We recently connected with Devin Jenkins and have shared our conversation below.

Devin, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I’ve always loved music, but around 2015 upon graduating college and beginning my career is when I really started listening to albums in full and consistently staying current on new releases each week. Over time I started texting people new songs or albums they should check out and eventually became known as the music guy among my friend groups. It got to a point where I was sending about 15 different messages out each week to people with music suggestions, and I said there has to be a better way to do this. This led to me creating the Share The Vibes Facebook Group in May of 2019, where I could put my suggestions in one place for everybody as well as allow others to share music with the group members.

Maybe a few weeks later, I was in the shower one morning and the thought hit me.. “I can make this a real business!” I wasn’t exactly sure what it would look like, but I knew I was driving connection among people through music and technology. I started capturing my thoughts in a note in my phone, and after procrastinating and thinking too much for another year or so, I converted that note into a business plan and established my LLC in July of 2020. At this point I had held 2 virtual Share The Vibes Kickbacks in Zoom as a way to bring people together and have some fun when the pandemic made human interaction very challenging. These 2 kickbacks validated the value of Share The Vibes for me and pushed me to move forward with building the business. Now 2 years later, what started as simple text messages to my friends about exploring new music has grown into a brand and platform that connects people around the world through music and technology!

Devin, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I grew up in a small, rural town called Fitzgerald, GA, where everybody knows everybody, and I have been involved in music since I was a little boy from singing in the choir at church to being percussion captain in high school. My mother, Joyce Jenkins, had me when she was a little older, so I was exposed to a lot of Soul/R&B from the 70s and Southern Gospel that shaped my love and appreciation for music at an early age. I attended Miles College, an HBCU in Alabama, where I earned my B.S. degree in Management Information Systems, and went on to work in IT at GE Healthcare after graduating in 2015, which is what brought me to Milwaukee. Being in the HBCU culture my love for music grew even more in addition to my understanding of business and technology expanding through my degree program and internships. All of these experiences set the foundation for what is now Share The Vibes, LLC – connecting people through music and technology.

Share The Vibes offers professional DJ services, playlist curation, music-based events, and exclusive merchandise. In our first 2 years, we have provided DJ services in 2 professional sporting arenas, for 2 HBCU homecoming alumni events, at an international business & entertainment conference, and more is in the pipeline. In June we hosted our Inaugural Share The Vibes Music & Technology Festival in Milwaukee, WI, bringing together 100+ people for a day of live performances, Web3 workshops, podcasting, BIPOC-owned business vendors, and more! We also recently launched Share The Vibes Podcast available on Apple, Spotify, and Anchor featuring conversations with artists, professionals, and people in general who appreciate the power of music and technology. We’re sharing the vibes in the Metaverse too! We have a Metaverse Gallery in Spatial.io highlighting artists, our festival sponsors and partners, podcasters, and more.

My hope is that Share The Vibes continues to grow as a vehicle for STEAM awareness, employment & business opportunities, and building meaningful relationships all through music and technology.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I established Share The Vibes, LLC in the middle of a global pandemic, during the most civil unrest I’ve witnessed in my lifetime, with a 2 year old daughter and a newborn daughter (we’ll talk about having a baby during all of this another time), and I still had my full-time role at GE Healthcare. The very birth of the business is a story of resilience, but it’s also a story of leveraging circumstances to your advantage. When I wasn’t tending to my daughters, I took time during my paternity leave to work on my business plan. Since we couldn’t connect in-person, I had to be creative in how I built community and structured the business to thrive in this new normal. Share The Vibes has supporters and community members around the globe because I had to think beyond those in my physical reach when I was crafting the business.

As a young business owner, I’m still figuring things out as I go though. This year in particular has been challenging because it’s been my biggest year in business, but also one of my biggest years in my personal life. While planning Share The Vibes Fest and figuring out how to even put on a festival, I was planning my wedding that took place a month later as well as going through the process of building a house in another state for my family to move into this Fall. This has required sacrifice financially, physically, and mentally, but I’ve been able to navigate it by prioritizing what needs to be done, having a supportive team around me, staying grounded in faith, and pausing to celebrate small wins along the way.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

When starting the business, I knew there were a few necessary expenses required, and I noted what those were and used my disposable income from my full-time salary to cover those. These were things like getting the LLC, securing a logo, and purchasing a DJ controller. As I began to grow and started facing a few higher expenses, I employed a few strategic approaches. One was offering alternative payment methods for my services. I acquired my first set of speakers by offering additional DJ services in exchange for a client purchasing the equipment since they had more capital than me. When organizing Share The Vibes Fest, I solicited sponsorships and strategic partnerships from my network and relationships committee members had to cover expenses and boost our marketing. We had media trades with radio stations that didn’t give us cash but gave us free radio promo. Instead of having a big catering budget, I gave food vendors the opportunity to pay a fee and come sell their products at the festival allowing them to profit and reach new customers. I’m starting to apply for grants and other funding sources now, but until this point my approach has been operating within reason given we’re still young, creating win-win partnerships with others who have access to resources, and reinvesting all of the revenue into the business vs using the funds for my personal pleasure.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sharethevibesllc.com/
• Instagram: @sharethevibesllc | @phrozenintellectual7
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/sharethevibesllc
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devin-r-jenkins/
• Twitter: @Djenks_7
• Other: MixCloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/JenkTheDJ/

Image Credits
Our Differences Define, LLC Forward Solutions Media Maximum Graphix DJ Godzilla