Offerin' Real Estate Insights

Time Is Money: How Using Offer Management Tools and Delegating Tasks Can Prevent Agent Burnout

• OfferIn.io • Episode 5

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Real estate agents wear a lot of hats and if you’re not careful, your time disappears faster than a price drop on a stale listing. 

In this episode of The Offerin Podcast, we dig into the real reasons agents feel overwhelmed and how time management (not hustle) is the key to unlocking success.

Darrin, Ben, and Kevin share practical productivity tips and personal stories about how better morning routines, intentional calendar blocking, and smart admin support can transform a chaotic week into a focused, profitable one.

You’ll learn how delegating tasks, saying “no,” and building sustainable systems leads to real gains in work-life balance without sacrificing lead generation or client communication. We also reveal shocking data about the times agents are most likely to receive offers (hint: it’s when you're trying to relax with your family), and how platforms like Offerin are helping agents reclaim their time and live the freedom lifestyle they dreamed of when they got into the real estate business.

If you’re serious about scaling your real estate career without burning out, this episode is your playbook.


👉 Discover how Offerin helps agents win more deals, save time, and look like heroes to their clients. Visit Offerin.io to learn more or schedule a demo today.

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Welcome everyone to yet another exciting, friend podcast. We're super pumped to be here today and talking about one of the most critical, guest behaviors a real estate agent. Time management. How it's sucking the life for the little, literally the business out of out of most agents. And, why this, industry is so stressful. So, today we're joined by Kevin and Ben. Super excited to have you guys here. I wanted to look at some practical ways that agents could walk away with saying, like, hey, here's going to make my business better. My, some of the things, you know, on our, on our, conversation today. So, time management, having led national sales teams most of my life, seeing, you know, individuals just, you know, be productive, other ones be unproductive. But let's start with something that we all know, like the 8020 principle. All right. So you've heard this, like 20% of the people are responsible for 80% of the production. You know, that's that's actually true in my life. I don't know how many times, like, if you look at my my day, I'm super productive and I feel I'm really good at getting stuff done. But so many times, like, I'm spinning out of control and literally wasting time. And if I look back in the day, it's like, wow, I probably wasted 80% of my day. It was really only productive 20%. So, you know, having to implement some of these, tactics, if you will. So now a couple things I'm going to I'm going to share with high level. You know, I don't understand what life is like as a real estate agent. So that's what I'm going to lean on you guys for some stories and practical examples. But just being in a sales world, you know, and also just in business, right, for 25 years, you understand these things like morning routines. For me, I've found times where it's like you have a very dedicated, more routine. The days go better. Other days you don't have that morning routine and you kind of aren't, aren't as, as productive. So thinking about morning routines, blocking our time on our calendars. So who who's owning who does a calendar on our our day? Or do we own the calendar or vice versa with email boxes? Right. Do we own our inbox or does our inbox own and direct us? Prioritizing. We've all heard of, different charts that say, you know, the urgent versus important and looking at our tasks and trying to prioritize those a little bit more effectively. I love this one. You're getting to a point where it's it's doing versus reviewing. So think of, opportunities where we can delegate, whether it's to an admin or delegate to a software to manage these things for us. So doing versus reviewing, you know, just approaching the business in general, like the mindset of a real estate agent, are many of them taking this as a hobby? Because then you're going to get paid as a hobby, right? But if you're looking at it as a business, if you're an agent that really wants to scale their business, what are things they need to do? And look at it as a business, right. And, you know, having done triathlons, you know, running events, endurance events most of my life, you look at some of these, different training tactic techniques. And I got to share just a quick story. So it's, today it's all about Darren on the podcast. So, just running, a bunch of marathons and over my life and, and I, I think it's called the Gallagher method, where he says, you run a period of time and then walk, so, you know, you're supposed to run, either run a mile and then walk 30s, or you run seven minutes and then walk 30s and then run seven to walk 30. So that kind of approach, it's like, it's fine and training, it's kind of hard to get used to. But then I ran my first marathon. It was it was in Akron. And, or on the under this training method and, I would run and use so much energy to start the race. Right. And then, you get to a point where it's like you run your seven minutes and your watch is telling you to stop. So then you'd have to stop and walk, and all these people are passing you all this energy, like adrenaline's pumping and everything because you want to, like, keep running and, but then you have to walk, and then you run seven months and then you walk again, and then you get into a routine. You're like, well, I don't care about other people. I'm just going to focus on my training. And then, you