Meet Mike Vaughn “TattooFaceMike” | Serial Entrepreneur

We had the good fortune of connecting with Mike Vaughn “TattooFaceMike” and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Mike Vaughn, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
This was a two fold process for me. At the core, I knew I didn’t want to have a boss and I wanted the freedom of being able to do “whatever I wanted”. I have worked for people before here and there but I often found that I was generally hindered from being myself. The second part was more about “necessity” and less about who the boss was. My first “real” tax paying business was a tattoo shop in 2007/2008. But essentially I started it because I was spending a ton of money getting tattoos with a particular shop and one day I said to the owner “hey how about we just open another shop that I will run.” In my mind I would then be getting paid to get tattoos rather than paying for them. It basically worked out how I thought it would and it opened up so many doors and avenues for me. It actually laid the ground work for my current bail bonds business because of the network I started really building back then.

What should our readers know about your business?
I started my bail bonds business in 2015. I had a friend that was doing it and I was looking for something that would provide me with a decent income, but more importantly, a flexible schedule. The biggest draw back to owning the tattoo shops that I did, was that I needed to be there from open to close, any day we were open in most cases. It didn’t leave a ton of room for me to do anything else. So the driving force in me becoming a bail bondsman was flexibility. The six figure income isn’t a bad secondary reason either.

I think when I look back on where it started vs where it is at today, I hang my hat on how well the company has grown based on my personal promotions of it. I haven’t gone out and spent a ton of marketing money, I haven’t spent a ton of money on my website, or things like that. I have spent a ton of time promoting it myself. Handing out cards, posting about it on my social media, putting the logo and business info on my vehicle. It hasn’t been easy at all. There are times where I have to call myself to make sure my phone is working because it hasn’t rang in a few days. Then there are days where I couldn’t handle all of the business if there was 10 of me. So learning to balance all of that has been a tough, but incredibly eye opening experience and has shaped who I will be in the next 5 businesses that I will start at some point.

I take pride in treating all of my clients with as much respect and class as I can. People that are calling a bail bondsman aren’t usually having the best day and some of them have never had to do it before. So I do whatever I can to help them through it and make the experience as easy as possible.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
My wife and I love energy. We will usually pick a great place to eat that we saw on social media, or on a tv show, and then venture out into some sort of fun night that often includes live music but sometimes includes a pop up speak easy with magic potion making and trivia. I think being spontaneous is the most fun. Often a little harder with 3 very active sons, but Colorado is a melting pot of activity and there is always something for everyone. My best advice is follow people on social media (specifically IG and TikTok) that have made businesses by reviewing events and restaurants here. There is always new stuff on those pages and it helps us find things to do when we can.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
There are people that have shaped me over time. I tend to take as much as I can to learn from everyone, and I have come into contact with a ton of people over time. However nobody has shaped my life more than my wife, Megan and my three sons, Kaiden, Wyatt and AJ.