As with all piercings, an industrial piercing hurts. Depending on how vertical or horizontal the piercing is, the piercing will hurt more or less. For instance, my industrial is pretty vertical, so one hole is in my cartilage and the other is more in the softer part of my ear, pretty close to the lobe. Getting the piercing itself done is pretty harmless, there is a pinch when the needle goes through and then that's basically it. The cleaning and healing process is pretty painful, though. Most likely, the piercer will instruct you to twist the bar when you are cleaning it, which hurts like hell, but it'll get the soap (use Satin therapeutic cleanser... I've used it on my industrial, my nose, and my tattoos and it's a wonderful thing) inside the piercing to heal it up quickly. But make sure you rinse it out thoroughly. I got a keloid (the nasty looking bump infection) on one of the holes of my industrial piercing and it took 8 months to heal, even though I cleaned it every day. My hair did not help either, as it often got wrapped around the bar (and still does). Also, banging it is quite painful. So don't worry about the piercing itself, worry more about the healing process. If you clean it and take care of it to the best of your ability, you'll love your piercing! Hope this helps :)