know, you start hit towards the end of the race and you have juice in the tank, right? You hit mile 2022 and you're like, yeah, I'm feeling good. I'm passing a lot of people. A lot of people are stopping. A lot of people are walking and you feel great and you could power through it. So, just an interesting like long game perspective day to day. I heard a quote, actually this week that, consistency over intensity. And, for me in particular, I thought that was pretty appropriate. It's like I can get really intense on a day to day basis. But if you can consistently string these things together. So. All right, enough about the high level stuff. But anything resonate with you guys? You know, for that intro, anything you want to I want to share. Go for it. Yeah. I think the word that came to mind was, Sustainability. Yeah. And what you were describing in the race was sustainable for you to have energy at the end. Versus and so I think as a real estate person. You have to ask yourself on a day to day basis is the process is the is the way that I'm doing this sustainable for a long period of time? Yeah. Like it could be anything. Am I am I sacrificing my family? Yeah. Am I making a bunch of money? But I'm sacrificing my family. Am I making no money. Am I you're, you're asking yourself this question as a, if you're looking at it like a business, you know, is this sustainable to such a, I mean that's like probably like top three question I would ask myself in my life, in business and it's okay for it not to be sustainable. If you know that it's not sustainable so that you can make course corrections, you can do anything for a short period of time, get through it. Yeah, whatever. Almost being self-aware, right? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And I think because in a business, it's a team sport. Yeah. So once you recognize that you only have been given such amazing things, but you didn't have it all. Yeah. You start to realize where your unsustainable parts are and then you can include others in your journey. And that's where you start to get the real horsepower. But most agents, most agents, I would say, are the way it's all set up is they're kind of on an island, you know, and they are, you know, expected to do ten things well. And the truth is, is nobody can do ten things well. And so then people can have like they can feel bad about their selves. I would say instead of just being more self-aware and saying like, yeah, I'm amazing at this and I need help over here and just build something that makes that happen. Yes. That's gold. So many agents, almost every one of them. Right. You know, not maybe not every one of them, but most agents are ten, 99 contractors, right? Yeah. And so they do feel on that island and don't have that help. That's that's great. Put team team around you, Kevin. Where do you think agents waste most of their time? On a typical day, week. I think most agents waste their time. Well, let's back up to one thing here. Yeah, there's different times of year. Real estate is seasonal. And so it's really important when you talk about time management you do think about this from a perspective of okay is this my busy season right now. You know we live in Northeast Ohio. Summertime you're super busy. You're working. You're you are sometimes a slave to your email. You're processing things. You're getting a lot of phone calls. That's very different than, you know, December 18th. And you maybe don't have those leads coming in. So there's just a natural seasonality. And that's really important to recognize as a real estate agent that different seasons mean different styles in your work. I remember when I first got into real estate, you know, super busy July, August, September, December rolls around and you almost have like a depression. You're like, what is happening in the world? We are going to die. The mortgage is not getting paid. The car is getting repo. Like that happens in mid-December, in January. And so we, you know. We wrote it down. I think we were we literally write it down on the calendar, like so, that when we get to that date, we're like, hey, remember, this happens every year at this. Every year, every year you're thinking about it, which is really important then to think about your work in regards to seasonality as a real estate agent. Summertime, your work is going to be different. December, January, February. In our area, that means long term building. You're building systems for the time when you're really busy. When you're really busy, you're utilizing those systems. So when we talk about time management for real estate agents, it's a time period of building systems and using systems, which I think one of the most important things for real estate agents, as you've already touched on, is having a great team, which is most real estate agents don't because it's a 1099 independent contractor on an island world. And then number two, pairing that with having great systems. So, you know, I think I would like to add to that as you mentioned, the seasonality. So what you do matters. And every every minute does count. Because right now are you productive for something that's going to produce results in 90 days. So in December, in January there are some things you could be setting up, in order to have a productive spring. Right. So it's not that you're sitting in January thinking, oh man, this is going to be a terrible year. But it's like, no, today starts now for my paycheck in April or May. You know, when those those leads start flowing. And so. Yeah, you reap what you sow, what you put in the ground in January, February, March in our area. You will take out in July. August. So what's one thing you started doing or I should say one thing or stopped doing. That's produced the most, freedom in your, in your, schedule. The one thing I've started doing to put