh asks me whether or not they can just do like two or three hour sessions on the tattoo so that it won't be like a huge lump sum of money every single time they can make it cheaper for themselves or if they ask for these sessions to be spread pretty far apart like every three months or six months or something like that and i'm just really not interested in doing that because i want to finish tattoos quickly if they're multiple session uh that way i kind of don't have to like re-figure out what i'm doing every single time that i get back into that piece it just kind of tends to happen more fluidly and efficiently and it's better for like my portfolio in terms of um i don't know getting uh pieces finished that are at a certain time period of like stylistically how i tattoo during that time period or what my skill levels at during that time period it's just a lot better for that because if people are coming back every six months or every year then a lot of times the way that i've tattooed um has changed and uh you know it's not really like when i finish the piece it just feels like it's not like an accurate representation of where my skill level is at or what i'm doing stylistically at that time so for all those reasons yeah i try not to uh spread the appointments apart but um yeah i feel like i'm rambling a little bit now but that does kind of tie into people um trying to figure out how to make the entire thing more financially manageable um which like i said is okay but if it's to that extent then i'd rather just not tattoo the person because i'm not like a financial advisor or something like that i'm just a tattooer and it's not really my job to make it so that you can afford getting tattooed by me now the third red flag is actually going to be like the opposite situation um where sometimes i'll get these clients that will come in and they will like try to throw their [ __ ] around like their weight around in terms of how much money they have or whatever and uh i don't know usually it's like some big bodybuilder like bro [ __ ] that thinks that he's like super entrepreneur [ __ ] ultra paid i own my own business and uh you know i get hella cheese and [ __ ] and money's no object you know i have an unlimited budget or whatever um those are usually the same [ __ ] that will come into the shop and ask me um like if i tell them i'm booked out five months or something like that they'll ask me if they can pay me extra to jump the line and get ahead of everybody else that has already booked with me um or something like that like they just try to like figure out some way to like financially like cheat the system and circumvent everybody that's already been waiting and that's a [ __ ] huge red flag for me because like when i say that i'm booked out five months i'm actually booked out five months like i can't [ __ ] squeeze you in because it's already been squeezed as much as it possibly can in terms of my um available days so there is no way to jump the line unless i get like a cancellation or something like that and you know i can put you on a short list but when people are doing that it also turns me off because it's like kind of disrespectful to my other clients like just because you have more money doesn't necessarily mean that um you know i'm gonna jump all over that and be like [ __ ] yeah i'm gonna tattoo you and just like start rescheduling and burning these other clients that i've already been waiting for several months to get tattooed by me and if somebody has that sort of attitude then it starts making me think that maybe we're not even going to get along as people and if we're not going to get along as people then i'm not going to want to spend you know dozens and dozens of hours over the course of many months um tattooing on you like multiple session work because i got to spend all that [ __ ] time in the room with you and if you're a douchebag then i'm not going to get along with you and i don't like spending my time around douchebags so those type of clients i definitely turn down as well and you know what's ironic about that is that every time that i have given somebody the benefit of a doubt in that situation where they start acting all douchey what the [ __ ] money is no object and i'm [ __ ] you know doing big things and all that sort of attitude or whatever every time i've like made an exception to that it has turned out exactly um the opposite of that where these are the clients that are like always rescheduling and flaking and don't end up getting the tattoo or just i don't know sit terribly like i said big bodybuilder dudes that are all [ __ ] uh have that sort of attitude whatever they usually sit like little [ __ ] too so when i get people that are in the shop like that i just like find an excuse not to tattoo them and uh just tell them you know maybe you should think about it some more and mull it over and here's a [ __ ] business card or whatever and uh that seems to work pretty well to get them out of there because um in my experience those people are very impulsive and uh as soon as they leave the shop i literally never see them again um you know in those type of situations but yeah every time i've made an exception and actually try to tattoo one of them like it's almost never worked out and that's why i just avoid those clients totally now when they start acting like they're all super money bags and [ __ ] so the fifth and last uh red flag that i'm going to talk about that makes it so that i don't want to work with a client and kind of look for an exit strategy during that consultation it's going to be if that client gives me any sort of impression that i am their employee or their subordinate and uh you know this is kind of a weird one i don't know why people do this [ __ ] either it's usually people that have never had a tattoo before or like had very few tattoos but like i've had clients come into the shop and like kind of talk down to me um i don't know like they talked to me the same way they would if they were talking to i mean i wouldn't talk to somebody that comes and does work at my house like this because i don't talk to anybody like they're my [ __ ] subordinate unless they actually are like if they're my apprentice or something like that and even them i'm pretty polite to the apprentice that i've had in the past um well like they talk to me almost like if i'm like some dude that's just gonna like come and do some landscape work for them and pull some weeds out of their [ __ ] yard and uh as if they're gonna be like my foreman supervising me the entire time during the entire tattoo process and nothing turns tattoo