- Hi this is Lea Woodford with Between the Lines,
and I am in beautiful Las Vegas
with the tattooed millionaire, Sean Dowdell.
Hi Sean, how are you?
- I'm doin' great Lea, thanks for having me on.
- This is such a beautiful place.
- [Sean] Thank you very much.
- Now we're here to talk about your new book today.
Now what was your inspiration for the book?
- The inspiration was after 20 plus years
in the tattoo and piercing industry,
I feel like we've really changed
and been a disrupter within the industry.
Had a lot of people come up to us,
I was speaking at an event, and asked if we had a book
and really that was the motivation and inspiration
for writing the book.
I just had so many people asking me if I had a book.
I said, "You know what, I have a story to tell
"I might as well write a book."
- Now what's the underlying message
that you want to leave in this book
and you want our readers to get from it?
- The underlying message is pretty simple.
We live in the most amazing country in the world,
and I'm very proud to live in the USA,
and it has so many opportunities for everybody.
I grew up pretty darn poor,
I was not a great student.
I graduated high school with a 1.81 average,
which is like a D+.
It's embarrassing to say that out loud,
but it humbles me very quickly.
And if I can do something that is on such a scale
of what we've accomplished, than anybody can do it.
And that's the underlying message.
- I love that.
Now what was your biggest challenge writing the book?
- Starting writing the book,
was the biggest challenge.
Once I was able to start writing and actually dedicate
a certain portion of my day,
then it came a little bit more naturally,
and I began to get a flow for what I was doing.
But honestly, starting and keeping on schedule,
like I had to make myself, force myself,
to lock down and actually write.
- So you locked yourself away literally?
- I had to.
When I first started I thought it would come organically
and it would just be you know this great moments of writing.
It didn't happen that way for me,
I had to actually allot three, four hours a night,
in my office and lock myself in my office
and force myself to write.
Even if I was writing something
that wasn't pertaining to what
I wanted to actually put on paper,
it got the juices flowing and got my mindset
into a way where it actually fed the big picture.
- Now you have a lot of people in this book
including Chester Bennington from Linkin Park.
Can you explain your relationship with him
and how he influenced you?
- Sure, so Chester wrote the forward to the book,
and he's one of my best friends.
He and I played together in a band,
back started in 1991,
and we played together all the way through 1998
in a band called Gray Days.
And he was a lead singer, I was the drummer
and basically I was his big brother,
and we just remained the best of friends
up until he passed unfortunately last year.
And he was not only a great friend, he was an inspiration
because he was one of the kindest individuals
I've ever met in my life.
He was one of the most selfless,
and giving human beings that I've known
and he always made me want to be a better person
when I was around him.
- Well you know one of the things
that I noticed about your book is your band members,
you keep people in your life.
You know it seems, you do.
What I've noticed, we're in such a disposable society,
and we cast people away,
but I noticed that you're writing about them
when they're really young
and yet they're still in your life.
- To a point, sure.
You know I don't look at people as disposable
by any means, for sure.
- I know you don't (laughs).
- That actually makes me uncomfortable even saying that,
but I'll say this, my wife tells me
I have an underdog complex.
I give people, probably too many chances.
You know I take meetings I shouldn't even take sometimes,
because I wanna hope the best out of people.
I wanna pull the best out of people when I'm around 'em
and hopefully I'm having that influence on 'em.
There's been some rough times as you read in the book,
with some of those band members
and you know they did some things that were, not good.
We'll just put it that way.
They did some things that did not make them
favorable in my life.
And for a while you have to turn it off
if they're not gonna, or not willing to change.
But you know I talk about our bass player
Mace Byers in there, and for a long time
he had an addiction problem
and was making really poor business choices
and caused a lot of detrimental damage to the band.
But since then he's gotten completely sober
and he's turned into a really good person
and I love him, you know.
You gotta give people the benefit of the doubt
if they're willing to change themselves.
- Now what was your favorite chapter in the book?
- Oh that's a tough one.
I like the chapter where I talk about meeting my wife
and my priorities in life changing, that's a good one.
I also like the chapter where I talk about value,
that was an entire thought process
that really switched my business perspective.
And how can we add value?