or stop right or stop doing. That give you back the most time. Well, stopping working out. Give me back a lot of time. But I don't know that that helped anybody, Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah. The one thing I've stopped doing, the one thing I've started doing is delegating. We've built an awesome team of people around us. Yeah, and an administrative staff. You know, our staff looks like this. There's me, there's Ben, there's Tina who handles our administrative work. Okay? We have somebody to install the signs, and then we have a buyer's agent. And so. We have a Monica. And Monica who handles all of our finances. And so we have a really great team of people who's handling everything on a day to day basis. So how many homes are you guys selling? Just you. Five I think was looking at, I don't know, 130 to 150 for this year. Okay. Awesome. Ben, how about you? So what's what's one thing that you've started doing or stopped doing and you give your time back. So delegating from Kevin over here. Saying no. Okay. Yeah. And trying to trust other people in doing things, knowing that they're not going to necessarily do it the way I would want them to. Exactly. Or that it's going to take some time for them to get better at it. Yeah. So practically, I want to yeah, I'll do it. Yeah. Yes, I'll do it. And then I regret it. Yeah. Because I'm not it's not actually what I'm best at or that I'm taking away from them. I, you know, I can like fall into wanting to make the sale or make the money or whatever instead of actually building the team. I. Have two stories to share. They're a great mentor of mine. You know, years ago, shared delegation, thought, similar to you trusting other people, trusting team. He said, you know, as long as you're okay with them handling at 70% as good as you can, then delegate it. Yeah. If 70% of that is not good enough, then then keep it. Yeah. All right. So, another another story. Super successful business owner that I know. You know, I asked him his his biggest, productivity tip and, he, he mentioned two things very similar to what you said. He said learning to say no. And then also, doing the job once, and I'm like, well, what do you mean? He said, well, so many of us approach the job logically, and we also approach the job emotionally. So we're at the end of the day, we're doing double the amount of work. We're actually working emotionally and logically. So yeah, this particular guy, stone cold, he pulls out the emotion of his life. Hard to do for a real estate agent because you're very relational people. You know, you want to be with people, you want to connect with people. So that relationship, that emotion is critical. But, you know, figuring out how to be productive and think about what you're doing is like, hey, am I being super emotional about this and still have to do this logically or physically? Because then you're almost doing double or triple the amount of work in that case. So yeah, that's that's interesting. So saying though, and then delegating how about systems. So you know, you mentioned systems like streamlining, your operations, creating systems. So essentially you could scale, right? I mean, without systems can you scale? I don't, I mean, I don't think so. Yeah. I mean no. I should say that folks, I think a lot of really I think a lot of people, It's, they live in nuance. Well, I handle this situation this way and then like I'm kind of around another person and I handle it that way. And so like, they're always changing kind of like, well, I would equate it almost like a greediness, which maybe I'm a little cynical, but it's like, that's why I love on our real estate side, having a flat rate. It's like, well, no, like this is the process that we're going through. But well, hey, I think, I think I could charge a little more for this. I think I could charge a little less for that or hey, it's not you can't if you don't have a consistent process that and that you know how to handle every time. Better example actually would be my apartment buildings. Yeah. There's 72 units there. I if I say yes to somebody, it's a big deal because now I have to change that. My entire staff is going to say yes to this, to everyone. The reason why that matter, or if I say no to it, then we say no to it because, if somebody is working with you or for you, they have to have boundaries and guidelines and processes that are consistent so that they know how to make a decision. Because they're not you living in this like, owner world of like, new, you know, so it really matters that you have consistent decision making that the entire team. Yeah. You know lives by. Yeah. You know here on your son or yourself, we understand systems. We understand technology and why and how, you know that's our big approach to the market is that, you know, this system offering really can help streamline the time management process or really help, you know, the studies show 3 to 5 hours of time is saved from doing the administrative work around every offer. So if you can get 3 to 5 hours back, you're trying to build a business being productive agent and you get 3 to 5 hours back per deal per offer. Imagine like I actually talk about time management from an offer process. So Kevin, how has using offer in and your your brokerage helped you guys be able to scale? It hasn't helped us. It's actually made it so we can live normal lives. Yeah. What do you mean by that. Yeah. Thinking of that. Oh my gosh. What do you mean. Well so you said has it helped you scale per se. Not yet. Okay, okay. But it has given you your lives back. So you're choosing to take that time, if you will, and use it to enjoy life, which is fine, right? That's what you want to do with your time because you're able to still be as productive. Yeah, yeah. Here's what happens in a real estate agent's life, okay?

