We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Leo Rain a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Leo, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I learned how to do what I do through meeting the right people and a lot of trial and error. I’ve mentioned in other interviews that if it weren’t for Atlas Gold and Brandon Williams, I would not have grown into the artist I am today. But furthermore, the “doing” behind learning the knowledge I was given was what really taught me a lot. And in that doing, I encountered a lot of trials and errors, but they helped me hone my craft.

Knowing what I know now, if I wanted to speed up my learning process, I would’ve taught myself how to accept the journey. I think accepting the journey would’ve helped me miss a lot of the obstacles I faced, and still am facing today. What’s crazy is, these obstacles are necessary for my development. But they sometimes hinder my mental growth. Having to face that mental battle with fear, anxiety, and yourself is tough and has definitely been one of the obstacles in the journey.

Thankfully, I learned to keep faithful in relying on who God is calling me to be and persevere through the tough times. These two skills were the most essential in getting me to where I am today!

A lot of what I went through was experiences that molded me to have the mentality that I am currently building. Whether it be watching a Youtube video on mixing everyday, performing open mics, or going to writing sessions at studios, I have been working hard to take advantage of new opportunities .

A lot of life situations and emotional seasons taught me a lot about myself and really brought me through different seasons with God.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

For the folks who don’t know me, I am Leo Rain. I am a recording artist, songwriter, audio engineer, and keys player (sometimes haha)!

I got into what I do, while being on the journey of finding where my passion and purpose intertwine. In 2020, I was working and didn’t really love what I do. Ironically, not only did I feel that way about my work, but I continued to see countless people do and feel the same about their job. So I set out on the journey of finding a career where my passion and purpose intertwine, the place where you are exactly where God needs you to be and you actually have a deep passion for that place. Watching numerous interviews and reading stories of people “loving what they do,” I set out on the journey to find the same for my life. On that beautiful journey, I found songwriting and music!

I think what sets me apart from the others is my songwriting skills and just my heart for Jesus. If you are reading this and you don’t get anything else, just make sure you get this. My “pen” will be one of the greatest in the game, and it is 1000% because I was blessed with the talent and the way to get there! I am forever grateful to Jesus for changing my life and I will forever rep that!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

One of the biggest goals driving my creative journey is maxing out the potential of my life. I genuinely think every single individual on this Earth was created with a certain potential that only is unlocked in special occasions. God is so intentional in everything. We can see the evidence if we poke our head outside. Everything has a “why.”

I think if we take those same “perspective goggles” that we used to see the intention throughout nature and look at ourselves, we will find out that there is a certain gift/talent/mindset we were born with, that this world needs. Unfortunately many people don’t see that or they aren’t given the resources to unlock and max out that potential.

I think we as humans living in society conform a lot to the culture we live in versus going for what we were created to do. So for me personally, I not only want to do what I was created to do but, I want to do it to the fullest!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The lesson I had to learn was to stop comparing my story to other people’s story.

Everyone has their own life, yes. Wisdom does come from using other people’s smart life lessons for your life, yes. But your story is not supposed to look like everyone else’s life. It’s supposed to be different. I had to learn that my story was going to look different.

I used to find myself worrying and making myself unhappy scrolling on IG and seeing all the people I wanted to be like who I would say “made it.” Everyday, I would work so hard, not see the results I wanted, and then get on a social media platform that essentially is a flex off of everyone else’s results. As I am sure you may know, that mindset of comparison really discouraged me. It was defintely a debilitating cycle that I had to unlearn.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/LeoRain
• Instagram: @leorain_
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leo.rain.520/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTYnm3OOcHmtYYBK812Pj5w

Image Credits
Shaun Jackson