We take a different approach to every situation.
A lot of times I meet entrepreneurs and,
you know, "How much money can I make?
"How can, what's the ROI in this?"
And I look at it a little bit differently.
Yes, I'm concerned about the monetary metrics,
however, when I'm given an opportunity
to do business with somebody,
whether it be a client who wants our services,
or whether it be a worldwide, global collaboration
with Club Tattoo and let's say Oster
or Bicycle Playing Cards,
our first priority is how can we add value to this situation
for the person on the other side of the table.
If we can establish that,
and add value to any given situation,
I'm confident that we'll make money on the back-end.
It'll come back through those efforts
and through the value that we added.
So that chapter in my mind, holds a lot of priority.
I really like that chapter.
- I do too.
And I'm gonna just tell you,
I did not think that your book would be,
basically a business book.
I mean I, when I read it you know,
The Tattooed Millionaire,
I'm thinking okay, this is your band days and tattoo,
but it's actually a lot of strategies for entrepreneurs.
- Well I, that's really one of the main messages
I wanted to have in the book,
was to make sure that they understood
that this was a how-to guide for young entrepreneurs.
And what I wanted to portray in the book was,
how I failed in a lot of different ways.
And how I would take that failure,
get knocked on the ground, get back up,
lesson number one, dust myself off and regroup
and try to push forward.
And either take the lesson from the failure
or pull myself out of the failure.
Those things are very important as a business owner,
to know not to be so scared of failure that you don't try.
'Cause fear is a paralyzer.
Fear will paralyze you into inaction.
Inaction will cause nothing to happen.
So if you want something to happen,
it takes massive determined action,
you gotta move through the fear.
- Well one of the things that I loved about your book too,
is just the sheer honesty.
You know when you talk about your failure in San Francisco,
I mean, I read that chapter twice.
It was so raw and so real,
and I think a lot of entrepreneurs need to know that.
It's not always gonna be easy.
- No, in that specific case my wife and I,
we bet the farm on that store location
in San Francisco on Pier 39.
We spent a little over two million dollars,
it was a beautiful store,
but it just didn't work out for a number of reasons
that you read in the book.
And I think the scariest thing for her and I was,
yeah, losing the money hurts
and you didn't want it to crush you,
and that type of a failure can really crush you but,
I think we came out stronger as a couple
and stronger as business partners,
because we were able to weather
that ridiculously heavy storm.
- Well I love the honesty in the book because
I don't know about you guys, but being an entrepreneur,
I've had a lot of failures too.
- For every one success, you're gonna have nine failures.
It's just the way it works.
And you can't be scared of the failures,
recognize them early, correct the ship when it needs to be
and then move forward, and get through the success.
- What piece of advice would you give an aspiring writer?
- Start.
Pick a topic and start writing.
Honestly that was the hardest thing for me.
I was telling you a little bit earlier when we spoke,
when I started my book was actually eight years ago,
and my wife and I had moved into a new house,
and I came across this unfinished manuscript
and I got really upset with myself
because I'm not a type of person that doesn't finish things.
So I had to literally schedule it in my calendar,
and force myself to start and if you want to be a writer,
if you want to write a book,
the first step is the most important step.
You just gotta start writing.
- So true.
Now did you ever experience writer's block at all?
- All the time.
I would write entire chapters.
I would write 3000 words and throw them out.
I still have some of those chapters
that never did make the book.
But that's part of the process.
You have to get through.
Everyone, at least not everyone, myself,
I thought I was gonna write this War and Peace novel
and I think it's a completely delusional thought process.
You just have to write your story.
And your story if it's important to you,
don't worry about if it's important to everybody else.
Get your thoughts and your story out on paper,
and the rest will take care of itself.
- You know Sean,
some of these chapter titles are just amazing.
Laying the Groundwork,
can you elaborate on that a little bit?
- So the Laying the Groundwork chapter
was really about me growing up
and the values that my parents and my grandparents
instilled in me at a young age.
I told you a little bit earlier, I grew up,
and I'm careful to use the word poor because,
when I think of poor I think of third world countries,
kids without clothes, shoes, and food.
That's poor to me.
But in America you know, we had one car,
both parents worked, there was no money for extras.
