April 10, 2017

Meet Paul Kwo of PopRock Academy in San Gabriel Valley

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Kwo.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Paul. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I have been a musician and an actor all my life. I went to college at the University of Southern California in piano performance with double minors in Theater and Musical Theater. I then continued on there with my masters in Music Composition.

I have been teaching piano privately for all my life. I had my first piano student at the age of 12. But then I stopped after a few months and didn’t start again until I was 16. I have been teaching continuously since then. I have also taught at various programs in the Los Angeles area, non-profits and for-profit organizations. I was an assistant coach for Gabrielino High School debate team, as well as the music director for their annual musical for a few years. I also worked at various churches as their music director for many years.

During my time post-college, I have been working also as an actor and a musician in the Los Angeles area. I have booked various TV shows and commercials during this time. But the writer’s strike in 2008 slowed down most of the progress I have made and I was looking to expand my income source.

In 2011, I started working with Cassandra Daurden in her summer program Glee Summer Camp. She’s owns Daurden performing arts center in Atwater Village, our sister school. It was that summer where she inspired me to start my own program in the San Gabriel Valley.

So, in late 2011, I started looking for a space in the San Gabriel Valley area for my school, PopRock Academy. The concept was to create a school that values all of the performing arts. I wanted to provide a space in the community that will provide students a diverse education in the performing arts, so that they are not limited to one instrument or one dance form. I wanted my students to build on a strong classical foundation, but then to be able to play all the music and dance all the styles they want to do. And I wanted them to have fun doing it. I wanted them to love the arts.

Since I officially opened my school in 2012, I have had tremendous success with students coming through the program. I have helped new generations of students in the area find success in Hollywood in the entertainment industry. And having a school also have been able to allow me to continue to pursue my acting and music career. I played one of the lead role in the $60 million box office hit “God’s Not Dead” and the sequel “God’s Not Dead 2,” as well as release my first vocal album in 2016.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
As with any business, there have always struggles. I had my fair shares of struggles during this process.

When I first decided to open my business, I had searched for 4 months for the perfect location. When I finally found a great location, I went through the normal business application process with the city. Normally that process would take only 2 to 3 months. But because of delays in city paperwork, that process dragged on for half a year until I was able to start work on my new location.

A few months into opening my location, I had to leave for 3 weeks because of a last-minute movie booking. I had to leave my office assistant by herself to manage the school on her own. It was a fast lesson learning how to let go of control and trusting others to their work. Fortunately, I had already trained my assistant for my absence as I had to go out of town for 2 weeks a month prior.

Another month later, a freak rain storm hit the area. I was in the middle of a recording session at the time. There were no signs of rain earlier in the day. But when I turned my phone back on after the recording session, I received a strong message on my phone saying my school has been flooded. Apparently, there was a leak in the roof and rain poured into the interior of my school. Fortunately, I gave my assistant the phone numbers of my parents and my brother in case of an emergency. With quick thinking, they were able to temporarily keep the rain water contained, limiting the damage. Since it wasn’t yet rainy season, we were able to get our landlord to fix the roof in a reasonable amount of time to prevent future leaks.

Beyond that, there had been many typical business struggles. Finding the right staff, juggling schedule and all the normal business operations of a school. But with a great network of people I had to confide in, I was able to continually bounce ideas off others in order to solve all the problems along the way.

So, let’s switch gears a bit and go into the PopRock Academy story. Tell us more about the business.
PopRock Academy is a performing arts school, dedicated to helping everyone learn to perform. Our specialty is in acting, dancing and music performing. We offer both group classes and private lessons in the different disciplines. We also offer a unique triple threat program (Disney Musical class and Glee Workshop) that helps students put the three elements together.

We are very proud of the confidence and growth all our students gain while attending our school. We love the fact that all our students love what they do here. We are here to help our students find the joy, love and passion in the performing arts. We are a performance oriented school. We offer students various performance opportunities throughout the year. We don’t force our students to learn tricks, compete and win trophies. We provide solid classical foundation in what we teach, all the while encouraging them explore all styles and genres. We provide well-rounded education to our students so that they can become versatile performers.

Also, unlike most other performing arts school that started with one discipline and eventually branched off into more. From the first year, our school offered all three disciplines. As a result, our programs are completely integrated. Our teachers communicate with each other, working together to provide a cohesive program to all our students to enjoy and explore. We encourage our students to try different classes to gain new perspectives back to their primary disciplines. Our staff are in support of each other to find the best method to nurture every student that walks through our door.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I believe the good and bad luck we experienced balanced each other out. And with our perseverance, we are still here and still going strong.

One stroke of bad luck was when my office manager broke his leg playing soccer in May of 2016, which is an important month for signing up students. He was our strongest sales agent. So, as a result, we missed a critical timeframe to reach our normal quota and had a major setback in our business at that time. We had to play catch up in the following months to bring our enrollment back to where we needed it to be.

We also had tremendous amount of good luck as well. We were fortunate to have lots of people come to us at the right time to offer us the right things. Just earlier this year, a new keyboard manufacturer, Flychord piano, offered to sponsor us a piano right at a time when we were looking for a new piano for our studio. We are now an official dealer for Flychord piano. We have also had some great performance opportunities that presented themselves to us over the years, such as the Chinese Lantern Festival that came to us a year ago when we were looking for performance opportunities for our students.

Good and bad luck will always happen in the life of a business. We try our best to seize every good opportunity that come our way, and ride out all the bad ones. Keep a positive outlook and we will persevere.

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