February 21, 2025 • 22 mins
This episode dives into the personal journey of Sam Silvey, owner and founder of Spectruss, who transitioned from professional cycling to building an award winning, full service marketing and advertising company. Key themes include embracing change, learning from setbacks, and the importance of a strong foundation in entrepreneurship.
• The decision to drop out of school for cycling
• The challenges faced during a professional bike race
• Early career experiences with website development
• The origin and meaning behind Spectrus
• The significance of adaptability in business
• The journey of learning through successes and failures
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So you dropped out of school because you kind of
wanted to pursue this as likethe main thing, and then got my
ass handed to me the first race,Georgia Theater.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I wound up high side and a guy crashed in front of me
.
It tossed me off the side of mybike up in the air.
One of the first jobs we got Iworked with some people, like
kind of some freelancers, tostart building websites together
and they paid us, you know,$300 cash and we worked every
day in the coffee shop until hefinished it.
I used to cut trees when I wasyounger and he was older than me
(00:28):
.
I'm like hell, let's bid on it.
I think we bid 75,000, we splitit three ways and so over the
course of I think it was 30 to45 days, we cut all these trees
and it was like 225 trees,roughly Cleared out all the
trees in 30 to 45 days and made25,000 cash each.
I used that money to build outthe office.
I moved out of the little houseI was living in and I slept on
(00:49):
the futon in the back of theoffice.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Where does Spectrus come from?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
It's a cool name, spectrus.
We kind of split the word likea truss being like a strong beam
in the roofline, you know, soit kind of holds the whole house
together.
Hell, we've learned the hard todo.
(01:11):
Hopefully in the future.
Welcome back to another podcast, this one.
I'm going to start with a themeon lucky number 13.
13 is normally not lucky, sohopefully that doesn't apply
here.
Lucky number 13 because it's 13years in business.
We opened the doors in 2012,january 2012.
And I thought people might wantto know some of the funny
stories of kind of how we gotinto this.
I wanted to pull you in, zach,because you don't really know
(01:33):
many of these stories, and so Ithought maybe you know you
asking me questions, that sortof stuff.
I can help tell the story toother people and it's nice to
have a second person here.
It kind of makes sense right tohave a second person here.
Kind of makes sense right.
Yeah, but there are some funthings happening along the way
to get that started officiallyas a business and and some of
the background stuff of my ownpersonal background thought
people might enjoy hearing about.
So yeah, lucky number 13.
(01:53):
That the initial beginningsyeah no, I love it.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
So I'm sort of kind of helping you guys out working
with you about only a year ortwo ago.
So it'll be kind of cool to seea little bit of the backstory
here from the man himself.
So kick it right off.
How'd you get started inmarketing advertising?
Why marketing advertising?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Right, right, good question.
Well, kind of by accident, tobe honest, there's so many other
industries I could have pickedthat are way easier.
I mean, this is one of the mostvolatile industries, in my
opinion, in the entire world,because you can learn everything
in a textbook in school andcome out and not know anything
about marketing advertisingbecause it changes so much.
And two, it's one of the mostvolatile industries in the world
because when you're workingwith a business to help it grow,
(02:35):
more often than not they'reunder a ton of pressure because
they're pushing growth right, sothey're spending money, hoping
they're making money, andthere's all kinds of things on
their own infrastructure side orfulfillment side operations
that might fall apart.
And so I picked a reallychallenging one, kind of by
accident.
Initially it was computerscience that got me into this,
and that was just because I wascurious about how computers work
(02:56):
.
So I went to school at UTC forcomputer science.
I love learning aboutprogramming.
In fact it's some of the onlyclasses I actually did well.
In Everything else I kind ofjust didn't give a shit about.
You know, like bored me.
I like physics, I like computerscience.
Didn't really like the mathpart, like when it got into all
the abstract stuff I didn't get.
(03:16):
But computer science stuff Ikind of understood, especially
once I learned about like objectoriented programming,
understood like how to build,like you know, scalable
programming systems.
Not that I was uh amazing at it, but I understood it yeah, and
uh started to enjoy it becauseit was something that, to be
honest, was kind of challengingfor a lot of people and so I
like that, like I want to learnsomething.
That was challenging.
Um, yeah, so I went to schoolfor computer science but then I
(03:40):
dropped out.
Don't, don tell anybody, okay,yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
When did you drop out ?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Like 2007.
So technically I went for fouryears.
I think I got a total of about36 credit hours in four years,
which I don't think is very good.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, okay, I was going to say I'm not very
familiar with how the credit, Idon't know if that's good or not
, but is that?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
not standard.
I think most overachievers getthat many credit hours in a
semester.
Maybe, I don't know, maybe twosemesters.
For me it was about four yearsand then I did pay for it myself
.
So it wasn't like living off ofmom and dad just going to
school wasting time.
But I think I took amongcomputer programming and physics
and some math stuff.
It was like intro to UltimateFrisbee, beginning kayaking.
(04:24):
It was fun, yeah, it was fun.
I passed those courses and thenthat was about it.
But like English and psychologyI do like psychology, but like
the one-on-one, you know thosebig classrooms, I just didn't
enjoy it.
Um.
So, yeah, I got an offer to gorace um bicycles and it was
going to be like, I mean, I wasalready racing bicycles and I
was was racing pretty high leveland I guess I was 19, 20 at the
(04:46):
time and there was a tour ofVirginia that came along and our
team got an opportunity to gorace in it and I got invited to
go race in the team at that raceand it was a big pro race and
that was my biggest pro race togo to stage race and it was
during I think it was duringfinals is when it was.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
And so I told my mom.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
I was like, hey, I'm dropping out of school and I
mean I was paying for it anyways, but it was our biggest fight
we'd ever gotten into, becauseshe was so adamant about me
finishing school and I was like.
