High-rise real estate from Chicago to the West Coast.

The Business Journal occasionally checks in with L.A. professionals and asks them to describe how they do their job. Michelle C. Marsh of Fifield Realty Co. discusses her duties:

I was in Chicago until the beginning of April.

I came to the L.A. office to work on the Californian on Wilshire. It's an ulta-luxury high-rise where 5,000-square-foot condos sell for $8 million.

I will be here six months to a year and then I'll move down to Irvine. I do a lot of communicating with the buyers, making them understand all the minute intricacies of the process prior to closing. The majority of what I do in fact is communication.

I get up between 5:30 and 6:30. In Chicago in the winter, I typically saved my workout until the end of the day. Now I live in Pacific Palisades. Here, by the time I get down to the beach in the morning to go for a run, the sun is coming up.

I get to the office by 8 a.m. The majority of my time is spent in individual buyer meetings. Basically, I could sit down all day in meetings with buyers just keeping them updated on whatever is happening with the property. I am solely focused on getting them their information and what they need.

When I get to the office what I typically do is sit down and read e-mails. My inbox is my to-do list; I prioritize my day by it.

I focus on the condominium business only. I secure brokerage and marketing firms for a project and I manage them. So basically I'm giving direction to the developers and the brokers are telling me, "This type of unit is going to sell" or, "This unit will sell more than this other unit."

I spend a lot of time in the morning sending out meeting invites. I am constantly pulling in the sales team and the marketing team and saying: Let's talk about the sales center. I am the catalyst for communication between the two.

I am also re-establishing my contacts. The contacts I had in Chicago are no longer very relevant. I don't have my graphic designer just down the street that I can run to whenever I need.

I am seriously sourcing marketing firms. Right now, I'm trying to prepare for launching sales for major projects by early fall 2007 in San Francisco, Costa Mesa, and Hawaii.

I'm also looking at virtual reality companies. We use virtual reality on our Web sites. For instance, in the Californian on Wilshire we used Focus 360. You could basically go through a unit and see it fully furnished even though it wasn't physically created yet. The site is interactive. We took photos of the view from building sites. We took helicopters up to take 360-degree photos. Therefore when a customer went on the site, they could click on the floor they would like to live to see the view.

I eat lunch at my desk usually but I think that some of the best meetings are when the team gets together for lunch. We have a lot of people trying to close the Californian--the head of construction, people coordinating the escrow--when we order sandwiches and eat in a board room, it is an excellent forum to bring everyone together to bring up challenges that they are facing on the project.

In the afternoon, I have to be cognizant of the time change. I lose everyone in Chicago at 3 p.m. Early afternoon I spend calling people there, calling photographers saying, "I need you on site on this day," facilitating any details that need to happen.

Part of my afternoon is again about communication. I sit and start to download the information I've learned that day into the schedule. I recently found out that the model builder for one of our projects is going to be 10 days late with the model. That affects multiple people. Schedule changes are saved on the network and I publish them to the top guys telling them, here are some days you need to be aware of.

I stay until the sale is mature: Every unit in the building has to be closed before I will leave the site.

I leave for the day between 7 and 8:30 usually. Sometimes I get out a little bit earlier. If I haven't made plans--which is uncommon for me--I go out and grab a bite to eat. Walking on the beach has become a regular routine. And then there are those nights I work really, really late.

As told to Sarah Filus

Michelle C. Marsh Vice President Sales and Marketing Fifield Realty Co.

A Tale of Two Cities: "I noticed that people in California spend a lot more time outside. Even though I'm incredibly busy, I try to get outside in the morning and in the evening. In Chicago it used tO be that in the evening I would go meet * friends in a restaurant or a bar. Now there are more workout dates: walks on the beach, yoga."

Young Entrepreneur: When she was 18, her mother paid the rental fee for a concession stand at a pool for $3,000. She ran it, paid her mother back, and used her profits to buy a car.

Cause: Outward Bound; she has been on two treks Roots: Comes from a big Italian family in New Jersey