So it was a very blue-collar family.
And the work ethic that was instilled in me at a young age,
my dad had me out working on cars since I was six-years-old,
you know, every weekend was time to work on the car
because that's just what it took to keep it on the road
for our specific family.
And then my grandfather
was a big part of that chapter as well.
He was an entrepreneur himself.
And he really taught me that if you want something,
you can go out and get it.
You gotta make it happen.
Nobody's gonna give you anything,
nobody owes you anything.
The one blessing that this country offers everybody
is the same opportunity, it's not the same finish line,
the same opportunity and you do with it what you will.
So if you want something, you gotta go make it happen.
And that was really what Laying the Groundwork was about.
- I love that.
Now, I loved Beginning to Push Boundaries.
Let's talk about boundaries a little bit.
- So that chapter is a little bit deceiving.
So Pushing the Boundaries was talking about
within our specific industry.
When we first started in tattoo and piercing business,
tattoos were kind of a seedy, underground industry.
It was kind of a biker industry,
and that's not who we are.
And from day one, we wanted to have
more of a classy establishment,
something that where women felt safe.
And they didn't feel like they were gonna be, I don't know--
- You cater to women.
- Just uncomfortable.
Yeah we absolutely cater to women.
We found out very early on,
women will spend their money
and women will spend their man's money.
Men are uncomfortable making choices in buying power
and they will go off of what their companion tells them
is the right move.
It's just how men shop.
I do it with my wife.
She'll tell me somthin's good, I'll buy it.
It's just how we are.
So once we were able to establish an environment
where females felt comfortable and they felt cool,
then it was easy to get the men to buy in.
- Well one of the things that I love about Club Tattoo
is that you hire a lot of women and they run your stores.
- Absolutely.
Once again we found out early on that
for our specific business model,
it's very testosterone heavy.
There's a lot of males in the tattoo artist side of it.
So we wanted to offset that a little bit
and bring some females,
some women into the picture
where they could offset that testosterone mix
and not have such a, an aggressive environment
and it worked beautifully.
They work very hard.
The women that run our company are very intelligent.
It's great, it's a great mix.
- Well it feels very boutique-y here,
but still very, it kind of balances the yin and yang here.
- Absolutely, we still have our integrity
of a tattoo and piercing studio.
We are a tattoo and piercing studio to the core.
But we're a very nice tattoo and piercing studio.
We're not a bottom-feeding business.
- No, it's very elegant.
- We're at the top end.
Yeah, we're at the top end of the spectrum.
And that's really what we try to portray
in everything that we do.
- But you've also,
what really impressed me about the book is,
you know you've gone to Washington,
you've changed laws, you have patents.
I mean I don't necessarily think about that
when it comes to tattoos or piercing.
- I'm a big picture kind of guy,
and everything feeds into everything.
And if you have laws at the state level
that don't make sense, get up, call a congressman,
call a senator, and make it happen.
So those are things that I've done in the past.
And as far as patents go, once again,
if something doesn't exist in your industry, invent it.
Create it.
So that's something I did as well.
There's a couple pieces of jewelry
that I've invented and patented.
I've invented and patented some tools.
Thor and I, we wrote a computer program
that makes our client experience
within Club Tattoo completely different.
It's a touch screen tattoo software
called Interactive Tattoo.
We developed that over a couple years,
and it's in all of our stores.
Definitely a differentiating factor within our company.
- It's so beautiful here.
- Thank you so much.
- So beautiful.
Now Sean, how can our viewing audience
get a copy of your book?
- So, it's all over the internet.
You can get in on Amazon, you can get it on clubtattoo.com,
you can get it on Ebay,
you can get it at businessgamechangers.com,
you can get it at seandowdell.com,
literally it's everywhere.
It's on audiobook.
I actually did a really cool narration of this book,
I'm very proud.
I went into a recording studio and did it very top-notch
so if you like to listen to audiobooks like I do,
I think you'll be very happy with the version that I did,
and that's at Audible and it's on iTunes.
- Oh, awesome.
You know, Sean, they're also available
in all the Club Tattoo studios.
- Absolutely.
- This has been Lea Woodford, Between the Lines.
Thanks for watching.