I'm not going to finish anyways.
At this rate I'll be done atlike year 2040 maybe if I'm
lucky.
So I dropped out and went.
I trained so hard before and Ihad some of my best power
(05:26):
numbers on road bikes at thetime.
And Virginia, it was like allthrough around Natural Bridge
and that area and it's like hugemountain passes in there and it
was a brutal race super fast,largest pro teams in all
countries, some Euro teams werethere and I got my ass handed to
me.
Yeah, I think I was dropped onday two of five or six.
It might've been a seven daystage, I can't remember now.
So long ago.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yeah, so you dropped out of school because you kind
of wanted to pursue this as likethe main thing, as a profession
to get racing, yeah, and thengot my ass handed to me the very
first race.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
So I was like what have I just done, you know?
Like I mean not that I wasgreat at school anyways, but it
was like I just threw away thecomputer science course I was
going for that I was actuallydoing good in and got my ass
handed to me but went back andkept racing and I think at that
time I had all kinds of jobs.
I was working at a bike shop, Iwas building bicycles for
American Bicycle Group andQuintana Roo and Merlin and I
(06:21):
think, valet parking from timeto time and ride my bike.
During the winter months I had30 to 40 hours would be a big
week spent on the bicyclepedaling.
So there's a lot of trying tofind jobs to fill in between
there and go race as much aspossible.
Nice Well, at least you're inshape.
Yeah, I was skinny man.
You know some like 6'3", 6'31⁄2", something like that, and
(06:42):
at one point actually it wasright before the tour of
Virginia.
That's one reason I did so bad.
I weighed in at 149 pounds.
Okay, so that's light.
Yeah, it's like Skeletor.
I mean, my biceps were the sizeof like my wrist.
It was just one.
You could count on my ribs, Imean it was.
Yeah, it looked like I'd beenin the Hunger Games Right doing
well.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
I mean, biking is very taxing on your body, so
that's kind of impressive thatyou decided to drop out of
school to go do it.
This sounds like I'm hating.
I think it's just like it'sfunny, because hate away, that
is Trial to blank.
I'm cutting that part out.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
No, don't do it, let it run no.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I was going to.
Is this a good segue?
Because I was going to be likeokay, so you just got out of
school, you went after really adream.
At this point it seems like itwas your dream and you know you
faced a little bit of adversity.
It didn't go the way you wantedit to.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
So I think this is a good segue into.
So how marketing Cause I meanthat's like you went from like a
really fun, exciting sport to avery, you know, tech savvy and
very it could be very boringbusiness, but you did it and
Road Race Champion in 2008, Ithink it was had some decent
wins in 2007 as well Went to alot of national international
stage races, mainly racing onthe road bike.
I do some mountain bike racinghere and there.
(08:11):
So I was a Cat 1 road cyclistracing for like a.
We got a lot of the pro racesbut we technically weren't a pro
team because you had to have acertain budget basically to be a
pro team.
I was a UCI pro mountain bikerbut I didn't have enough time to
really race mountain bikes, um,so most of the races I was
doing were, like you know,averaging about five, five day
stage races.
Usually it's a lot of omniumswhich are three race weekends
(08:32):
and then some five day stageraces and 2008,.
I think it's when I won the proTennessee State Road Race
Champion 2006,.
I was SEC Division I OverallMountain Bike Champion, so
that's where the mountain bikingcame in Raced for UTC and went
and won the whole SEC Division.
I and that put me as top six inthe whole country Went to
nationals collegiate nationalsand had a really good chance of
(08:55):
winning overall there, mainlybecause of the downhill
background I had.
I was better than most of thecross-country racers at downhill
, so back then, especially allthe top cross-country racers
were really good road bikers androad biking was my weakest part
at that point because all I'dbeen doing was mountain biking
as a kid and racing downhill andmountain cross, so downhill,
but I got the flu in the way outthere and so I didn't do well
(09:15):
at nationals.
Long story short, got away tothe housing market crash in
2007-8, so it was like the worsttiming ever to be up and coming
under 23 cyclist who's tryingto make a career out of it.
Yeah, and there's a lot ofreally good cyclists then and I
was racing against a lot of them.
You know, like brent bookwalteris one guy I raced against in
collegiate cycling.
He came back and raced some and, um, he was under 23 time trial
(09:39):
champion.
He went on to race the tour andsome of my former teammates,
like Nathan Brown, like theywent on.
I think he raced the tour aswell, but I was up against a lot
of good talent, yeah.
And then I had a really badcrash in 2008 landed on my head.
I was in neck brace for likesix months and I was trying to
find a pro contract, couldn'tfind one and found a lower level
.
You know, cat one racing team.
(09:59):
We still I think I still racedabout 45 or 50 races in 2009 and
then tour jamaica was the lastrace I did.
That was kind of like the one Iretired on.
Yeah, technically wasn't reallyhigh left, high enough level
pro to say I retired it soundskind of pretentious, but I mean
that sounds like a career to me,so I it was a good attempt.
There's a lot of things I shouldhave done better, but, um, then
(10:19):
I kind of had to.
I had to find, uh, findsomething to do, yeah and um, I
was tired of getting hurt anddoing all that stuff, like I had
I don't know what number catscan it was, but racing the
twilight got a front row call upif anyone hears listings a
cyclist, a front row call up toAthens twilight criterion, which
is like a televised big critdown in Athens, georgia, within
halfway through it, like I wasdoing.
(10:41):
Criterion is like, especiallyif it's technical and this race
is at nighttime and it's throughthe street of Athens, georgia,
and all the college kids comeout in the bars and they have
like it's all fenced off andthere's beer spilling in the
streets.
I mean it's crazy and ouraverage speed is usually around
like 32 to 35 miles per hour forit's a two hour crit.
