We were lucky to catch up with Johnny Xodus recently and have shared our conversation below.

Johnny, appreciate you joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

My name is Darien Williams (Johnny Xodus), and I have been producing for 12 years. I started using Canva about 2 years ago and I have been using Canva Pro for about a year. Canva Pro helps me when creating album covers, loopkit covers, and artists template pictures for my website. I have been working to become full time with my craft for a while now. I currently work as a high school teacher during the day and as things change with technology and social media, I am always looking to improve my craft. I use resources such as Canva to help me innovate the way that I present my music and my art. Keeping things fresh and creative helps me to stay motivated as a producer. When it comes to what’s “hot” or popular, things change at the drop of the hat nowadays. That’s why I feel that it is important to learn new things and apply it to your craft in ways that are meaningful to you. Learning your craft as well as other crafts that may support you, is always the right move. It never hurts to learn more. Learning more about your craft as well as other crafts to support it can change your life, why not take the risk?

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Johnny Xodus, I am a music producer from Ohio. I have been producing for 12 years now and have produced music for various people throughout the years. I first got into music when my best friend introduced me to the software known as “FL Studio”. FL Studio is a digital audio workstation where you can create beats as well as songs. My clients are typically artists like rappers, singers, or individuals that are searching for music for their YouTube videos, personal projects, or short films. My clients either describe what they need and I create it or send them any music of mine that I feel fits. They also tend to select beats from my website to purchase for use. I feel that what sets me apart from others is my customer service. I try to connect with everyone that purchases from me and form a relationship. If my work is featured in a project, I also promote as best I can from my end. This is important to me because it becomes bigger than just music for me. I want to support as much as I can if they choose to support me. The most important thing to me is collaboration. Supporting one another is one of the best things for growth in my opinion.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I starting building my audience when I started showing more of who I really am on a day to day basis. A lot of creators will tell you to only focus on posting about your craft, but that’s boring. Be yourself. I am HUGE anime and movie fan. I talk about both a lot on all of my platforms and interact with others through these conversations. This has helped me build not only solid connections, but lasting friendships and supporters as well.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn that success is linear. It is very rarely a straight path to your destination. Throughout the years I have had many successes, but just as many failures. I have had two instances where I have spent A LOT of money on collaborations with famous big name producers thinking that it was a guaranteed life changing event. These opportunities ultimately led no where, and I lost out on over $500 dollars. The lesson for me was that I needed to change my mindset. There was a chance that either purchase could have been life changing, but obviously there was no guarantee, I was naïve. Nowadays if I invest in paid collaboration, I do so without the huge expectation. Unlearning this was the best thing for my career. Now all of my collaborations are with people that I have built both great business relationships and friendships with. These connections have been life changing. One of these collaborations has led me to a huge sync placement(music in tv, films, video games, etc.) and is currently the biggest success of my career so far. I hope to go into further detail when the time comes, but me being in this position doesn’t happen, without unlearning my initial thought of success being linear.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.johnnyxodus.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/prodbyxodus
• Twitter: twitter.com/johnnyxodus
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2jdR5o_mtzoz5ZSAPLVL0g

Image Credits
Mick Jenkins Paris Stephan Mark Battles aDubOneLove NickyDonnie