Digital Social Hour - Going on Ink Master, Wildest Tattoo's & Transitioning into Shoes with Bull Airs | Thom Bulman DSH #292

Episode Date: February 17, 2024

Thom Bulman comes on the show to talk about his transition from tattoos to shoes, what it was like going on Ink Masters and how he made shows for TMNT. APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Which part of the body hurts the most to get a tattoo? The ribs. The ribs. It's still like one of the hardest spots. It's the only spot on the human body that when you're getting tattooed, your body will actually go into, like you almost get symptoms of the flu. Your body like is trying to fend off the ink that's going in it and you're getting those symptoms.

Like anywhere else in your body. Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe it helps a lot with the algorithm it helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team truly means a lot thank you guys for supporting and here's the episode ladies and gentlemen tattoo artist and sneaker legend tom bowman here in the building how's it going man hey thanks for having me man yeah i love the hair oh you know you got us you got a peacock when you're in the room so why not neon pink hair how many colors have you tried uh done neon green neon blue and neon pink

okay sometimes i do bleach blonde but like pink to me is just it looks the best it photographs nicely i have all these caricaturesatures that I use for branding, so it's got the pink hair. It's kind of like my staple now. So you do a lot of neon, a lot of bright colors. Yeah, everything we do is pop culture, so why not make the hair pop culture bright too? You know what I mean?

So I know you made a big living in the tattoo space. We'll touch on that first. What made you so passionate about getting into that industry at first? Tattoos? Well, I just came from being a musician for years, touring around the country. And then obviously as you're a musician, you've got to get tattoos. And getting tattoos.

And I've always drawn. When I was a little kid, I wanted to work at Disney as an animator. But obviously I got into the music business and was kind of doing that for a while. But I was always drawing everyone's tattoos. And then as you get a little bit older in your mid 20s and you're like i don't know if music's gonna work out you kind of say what what can i do next that i love yeah and at that time it was tattoos yeah got an apprenticeship at a biker shop you know uh got whipped with cables and cords and doing crazy stuff.

But that's a whole different podcast if you want to hear those stories. But yeah, I did the apprenticeship, and then I was just kind of working from shop to shop, learning when I would reach the peak of that shop, I would move on to the next shop where there's somebody. There's always somebody better than me because I always wanted to push myself to be better. I didn't want to just be stale and kind of stagnant there's like levels to the yeah exactly and i think a lot of tattoo artists especially you know they get to the top and you know it's a small little you know big fish

in a small pond and they love where they are in that and they they don't they don't want to leave their comfort area you know whereas i was always like i was always aiming higher and higher and higher because i didn't want to be the best tattoo artist in the shop or in my town i want to be the best tattoo artist in the world right you know so i would constantly be like hey i love you guys i got an opportunity to go you know learn from these guys that are way better than me then you get there you learn what you can and then you move on to the next one so that's cool yeah i feel like a lot of tattoo artists don't think that way i mean i used to like at one point i was flying down to atlanta like once a weekend like once every couple months to just learn under under Dave Kruseman, who was another guy that was on Ink Master.

He actually won season five, I believe it was. And Dave was amazing. I'd fly down there and he would just show me all his tricks of the trade. I just can't imagine too many people, especially these days with the young kids, flying someplace to learn something for a weekend. Now they just want to go on YouTube and learn it. I feel like with tattoos it would be tough to learn digitally. It is and it isn't. There's a lot of really good media out there.