And uh, I got taken out abouthalfway through in front of the
(11:01):
georgia theater wind up highside and a guy crashed in front
of me.
It tossed me off the side of mybike up in the air, another cat
scan knocked out and I was likeman, I just got out of a neck
brace.
I don't know how manyconcussions I've had and how
many broken bones, and yeah.
So I started building websitesand I've already been building
some websites to make some moneyhere and there.
So I started using computerscience part and then started
(11:22):
freelancing more and, oddlyenough, one of the first jobs we
got, I worked with some people,like kind of some freelancers,
to start building websitestogether.
We worked at a coffee shop alot, which is like what a lot of
people in marketing advertisingdo, right, always at a damn
coffee shop Powered by coffee.
Yeah, everyone does.
We need it, right, like got toget cracked out on something.
(11:42):
So first job we landed and itwas actually my first technical
like I mean, we had no LLC oranything, but we called it Hub
Design Group built a website forit.
It was me and this guy namedMatt Richardson super smart guy
and we built a website for thiscoffee shop called Toast.
It was over by UTC and we werein there every day working or
playing on the computer.
(12:02):
I remember we bid on it.
We had no idea what to bid.
I think we bid $750 for thewebsite.
It was going to be a fullcustom design, custom build.
I think at that time we werebuilding it on an open source
CMS called Concrete 5.
That was one of the competitorsto WordPress that was just
really gaining traction.
That was like one of the kindof competitors to WordPress.
It was just really gainingtraction and $750, but we traded
(12:23):
them.
I think it was $450 of creditso we could eat and drink there
for like basically a couple ofmonths and they paid us $300
cash, yeah, and we worked everyday in the coffee shop until we
finished it.
Nice, it turned out to be agood-looking website.
We did some other fun stuffwith them.
That was our first website job,$750.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Dang, that's pretty sick.
I mean, like I said, we operateoff coffee, so that's kind of a
good deal.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
As a first date, I bet you're like?
Speaker 1 (12:51):
yes, please, thank you.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Yeah, that offer does not.
If you're listening, the offerdoes not apply anymore, that
quote.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Or it's got to be like a lot, a lot, a lot of
coffee.
A lot yeah, ownership in acoffee business that I can
resell.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah, yeah, something .
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Yeah, so, okay.
So we're at the.
You kind of get your roots herein marketing advertising.
Is it a big world at this time?
Because I know, compared to now, marketing and advertising is
way different.
The internet is way differentthan it was back then.
Software is way different, soway different.
The internet is way differentthan it was back then.
Software is way different.
So take me into a little bit ofthe process of what got you to
(13:26):
start rolling in, to maybebecoming Spectris.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good question.
So yeah, I mean, the landscapethen was way different.
So in some ways kind of caughtat a good time because social
media is really starting to takeoff.
You know, facebook's startingto take off, instagram wasn't
even really around then, aroundthen, I believe.
I think it wasn't until whatlike 2012 or something um at
this point it's like 2009, 10,11, so you open the doors in
(13:51):
2012.
During that time, I did someother like, had a little stint
over in europe, worked for trektravel and led tours in europe
bicycle tours so they neededpeople that were like strong
enough, good enough.
So I picked up a lot of formerpro cyclists or cyclists and
went over there, worked a summerwith the tour de france for
trek travel, leading bike tours.
That was a super cool job andpissed off a lot of people
trying to speak french andspanish because I was so
(14:12):
terrible at it.
Um, great, uh, great experience, though, and then I worked for
the north face for four months.
That was my only corporate job,and I was still kind of
building websites here and thereand tried that corporate gig,
and that was like the most moneyI ever made in my life.
You know, like they gave me atruck and you know, at the time
it was a Blackberry, you know,and you get a Blackberry.
I was like, oh, this ishighfalutin.
Yeah, no-transcript, want to.
(14:50):
I don't want to work for herand you're on your life for so
long like I would rather bearound people I want to spend my
life working with.
Yeah, so wasn't soon after thatthat, you know, more websites
came across my path and I'd beenshooting a lot of photography
too, because I've always likedthe visual arts.
So I started shooting moreguidebooks for rock climbing and
all this outdoor stuff, beingChattanooga and all the outdoors
(15:11):
are here.
So I photographed a lot forguidebooks and then kind of got
into video.
And then I started buildingwebsites for friends and their
businesses and they're like well, they need photos and they
might need videos and that sortof stuff and and so that kind of
led to, uh, finally, I'm likeI'm going to start a business
I'm going to call it Sylviedevelopment, you know, for
website development.
And um, picked off, this isNorth Chattanooga, right by
(15:33):
Aretha Frankenstein's andbuilding.
Still, there's a cool building,kind of like a shotgun, tall
ceiling, you know, tall ceiling,about 800 square feet,
something like that.
And um, and yeah, so I I builtthat out, but I didn't have very
much money at the time.
Um, and conveniently enough, astorm came through.
I mean, it wasn't convenientfor a lot of people, but yeah,
big storm, a tornado, and abuddy had a property.
(15:56):
It was about seven and a half,eight acres in stewart heights
and he had like 200 andsomething trees tornado
basically went right across thishouse and somehow didn't rip
the house down.
It was really well-built,sturdy, mid-century modern house
.
Had six trees fall on it andsomehow didn't grow like big
trees.
And so he was getting thesequotes and I was listening to
him get all these quotes andthere was like 150, 190,
(16:18):
$225,000, you know, for threequotes.
I'm just trying to guess atnumbers.
This was 15 years ago, 14 yearsago.
So I'm sitting there, I'm like,well, man, I've got a chainsaw,
I've handed the chainsaw, likeI'll give it a shot.
And I talked to my buddy andhe's like, yeah, I used to cut
trees when I was younger and hewas older than me.
And I'm like, hell, let's bidon it.
