Becoming a Master Collaborator

Sarah Micheletti

Feb. 11, 2025

Mind Your Ink Platform

Master collaborator (n.) - but what do we mean by that? We want to find the sweet spot of creating positive collaboration environments where everyone involved feels heard, supported, and valued.

The most basic start has been artist feedback shaping our platform where it consistently is the number one priority. Typically, a tech company does take user input through methods like user testing, surveys, usability studies, etc. But when there's a give and take between business needs and user needs, the house (business) always wins. Profit over people. We've taken a firm stance on doing the opposite, sometimes at the detriment of faster sales or growth. We'd rather fix bugs or add features for existing artists than put energy toward making ads or building things for potential users (they're on the backlog, we'll get to them eventually). We'll continue to working on finding the balance in creating a sustainable business (I can't avoid doing sales entirely), but promise to always put y'all first.

How else might we be master collaborators? Enter some Mind Your Ink artists into the chat with ideas.

Advertising à la Art Collaborations

Seth has his unique style of art, and while I have a BFA in Design, we'll be the first to admit that y'all are way better artists than we are. Like, we bow down. It's part of why our visuals are so minimal, and I spent maybe an hour looking for the font I used to make our logo before shipping it and saying "good enough." I've wanted to have a sticker (or 2 or 3), but have it be something that folks would want to actually decorate their water bottle or iPad with. Enter Stevie (@maybestevie) into the chat

Stevie created a mascot for us, based on my pupper Chance, and gave us the lovely idea of using the mark as not just a Mind Your Ink sticker but making multiple versions of it by having our Mind Your Ink artists draw their own Chance head (like Cream Tattoo Supply).

How It Works

No rules, just keep the general shape/silhouette similar, but in your style. Add in "Mind Your Ink" or "@mindyourink" somewhere, plus your own artist name or handle. For every 50 stickers we print, we'll give you 10 of them. Put 'em on your shit, hand them out to conventions or in aftercare packs, whatever your heart desires! We want you to love them as much as we do, and highlight y'all while also highlighting ourselves.

Want to contribute your own design? Email me about art collaboration.

Team Up for Conventions

Conventions are fun to attend, but you know what's more fun? Sharing a booth! Enter Aaron (@yuzzile) into the chat. I was complaining about the slow sales process. Getting the word out (without spending disgusting amounts on Meta/Google advertising) is hard! Y'all are like cats! Each Mind Your Ink artist has suggested "word of mouth" as the best way to spread the word, but that only scales so much. Aaron suggested an different, yet similar, version of word of mouth: sharing a booth at a convention. Social proof that at least one artist believes in us, and if you book appointments for the convention, that our booking process works.

Stevie was kind enough to be a test case for this, and while we're still waiting to see if a sale comes out of it, I had much more genuine and inquisitive conversations with artists from being at his booth table. Plus, I like to think that I'm a helpful and fun hang (ask Stevie for an honest opinion).

How It Works

We're officially opening up the offer to any Mind Your Ink artist: we'll split your booth rent in exchange for allowing us to put up Mind Your Ink signage, giving your opinion on the platform to curious artists, walk around the floor with us once, and we'll help run your booth area if you need the support selling merch or handling client inquiries. I handmade our banner in the traditional artist style, it's dope, promise.

Want to collaborate at a convention? Email me about convention collaboration.

Referral Bonuses

This one isn't new, but just a reminder, for any artist that you refer, we give y'all a month's subscription fee for free. It's also not so much a master collaborator style format, more so a traditional tech related one. But, we're wondering if there's a more collaborative way to go about this. If you'd be interested in collaborating on content together, we'd be happy to discuss how we can help in a way that's less effort for you, still in your authentic style, and how we might be able to help promote you on our end.

How It Works

They just have to mention that they heard about it from you for you to get the bonus. And heck, if they mention multiple artists, we'll give it to everyone mentioned.

Usually, for folks that have been referred, they hear about us through social media posts from you, word of mouth if you're friends, or a warm introduction where you introduce us IRL or virtually.

Interested in chatting how to refer folks? Email me about referral bonuses.

Community Building

We're in the process of chatting with a local Austin artist about this concept, but at the highest level, we'd love to collaborate (through sponsorship, hands-on-coordination, connections, or some mix) an artist community building experience through education or more casual hangs.

How It Works

Imagine a quarterly opportunity to learn from a variety of experts: a massage therapist about at-home preventative care; a small business tax professional about tattoo specific must-knows; a self-taught, queer artist on how they broke through the gatekeeping and created a successful business and found amazing clients. The ideas abound!

The concept is still very work-in-progress, but there's event management and educational best practices from other industries we could adopt to make this work while still tweaking it to be best for tattoo artists. Also, just to be abundantly clear, this would not give space to any get-rich-quick or "10x your bookings in 2 weeks!!" style "educators." It would come from folks who are successfully running their own small businesses, maybe need some coaching on how to share knowledge and educate, but have the proof of doing it for themselves and an interest in community building. Most importantly, the goal would be to make it a safe space.

Interested in attending or helping make this a reality? Email me about community building.

A Final Note

We're in the beginning stages of figuring out what master collaboration looks for us, and we'd love your input on any and all of the above. If this spurred any ideas of other ways to collaborate together, hit us up! Even if you aren't currently using Mind Your Ink, we'd love to get to know you and support in some way. And throughout the process, feel free to keep us accountable. We're not your average tech company.