There's one called, I think it's called Fireplace or Fireside Tattoos. He does an amazing job. He'll do full episodes or a full season of how long should your needle depth be. This is the way I shade if you're doing this type of style. It's very in-depth. Like anything, today if I want to learn something, I'm right now learning how to CGI and digital sculpt. I'm just going on YouTube and right now learning how to cgi and digital sculpt i'm just going on

youtube and i'm learning how to do it you know there's so many uh websites and you know me uh what's the word i'm looking for there's so many videos yeah there's so many videos out there of these people that are masters of it and you know like i almost feel like you really don't need to go to college just on youtube and you know there's college for tattoos there is there actually is tattoo schools i think there's one here in las vegas i know that for a fact there's a bunch in portland they do a huge um to do about it up in portland um they're not everywhere but i know in las vegas there's a really big one um joey hamilton who was also on ink master he runs it um with a guy named sausage shout out to

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bucks a month and they were able to cut down on those prices. So all in all, shout out to Rocket Money. Great product. So stop wasting money on things you don't use cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash dsh that's rocketmoney.com slash dsh link will be in the description below i know sausage what a name yes he's he's hilarious he was on ink master too um like i said i mean being on ink master it's like a fraternity so like we all kind of know each other but yeah there's um the tattoo school thing is great you know i mean because you're actually learning from like you know an actual person that's been doing it for a long time apprenticeships at times can be a little redundant a lot of times you know an old tattoo master kind of just wants somebody there to be their slave and kind of you know go get them

a water like an assistant yeah clean up after them you know what i mean and they're not really learning you know they're not invested in teaching someone whereas the tattoo schools they're you know you're paying premium dollar and you're going to be taught properly so it's pretty cool so as someone who was one of the most known tattoo artists how insane was the money at that level uh so it's nice but i think being in upstate new york you know you have a roof that you you hit you know what i mean if i lived in new york city or la or san francisco you know i could have my hourly you know hourly rate or my day rate you know could have been 3500 damn for an hour no no for for a day right my date yeah so being in you know those areas if i wanted a 3500 would have been my day rate or my hourly rate could have been 600 an hour you know

what i'm saying you can make a million oh yeah but i'm in upstate new york i have a house there i have a family of kids right so like i'm not planning i wasn't planning on going to those places so like mine was only 250 an hour you know and that was kind of like the max that you can make in upstate New York. Which is still great. No, it's great. Obviously, you've got to do your taxes at the end of the year if you want to.

You kind of see the ceiling. The only way you were going to go above that is one, do a lot of conventions. I did a lot of them. I was doing at least once a month. People get tattoos at the convention. There you can have a convention rate where it can be $600 an hour

and you can get those premium rates that you would get in New York and LA. So I did that a lot, which was fun. But then also you have to deal with being away from your family. And then that's a whole other... You seem like you're a big family man. Yeah, I'm a huge family guy.

I love my kids. Drive me crazy. But I love them. I love my wife drive me crazy but you know i love them i love my wife she's amazing you know so that's awesome has anyone come to your shop with just terrible tattoos and you had to kind of redo it i mean so towards the end before i retired you know i'd have like a whole like when you go on the website you fill out like a form and you know there'd definitely be a lot would it be like oh i saw you an ink master i'd like to get like a unicorn on my shoulder and i'm like that's cool it's just not my thing so it

towards the last three years i would say i was very picky on what i did because i was very much into the cartoon realistic new school type stuff yeah um so i was very fortunate i was able to pick and choose but i also tell people like a lot of young tattooers i say you know i didn't get to pick my style or turn down tattoos until 12 years into it you know what i mean like i'm 17 now if i was still going yeah but i was said you know i i could pick them and you know and stuff like that but like a lot of these younger tattooers i mean i'm like an old man yelling at clouds right now but a lot of these younger tattooers are like oh i've been tattooing for six months and I only do anime tattoos. I'm like, that's cool, but I still think you've got to pay your dues.