And so we bid on it andbasically wound up three of us,
(16:41):
including my buddy, the propertyowner and then I put together a
contract, like a legal contract, to remove any sort of risk and
liability in case we chop offour legs or whatever.
Got some stuff on the Internetto help us write that.
And his wife is actually hiswell, ex-wife wife at the time
was an attorney.
And she looked at us like, yeah, this is good.
And so we bid on it.
I think we bid $75,000.
We split it three ways and soover the course of I think it
(17:04):
was 30 to 45 days, we cut allthese trees and it was like 225
trees roughly and one of thetrees that we had removed that
were all ripped down by thetornado One.
If a tornado comes through andthere's a lot of elastic trees
like pine trees are very elasticit twists them all.
And I trees like pine trees arevery elastic.
It twists them all.
I never experienced that, butthey are under such great load
(17:24):
and when they get in thatcluster and they're all bound up
whenever you go to cut them,dude, it's like russian roulette
like sometimes, like you try tolook at it, but then sometimes
this thing is so like just underpressure it'll unload and swing
.
It was.
It was crazy times, um, but webasically did that for half the
price of the cheapest quote andour big thing is that we did a
control burn and so we burnedall of them.
(17:45):
We got industrial fans and weburned all the wood on site in
three burn pits, cleared out allthe trees in 30 to 45 days and
made $25,000 cash each.
I used that money to build out.
The office, moved out of thelittle house I was living in and
I slept on the futon on theback of the office.
So I bought a new computer, anew camera gear, a bunch of desk
, painted the whole place andlived on the futon for the first
(18:07):
six months in the office.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
So where's your happiness meter now, compared to
this corporate job that you hadright before?
Because this is the fun partabout entrepreneurship there's
so much random stuff you'redoing to make it work, but where
were you on Mintool?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Once in a while, like I've seen, memes or whatever,
or posters like entrepreneursare the only crazy people that
would be so spiteful to work 80hours a week instead of 40 hours
a week, for half the pay, orwhatever.
I don't know.
I paraphrase that terribly.
No, I know exactly what you'retalking about.
(18:47):
To be honest, the most fun partwas probably cutting the trees.
Like that was so much fun.
Like my buddy brought his olduh, honda cr7 or whatever it was
, um, what's it called trail 70pit bike yeah, we'd ride that in
between the trails we cut toget to the trees and we're
snaking big giant trees.
That.
That was a ton of fun, to thepoint where I almost thought
about like chasing storms andcutting trees.
But I'm also like kind of wildenough to where I'd probably
like be a peg leg by now, youknow, and like be missing maybe
both my legs by now.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Um, geez, I don't know.
I feel like you've gone throughit and you're still, uh, still
in one piece.
You might be a little bitinvincible, we'll see, you're
still, you're still racing, sostill still shit.
Oh, you know, I do have onething.
I think that's a good way toend it on this, like the
beginning of your story is thename Spectrus.
(19:28):
Because is that?
Because you said Sylvie LSE?
Is that what you said it wasbefore Sylvie Development?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Sylvie.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Development Is it?
Where does Spectrus come from?
It's a cool name.
I always liked Spectrus.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yeah, so there's a little bit of a story there,
because it actually went fromSylvie Development to then.
I had a business partner for alittle while because we were
partners in other business and Ineeded someone to help me run
mine when I was building thishouse on Lookout but I still
have and shit hit the fan thereand so I had to be up there and
so I wound up and changed thename of my business to Sylvie
Huffaker Creative and then weparted ways after about a year
and a half and then I rebrandedit in 2015, january, to Spectris
(20:06):
, and Spectris just came from.
We finally made up a wordbecause we're tired.
I mean you can look up likePink Pony Creative Company and
there's going to be like,there's just so many of them.
Even in 2015, there were somany of them like, and all
creative people just kind ofpull names out of their ass, it
seems like, and put agencybehind it.
There it is, um.
So we made up a word and it was.
(20:27):
I wanted to give some sort ofstory behind, so you know it had
to mean something.
So right, um, spectrous we kindof split the word like a trust
being like the strong beam andthe roof line, you know, so it
kind of holds the whole housetogether.
And then spectrum being likethe wide array of light, you
know, light spectrum, and so theidea would be like we'd have a
wider range of strengths.
So the full marketing,advertising marketing, because
(20:49):
it takes more than just beinggood at websites or just being
good at Google ads or shootingvideo Like ideal world.
If a company is going to domarketing and advertising
correctly, they need it all doneand it all needs to be tied
together with a strategy andplan.
So that's where the wordSpectris came from.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Cool.
Yeah, that's a fun story.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
It helps me it helps me tell the story as opposed to
just being like I don't know.
We put some letters togetherand make a number.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yeah, no, a hundred percent.
That's pretty cool.
It's always stuck out to meSpectris is you guys got great
branding, so it's pretty cool.
So that's, that's the beginningpart of spectrous.
I think we got to stay tunedfor a little bit more where,
right before where you startmaybe bringing on some help,
bringing it, building a team outtogether uh, maybe even touch
(21:32):
on covid, because I know covidwas a big, big part of the
business where things havechanged yeah, I think we can.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I know there's some fun times there and some wild
times between, like, whenever Ichanged it from Sylvie
Development to Sylvie HuffakerCreative, and then, you know,
justin Aragon became part of theteam as creative director and
then, you know, he's still withus today, and there's a lot of
wild times where we could talkabout some like projects that
went great way of like who notto work with or what not to work
(21:59):
with.
So I think those are funstories to tell.
It's been long enough now thatwe could probably, you know, be
honest with it, yeah, ourselves,or me with myself, and, yeah,
people might want to hear it.
You know, hell, we've learnedthe hard way of things.
