Meet KpopinJax

 

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

Hi KpopinJax, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.

KpopinJax was born out of a longing to create a community for K-pop fans to connect with one another here in the Jacksonville area. At the start of the KpopinJax journey, our event attendance was small, but as word got out and we continued to consistently host events for a wide variety of K-pop groups, our attendance grew quickly. We began to see regulars at our events as well as people coming from out of town. With the growing K-pop community, we began entering a new world full of other K-pop related event hosts in the area and it has been great growing alongside them and seeing what events they create as well. We’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with some of them on a few of our events as well as collaborate with other organizations outside of Jacksonville. In less than a year of actively hosting, we were able to grow our social media following to over a thousand followers and brought the first K-pop idol to perform in the area. We were also able to host our first K-Pop Arts Market which brought in just over 350 attendees. We could never have anticipated the success and quick growth that occurred within our first year as KpopinJax and as a result we have had to battle imposter syndrome alongside it.
Even after a successful year of events and activities, we continue to experience self-doubt as we plan for future activities. We are constantly asking the questions “Will people like this concept?” “Will anyone even show up?” “Do we deserve this kind of support?” “Will people grow tired of our events?” Despite the fact that we have consistently had a show of support from the K-pop community here, we still doubt our success. Part of this stems from the fact that we three admins did not come into this with experience or knowledge in hosting events for any sort of music-related community – we each have our own unique skills that come together to make our events run well, but that only makes up a small portion of the success.
We do our best to involve our community as much as possible to keep our finger on the pulse of what is relevant within the K-pop community. We have several options available that we utilize to get feedback or thoughts from the community. For example, with our K-pop Dance Classes, we use social media to vote on what song they want taught for the upcoming class. We have an event feedback form as well as an event recommendation form that we utilize to grow and search for more opportunities to collaborate with others. We also continue to find fun ways to interact with others in our community through social media or our discord server in between events. It helps us greatly that we are not having to rely only on our own thoughts and opinions but can include the community in the consideration and decision making for our events. Having the support of the community and building personal connections and relationships with everyone is the largest factor that keeps us going and at the same time it serves as the reason that we do not want to disappoint. For this reason, we are able to overcome those feeling of imposter syndrome.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

We host K-pop-related events in Jacksonville, Florida. We are proud of our teamwork and rapid growth over the past year and a half. We are receiving so much support in this community from people of all ages and have had the opportunity to collaborate with so many other groups in the process. It has been exciting to see the growth of the local K-pop community and to know that we are part of the reason that this community flourishes.

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?

The three qualities that were most impactful for our journey with KpopinJax were:
1. Our level of commitment – each of the admins have daytime jobs and/or other personal commitments in our lives but we all agree to still set time aside to ensure we put on the best events possible for our community.
2. Our ability to communicate with each other – generally we can all come to agreement when it comes to event planning details. There are some times where we may have differing opinions, but we can respect each other’s opinions and still reach a working resolution without hindering our working relationships with each other.
3. Our companionship – at the end of the day, we are all genuine friends and support each other whether it is event-related or not. Our friendship is built on a foundation of shared experiences, understanding, and a fondness for one another. Being able to host K-pop events together is just a bonus!

People always say never to go into business with your best friends, but with the right qualities it could end up being a fun and rewarding experience.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

We are always open to collaborate with other K-pop communities as well as other organizations that are open to work with us to create safe spaces for individuals in our community to be who they are and celebrate their interests. If anyone is interested in collaborating they can always reach out to us on our Instagram page (@KpopinJax) or send us an email at [email protected]

Contact Info:

Image Credits

CJ Dela Cruz
Jess Javier

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