Two of the DMV's best-known entertainment brands, one company

Jordan Solender started the way a lot of DJs do, and the way almost none of them stick with. As a teenager in Baltimore he carried speakers for a local DJ, mostly to be in the room. What he actually took home was the craft: how one person reading a crowd, choosing the next record and pushing the lights at the right second could hold a few hundred people in the palm of his hand. He decided he wanted to learn how to do that.

He got behind the booth himself in 2006, playing mitzvahs, bars and nightclubs around Baltimore and Washington. In 2009 he narrowed his focus to weddings, and that decision shaped everything since. He has been part of well over a thousand couples' wedding days, and he still takes weddings himself every season because, in his words, the calendar is the only honest way to stay sharp.

Solender Events is not his first company. It is his third DJ and production business, each one built alongside other founders, DJs, MCs, lighting designers and operations people who taught him a different piece of the trade. Some of those partnerships grew into companies that outlived their original plan. Others taught him faster lessons about hiring, payroll, warehouse logistics and what happens to a brand when the person on the phone is not the person behind the decks. He kept the people who were great at their craft and kept the systems that held up on a Saturday with nine events out the door.

Maryland's DJ grew out of that experience: a wedding-first roster with real production behind it, built so that the DJ a couple meets is the DJ who shows up. Epic Events came from the other half of the calendar, the mitzvahs, school dances and corporate parties that need dancers, motivators, LED walls and a photo booth lineup deep enough to match any theme. Bringing both under Solender Events let one team share a warehouse, a rehearsal culture, an insurance binder and a bench of performers, instead of two companies quietly competing for the same weekend.

Outside of entertainment, Jordan spent years in enterprise technology and operations, including founding and running a technology advisory firm. That is where the unglamorous half of this company comes from: documented timelines, redundant gear, contracts that say what they mean, certificates of insurance sent before the venue asks, and a booking process that does not make a client chase anybody. He now spends part of his time advising other founders on removing the bottlenecks in their own businesses, which mostly means he cannot stop building systems.

He describes himself as a "hold the cheese" DJ. Big moments, no schmaltz. "Anyone can play music," he says. "Only a few can read a room." Jordan lives in Rockville, Maryland with his wife and their two dogs, Harvey and Rocko, keeps a slightly unreasonable Marvel habit, and will defend "The Greatest Showman" remixes to anyone who asks.