We’re looking forward to introducing you to Brandon Notch. Check out our conversation below.
Brandon, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What’s more important to you—intelligence, energy, or integrity?
Integrity is the foundation of everything I do. Intelligence gives us understanding, and energy gives us drive, but integrity is what connects the mind, heart, and spirit. It’s the inner compass that keeps us aligned with truth — not just the truth we speak, but the truth we live. In my work and in my life, integrity is how energy becomes meaningful and how intelligence becomes wisdom. Without it, there’s motion but no purpose.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Brandon Notch — an artist, author, actor, tattooist, and spiritual alchemist devoted to transformation in all its forms. Through my books, including Death Is Only the Beginning and Making Way for the New: Seven Steps to Spiritual Alchemy, I explore the sacred process of death and rebirth — the art of letting go so something greater can emerge. My work bridges deep spirituality and lived experience, guiding others to awaken to their true selves and discover the beauty within their becoming.
Beyond writing, I channel that same transformative energy into tattooing and acting — creative expressions that merge story, spirit, and soul. For me, tattooing is more than art; it’s ritual, energy work, and storytelling etched into skin — a living reflection of who we are and what we’ve survived. Whether I’m writing, tattooing, or performing, everything I do circles back to one core truth: transformation. My brand is about living authentically, embracing change, and turning pain into power — body, mind, and spirit.
My journey began with loss and self-discovery, experiences that shaped my belief that death — of the old self, the ego, or the past — is never an end but an initiation into something greater.
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
Before the world told me who I had to be, I was a dreamer with ink-stained hands and a restless spirit. I was curious, creative, and deeply connected to something unseen — always searching for meaning in the spaces between things. I felt life as energy before I had words for it. But like many of us, I learned to wear masks — to be what others expected, to fit into a story that wasn’t my own. It took losing pieces of myself to remember who I really was. Beneath it all, I’ve always been an artist and an alchemist — someone who turns pain into beauty, endings into beginnings, and stories into healing. That’s who I was before the world spoke, and who I became again when I learned to listen within.
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Suffering taught me the language of depth in a way success never could. Success rewards performance — the polish, the finish line, the applause — and it teaches you how to win. Suffering, by contrast, strips away the performance until there’s only the raw thing underneath: fear, grief, longing, the small quiet self that wants to be seen. When I went through hard edges in my life, I discovered what resilience really is — not bouncing back to who I was, but bending into who I need to become. Suffering taught me humility (you’re not the center of the story), compassion (everyone is carrying something), and patience (growth is slow and often invisible). It showed me how to hold paradox: that pain and beauty can coexist, that endings are invitations, and that the alchemy of change requires being willing to be undone.
Practically, those lessons changed my work. As a tattooist and writer I don’t just decorate surfaces; I sit with people in their unglamorous moments and help them translate wounds into meaning. As an artist and actor I’ve learned to access truth rather than technique — to let vulnerability be the performance. Success taught me tools; suffering taught me the soul of the craft. It’s the place where empathy, depth, and real creativity are born.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What truths are so foundational in your life that you rarely articulate them?
There are a few truths that live so deep in me, I don’t always put them into words — they just move through everything I do. One is that everything is connected, even what seems chaotic or broken. Life doesn’t waste anything — every loss, every detour, every ending is part of a larger alchemy working toward transformation. Another truth is that energy never lies. The world speaks through vibration long before it speaks through language, and when we learn to listen with the heart instead of the mind, life starts to reveal its design.
And maybe the deepest one is this: nothing is ever really lost. Things change form — people, dreams, identities — but the essence remains. Death, endings, failure… they’re all just phases of becoming. That understanding sits beneath everything I create, whether it’s a tattoo, a performance, or a book. It’s not something I often say out loud — it’s something I try to live.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. What light inside you have you been dimming?
The light I have long dimmed is the curiosity that refuses to settle — the relentless, quiet force that pulls me toward truth, even when it is uncomfortable. It is the part of me that insists on looking at life, at pain, at joy, with unflinching eyes, even when the world prefers certainty, comfort, and conformity. There were times I muted it to fit in, to avoid friction, or simply to appear “whole” when I was still becoming. But true illumination, I have learned, arises not from answers alone, but from the courage to live in the questions. That light — the desire to seek, to challenge, to witness without judgment — is the spark that fuels understanding, transformation, and the art of living deliberately. To me, comprehension is peace.
I feel most at peace when I am fully present in the alchemy of transformation, whether in my own life or in the lives of others. Peace is not found in control or certainty; it is found in surrender to the flow, in honoring the cycles of endings and beginnings, and in allowing change to unfold. Moments like tattooing someone’s story into their skin, writing words that have been waiting for their voice, or sitting quietly with the pulse of nature, remind me that life is always in motion. True peace emerges when we see that even in chaos, every thread is working toward growth, and beneath it all flows an unshakable current of connection, meaning, and possibility.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://brandonnotch.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandon_notch/
- Twitter: https://x.com/BrandonGNotch
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Brandon.Garic.Notch
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BRANDONNOTCH
- Other: TATTOOING – https://www.sacredsaint.com
IMDb – imdb.me/Brandon.Garic.Notch
Image Credits
Justin Morton