Also, doing a color portrait, doing a black and gray, doing a tribal tattoo, doing a stippling tattoo, all these things are going to make you learn the fundamentals. And then when you're ready to be at that point in your career where you can just pick one thing, you've kind of mastered all of the fundamentals and then when you're ready to be at that point in your career where you can just pick one thing you've kind of mastered all the fundamentals a lot of people skip that you know what i mean like when i had a few apprentices we would actually start on a coil machine because if you know how to put down an actual coil machine and put down lines your tattoos moving forward are going to be amazing because everybody switches to like the rotary machines yeah they look like a

vibrator so you you know switch to that but you need to learn the fundamentals of a coil machine before you do that so are there any tattoos on you that you did yourself are you interested in coming on the digital social hour podcast as a guest we'll click the application link below in the description of this video we are always looking for cool stories cool entrepreneurs to talk to about business and life click the application link below and here's the episode guys uh i don't think i'm trying to think if i've ever tattooed myself you know once in a while i would like when i before i got the sleeve blacked out i had um tattoos here and i would just touch them up or brighten them up and stuff like that oh i thought that was your shirt that's hilarious it's the full black you

know full black down sleeve you didn't like the tattoos? No, I love the tattoos. So like these, this is a sleeve and I had another sleeve over here. It's all like traditional. But I got it done in like 98. So like,

and at the time they were like top of the line, best tattoos around. But like, as you can see, you know, tattooing is so ridiculous now that like it's on a whole nother level.

So detailed. Yeah. And you know i've had these for i want to say like 25 years or something like that you know or whatever it is i don't know i'm 43 so um but i've had them for so long i just kind of got bored with them and i see a lot of people a lot of my friends in the industry they black out their arms like man that looks so good because it's just like it just looks smooth and clean. Black goes with everything. So I just kind of went for it.

And it hurt like hell. They get like a big giant 50 mag. So that mag is like the width. I'd be crying. Oh, dude, I was crying. I had to get laser on some dark spots on my face. Lasering is another one that just hurts. It hurts, dude. I had my chest lasered before I got it tattooed.

And I'll never do it again. Dude, it's... Everybody's like, oh, why don't you just get your arm lasered, and then you can do something new over it. I'm like, that'd be great if lasering didn't hurt as much. I had to hold onto a towel. Yeah, dude, it's ridiculous.

It's on a whole other level. You'd be sweating bullets. Which part of the body hurts the most to get a tattoo? I'm a big believer, and I think a lot of us tattooers are, that the ribs is is still like one of the hardest spots it's the only spot on the human body that when you're getting tattooed your body will actually go into um like you almost get symptoms of the flu so you're like chills like

a quick fever you know that that wet pale sweat you know what i mean your body like is trying to fend off the ink that's going in it and you're getting those symptoms like anywhere else in your body it doesn't do that but on your ribs it's something about that area that your body just goes i don't want anything to do with this and i'm gonna straight bone so i imagine it hurts what's the weirdest location you've given a tattoo up tattoo holes inside, yeah, yeah. You got to be careful down there. I've tattooed a guy's nutsack. It said Dragon Balls on it.

That must have hurt. Yeah, that was the funniest one because we literally had an armrest, and I had him put his balls on there, and he spread them out. Because he had to hold it, and I was tattooing it. And he was like a military guy, so he brought like 15 of his friends in there. And they're literally – it was like a circle jerk they must have lost their they're literally yeah he must have lost a bet but they're literally standing around me they're going oh my god they're just laughing off and this guy just has his balls and he's screaming bloody

oh i have somewhere online there's a video you must have felt bad just even doing that like no i when they come in i'm like hey you know what you're in for you know what i mean there's some weird spots i've seen eyeballs i've seen tongues yeah'm like, hey, you know what you're in for. You know what I mean? There's some weird spots. I've seen eyeballs. I've seen tongues. Yeah. I had the inside of my lip done. It's since faded.

