The $5,000 Lie: Marketing Gurus vs. Real Tattooing with Jeff Zalesak

This episode is about promises.

The kind that say you can be fully booked in 90 days.
That you can skip the apprenticeship.
That you can build a six-figure tattoo career if you just “optimize your content.”

I’m joined by Jeff Zalesak — tattooer of 20 years and owner of Camp Hill Collective in Pennsylvania — and we go deep into the rise of marketing gurus in tattooing.

We talk about the $5,000 sales calls and the predatory tactics behind them. About cold-messaging clients and why that quietly destroys respect. About online tattoo education versus real apprenticeships. About why technical foundations still matter. Why so many artists burn out. And about a question almost nobody stops to ask: why do you tattoo what you tattoo?

This isn’t an anti-marketing rant.

Learning how to communicate your work matters. Understanding social media matters. But selling shortcuts to mastery is something else entirely.

Tattooing was never built on hacks. It was built on repetition, humility, mentorship, and respect for the craft.

And if we lose that, we lose more than bookings.

We lose the culture.

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If this one resonates, share it with another tattooer.

See you next week — under the skin.