We recently connected with Wade Julian and have shared our conversation below.
Wade , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
The idea of Houston Diesels originally started by Forrest Rushing, Jhett Young, and Wade Julian. We had all grown up around cars and trucks and being involved in the “truck scene”. The three of us where on many diesel pages on social media and through the years we always saw diesel events around the state (Texas), but nothing was ever here in Houston. We decided to start our own social media page with guys we knew. We then started hosting little meet and greet events at Twin Peaks in The Woodlands, Tx., just north of Houston. Our main purpose was just to bring some diesel enthusiast together to hang out. We had a few events that went well. While we where together someone had the idea to throw some money in a hat and donate it to the Dallas Police Officers. This was around the time that three officers had been shot at the same time in the line of duty. From that point on the rest is history. It then turned into people wanting stickers for their trucks to want to represent us, to wanting shirts, hats, and more. We grew drastically over a year. It was organized chaos. We then turned our events into fundraisers and every time we got together we would raise a few dollars for another organization. This ended up being our foundation and what grew us to be what we are today. We had no idea what we where doing or how todo it, we just did it. This club was built on trial and error and the support of our members and the community to keep doing more. Our events are now once a month all around Houston. We all come together and our main source of proceeds raised come from raffles at our events.
We knew we had a purpose when we began getting feed back from the charities we where helping. The amount of gratitude they have and how much of an impact we where making is what kept us doing what we where and what pushed us to want todo more each time. The members are the back bone to this organization. Our members are all about what we do and continue to push us to have bigger events, new locations, and try new things to be able to give back. If it wasn’t for our members, we would not be here today. To our members, THANK YOU!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
My name is Wade Julian and I am 34 years old, a husband to an absolutely amazing, supporting, and rock of a wife, and a father of three amazing little kiddos. I am full time firefighter and began my career a little over 17 years ago. I began volunteering as a firefighter in high school. After high school I was not sure what I wanted todo with my life. So while still living at home and going to community college, I finally decided to go with the fire service career path. This was one of the by far best choices I have ever made in my life. I absolutely love my career and could never see myself doing something else.
In my free time I enjoy fishing and hunting and anything vehicle related, especially classics and diesels! This helped feed the passion into Houston Diesels, personally for myself.
When Houston Diesels first started, Jhett, Forrest, and myself had no idea what we where doing. We had never ran a business nor done anything like this. As we grew more and more and began making a bigger difference, one thing we always stood on was, this isn’t a job nor is it about the money, this is about giving back. To this day, we hold that very strong and all board members and administrators of this club do this 100% volunteer. We eventually became a non profit (501C3) organization our self and became a business to ensure all T’s where crossed and I’s where dotted. This in itself helped us grow even more. We can proudly say that ALL proceeds EVER raised for any organization is 100% given to that organization. That is what separates us from the others and that is what we stand proud on. Houston Diesels does not take any percent off the amount raised for the organization we are helping. Houston Diesels simply is ran by the sell of our merchandise off of our website and by donors to our organization.
To help explain the impact Houston Diesels has had on the community- Houston Diesels has donated over $446,589 since we began donating in 2016. Out of that, our largest donation at one time was actually just given this past July, 2022 to Base Camp 40 in the amount of $73.751.
How did you build your audience on social media?
When we first started Houston Diesels, Jhett, Forrest, and myself only knew a small handful of like minded diesel enthusiast in the Houston area. We where all on so many other diesel pages and interacted with so many people from all over. We initially just added basically any diesel truck owner we knew. This first helped just build our base of people and eventually spread the word to more people. We used what we could to network through others to find more local people. Once our base of numbers was up more to more local people we began focusing on only allowing Houston local people to join our page. After all, Houston is a hour from Houston. We really did not want a page that was nation wide. We where wanting something that was more focused in this area.
The club membership grew and with that, so did the following from the general public. The more good we did, the more attention we would get. So many people where happy and proud of what we where doing, they wanted to join. We really wanted to keep our main group focused around diesel drivers only but still wanted to be able to interact with the public. Our main group is where our members interact daily, talk, ask for help, and just have “shop talk”. At this point we then started a face book “business page” and Instagram. This allowed for the public to see all our announcements about events, new club product, donations, etc.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Honesty, integrity, professionalism, and organization is what has built our reputation within the diesel community. All of our events are family friendly and we our transparent on everything we donate. We hold our members to a higher standard. All of our events are organized and run very smoothly. We pay for law enforcement to be at some of our events when we anticipate higher attendance and, if any of our members do not act as we see appropriate, they are automatically banned from the club and not allowed back.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.houstondiesels.org
- Instagram: @houstondiesels
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/houstondiesels/
- Other: Facebook business page- https://www.facebook.com/houstondiesels
Image Credits
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