What does it take to build a business that thrives on purpose rather than proximity?
Host David Martin recently sat down with Darvin Lau, the founder of Brooklyn’s highly respected Bay Ridge School of Music. What began as a handful of private music lessons in a small neighborhood studio has blossomed into a community institution serving hundreds of students every week. Remarkably, Darvin has built the school to run entirely without him, allowing him to travel the world, share music, and live out his faith in action while the school continues to thrive in Brooklyn.
Darvin’s journey is a masterclass in how early life experiences, cultural identity, and a desire for genuine connection can shape a business designed for lasting impact.
Roots of Hard Work and Adventure
Darvin’s entrepreneurial spirit was forged growing up in Queens, New York. His father, a carpenter and artisan who renovated homes, taught Darvin the value of hard work from a very young age.
“My bucket seat was literally a paint bucket that I would sit on in the back of a contractor van,” Darvin recalls. Whether he was spending his summers and weekends polishing wooden floors or renovating bathrooms, the experience gave him a front-row seat to what it takes to take things into your own hands and build something from scratch.
While his father instilled a strong work ethic, his mother provided a global perspective. An adventurer at heart, she frequently took Darvin and his sister out of the country to visit local markets in Hong Kong and rural villages in mainland China. Seeing the poverty of children living on the streets at a young age deeply shaped his worldview. It taught him that not everyone is blessed with the same abundance, planting the seeds for his future mission-driven work.
Navigating Identity in New York City
Growing up as a first-generation immigrant from Hong Kong brought its own set of challenges. Darvin describes the constant cultural push-and-pull of navigating life between two worlds.
At home, the environment was reserved and traditional. At school, he was encouraged to embrace American ideals of independence and self-expression. Balancing these contrasting expectations meant constantly working to find his place, a struggle shared by many growing up in the diverse landscape of New York City.
The Power of Four Chords
Though Darvin took traditional piano and violin lessons as a child, he admitted he didn’t enjoy the strict environment of those early classes. His true passion for music didn’t ignite until he was 15, when he picked up an acoustic guitar his sister had left behind. After teaching himself a few basic chords, he fell in love with the instrument.
Soon after, he was asked to play music for a children’s Sunday school at a church in Chinatown. That quickly grew into teaching a single 12-year-old student. Before long, that student began teaching others, and Darvin started a formal guitar class.
The program exploded into a community center serving 50 children. “We had five floors of the church, and every floor there was a guitar class going on,” Darvin says.
This early success taught him a profound lesson about simplicity and impact: “Four chords can take you so far and impact so many people. You don’t need to know all the music theory; you don’t need to go to music school… it can impact dozens, hundreds, thousands of people.”
Connection Over Consumerism
From those early days in Chinatown to the thriving halls of the Bay Ridge School of Music today, Darvin’s focus has always remained on something much deeper than just teaching notes on a page.
For Darvin, music is simply the vehicle; the ultimate goal is building community. In a modern world heavily dominated by the curated, artificial nature of social media, people are starving for genuine connection, support, and real conversations.
By creating a space that prioritizes human connection and purpose over a computer screen, Darvin didn’t just fulfill a need for his students—he fulfilled a deep need for connection within himself.
