As JKS Incorporated celebrates its 40th year in business throughout 2024, we’ll be introducing you to the team that has made this monumental anniversary a reality. This month, we’re highlighting our “wearer of many hats,” Joshua Schaefer.
Joshua joined the JKS Incorporated family in March of 2008 as an Operations Administrative Assistant. Over the past 16 years, his role has expanded and evolved alongside the company and he now serves as our Director of Business Operations. When he’s not overseeing company payroll or the expenses for each of the many LLCs that fall under the JKS umbrella, you’ll find him working alongside clients and seeing event activations through to completion.
“Joshua is my right-hand man. I don’t know what I would do without him,” said Christy Cox Spencer, JKS Incorporated’s President. “He is trustworthy, organized, a problem solver, dependable, and an incredibly hard worker. We laugh together—and at each other—and he helps keep me focused on moving forward, even when I’m not motivated to do so. Over the past five years especially, Joshua has become part of the fabric of my day and I am beyond grateful to him for all that he does.”
I had the opportunity to sit down with Joshua to ask him about his role at JKS Incorporated, some of his favorite projects from over the years, and what he likes most about working in the office.
Rachel: You just celebrated 16 years of working at JKS Incorporated. Can you talk about how your role at the company has evolved since March of 2008?
Joshua: I was initially hired as an Operations Administrative Assistant and was solely in charge of reconciling American Express bills, but I eventually took responsibility over our Visa and AMEX accounts as well. Around the time I was hired, Sprint took over as the primary sponsor of the NASCAR Cup Series and JKS became responsible for all of the build-outs and activations that Sprint would set up at the different race tracks. As JKS’s relationship with Sprint expanded, I started working alongside our Operations Manager to build budgets for all of their projects, which meant I was in charge of creating spreadsheets that would track expenses and profit losses. Then I started doing the labor side of things and eventually took over the role as Operations Manager. Since then, I have slowly stair-stepped my way up to where I am now.
How would you describe your current role as Director of Business Operations?
That question is a hard one to lock down. Each one of us at JKS could probably write a book on what we do on different days as it’s always a moving target. But, for the most part, my position revolves around building out budgets with clients and monitoring them from start to finish, overseeing all of the LLCs that fall under the JKS umbrella, payroll, and anything else that Christy and Will ask me to do. JKS is also pretty unique in that we’re considered a “white label” company, so we can’t really go into the details on most of the projects that we work on. So while my job description sounds pretty straightforward, my day-to-day responsibilities look completely different every week.
The term “white label” gets thrown around the office quite a bit. Can you expand on that a little more?
Definitely. Put most simply, JKS works with marketing companies that, in turn, work with the client directly. These clients have specific needs and wants and the marketing companies hire JKS to get those projects completed. We’ll start by quoting out the project, follow it through to production, bill it, and send it off without ever working with the client directly. We get a lot of business this way, which is great, but we can’t advertise these projects on our social media or website so there are a lot of really cool things that we do that people will never know we took part in.
In terms of the projects that we are allowed to talk about, what have been some of your favorites from over the years?
The first one that comes to mind was the M&M’s Glampground activation that we did with M&M’s Racing in 2019. M&M’s Racing wanted to host an interactive experience at the summer races at Kentucky Speedway and Bristol Motor Speedway, so we collectively came up with an all-inclusive “glamorous camping” experience that had five-star amenities like private bathrooms and showers, catered meals, movie screenings, games, and VIP viewing areas. We produced and installed the majority of the perimeter and interior branding elements—like structure signage, directional signage, flags, fence banners, tent floor graphics, and what have you. JKS also provided our Airstream Skydeck that guests could use as a hospitality area. The event was definitely a success.
Next is the activation we put together at the Bank of America 500 race at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 2017. We brought our big TV trailer and set it up at the racetrack alongside eight of our racing simulator games. The winners from each of the games would actually race up on the big TV and the whole Fan Zone area could see the broadcast of what we were doing. We also brought little RC tracks. We’d ask folks to pair up in teams of two—the drivers of the RC cars would be blindfolded and had to race the car with the help of a spotter who would tell them when to turn. It was really cool.
So it sounds like your favorite projects are the full-scale activations and experiential events. What else do you enjoy about working at JKS Incorporated?
The activations are definitely my go-to, and what I used to spend most of my time on. But, overall, my favorite thing about working here is the uncertainty. You never know what you’re going to do. The other thing is the family atmosphere—my coworkers are like family members. We’re down to 16 employees. We all get on each other’s nerves at times, but we’re also really good at working together to get things done.