That what not to do, hopefullyin the future, yeah, no so the
best stories are when everythinggoes wrong.
So for some reason I love tolearn the hard way.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Cool.
Well then, stay to be continuedon that.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, we got to leave people.
Leave people hanging.
You know they want more.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Give them a little tease.
So you dropped out of school because you kind of
wanted to pursue this as likethe main thing, and then got my
ass handed to me the first race,Georgia Theater.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I wound up high side and a guy crashed in front of me
.
It tossed me off the side of mybike up in the air.
One of the first jobs we got Iworked with some people, like
kind of some freelancers, tostart building websites together
and they paid us, you know,$300 cash and we worked every
day in the coffee shop until hefinished it.
I used to cut trees when I wasyounger and he was older than me
(00:28):
.
I'm like hell, let's bid on it.
I think we bid 75,000, we splitit three ways and so over the
course of I think it was 30 to45 days, we cut all these trees
and it was like 225 trees,roughly Cleared out all the
trees in 30 to 45 days and made25,000 cash each.
I used that money to build outthe office.
I moved out of the little houseI was living in and I slept on
(00:49):
the futon in the back of theoffice.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Where does Spectrus come from?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
It's a cool name, spectrus.
We kind of split the word likea truss being like a strong beam
in the roofline, you know, soit kind of holds the whole house
together.
Hell, we've learned the hard todo.
(01:11):
Hopefully in the future.
Welcome back to another podcast, this one.
I'm going to start with a themeon lucky number 13.
13 is normally not lucky, sohopefully that doesn't apply
here.
Lucky number 13 because it's 13years in business.
We opened the doors in 2012,january 2012.
And I thought people might wantto know some of the funny
stories of kind of how we gotinto this.
I wanted to pull you in, zach,because you don't really know
(01:33):
many of these stories, and so Ithought maybe you know you
asking me questions, that sortof stuff.
I can help tell the story toother people and it's nice to
have a second person here.
It kind of makes sense right tohave a second person here.
Kind of makes sense right.
Yeah, but there are some funthings happening along the way
to get that started officiallyas a business and and some of
the background stuff of my ownpersonal background thought
people might enjoy hearing about.
So yeah, lucky number 13.
(01:53):
That the initial beginningsyeah no, I love it.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
So I'm sort of kind of helping you guys out working
with you about only a year ortwo ago.
So it'll be kind of cool to seea little bit of the backstory
here from the man himself.
So kick it right off.
How'd you get started inmarketing advertising?
Why marketing advertising?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Right, right, good question.
Well, kind of by accident, tobe honest, there's so many other
industries I could have pickedthat are way easier.
I mean, this is one of the mostvolatile industries, in my
opinion, in the entire world,because you can learn everything
in a textbook in school andcome out and not know anything
about marketing advertisingbecause it changes so much.
And two, it's one of the mostvolatile industries in the world
because when you're workingwith a business to help it grow,
(02:35):
more often than not they'reunder a ton of pressure because
they're pushing growth right, sothey're spending money, hoping
they're making money, andthere's all kinds of things on
their own infrastructure side orfulfillment side operations
that might fall apart.
And so I picked a reallychallenging one, kind of by
accident.
Initially it was computerscience that got me into this,
and that was just because I wascurious about how computers work
(02:56):
.
So I went to school at UTC forcomputer science.
I love learning aboutprogramming.
In fact it's some of the onlyclasses I actually did well.
In Everything else I kind ofjust didn't give a shit about.
You know, like bored me.
I like physics, I like computerscience.
Didn't really like the mathpart, like when it got into all
the abstract stuff I didn't get.
(03:16):
But computer science stuff Ikind of understood, especially
once I learned about like objectoriented programming,
understood like how to build,like you know, scalable
programming systems.
Not that I was uh amazing at it, but I understood it yeah, and
uh started to enjoy it becauseit was something that, to be
honest, was kind of challengingfor a lot of people and so I
like that, like I want to learnsomething.
That was challenging.
Um, yeah, so I went to schoolfor computer science but then I
(03:40):
dropped out.
Don't, don tell anybody, okay,yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
When did you drop out ?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Like 2007.
So technically I went for fouryears.
I think I got a total of about36 credit hours in four years,
which I don't think is very good.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, okay, I was going to say I'm not very
familiar with how the credit, Idon't know if that's good or not
, but is that?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
not standard.
I think most overachievers getthat many credit hours in a
semester.
Maybe, I don't know, maybe twosemesters.
For me it was about four yearsand then I did pay for it myself
.
So it wasn't like living off ofmom and dad just going to
school wasting time.
But I think I took amongcomputer programming and physics
and some math stuff.
It was like intro to UltimateFrisbee, beginning kayaking.
(04:24):
It was fun, yeah, it was fun.
I passed those courses and thenthat was about it.
But like English and psychologyI do like psychology, but like
the one-on-one, you know thosebig classrooms, I just didn't
enjoy it.
Um.
So, yeah, I got an offer to gorace um bicycles and it was
going to be like, I mean, I wasalready racing bicycles and I
was was racing pretty high leveland I guess I was 19, 20 at the
(04:46):
time and there was a tour ofVirginia that came along and our
team got an opportunity to gorace in it and I got invited to
go race in the team at that raceand it was a big pro race and
that was my biggest pro race togo to stage race and it was
during I think it was duringfinals is when it was.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
And so I told my mom.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
I was like, hey, I'm dropping out of school and I
mean I was paying for it anyways, but it was our biggest fight
we'd ever gotten into, becauseshe was so adamant about me
finishing school and I was like.
I'm not going to finish anyways.
At this rate I'll be done atlike year 2040 maybe if I'm
lucky.
So I dropped out and went.
I trained so hard before and Ihad some of my best power
(05:26):
numbers on road bikes at thetime.
