Jennifer Barbee, the owner and president of Telephone Marketing Services, Inc (TMS), has led the company with the clarity of someone who understands exactly what the ability to work can restore. In her view, running a company is inseparable from rebuilding lives, a passion that echoes Barbee’s own tumultuous journey to becoming a leader. Today, TMS acts as a national outbound and inbound call center that delivers exclusive health insurance A and B leads to agents across the United States.
Before running the company, Barbee’s path to leadership was embedded in chaos; addiction, financial instability, arrests, and dysfunction were all she knew, causing her to believe that her life was impossible to rebuild. She was only 20 when she began using drugs. “It was a single decision, but it cost me the next 18 years of my life,” she recalls, noting how the addiction consumed her physically and mentally.
By the time she reached her lowest, she was exhausted, pregnant, and unaware that her life was about to change. “I had given up all hope because I thought I was going to die, I assumed I would stay sober long enough to give birth and then return to the life I knew,” she recalls. “Instead, the moment I heard my son, Cameron, cry, it felt like God passed through me. Because of him, I knew I was no longer going to be the same person ever again.” From that day onward, she chose sobriety and has maintained it for 15 years.
Rebuilding, however, proved harder than quitting. With multiple felonies and misdemeanors, she was locked out of employment and other opportunities that could help her have a second chance at life. “Every door that should mark a fresh start stayed closed,” she says. “Until one didn’t.”
A counseling session led her to Telephone Marketing Services in Lubbock, Texas. “They hadn’t screened my history. They didn’t judge me based on my records. Instead, what mattered was my capability,” she says. Barbee notes how the company was established in 1999 by Chris Wilson and already built a reputation in the health insurance industry for disciplined quality control for agents nationwide. She started at the bottom, taking on demanding call volumes and proving herself through her work ethic alone. That effort, she emphasizes, did not go unnoticed.
“Chris gave me a chance when nobody in the world wanted to; I got really lucky,” she says. For a decade, she worked under Wilson, learning the business from the inside out. When he decided to retire, he offered to sell the company to her. In 2022, Barbee took over, adding layers of growth, expansion, and compassion to an already established 23-year legacy.
According to Barbee, TMS today prides itself on producing one of the most lucrative leads in the nation. The company generates exclusive telemarketed A-leads for insurance agents and is, as she notes, one of the few lead companies in the US that conducts an auction for its leads. Yet, for all of its emphasis on performance, Barbee places equal importance on quality. “Out of the volume of calls made daily, sometimes 50-60 leads don’t make it through due to our strict quality checks,” she explains.
TMS’s infrastructure encompasses a refined output, with daily lead delivery, advanced tracking, team pipeline management, exclusive orders, unlimited exports, and full AI integration for lead generation, designed to empower agents. The company also offers individual health under 64, lif,e and group leads with VIP memberships available.
But inside the office, another system operates with just as much gravity. “To me, the essence of the work not only lies in producing leads for the company, but it also lies in giving people a second chance, or even a third or fourth,” she says.
Drawn from her personal experience, Barbee operates with two pivotal passions: to provide health insurance for her agents and to support those struggling with addiction. “That’s a powerful purpose to me; it is interwoven with every part of my life,” she adds. “I don’t care what anyone’s done. If they want to work, I’ll give them a chance.”
The company hires individuals in recovery, people recently released from incarceration, and those who have been repeatedly turned away elsewhere. Despite upholding high expectations and strict standards, Barbee still aims to keep opportunities unconditional.
Since she took over, Barbee notes the team has grown from 20 employees to more than 50. “The more we grow, the more calls we make, the more leads we produce,” she says. “And at the same time, we’re helping more people get clean and rebuild their lives.”
The culture at TMS demands accountability and precision while offering an unquestionable faith without interrogation. Barbee often credits Wilson for saving her life by taking a chance on her. Today, through TMS, she has made it her mission to extend that same chance and empathy to as many people as possible.
Under Barbee’s leadership, the company’s future goals are rooted in expansion, with a growing capacity to serve more agents and hire more people who are seeking work, stability, and a second chance, because for Jennifer Barbee, every new hire is another life that no longer has to be defined by its worst chapter.
