We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joshua Robinson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Joshua thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
Diverse is what I am and was brought up in a very diverse culture. I didn’t know racism existed until I came to Greenville. I have seen so much hate and things that aren’t Right when it comes to the laws and the ways of the legal system. Everyone is divided here because of social media and no one will stand together when it comes to being a voice for the innocent people. I constantly wanted to start my own business when it came to electrical and finally did. But I wanted it to be with a name that I could branch off with hint DIVERSE electrical LLC. I knew after starting my business that I had a bigger purpose then me and my business. I used money from profits to buy camera equipment cause I wanted to be able to film and edit so well that I could start my own broadcast and be able to shed light to the evil here. I’m going to send you a link and know this all started from me doing good. Me and my situation showed me the bad that many others are going through and I’ve screamed for help everywhere. I have become a activist for the black community and had been going to reds@28th for months uniting everyone and bringing black and white together which you can see on my tik Tok page (,Joshua HayMaker). The first weekend I wasn’t there, a guy was shot in the head a couple of weeks ago and I want to tell you why I wasn’t there the next time we talk.The security team works for me and my electrical business and seen everything but I hope this presentation truly grabs the right people. It’s a evil and corruption I never imagined would come. Copy and paste this link below and I truly hope you see everything but what I’m going through and me want to stop this from happening to other is the future. The downfall of being DIVERSE.
Joshua , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Hi Joshua, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, how can you bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today? The years 2005-2008 were tough for me. The economy dropped, and I got hurt and fell off, living in homeless shelters in Texas. That is when I started seeing really bad stuff happening. One day I decided I wanted to change that and live a better life for myself, so I looked up the top 10 happiest places to live, and Greenville was one of them. I looked up a video on YouTube, and it was like a place I’d never seen before. I grabbed my clothes and tv, drove here, and got myself an apartment in Berea. After a while, I had my daughter and had no choice but to figure it out. Seeing how other companies were working and overcharging people, I no longer want to be a part of it. I had so many ideas that were always dismissed; I knew my ideas would work. I started this company in July of 2022 because I’m an honest man and wanted to help people how I would want someone to help me. Someone important to me told me I would never be anything, and I wanted to prove them wrong. I realized social media was a big part of advertising, so I started making videos, posting them, and editing my pictures uniquely that would grab people’s attention. Sure enough, they did, with 64.5K followers on TikTok and 11.5K on Instagram, I couldn’t be happier, and business is booming. Being my goofy and honest self has paid off.
You wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been smooth?
It has been a challenging road. I didn’t think I would get to where I am this quickly when I started this company. I’ve been doing it alone since it began, and it can be very overwhelming at times with so many phone calls coming in and having to do marketing myself and all of the administrative work. I wake up early and go to sleep late because a lot needs to be done.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might need to become more familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
I was born in Dallas, Texas, and grew up 36 miles east of Dallas in Terrell, Texas, Jamie Foxx’s (real name: ERIC BISHOPS) hometown. I had an amazing mother, but my father wasn’t the dad any boy wants. I was a class clown, and at the time, I did not really understand why until I got older, But I just wanted attention that was good because my father was not so good. I had many friends, and I had one friend named Julie Summerlin that I would hang out with all the time, and she had a stepfather named Gerald Templeman. all I knew and everyone else knew was that he was a mean man who did not like any boys around. My mother left my father when I was 15, and then my mother left us, and I had nowhere to live, so I lived in my truck and wherever at 18. One day at Julie’s house, I fell asleep in her bed, And I remember waking up to Gerald about to kill me. Growing up with a twin sister and playing with girls your whole life, You don’t look at girls as other boys do. I told Bubba I would never touch Julie and went to my truck, and Bubba realized I had nowhere to go; he came outside and made me go to the guest room and go to bed. The next day I woke up to Julie’s mother framing tools and slipknot posters and asked her what she was doing, and she told me she was framing posters from my room, and this family took me in. Gerald Templeman took me under his wing and taught me what I know today. He was a father, a friend, and someone I will always love and look up to. I’m grateful for this man every day and wish to hug him daily. In 2008 when the economy crashed after quite a few years of being taught by him, I lost everything because I still had stupid mistakes to learn by. You realize who you have when you fall because no one was there, and Gerald could not even help me because he had to lay off almost everyone. I still remember his face letting me go, which he did not want to. I ended up in a homeless shelter in Dallas, TX. I had a massive family, and not one person helped me. One day, my mother picked me up, took me to a homeless shelter in Dallas, and dropped me off. I was lost for years and broken for years and ended up getting a job in Oak Cliff, which is the project of Dallas, and they offered me an apartment to live in on the property, and the things I saw that year have never left my head. One day I saw things I should not have ever seen.