And Virginia, it was like allthrough around Natural Bridge
and that area and it's like hugemountain passes in there and it
was a brutal race super fast,largest pro teams in all
countries, some Euro teams werethere and I got my ass handed to
me.
Yeah, I think I was dropped onday two of five or six.
It might've been a seven daystage, I can't remember now.
So long ago.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yeah, so you dropped out of school because you kind
of wanted to pursue this as likethe main thing, as a profession
to get racing, yeah, and thengot my ass handed to me the very
first race.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
So I was like what have I just done, you know?
Like I mean not that I wasgreat at school anyways, but it
was like I just threw away thecomputer science course I was
going for that I was actuallydoing good in and got my ass
handed to me but went back andkept racing and I think at that
time I had all kinds of jobs.
I was working at a bike shop, Iwas building bicycles for
American Bicycle Group andQuintana Roo and Merlin and I
(06:21):
think, valet parking from timeto time and ride my bike.
During the winter months I had30 to 40 hours would be a big
week spent on the bicyclepedaling.
So there's a lot of trying tofind jobs to fill in between
there and go race as much aspossible.
Nice Well, at least you're inshape.
Yeah, I was skinny man.
You know some like 6'3", 6'31⁄2", something like that, and
(06:42):
at one point actually it wasright before the tour of
Virginia.
That's one reason I did so bad.
I weighed in at 149 pounds.
Okay, so that's light.
Yeah, it's like Skeletor.
I mean, my biceps were the sizeof like my wrist.
It was just one.
You could count on my ribs, Imean it was.
Yeah, it looked like I'd beenin the Hunger Games Right doing
well.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
I mean, biking is very taxing on your body, so
that's kind of impressive thatyou decided to drop out of
school to go do it.
This sounds like I'm hating.
I think it's just like it'sfunny, because hate away, that
is Trial to blank.
I'm cutting that part out.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
No, don't do it, let it run no.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
I was going to.
Is this a good segue?
Because I was going to be likeokay, so you just got out of
school, you went after really adream.
At this point it seems like itwas your dream and you know you
faced a little bit of adversity.
It didn't go the way you wantedit to.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
So I think this is a good segue into.
So how marketing Cause I meanthat's like you went from like a
really fun, exciting sport to avery, you know, tech savvy and
very it could be very boringbusiness, but you did it and
Road Race Champion in 2008, Ithink it was had some decent
wins in 2007 as well Went to alot of national international
stage races, mainly racing onthe road bike.
I do some mountain bike racinghere and there.
(08:11):
So I was a Cat 1 road cyclistracing for like a.
We got a lot of the pro racesbut we technically weren't a pro
team because you had to have acertain budget basically to be a
pro team.
I was a UCI pro mountain bikerbut I didn't have enough time to
really race mountain bikes, um,so most of the races I was
doing were, like you know,averaging about five, five day
stage races.
Usually it's a lot of omniumswhich are three race weekends
(08:32):
and then some five day stageraces and 2008,.
I think it's when I won the proTennessee State Road Race
Champion 2006,.
I was SEC Division I OverallMountain Bike Champion, so
that's where the mountain bikingcame in Raced for UTC and went
and won the whole SEC Division.
I and that put me as top six inthe whole country Went to
nationals collegiate nationalsand had a really good chance of
(08:55):
winning overall there, mainlybecause of the downhill
background I had.
I was better than most of thecross-country racers at downhill
, so back then, especially allthe top cross-country racers
were really good road bikers androad biking was my weakest part
at that point because all I'dbeen doing was mountain biking
as a kid and racing downhill andmountain cross, so downhill,
but I got the flu in the way outthere and so I didn't do well
(09:15):
at nationals.
Long story short, got away tothe housing market crash in
2007-8, so it was like the worsttiming ever to be up and coming
under 23 cyclist who's tryingto make a career out of it.
Yeah, and there's a lot ofreally good cyclists then and I
was racing against a lot of them.
You know, like brent bookwalteris one guy I raced against in
collegiate cycling.
He came back and raced some and, um, he was under 23 time trial
(09:39):
champion.
He went on to race the tour andsome of my former teammates,
like Nathan Brown, like theywent on.
I think he raced the tour aswell, but I was up against a lot
of good talent, yeah.
And then I had a really badcrash in 2008 landed on my head.
I was in neck brace for likesix months and I was trying to
find a pro contract, couldn'tfind one and found a lower level
.
You know, cat one racing team.
(09:59):
We still I think I still racedabout 45 or 50 races in 2009 and
then tour jamaica was the lastrace I did.
That was kind of like the one Iretired on.
Yeah, technically wasn't reallyhigh left, high enough level
pro to say I retired it soundskind of pretentious, but I mean
that sounds like a career to me,so I it was a good attempt.
There's a lot of things I shouldhave done better, but, um, then
(10:19):
I kind of had to.
I had to find, uh, findsomething to do, yeah and um, I
was tired of getting hurt anddoing all that stuff, like I had
I don't know what number catscan it was, but racing the
twilight got a front row call upif anyone hears listings a
cyclist, a front row call up toAthens twilight criterion, which
is like a televised big critdown in Athens, georgia, within
halfway through it, like I wasdoing.
(10:41):
Criterion is like, especiallyif it's technical and this race
is at nighttime and it's throughthe street of Athens, georgia,
and all the college kids comeout in the bars and they have
like it's all fenced off andthere's beer spilling in the
streets.
I mean it's crazy and ouraverage speed is usually around
like 32 to 35 miles per hour forit's a two hour crit.
And uh, I got taken out abouthalfway through in front of the
(11:01):
georgia theater wind up highside and a guy crashed in front
of me.
It tossed me off the side of mybike up in the air, another cat
scan knocked out and I was likeman, I just got out of a neck
brace.