It's just a novelty thing. I try to tell people that. The tongue. I mean, why? Why the f**k? I've seen people get this tattooed over here on top of their gums. Yeah, not for me. How many tattoos did you have to remove um for me it

was just it was just lightening up this so we could put something over the top of that oh and then i've had one spot on my han solo tattoo that's on my like just uh i didn't really like how the face came out so we lightened it and then we redid it so yeah that must be a bad feeling getting a tattoo done because it's hard to like edit that right yeah i mean if it's a black and gray tattoo it's gonna fade super easy like those are actually the easiest things to get tattooed off like if it's a you know red green or yellow they're a little bit harder it takes a little bit more time so yeah damn let's let's wrap up with ink master what was it like going on there what did you learn through that i love i loved it so i grew up watching you know real world road

rules you know all that like that so like i've always been, you know, real world and road rules, you know, all that shit like that. So like, I've always been a, you know, a reality TV whore as it were. Yeah. But I loved going on there. It was the most intense thing I've ever done. A lot of people don't realize, you know, I was there for 10 episodes. There's 15 total.

I was there for almost three months. Wow. Yeah. So you're like, you're there. And on top of that, like, there's no windows in the place. Damn. There's no clocks. There's no TV.

It's like a casino. They take away your cell phones. Three months? Yeah. Dude. I would have gone crazy. In the morning, you'd be able to go downstairs. And you go into a room.

And they have a guy that's standing outside the door. And you can call or FaceTime your wife or girlfriend or whatever. And then they take it away. And you're basically under. We compared it to jail. It's very traumatic because when you come out of it, you feel like you were in jail. In the first couple weeks after you come out and you're tattooing,

you're also always looking at the clock. How many hours do I got left? Because you're just so traumatized from the clock always. Five minutes, five minutes. You know what I mean? So you're under a certain time period. Yeah, like they'll give you like oh you have six hours to do a tattoo you quickly learn after you don't finish the tattoo in time and you almost get sent home which happened to us is you you don't need to design a tattoo for six hours design it for three hours because just like you're under the lights. There's no music playing. So everything goes by a lot faster.

But just don't overestimate what you want. Oh, I could totally get a six-hour tattoo. No, you're not. You're going to do a three-hour tattoo and crush it. How far did you make it? Made it 10 episodes. So I think it was fifth place or something like that. I don't know how many people.

There was 23 in my season. You did solid. My season was the only one, too, where we were able to go on it with our tattoo, fifth place or something like that how many uh people there was 23 in my season yeah solid so my season was the only one too where we were able to go on with our tattoo our actual shop so there was two of us me and this guy named derek who's awesome nice so we came on there and we were able to do like tandem tattooing so we i'd be tattooing one side of a girl's body and he'd be tattooing the other which i've never done in my life and then just the overall like the funness of doing like stuff that we've never done before like we had an ice sculpting challenge i've never done in my life. And then just the overall funness of doing stuff that we've never done before.

We had an ice sculpting challenge. I've never sculpted ice. Apparently I must have done well. So yeah, we have stuff like that. It was just an overall amazing experience. I'm very fortunate. And it's still cool that I go to a lot of tattoo conventions and people are like, oh, I loved your season.

You were cool. That's cool. Yeah. So going from tattoos to sneakers, what sparked that change? Was it money? Was it you got bored of the industry? What happened? Yeah, I mean, it's never money with me.

It's really hit at the right time. So at that point, I was 15 or 16 years into tattooing, but I had really bad back problems and a little bit of carpal tunnel, like most of the vet the vet tattooers and I just basically said I need to do something while I can't tattoo right now and it was like the first time ever that I've been on you know I've taken a week vacation here and there but this is the first time for like three months we weren't able to tattoo in New York and then a friend of mine Dom he goes by the shoe shoe surgeon. I had been talking to him for a couple years

because he always wanted to get tattooed by me. And he's like, you should take my course. And I'm like, I don't know. I've painted vans and things like that. He goes, I think you do really well. You're creative. Obviously, you're an artist. So I took his course that he offered

and made a pair of Wolverine shoes, posted them. And everybody was like, f***. And I was like, wow, okay, this is really cool. And then everybody I was talking to, they were just like, I was like, wow, okay, this is really cool. And then everybody I was talking to, they were just like, I think you should do more of this because I think there's a market that hasn't been fulfilled yet. It's like this nerd culture,

