There are seasons where you feel like you’re building with your bare hands.
Not in the motivational version people sell you. The version that sounds cool when you say it out loud. I mean the real version. The version where you’re looking at the calendar like it’s a countdown. The version where rent is due whether you’re ready or not. The version where your faith gets tested in small, humbling ways every single day.
That was me in the early Vegas years.
People see the studios now and assume it was a clean transition. Like I landed, opened the doors, and everything started rolling.
It didn’t.
The first Las Vegas shop was about 800 square feet. Small. Tight. And it took months longer than it should’ve to even get it open. Zoning issues, approvals, paperwork. All of it dragged. Meanwhile the bills didn’t drag. They came right on time.
Rent still due.
Life still moving.
Pressure stacking.
And as an ex-con trying to build something legitimate, I didn’t feel like I had room for mistakes. I wasn’t chasing a dream. I was fighting for a second chance. When you’re in that position, everything feels like make-or-break. Because it is.
When You Can’t Tattoo, Your Mind Gets Loud
Before that shop was fully up and running, I was doing whatever I could to survive.
I’d be at the shop from 12 to 9, then out in the world scouting for anyone with tattoos. Walmart. Home Depot. Anywhere. Just trying to start conversations and bring people back to work with. That’s how desperate it felt. That’s how hungry I was.
But there were also hours where I couldn’t tattoo. Hours where you’re stuck waiting on the city, waiting on approvals, waiting on the next “maybe.”
And when your hands aren’t working, your head starts working overtime.
That’s when the doubt creeps in.
You start questioning everything.
Was this a mistake?
Am I really built for this?
Did I drag my family into something I can’t hold up?
How long before everything collapses?
Do I even have the strength to keep going?
I didn’t have a team back then. At home, I had a family depending on me.
At the shop, I had Anthony, my only employee. He was doing everything: front desk, phones, booking, the whole thing. He moved with me from state to state. Uprooted his life because he believed in mine. California to North Carolina to Vegas. He held the place down while I tried to figure out how to keep the doors open.
And then it got so tight that I had to let him go.
If you’ve never had to do that, you won’t understand what it feels like. It’s not a business decision on paper. It’s a personal failure in your chest.
Letting go of the one person who’s been with you through the struggle is a special kind of pain. Who’s become a second family. Especially when you’re the one who asked them to believe in your vision.
I felt invisible. I felt embarrassed. I felt like I was watching my own life shrink. Like I was drowning in more ways than one.
And then the real-life stuff hit too.
Debt and collections piling up
Foreclosure.
Cars almost getting repo’d.
That “hide the car somewhere else so they can’t find it” kind of season.
People romanticize the grind. But there’s nothing romantic about parking your car somewhere that isn’t your home because you don’t want it gone in the morning.
Flash Was How Tattooers Built Community
Things were different back then. The tattoo industry wasn’t what you see today.
Things were simpler. The industry was still growing, finding its way. Flash was still a real currency in tattooing.
For anyone outside the tattoo industry, flash is basically the designs tattoo artists draw and sell the rights to. Shops would buy sheets, hang them on the wall, and tattoo them for clients.
It wasn’t just art. It was a network. It was how tattooers communicated before social media.
It was a way to get your work into rooms you’d never step foot in. A way to share your art with clients you’d never even met.
And it was a way to survive when your schedule wasn’t full.
I had done flash before, an animal set. It didn’t really move. It wasn’t the thing.
But during that Vegas chapter of my life, when I was stressed out of my mind and still trying to get the shop off the ground, I had this idea. I thought about creating a flash set featuring pitbulls. The best of the best.
Because at that time, I was deep in that world.
I was breeding pits back then. It was a whole community. People who know, know. Standards. Structure. Bloodlines. The way a dog is built, the way it carries itself, the way the head sits, the way the muscle lays.
And I realized something.
There wasn’t realistic pitbull flash out there like what I had in my head.