I don't know how manyconcussions I've had and how
many broken bones, and yeah.
So I started building websitesand I've already been building
some websites to make some moneyhere and there.
So I started using computerscience part and then started
(11:22):
freelancing more and, oddlyenough, one of the first jobs we
got, I worked with some people,like kind of some freelancers,
to start building websitestogether.
We worked at a coffee shop alot, which is like what a lot of
people in marketing advertisingdo, right, always at a damn
coffee shop Powered by coffee.
Yeah, everyone does.
We need it, right, like got toget cracked out on something.
(11:42):
So first job we landed and itwas actually my first technical
like I mean, we had no LLC oranything, but we called it Hub
Design Group built a website forit.
It was me and this guy namedMatt Richardson super smart guy
and we built a website for thiscoffee shop called Toast.
It was over by UTC and we werein there every day working or
playing on the computer.
(12:02):
I remember we bid on it.
We had no idea what to bid.
I think we bid $750 for thewebsite.
It was going to be a fullcustom design, custom build.
I think at that time we werebuilding it on an open source
CMS called Concrete 5.
That was one of the competitorsto WordPress that was just
really gaining traction.
That was like one of the kindof competitors to WordPress.
It was just really gainingtraction and $750, but we traded
(12:23):
them.
I think it was $450 of creditso we could eat and drink there
for like basically a couple ofmonths and they paid us $300
cash, yeah, and we worked everyday in the coffee shop until we
finished it.
Nice, it turned out to be agood-looking website.
We did some other fun stuffwith them.
That was our first website job,$750.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Dang, that's pretty sick.
I mean, like I said, we operateoff coffee, so that's kind of a
good deal.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
As a first date, I bet you're like?
Speaker 1 (12:51):
yes, please, thank you.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Yeah, that offer does not.
If you're listening, the offerdoes not apply anymore, that
quote.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Or it's got to be like a lot, a lot, a lot of
coffee.
A lot yeah, ownership in acoffee business that I can
resell.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Yeah, yeah, something .
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Yeah, so, okay.
So we're at the.
You kind of get your roots herein marketing advertising.
Is it a big world at this time?
Because I know, compared to now, marketing and advertising is
way different.
The internet is way differentthan it was back then.
Software is way different, soway different.
The internet is way differentthan it was back then.
Software is way different.
So take me into a little bit ofthe process of what got you to
(13:26):
start rolling in, to maybebecoming Spectris.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yeah, yeah, that's a good question.
So yeah, I mean, the landscapethen was way different.
So in some ways kind of caughtat a good time because social
media is really starting to takeoff.
You know, facebook's startingto take off, instagram wasn't
even really around then, aroundthen, I believe.
I think it wasn't until whatlike 2012 or something um at
this point it's like 2009, 10,11, so you open the doors in
(13:51):
2012.
During that time, I did someother like, had a little stint
over in europe, worked for trektravel and led tours in europe
bicycle tours so they neededpeople that were like strong
enough, good enough.
So I picked up a lot of formerpro cyclists or cyclists and
went over there, worked a summerwith the tour de france for
trek travel, leading bike tours.
That was a super cool job andpissed off a lot of people
trying to speak french andspanish because I was so
(14:12):
terrible at it.
Um, great, uh, great experience, though, and then I worked for
the north face for four months.
That was my only corporate job,and I was still kind of
building websites here and thereand tried that corporate gig,
and that was like the most moneyI ever made in my life.
You know, like they gave me atruck and you know, at the time
it was a Blackberry, you know,and you get a Blackberry.
I was like, oh, this ishighfalutin.
Yeah, no-transcript, want to.
(14:50):
I don't want to work for herand you're on your life for so
long like I would rather bearound people I want to spend my
life working with.
Yeah, so wasn't soon after thatthat, you know, more websites
came across my path and I'd beenshooting a lot of photography
too, because I've always likedthe visual arts.
So I started shooting moreguidebooks for rock climbing and
all this outdoor stuff, beingChattanooga and all the outdoors
(15:11):
are here.
So I photographed a lot forguidebooks and then kind of got
into video.
And then I started buildingwebsites for friends and their
businesses and they're like well, they need photos and they
might need videos and that sortof stuff and and so that kind of
led to, uh, finally, I'm likeI'm going to start a business
I'm going to call it Sylviedevelopment, you know, for
website development.
And um, picked off, this isNorth Chattanooga, right by
(15:33):
Aretha Frankenstein's andbuilding.
Still, there's a cool building,kind of like a shotgun, tall
ceiling, you know, tall ceiling,about 800 square feet,
something like that.
And um, and yeah, so I I builtthat out, but I didn't have very
much money at the time.
Um, and conveniently enough, astorm came through.
I mean, it wasn't convenientfor a lot of people, but yeah,
big storm, a tornado, and abuddy had a property.
(15:56):
It was about seven and a half,eight acres in stewart heights
and he had like 200 andsomething trees tornado
basically went right across thishouse and somehow didn't rip
the house down.
It was really well-built,sturdy, mid-century modern house
.
Had six trees fall on it andsomehow didn't grow like big
trees.
And so he was getting thesequotes and I was listening to
him get all these quotes andthere was like 150, 190,
(16:18):
$225,000, you know, for threequotes.
I'm just trying to guess atnumbers.
This was 15 years ago, 14 yearsago.
So I'm sitting there, I'm like,well, man, I've got a chainsaw,
I've handed the chainsaw, likeI'll give it a shot.
And I talked to my buddy andhe's like, yeah, I used to cut
trees when I was younger and hewas older than me.
And I'm like, hell, let's bidon it.
And so we bid on it andbasically wound up three of us,
(16:41):
including my buddy, the propertyowner and then I put together a
contract, like a legal contract, to remove any sort of risk and
liability in case we chop offour legs or whatever.
