Meet LaDarrel Johnson

We were lucky to catch up with LaDarrel Johnson recently and have shared our conversation below.

LaDarrel, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
My work ethic comes from the resilience of my city, Detroit. We’re a hard-working, roll your sleeves up, non-stop grind, back against the wall type of people. Nothing given, everything earned type mentality. It keeps me in a constant mood of wanting greater for myself and for those near and dear to me.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am a multi-instrumentalist (primarily saxophone), a producer, a father, a gym rat, and a fan of the arts.

I’ve been playing sax for over 30 years now, and I’m extremely passionate about music. Without it, I honestly don’t know where I’d be.
My first inspiration to play saxophone came from watching The Simpsons back in 1992, and being completely enamored with the fact Lisa Simpson, an 8 year old could play sax as phenomenal as she could. Of course as I became older, I realized that her musicianship was portrayed by very experienced older people. Lol But it definitely motivated me to learn to play.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
My big 3 would be focus, determination, and authenticity.

Focus because they’ll always be someone more talented, faster, stronger, better looking than you.. but the person who focuses on their objective is the person who wins in the end.

Determination because my fire continues to burn due to the countless times I’ve been told no, and wanting to show those people why they should’ve said yes.

And authenticity because no matter how many followers you have online, how gimmicky someone can be, what people want more than anything is to know you… the REAL you. So give them that, and be you, through and through.

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
When feeling overwhelmed, I like to take time to take very intentional breaths, meditate, and remind myself that this feeling is only temporary. Often times, when we feel overwhelmed, it feels like a storm cloud lingering over us that just won’t seem to pass fast enough. But a constant reminder that the storm will pass always helps me.

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