What I Found When I Flew to Manila

Some companies send a memo.

I bought a plane ticket.

The Trip

On March 17th, I flew to Manila to meet our team in person—the Offsite Professionals who spend their days quietly running operations, inboxes, and systems for business owners across the US.

No Zoom. No slide deck. Just a flight across the Pacific and a room full of people I wanted to look in the eye.

Why I Went

Because there are things you can only communicate by showing up.

We’re at a moment where AI is reshaping how work gets done, fast. And I wasn’t going to let our team hear about that from a company update or a newsletter. I wanted to be in the room when we had that conversation.

What I found when I got there wasn’t what the headlines about AI and remote work would have you expect.

I didn’t find a team worried about being replaced. I found people hungry to get better. Asking real questions about tools and workflows. Thinking hard about how to do more for the clients they work with every day.

That room changed something for me.

What I said, and What They Said Back

The message I brought was simple: AI isn’t coming for your job. But it is a tool your team needs to learn to use, sooner than later.

It landed as an investment, not a warning.

We talked about what AI actually looks like in day-to-day VA work. Drafting faster. Researching smarter. Building repeatable processes. Surfacing insights that used to take hours to find. Not replacing judgment—sharpening it.

And then people started asking questions I wasn’t expecting. Specific ones. About tools they’d already been experimenting with. About workflows they wanted to improve. About how to do more for their clients.

That’s when I knew the trip was worth it.

My Takeaway

The businesses that win in the next few years won’t be the ones that cut their people and replaced them with software. They’ll be the ones that gave their people better tools and trusted them to run with it.

Our team already understood that. I just wanted to make sure they knew we understood it too.

There’s something about flying 7,000 miles to have a conversation that changes its weight. It says: this matters enough to show up for.

I think our team deserved that. And the clients who depend on our team deserved to know we take it seriously.

We came back with a clear direction, a training initiative already underway, and a team that felt seen.

If this is what leadership looks like, I think we’re doing it right.

Book a strategy session today

FAQs

How many hours per week should I delegate?

Start with 10–20 hours. Reaching the 20-hour weekly threshold is what unlocks the full 1000-Hour Year effect.

What tasks are best for an Offsite Professional?

Inbox management, scheduling, CRM updates, reporting, bookkeeping prep, vendor coordination, customer support, and project tracking are all strong candidates.

Is this only for large SMBs?

Businesses of all levels of revenue can unlock meaningful growth by freeing the owner's time for higher-leverage work.

What if I don’t have processes documented?

Start anyway. Documentation can happen as you go, and the process of delegating often forces a clarity that strengthens operations over time.

How fast can I see ROI?

Most SMB owners feel immediate relief within weeks. Revenue impact depends on how effectively the reclaimed time is reinvested.