Got some stuff on the Internetto help us write that.
And his wife is actually hiswell, ex-wife wife at the time
was an attorney.
And she looked at us like, yeah, this is good.
And so we bid on it.
I think we bid $75,000.
We split it three ways and soover the course of I think it
(17:04):
was 30 to 45 days, we cut allthese trees and it was like 225
trees roughly and one of thetrees that we had removed that
were all ripped down by thetornado One.
If a tornado comes through andthere's a lot of elastic trees
like pine trees are very elasticit twists them all.
And I trees like pine trees arevery elastic.
It twists them all.
I never experienced that, butthey are under such great load
(17:24):
and when they get in thatcluster and they're all bound up
whenever you go to cut them,dude, it's like russian roulette
like sometimes, like you try tolook at it, but then sometimes
this thing is so like just underpressure it'll unload and swing
.
It was.
It was crazy times, um, but webasically did that for half the
price of the cheapest quote andour big thing is that we did a
control burn and so we burnedall of them.
(17:45):
We got industrial fans and weburned all the wood on site in
three burn pits, cleared out allthe trees in 30 to 45 days and
made $25,000 cash each.
I used that money to build out.
The office, moved out of thelittle house I was living in and
I slept on the futon on theback of the office.
So I bought a new computer, anew camera gear, a bunch of desk
, painted the whole place andlived on the futon for the first
(18:07):
six months in the office.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
So where's your happiness meter now, compared to
this corporate job that you hadright before?
Because this is the fun partabout entrepreneurship there's
so much random stuff you'redoing to make it work, but where
were you on Mintool?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Once in a while, like I've seen, memes or whatever,
or posters like entrepreneursare the only crazy people that
would be so spiteful to work 80hours a week instead of 40 hours
a week, for half the pay, orwhatever.
I don't know.
I paraphrase that terribly.
No, I know exactly what you'retalking about.
(18:47):
To be honest, the most fun partwas probably cutting the trees.
Like that was so much fun.
Like my buddy brought his olduh, honda cr7 or whatever it was
, um, what's it called trail 70pit bike yeah, we'd ride that in
between the trails we cut toget to the trees and we're
snaking big giant trees.
That.
That was a ton of fun, to thepoint where I almost thought
about like chasing storms andcutting trees.
But I'm also like kind of wildenough to where I'd probably
like be a peg leg by now, youknow, and like be missing maybe
both my legs by now.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Um, geez, I don't know.
I feel like you've gone throughit and you're still, uh, still
in one piece.
You might be a little bitinvincible, we'll see, you're
still, you're still racing, sostill still shit.
Oh, you know, I do have onething.
I think that's a good way toend it on this, like the
beginning of your story is thename Spectrus.
(19:28):
Because is that?
Because you said Sylvie LSE?
Is that what you said it wasbefore Sylvie Development?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Sylvie.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Development Is it?
Where does Spectrus come from?
It's a cool name.
I always liked Spectrus.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yeah, so there's a little bit of a story there,
because it actually went fromSylvie Development to then.
I had a business partner for alittle while because we were
partners in other business and Ineeded someone to help me run
mine when I was building thishouse on Lookout but I still
have and shit hit the fan thereand so I had to be up there and
so I wound up and changed thename of my business to Sylvie
Huffaker Creative and then weparted ways after about a year
and a half and then I rebrandedit in 2015, january, to Spectris
(20:06):
, and Spectris just came from.
We finally made up a wordbecause we're tired.
I mean you can look up likePink Pony Creative Company and
there's going to be like,there's just so many of them.
Even in 2015, there were somany of them like, and all
creative people just kind ofpull names out of their ass, it
seems like, and put agencybehind it.
There it is, um.
So we made up a word and it was.
(20:27):
I wanted to give some sort ofstory behind, so you know it had
to mean something.
So right, um, spectrous we kindof split the word like a trust
being like the strong beam andthe roof line, you know, so it
kind of holds the whole housetogether.
And then spectrum being likethe wide array of light, you
know, light spectrum, and so theidea would be like we'd have a
wider range of strengths.
So the full marketing,advertising marketing, because
(20:49):
it takes more than just beinggood at websites or just being
good at Google ads or shootingvideo Like ideal world.
If a company is going to domarketing and advertising
correctly, they need it all doneand it all needs to be tied
together with a strategy andplan.
So that's where the wordSpectris came from.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Cool.
Yeah, that's a fun story.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
It helps me it helps me tell the story as opposed to
just being like I don't know.
We put some letters togetherand make a number.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yeah, no, a hundred percent.
That's pretty cool.
It's always stuck out to meSpectris is you guys got great
branding, so it's pretty cool.
So that's, that's the beginningpart of spectrous.
I think we got to stay tunedfor a little bit more where,
right before where you startmaybe bringing on some help,
bringing it, building a team outtogether uh, maybe even touch
(21:32):
on covid, because I know covidwas a big, big part of the
business where things havechanged yeah, I think we can.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I know there's some fun times there and some wild
times between, like, whenever Ichanged it from Sylvie
Development to Sylvie HuffakerCreative, and then, you know,
justin Aragon became part of theteam as creative director and
then, you know, he's still withus today, and there's a lot of
wild times where we could talkabout some like projects that
went great way of like who notto work with or what not to work
(21:59):
with.
So I think those are funstories to tell.
It's been long enough now thatwe could probably, you know, be
honest with it, yeah, ourselves,or me with myself, and, yeah,
people might want to hear it.
You know, hell, we've learnedthe hard way of things.
That what not to do, hopefullyin the future, yeah, no so the
best stories are when everythinggoes wrong.
So for some reason I love tolearn the hard way.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Cool.
Well then, stay to be continuedon that.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, we got to leave people.
Leave people hanging.
You know they want more.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Give them a little tease.
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