There was great flash in general, of course. One of my friends—Boog—was one of the only guys really pushing flash to another level. International. He had that stylized, comic feel, and he made people overseas pay attention. He was different. He elevated the whole thing. Changed how the whole tattoo industry looked at flash. He opened so many doors.
But what I wanted to do was different too.
I wanted to do realistic pitbull flash—because I hadn’t seen it done in a way that felt true to the dogs I knew.
And because I didn’t really have any other options. I had to make a path for myself, because there wasn’t one waiting for me.
The Dogs That Inspired the Flash
The bloodline I was into at the time was Razors Edge.
And I’m not saying that for hype. I’m saying it because it matters to the story.
When that line first came out, it had a different look. Clean. Athletic. Blocky head, but not sloppy. Not too big, not too short, just built right. It stood out.
The guy behind it was Dave Wilson.
He was the guy.
This is the book I first saw, with Knuckles in the top right, that got my attention toward the Razors Edge breed
I’d see his dogs in magazines, in publications, on covers of pitbull books—dogs like Knuckles and Mufasa, foundation dogs. It was a whole era.
At that time, I was in North Carolina. Dave was in Virginia.
I had been following his dogs for a while, so I reached out to him about getting one.
That’s how we connected.
Somewhere along the way he found out I tattooed. Eventually he came down to the shop and I tattooed his arm—a pitbull with “Razors Edge” over it. He came back for more. We got close. Started trading dogs. That whole community was built on relationships, respect, and a shared commitment to the breed.
My first real stud was Blue, my first dog I used for breeding seriously. I’d owned pits before, but Blue was different. That was the start of me being all-in.
Blue, from the Razors Edge bloodline, and the pitbull flash set he inspired
So when I started drawing, I wasn’t pulling random reference photos off the internet.
I was drawing my dogs.
I was drawing dogs I knew personally. Dogs that were a part of my family.
Dogs from the same bloodline.
Dogs I watched move, watched breathe, watched grow.
I knew their form because I lived with it.
The Idea Born Out of Desperation
The pitbull flash wasn’t a “business strategy.”
It was a last resort.
I was already in that place mentally where you start thinking about quitting—not because you want to, but because you don’t know how much longer you can carry it.
I remember writing letters back then.
To myself.
To my wife.
To my daughter, Reena—she was around two at the time.
Letters you don’t write when you’re feeling strong.
Letters you write when you feel like you’re failing the people you love. When you’re trying to apologize in advance, because you don’t fully trust that you’re going to pull it off. When you’re trying to come to terms worth the worst case scenario, because you can’t visualize any other alternative.
Letters you write when you’re on the verge of ending it all.
That’s where my head was.
But I kept drawing.
And I got this idea:
What if I got these pitbull flash sheets into as many tattoo shops as possible?
Not posting. Not hoping the algorithm picked it up. That didn’t exist.
I mean mailing them.
So I went all in.
I bought envelopes. Stamps. Mailing lists. I made postcards of the flash sheets. And my wife and I sat there stamping and mailing thousands. Over 5,000 postcards—sent out to shops around the world.
One of the original pitbull postcards I mailed out
That was money I didn’t really have.
Time I didn’t really have.
Energy I definitely didn’t have.
But when you’re desperate, you don’t move like a comfortable person.
You move like someone fighting for oxygen.
When the Mail Started Sliding Under the Door
About a week later, maybe two, I started seeing mail come in.
Not one letter. Not two. Stacks.
I remember it like it’s burned into my brain—opening envelopes and seeing money orders inside. Over and over again. It was a dream come true—except I’d never let myself fully visualize just how powerful it would feel, because I never believed it could happen to me. To my family.
At first I didn’t even understand what I was looking at.
Then it hit me.
Tattoo shops were ordering the flash.
I had been in such a dark place mentally leading up to that moment. Feeling like I was failing my family. Failing my wife who stood by me fresh out of prison. My son I adopted and wanted to raise into a man he could be proud of. My daughter, still so young.