For days, I sat in this apartment thinking about the reason life, and something made me look up the happiest places to live in America. It brought up the top ten, which in the top ten there was a town called Greenville, SC, and back home next to my hometown of Terrell, TX There was a town called Greenville so it, related and there was a video on YouTube that made it look phenomenal and homeless makes fear leave you. If I did not leave, something bad would happen, so I called and found an apartment in Berea, an area of Greenville, for $400. I got in my car, what TV in my clothes, and left and drove nonstop for 13 hours straight. I was out of it when I got here, and when I signed the paperwork that morning in the apartment, I asked him if I could go to sleep because I had no idea what was happening. I went into this apartment, and I laid on my face, and when I woke up at 4 in the afternoon, I returned to reality. I had no idea what I had done cause I could not drive back home. 2 years into being here, I started working at a club and met a woman with whom I had a child a year later, and I ended up getting custody of that baby. For the following years, we lived in hotel rooms, renting rooms off Craigslist while being completed alone with a baby, But I never gave up. I started doing electrical again and was being paid nothing, but I saw the service companies, and I had ideas from the beginning that I knew would work, but no one would listen. Then I started seeing how people were being done with pricing and other things. I always wanted to do something about it but was scared to jump.
The last company I worked for fired me for no reason after using me all day to install a generator and then not even paying me my last paycheck, and I still haven’t; that was the last time anyone was going ever not to pay me my paycheck. While working for that company, I always had an idea that no one was doing how-to videos for electrical I’m not saying do it. Still, you can watch and get ideas about how your electrician is doing it. Immediately I saw that it would work, and that’s how I started my business. I started with my truck, and I and I remember a guy from a company calling me from a company I worked for and saying he had seen my little ad being funny and cold, asking me if I wanted to work for them being funny. Still, no one understood that people want different, and I’ve realized I’m different. I tell everyone back home it’s 1950 in South Carolina. So, I gave Diverse Electrical to them, and yes, I am different cause I truly do care about people, and it’s not a sales pitch. I live right by people every day, and I’ve learned that there is a lot of bad watching for good here. There’s been a lot of advantage-taking of people, and I’ve realized that there are more things to accomplish than electrical here when it comes to helping people. I have become a light to people back home, and I have to continue to go forward and strive with the focus of others. Even through the bad I have encountered. Hopefully, the light will shine because I will continue to live right every day by people, and I hope to continue to bring smiles to faces constantly. Love and help each other. I hope I can get that message everywhere.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
I want to be a light and entertainment to people making electricity funny in a way that teaches people but entertains them. I’ve realized I have funny facial expressions, and I try to make people laugh, But mostly I try to make my daughter laugh I want her to see she can do anything she puts her mind to And don’t let anyone tell her no she cannot.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
this link above is the story
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Me being honest about my situation with all my customers and on social media. I have never lied and won’t and that is my reputation. My customers know this presentation is the truth and everyone who looks at it. Trying to find the right person to share the story and shed light on the evil has been the problem.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.tiktok.com/@joshuahaymaker?_t=8iJ4j6t2pMg&_r=1
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshuahaymaker?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100080791749043&mibextid=ZbWKwL
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@JoshuaHayMaker
Image Credits
Gerald Templeman