sneaker niche market. And I was like, okay, cool. So then I made a couple more shoes and every time I make up another shoe, I'd post it and people would be like, oh, I want to order a pair of those. Then I would do five pairs. Then the big one was I did the Ninja Turtle one,

the first ones. I just put up a pre-order and I was like, we'll see if we get 10 orders. I got 50 in the first day. 300 each, right? No, that time they were 600. They were still being made by me at that time. I was like oh this is this is pretty crazy so i should pay in a day yeah so i had to like shut it down like close pre-orders because i couldn't take any more out and then i was just

out like how am i gonna get 50 pairs done in you know three months so i reached out to there's a company in philadelphia that makes a lot of cool shoes have you ever heard of mosh no mosh is another customizer from new york area and he gets his shoes made at the garrison factory so it's an actual american made factory that's down in philadelphia and i reached out to some of those and they actually came through and helped me create the shoes nice and then after that i basically was just like man you know maybe i should stop tattooing and just kind of do this. And originally in the beginning when tattooing came back, I was tattooing like one or two days a week. And then after I kept getting more and more orders, I was like, I'm done.

I'm onto this now. So I kind of just made the transition. And when I'm into something, I'm all into something. I feel that. Yeah. So I was like, balls to the wall. Let's do this. And where else in life

can you be more successful than you already were at 40, that age was 41, at 41 or 40, where can you switch careers and be more successful than you already were

in an already successful career? So I'm super blessed. Absolutely. And now you have time and location freedom because with tattoos you were tied to a physical floor. Exactly.

Now there is no ceiling. We just had an acquisition with another firm basically and we still keep all our names and like that. Nothing really changes, but now we have a whole marketing team behind us. We have the funds. We have a lot of capital to go to more trade shows and things like that.

And really just sky's the limit with that stuff. That's awesome. You know, it's awesome. Like it's just, I hear stories from people all the time, like sending me messages going, I found your page. I wish I had found it like two years ago because everything you post is like my childhood. And I'm like, hey, I like, if I can make you think of Saturday morning cartoons, I'm doing my job right. Yeah, that's so cool. And there's a passionate audience for some of Saturday morning cartoons, I'm doing my job right.

Yeah, that's so cool. And there's a passionate audience for some of the licenses and brands. Oh my God, yeah. That was our goal was, we're kind of like a dealer, right? We get you in with the Nikes, that kind of stellar brand, the established brand of Nike. But then we've transitioned to our own shoes, which are the short horns, which are the low top, and the long horns, which are high tops. But working with the licensing and stuff that we're doing now,

you can't put a Ninja Turtle license on a Nike shoe unless you get permission from Nike, and that's not happening anytime soon. Yeah, they would never do that. They don't need it. So working with all these licenses, we had to develop our own shoe. So it took about six months to kind of work out some prototypes,

go back and forth. But we really came out with a shoe that I call the perfect convention shoe. A lot of our customers are Comic-Con. And they wear the shoes. Most of the time, they just have it on the shelf with their Holy Grails and their collectibles. Oh, here's the Ninja Turtle shelf. Damn, there's the shoes right there.

It's the coolest thing. I love seeing stuff like that. And then the comic-con you know comes to their area they put the shoes on with their cool you know clothes or whatever they go walk around show them off everybody goes oh those are cool shoes and then they come back put it back on the shelf you know clean them off put them back on the shelf that's like the biggest compliment so when they send me pictures of their collection my shoes are right next to their you know sideshow collectible statues like yeah yeah that's that's the best what goes down at comic-con i've never been to one of those dude you gotta go dude it's it's just nerd

heaven man like everything from you know i'm a huge toy collector like as i've been here in las vegas like probably most people are like going to the bars or casino i'm like trying to find every cool little hole in the wall toy store i'm at brad's toys like once a month oh nice i'm a funko pop collector oh nice yeah yeah so um comic-con is just like cosplay galore everybody comes out dressed in their favorite costumes nobody's judging it's just really a good geek culture where everybody can come and you can be yourself and nobody's judging you yeah you know um yeah it's just a huge fandom i love it it's just it's it's changed a lot over the years but in a good way you know i love the new narrative on nerds because growing up i got

bullied for it but now nerds are cool dude i used to so growing up i was a huge star wars collector i still am but i would have you know all these star wars you know in universe books that i'd read i'd bring them to school and they'd somebody somebody would punch me and be like, you read this nerd? You know what I mean? I was like the only kid that read sci-fi and had like a Mohawk. I was the only punk kid in my school.