They get a text message at 7:

22 a.m., and from that moment forward, their day does not stop. Text message, email, phone call, contract appraiser. Yeah. Home inspector. Contract to another real estate. Another real estate agent. Another real estate agent. Another phone call with a seller. A buyer wants to see a house. Now at 4 p.m.. It is absolute chaos. Yeah. When you're a real estate agent and you have all of this information coming towards you, and look, you've got to put food on your table. So you need to be attentive to all of these things. And the other thing about real estate agents is you don't know where your next meal's coming from.

It could be from that 7:

22 a.m. call. It could be from that 3 p.m. call. And so it's really important that you're paying attention to all of that and following up with all of it. And you are just spread so thin. So the thing that often has given us is particularly around the offer process, which is 95% of the experience of a seller, it has given us a concrete system every single time, every single offer and every single seller goes through the exact same experience when they're interacting with our brand and our company. And so an offer comes in, it goes through the system, it goes to the seller, we have a conversation about it. And the thing about it is we have really great data on this, which I'm sure you're going to share. But the times when offers come in, what are they there? What's the what's the data on it. Number one days of the week. Sunday. Sunday. Yeah. So you know most weekends you know when families are trying to spend, spend that time together. Yeah they're spent you know in that. So here let me pull it up for. Sorry. Sorry about the delay here, but the number one time of the day, that we receive, the system receives offers. There's actually a tie. Over the last 12 months, Sundays, number one. We were not Tuesdays or number two, which is kind of random, but 11 p.m. at night. 11 p.m. at nine. 11 p.m. at night. I'm, you know, I've actually gone back this up 8 p.m. at night is the number one time of the day that offers are received in our system, tied for for first one B is 2 p.m. so 2 p.m. in the afternoon. Busy time to receive offers, right? People probably start first thing in the morning. It takes a few hours, but they offer together. Finally present it at two. Same thing. They get an offer in the afternoon. They probably take several hours, you know, meal times, whatever.

Presented at 8:

00. But, you know, then number two time is 11 p.m. at night. Only by like, the difference is only a couple percentage points from 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. on the times offers are received. So what you're saying is real estate agents interact the most with offers on Sunday at 8 p.m. or 2 p.m. and Tuesday at 8 p.m. or 2 p.m.. Is that. Right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, when you're looking at your life and you're hanging out with your family, throwing a ball with your son in the front yard, you're going to the Little league game, you're going to your daughter's dance recital. You're having a conversation with your wife that started on Saturday night. Now leads into Sunday night, and now you're getting a phone call about an offer at 8 p.m. on Sunday. I mean, there's a reason why real estate agents, good ones, make a lot of money. And that right there that nobody talks about is probably the number one reason why real estate agents do a good job, make good money because they're available. Of course they're experts, obviously. But when you look at that data on when offers are coming in, that's huge. And if you want to have a normal, sane life, you need to have systems, particularly a great offer management system. Shout out, that's what we're talking about here today. Offer in. You need to have a system in place. If you want to build a great business and a great life. Yeah. Can I add something? The real issue that real estate agents that I think they have is it's so difficult to be moving your forward, your business forward and managing what is is happening behind you. So like you get you've got something under contract. Good for you. Like that means you're going to like make some money in 30 days from now. But while you're processing through that, you also need to be. So that's like behind you now, but you also need to be reaching forward, taking new phone calls, meeting, building new relationships, going on listing appointments. So you're you're constantly stretched in two different directions. If you're a single agent and your the the consistency or the cleanliness of like how you handle like you've done all this work, you've got it listed, you finally got an offer. It's like a baby at that point. Like I do a great job with this. This software, really assists you in making that part. It assist you in managing the emotions and expectations of your seller. And it also then gives you the administrative assistant that you can't afford at this point because you're not selling enough houses. Or maybe if you're on a team, you can but it it is now giving you the, the administrative work and the time to get to it. Not right at that moment, but get to it in a little bit more time. So it it is assisting in your ability to do two directions at once. There you go. Which is a big deal. Yeah. And I mean there's other than the reality is is like there's other softwares that are part of this, you know like we've been work, you know, integrating with this, that's another part of it. And ultimately I think in real estate, like we've had this discussion like there has to be like a singular platform that just allows people to, because it's a really big deal. This is like, this is the probably the biggest problem in real estate transactions is there's so much, you know, so many different systems, so many different ways of doing things, and it's all disconnected from the customer. So it's like double, double, triple work. And that's actually what. I think is so amazing is like it's genuinely like you're not having to you're not having to worry about the details. You're not having to worry about communicating with the seller. You're not having to worry about how many are coming in and how much work that's going to be for you. It changes it from that to like, this is so exciting. I'm still at the ball game and I'm pumped and I'm not worried about doing all the work. Yeah, if there's just one offer, it's a little bit different. But when you're getting 4 or 5, six, ten offers, it's like it's a big deal. Yeah, I mean he's a big deal. So were you recorded an episode previous episode and I remember know you're done recording and you look at your phone, but like, oh my gosh, I got four offers on three different properties. Yep. So three, every property got one offer and then another property got two. And the 30 45 minutes that we are here. So you talked about being able to do double the work. Know that that leveraged space for you gave you margin was. Oh I received those offers communicated that to our sellers. Three different sellers. Yeah. Or four in that case. Yeah. Well excuse me. There was three properties for different offers and they're already expecting. So they're not wondering if I'm, they're like, this guy's awesome. Like look at this though. The offers are here. Yeah. Right. So and then when we get out of there we, we can communicate with them or tell them, hey, send him a text message. Just connect whatever. They're already informed. Yep. That's great. Great. So, you know, wrap it up today. You know, we learned that every minute really does matter. What we do matters, right? And, that streamlining, is actually helping us scale our business, but also buying us freedom. So when we implement systems like this, it's really cool to hear that, you know, the the ball game concept. My son loves the fish. And it's probably like, if I were to say the top hundred things I would do with a free day, fishing wouldn't be on the list. But he loves the fish. So the opportunity to connect with him over a fishing rod, you know, you buy yourself some space like that. So that's that's really what offering is doing. And it's pretty exciting to do that. So. Well. Great. Well thanks guys. Appreciate your time. And, another, speaking of time, time is money. And, Ben, you said money is freedom. Our time is free. Yeah, he's, I yeah. Wrapping that up. I think I think time time is life. And money is freedom. Okay. And so offer in is giving your life back. That's a powerful statement, right? Yeah. It's giving. It's a big deal. Yeah. I mean, you, if you get your systems and you build a team and you start getting enough offers coming in, it's like your goal was to make good money at this so that you could live a good life. You know, and you use the money, you know, if you get the money, you invest it, whatever. You have freedom to make choices. But like your time is, you only get what you get today, so you don't know. Yeah, right. Well, thanks for joining us. Until next time.