artists off more than that because like we're in this [ __ ] for ourselves like we're all independent contractors we're all entrepreneurs um you know we're not the type of people that function well in this like employer employee type of relationship where somebody's just barking orders at us and we're just like [ __ ] yes sir yes ma'am and um you know just jumping through the hoops or whatever so to speak um it really kind of grinds our gears when people act like that and i've had plenty of clients do that i've had people walk into the shop all drunk and then start looking through my portfolio with like some weird like snooty critical type of uh vibe to them and like basically in the end like oh well i guess you're good enough i guess i'll go ahead and hire you for the piece or whatever and uh if i decided to hire you and uh you know do this and they like use that word over and over like they're gonna [ __ ] hire me um i mean yeah technically i guess maybe you are [ __ ] um you know contracting the job with me you're uh gonna purchase the tattoo from me you're not [ __ ] hiring me like nobody hires me i work i own my own [ __ ] shop so it just doesn't make any sense when people start talking to me like that i just don't like people trying to send me and i know that you know in the past when people have come in with that sort of attitude they're actually quite surprised when i tell them that i'm not going to tattoo them and i'm not going to work with them directly and uh you know it kind of like blows their mind and [ __ ] it's the same type of thing i was hanging out earlier where they're like well i have money in my pocket so do you want this money or do you not want this money because i'm ready to spend with you and that basically means that i can talk to you however the [ __ ] i want and that is definitely definitely not the case because um you know like pretty much every other tattoo artist i've met i don't take any [ __ ] and i'm not trying to have anybody talk to me like i'm their employee or a little kid or anything like that so when people have any little inkling of that type of attitude right there i just figure out a way not to tattoo them and oftentimes like depending on how bad it is like there's a lot of different degrees to it if it's to a really high degree then i'll already feel like i'm wasting my time even consulting with them so i'll just cut the consoles i won't even like try to figure out a little excuse not to tattoo them i'll just straight up tell them like no i don't think we're going to work well together so i'm not the guy for the job or whatever and i mean and that shortens the interaction so i can actually get back to work and get back to tattooing somebody that's actually has their [ __ ] together and is uh treating me like a decent human being you know so um yeah that's definitely the sort of thing you want to avoid that's trying to talk down to your artist or act like they need you more than you need them because odds are if they're a skill tattoo artist they definitely don't and like i said especially this year i might be singing a different [ __ ] tune in a couple years when this economy takes [ __ ] but right now the demand is much much higher than supply so uh yeah you want to avoid that if you're looking to get tattooed so this list right here um you know i probably could have made it like 30 items deep [ __ ] 40 items deep there's a you know over my nine years of tattooing i've really honed in and like fine-tuned the way that i evaluate clients and kind of like uh like a checklist so to speak on uh things that they might do that might make it feel like hey you know i maybe don't not want to work with this person or whatever but i wanted to try to keep this video fairly short i don't want to you know run into a huge laundry list of all these different things um but it is something that's uh you know worth being aware of as a client especially if you're a serious tattoo collector you know i know there's probably a lot of people that might watch this video and be like [ __ ] this [ __ ] guy what does he who's he think he is you know [ __ ] if i've got my money then he should [ __ ] take it or whatever but when you start collecting tattoos from people that actually like really know what they're doing and they have a decent amount of clientele then you will um you will be uh kind of evaluated and uh filtered during the console whether you know it or not so it is something to be aware of you know i'm not saying you got to go up in here and walk around eggshells and kiss a tattoo artist's ass because i don't want someone to [ __ ] do that either with me it makes me feel weird when people kiss my ass extra during the console but definitely you know just exercise common sense and just be respectful towards your artist and uh just know that their time is valuable and that they don't have to work with you if they don't want to and that's one of the beautiful things about our job is that um you know we really are not obligated to do anything unless we're at a very very low novice level in our career which in that case will pretty much do whatever the [ __ ] you want and i mean we'll jump through all those hoops but yeah once uh you know like i said you get a serious tattoo collecting you're not gonna run into that situation anymore and it's probably smart to uh you know just be a [ __ ] good person and just be nice and um be concise and uh try your best to communicate with your artists in a way that uh makes sense like in terms of the context of what they do for a living and how much demand there is for what they do you know so that's about it for the video today if you felt like this information was helpful and as clients you uh are interested in kind of knowing about like a little bit more about like tattoo etiquette or uh just you know how to how to be a better client then definitely leave that in the comments section maybe i'll make another video that's similar to this um i got a few of them in mind for like unknown tattoo do's and don'ts and [ __ ] like that um but yeah if you're a tattooer and you have other things that might be like more obvious than this but i just put this [ __ ] together like my little outline for the video i just do it like 10 minutes before every video so there might be other things that are even more obvious or things that might have even been better to talk about in this video in terms of uh [ __ ] that clients do that are like major red flags that make it so that you choose not to work with them if you do have those things in mind and you're a tattooer then go ahead and leave those things on