Oh, shout out to Mohawks. Yeah, yeah. So like, I'd be getting bullied left and right. You're a nerd.

And now it's like, nerds rule the world. Yeah. You know what I mean? Elon Musk, Zuckerberg. Exactly. It's like,

it's our time to shine. Oh yeah. Yeah, it's our time. We don't have to hide anymore. No, I love it, you know? Nerd's not a dirty word anymore. It's our time to shine. It's our time. We don't have to hide anymore. No, I love it. Nerd's not a dirty word anymore. It's great.

I used to get bullied because I was a PC gamer. Oh, dude. Yeah, that was great. I used to play Doom. Remember Doom? I'm a bit too young for it, but my dad played that. You probably played World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft, RuneScape, MapleStory.

Quake. I've heard of that. Yeah, Quake was a great one too. Everyone in my school in town played Xbox or PlayStation. They're like, you're a nerd, dude. You play PC. Yeah, I remember you're probably a little too young for this, but when the Nintendo 64 came out, we would have GoldenEye.

Do you remember GoldenEye? No, I never played 64. It's a first-person shooter, but you're James Bond. It's hands down the best first person shooter game Ever made And we would all like have competitions All my nerd friends would come together And we'd sit there for two days straight

Playing like literally like have like a bracket And it's f***ing like an NBA playoffs But it's f***ing with you know a game So you got that game over Halo Oh yeah I mean it's before Halo for sure You know what over Halo. It's before Halo, for sure. I have played Halo a little bit. Now, I don't play as much as I would because I'm like the old guy.

There's too many buttons. I like my Nintendo and Sega Genesis and things like that. I like the GameCube. That's hands down one of my favorites. The controller was just so comfortable. So easy. Super Smash on the GameCube. That was my jam. Great game. I know you've made shoes for a lot of celebrities and known

people have there been any that really surprised you that reached out uh one of my favorites is peewee herman you know we made a pair for him which was super i mean i grew up watching him like who like everybody yeah and then he just passed so god rest his soul um you know i grew up watching power rangers so i made a pair for david blue power ranger which was really fun um now we're working with one of our licensing partners is david arquette you know who's from scream and i love scream yeah dude he's he's amazing so he owns the right to bozo the clown wow and we have the license with him so we last weekend we were in were in Nashville and we met up with Dave and took some photos and stuff like that. He's amazing.

We're working with Billy Zane. The dude is like an artist artist. I don't know if you've ever seen any of his paintings because he's a painter too. It's ridiculous. He's on a whole other level. He will talk your ears off forever in a great way because he just thinks outside the box that's what

i love about artists is we think outside the box so when we meet someone else that's like us it's just ear candy yeah you know dude i get so happy when i see people that find their passion and they're able to make a living off it yeah that's like true happiness oh yeah i i feel so i mean i was literally just talking about this with somebody was i just feel so like sad for the people that you know go to a nine to five job and they're in in a cubicle and they just feel like they're in a prison cell yeah and like they just hate their job you know they'll go home have a drink and be like i gotta start again tomorrow and it's just like i i would never want to do that it's not the way to live exactly i'd rather make less on my own than work a cubicle. Happiness isn't about the money.

What is that old saying? If you love what you do, it's never going to be. You know what I'm talking about? If you love your work, it never feels like work or something. That's how I feel. Every day I go in and I'm either designing a shoe on my Procreate or I'm painting a shoe. I always like to spice it up and kind of change the schedule and stuff like that.

