If you’ve never had an assistant before, you’ll just have to trust me when I say that hiring one is life-changing. You have someone there to help with everything that needs to get done but that you just don’t have time for, someone who can provide an extra set of eyes to look over important documents when you’ve been staring at them all day, and someone to help keep you organized.

Glance at our masthead and you’ll see that at Chicago Agent’s staff, we have two assistant positions. Peter Ricci possesses all the qualities every assistant should have – he’s responsible, deadline-driven and detail-oriented, which is essential for helping me copyedit each issue, write about the latest real estate news for our website and help with last-minute tasks (there are often many of those). He even helped me come up with the catchy title for this Editor’s Note!

Kim Jarosz assists the publishers, Marci Sepulveda and Anne Hartnett, with just about everything. Those fun parties we throw? Advertising deadlines? Kim has a hand in all of that, and she does a great job, considering she coordinates with advertisers daily, helps organize and process the magazine’s client database, returns calls and takes messages, and just about everything in between.

I think Marci, Anne and I wonder what we were thinking before these two were hired, and how we were even able to manage everything.  We know firsthand how in-office assistants are beneficial.

Virtual assistants, while a bit different – they typically work from home instead of in an office near the boss – help with whatever tasks an agent wants them to work on remotely. This is usually online marketing and advertising-related, like managing an agent’s website analytics, social media platforms and blogging duties, and even coordinating what listings will be advertised on what websites and measuring which websites yield the best results.

Both Peter and Kim help achieve the entire staff’s common goal – producing the best quality magazine we can every issue, in print and online. While an assistant doesn’t have to be an exact replica of yourself (sometimes that’s for the best, according to our quiz on page 18 – take it and see how you do), as long as he or she is passionate about helping you achieve your goals, chances are, an assistant who helps complete tasks for you so you can focus on client services, relationships and prospecting will improve your business, as proved by the agents featured in our cover story.

Thank you, Kim and Peter, for all you do for Chicago Agent. And readers, if you’re considering hiring an assistant, consider it a good choice for you and your business.