Watching everything we built start to fall apart piece by piece. Losing the house. Almost losing the cars. Letting Anthony go. Questioning if I was even meant to make it through this chapter.
I had been praying every night, asking God to show me some kind of sign. Some kind of way forward.
And when those envelopes started coming in, it felt like the answer. It felt like a miracle.
It was one of those profound moments where you realize everything is about the change for the better. Like when I first held Reena. When she was born, I saw the potential in me that my wife, Teena, had seen mirrored in my daughter’s eyes. I saw a new beginning. Everything I’d been waiting for my whole life.
That’s how impactful it was to see those money orders sliding under the door.
Because I knew they were the saving grace I needed to provide for the people I loved. They kept me from losing my second chance at a new life, the only other chance I’d get after prison.
I remember opening those envelopes and crying.
Not out of stress this time. Out of relief.
Because I knew in that moment we weren’t going to lose everything. I’d finally reached the change I’d been praying for.
Because of those flash designs and the people who supported them, my daughter was able to read those letters at 13—with her dad in a completely different headspace and position in life
Those flash sheets didn’t just help me catch up. They kept me alive. They kept the shop alive. They gave me enough breathing room to bring Anthony back.
And the first chance I got, I did.
Because I owed it to him. To myself. If you stood next to me in the hard years, I don’t forget it when things get better.
That pitbull flash didn’t just help financially. It gave me a place in rooms I’d never been in.
Shops were hanging those sheets on the wall. Artists were seeing my work. People were recognizing my style. My name.
And it reminded me of something I still believe today:
One decision can change the whole direction of your life.
Not a huge dramatic moment.
Sometimes it’s just one idea you refuse to quit on.
It felt like one of those moments where God quietly reminds you, “I see you. Keep going.”
Those words are still loud in my head to this day.
Full Circle, 22 Years Later
Fast forward to now.
This past Saturday—two days ago—I tattooed the daughter of Dave Wilson.
She recently moved to Vegas. I didn’t even know he had a daughter. My wife knew, but we never really crossed paths. A month ago, she reached out and wanted to get tattooed. She wanted a portrait of her dog. A pitbull.
And as we sat there talking, it hit me.
Full circle.
Me tattooing Dave Wilson back in 2004 at High Point, North Carolina Skin Design Tattoos
All those years went by. Over two decades since I last tattooed Dave. Since those dogs. Since that whole era.
That bloodline is basically gone now. That time has passed.
Memorial tattoo I did of Kaos, one of the dogs I bred and used as inspiration on the tattoo flash, on Anthony
But the impact didn’t disappear.
Memorial tattoo I got when Blue passed
Because it wasn’t just about pitbulls.
It was about community.
It was about relationships.
It was about this strange chain reaction where art connects people across time.
That’s the part nobody can explain.
The part where your survival story loops back around and reminds you: you weren’t alone.
What I Took From That Season
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it:
The industry will change.
Trends will change.
Technology will change everything.
But the human side is still the foundation.
That pitbull flash saved me, yes.
But it also reminded me that there are people out there willing to support something real. People who recognize effort. People who respect craft. People who see hunger and want to be part of it.
And I’m grateful for that. For the tattoo community. For the pitbull community. For the people who sent those orders in without knowing my full story—just believing the work was worth it.
I’m grateful I didn’t quit.
I’m grateful Anthony came back.
I’m grateful God had a plan for me, even when I felt like there was no way out.
I’m grateful my wife held it down when I felt like I had nothing to offer but stress and uncertainty.
And I’m grateful I can tell the story now from the other side of it—not as a flex, but as proof.
Proof that you can be in the worst season of your life and still build something that lasts.
Sometimes the thing that saves you isn’t some perfect strategy.
Sometimes it’s a last resort you commit to with everything you have.
And somehow, it becomes your turning point.