But I feel like I'm just creating art and that's the fun part. Yeah, that's awesome. That's what I love about what I do too is I'm bringing more art back to the shoe community. You know what I mean? Because there's so many... Nike is like the biggest violator of this where i think that they just play it safe a lot yeah and they'll just kind of oh here's this lazy colorway and they'll call it the bart simpson the bart simpson or the homer simpson and i'm like that's so lazy you know if

i had that license well also they don't have the license because they don't they don't they're nike they don't have to get the license but if i had it i would i you know you saw the el bardos i probably made yeah and you know i had so much fun doing those crush it yeah it's just like i i feel that when you're creating something for an ip or a brand or you know what i mean like a you know he man or any of that stuff like that it's your duty to give the collectors what they want yeah and put those details in you know that's a lot of what people say is like i love your shoes because you don't miss the details even if it's like you flip over the tongue and there's like something back there that only one person might know that's awesome yeah yeah i think from nike's point of view just

it would their scalability can't can't match the quality at that point you know yeah i mean how many times you see someone post like oh i got this from the factory and look how their margins must be insane. They're making the shoes for $10 probably. Oh, probably cheaper than that. Cheaper than $10? It depends on what size of the run is, but it's probably cheaper than that.

Wow, and they sell them for $150, $200. Yeah. Also, that's why I started making my own shoes too. I got fed up. I've been on the sneakers app for four years. I've never once won a drop. Ever.

How do those work? You go on. They'll say, oh, these shoes are coming out tomorrow at 9 a.m. Eastern Standard or whatever. I would go on there and it goes 9 o'clock, click, sold out.

Oh, it's a raffle? Yeah, or it's a raffle. You know what I mean? But I've never went. It's always the bots winning or somebody that has a code or whatever. I remember those Yeezy bots back in the day. Oh my God, dude, insane. I made a ton of money.

Yeah, they would buy like 20 pairs and sell them all. Yeah, so that's also, like I said, that's why I started doing my own shoes is I was just frustrated because I couldn't get the shoes I wanted. Yeah. So I just make my own. I love that. That's how entrepreneurship started. What's a dream brand or IP that you want to work with?

We've worked with so many right now. We had a provisional or a promotional license with Paramount working with Ninja Turtles, but I'd love to solidify that where it's actually a full-time license. But the hard part with that is we lost that license because Adidas came in and they had global licensing rights. but I'd love to solidify that where it's actually a full-time license. But the hard part with that is we lost that license because Adidas came in and they had global licensing rights. I get it, they're a multi-billion dollar brand

and we're a little old us, but give us a little piece so we can have our... Wait, so Adidas took TMNT from you? Yeah, so they have it until I think 2025. And then you can apply for it? Yeah. Then you can apply for it? Yeah, then we can apply for it. We're working with some other people. Working with the licensing, we're learning a lot of the ins and outs.

There's a company that they do pop culture coffee. They actually have a promotional license, or actual full license with Paramount. We're going to be doing a co-brand with them. We're actually going to be able to make Ninja Turtle shoes with a co-brand with them. It's kind of like a loophole. Learning about the loopholes is great.

I go to Licensing Expo here in Vegas every year. We were down there in June. It was super fun. It was the first time there. We came down with my partner and we just went balls to the wall and we got a dude yeah it's great networking i don't even sell anything but i go there and just get podcast guests it's a really fun time it's so much fun and everybody that's everybody was there the only one we couldn't uh score a meeting with was nintendo they're just like they weren't they weren't even taking anybody at the door. Give us your card.

I didn't even know the first year I went, you had to book the meetings in advance. That was the other thing. For years, I didn't know that anybody could go to the License Expo. I thought it was invite only. Then somebody, his name's Chaz, he works for Geek Fuel. He basically said, no, no, no, you just go on.