the [ __ ] comments because i'm pretty interested um to know what your guys is like uh i don't know like your line in the sand is that when people cross it you're like you know what [ __ ] this uh it's kind of interesting to me because me and a lot of my co-workers have discussions about this [ __ ] all the time in terms of like how to how to weed out like the shitty clients and how not to have to deal with them because every single time it happens man it's like you [ __ ] get done with a 10 12 hour day working on one of these people and it's just like [ __ ] i just sucked all the energy all the good energy that sucked it out of you and it feels like totally like you sold your soul at work afterwards and um we'd like we'll dissect it and discuss it and try to figure out how to avoid feeling that way in the future so i know this is something that tattooers talk about and it's definitely on all of our minds but yeah these are just some of the things that are kind of um that stick out to me um with regards to this subject and hopefully uh you know those things might have shed some light on that stuff for you fellow tattooers out there in terms of how to like avoid um like the shitty clients um i guess maybe it's worth explaining like how i [ __ ] avoid like how i end the console like i said sometimes i'll like suggest to somebody that maybe they need to think about it longer and uh tell them to mull it over and just hand them a business card without like doing like okay it's time to put up your deposit or whatever like i won't close the sale if i don't want to work with them or i'll just straight up tell somebody like uh hey maybe i'm not the guy for the job because this type of tattoo right here isn't the one that i excel at like i don't know i'll maybe even [ __ ] lie to him a little bit and say i'm gonna do a shitty job on this tattoo or it's going to suck which is only like a half lie because in some of these cases they [ __ ] probably would think it's going to suck anyway because they're that neurotic client that wouldn't like anything um i do that what else do i do i mean sometimes i'm pretty direct with them especially if they're like on the [ __ ] real extreme end of that spectrum and they're just kind of pissing me off and like i said i feel like it's a waste of my time to even be polite to them at that point sometimes i'm pretty direct with people and i just tell them that i'm not going to tattoo them like they're all drunk and just acting [ __ ] stupid and like being borderline disrespectful um sometimes i'll recommend them to another artist that is uh more i don't know amicable in terms of putting up all that sort of stuff and jumping through all the hoops for them because they need the business so it's almost like a win-win for the client and the artist or whatever um because the artist gets the business they need and then the client ends up having their ass kissed the way they feel like they need i do those type of things but yeah that's i think that's mainly the method as far as the exact verbage and like words that i use or whatever i just kind of improvise it every time so i'm not really sure if i can give advice on that but hopefully that little tidbit at the end of the video helped you out but yeah in either case if you guys want to check out pictures of my tattoos or see uh what the [ __ ] kind of stuff i'm working on you can always pop over to my instagram it is at jameswoodytattoo um or you can go to my website it's www.jameswithy.com and i have like an online portfolio on there if you're looking to get tattooed by me then uh the contact section is um on that website and all you gotta do is just uh make sure to fill out um you know your email with all the information that i've listed on there um which is probably another one i should have talked about if people don't fill out the information correctly and then that's another thing that makes it so that i really don't want to have a console with them because i'm like well if i [ __ ] have all this info on here that i need from you and you didn't fill any of that [ __ ] out then it makes me think that maybe you're not even smart enough to [ __ ] follow through and make all this [ __ ] happen to begin with so yeah i really don't respond to those people either um which is off topic but yeah that's the end of the video have a nice day i'll see you okay so now that we're at the end there is one more thing that i want to mention and that's that this video is sponsored by skillshare skillshare is an online learning community that has like thousands of different classes for creators and it's a really great way to explore new skills and beef up your knowledge and ability in whatever creative endeavor you choose the types of classes that you can take on skillshare are really wide in variety and they include stuff like freelancing fine art videography filmmaking all sorts of stuff one of the classes specifically that i liked when i was looking through the skillshare website was one called start drawing techniques for pencil portraits taught by a person named gabrielle bricky one thing i really liked about this course uh specifically was that she's really comprehensive in the way that she explains everything in terms of like how to draw a pencil portrait so she covers like uh different materials you'll need to start the process uh specific techniques that you might be using when you're drawing pencil portraits and also one thing that i really really liked was that she covered like the anatomy of the human face which is super important if you want to be a good portrait artist to like know where those anatomical landmarks are so you can kind of recognize them more easily when you're matching information from the reference to the actual art you're creating so yeah overall skillshare is a really great learning tool regardless of your current level of skill like whether or not you're a novice or whether or not you're intermediate or advanced and you know it's really great because there's no ads and they're also constantly putting on like new material onto the website so that there are new classes for you to continue your learning the first 1000 people that click on the link in the description of this video are going to get a one month free trial membership of skillshare and uh yeah go ahead and try it out and see if you like it hopefully you benefit from it thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: James Withee

Views: 102,573

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Id: mvmjoxk13UU

Length: 30min 6sec (1806 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 05 2021