You sign up. It's free. Then he told me that you book all your appointments. You contact them and that part i didn't know so i was walking up the tables like one of me yeah like nintendo was one that we couldn't book ahead of time and there was a couple other ones where you'd walk up be like hey can i book an appointment they're like sorry we're booked out you know dude if you ever get a kirby one or like sonic that would be sick so we we did talk to sonic the hedgehog so. So like because they have their outside of Sega. It's a different license and we're working with them. We got Capcom.

Nice. We got a bunch of awesome. Yeah. I feel like the Marvel ones would crush it too. Yeah. Marvel's hard because that's Disney. Disney wasn't even there at that time. So but I've also heard they're kind of to work for it too.

Yeah. Very hard to like get approvals and stuff like that. So they probably try to gatekeep Very much so So far the Capcom one is going to be great Once we finalize that So we can make Street Fighter Well dude you brought a pair here

I'd love to see it When we scheduled this I said I need to make you a pair of shoes So we made you Digital social hour Sean's shoes And what are these uh what are these balls here so these balls are we have our own little proprietary thing called sneaker heads and that's what these are so if you remember like back in the day mad balls yeah these are our

kind of version of mad balls but these actually have essential oils in them so you stick them in your shoes or buy your shoes and they get rid of the scent of your sneakers i need that because i got smelly feet so we got so we got the little blue guy that's based after a my pet monster ish and then our classic chicago bowls little guy here so and that's our little bowl logo and you got jerseys too yeah we got jerseys for you wow can't go wrong with that 23 it's the best number all time there we go exactly so that jersey is actually based after there was a um ninja turtle figure that came out uh i think it was before the 90s and yeah it was donatello and he had that jersey and that's exact replication of it dude that's sick oh there's my cards okay is this uh so that's sick. Oh, there's my cards. Okay. So that's signed by Steve Levine. Steve Levine, if you remember the Ninja Turtle cartoon,

he was basically the guy that created the look of what those are. Because before that was Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird who created the Mirage Turtles, and then they kind of made the transition into the cartoon world, and Steve was one of the ones that integral to that. Love that, dude. It's legendary. Yo.

These are sick. Oh, my gosh my gosh i'm gonna wear these and then i didn't realize how big your damn feet are like i wear a size nine i'm like sample size yo that is dope that's the best angle here yeah these are sick man thanks so much yeah and it's got like your little your head caricature that they kind of there's velcro on them so they. Yeah, you got the signature here. You got the signature. Bro, thanks so much. It's honestly one of the best gifts I've ever gotten. Yeah, you have a talent.

I can't wait to see where you take this from. Yeah, and I know you have curly hair. So I remember I showed you ahead of time. And you're like, oh, the hair's a little long. So I gave it a little haircut. I literally got clippers out and gave it a haircut. Oh, thanks so much, dude. Anything you want to promote or close off with?

Yeah, so in about two weeks, the middle of november we have our next shoe coming out it's uh i'll grab i'm actually i'm actually wearing them right now so we have the license for the toxic crusaders oh and um it's a cool cartoon if you remember the ninja turtle cartoon when that cartoon was just about to end the same company started um picked up another ip from a funny enough like a horror movie from the 70s that was totally rated r and they uh decided to make it into the the replacement for the ninja turtles and that's what this is right here it's uh this is a short horn so this is our version of a low top it's kind of a mix between an sp dunk and an adidas forum with a little bells and whistles it's got got a little Toxie back here.

But these are going to be going for sale, I'd say, around the 15th is when they're dropping. We've got a really cool campaign going for it. So if you're into the Toxic Crusaders and all that stuff like that, these are dropping November 15th, I believe. Dude, I'm not even into that show, but those are dope. Thank you very much. I would just wear those. Thanks so much for coming on, man. Dude, thank you guys so much.

And if you get a chance, check out at Bull Airs or at Bull underscore Airs. Check us out where you got all your nerd needs. It's nostalgia in every step. Nerds are cool now, guys. Let's go. Let's get it. Thanks for watching. See you next time.