The modern approach to household management

After a wealth event, many families face what we call the wealth spiral: a state of ever-increasing complexity, when the opposite is expected.

This can happen quickly (for example, in the case of a startup founder whose company is acquired for billions of dollars) or gradually over generations. Families buy luxury homes filled with high end assets and commercial grade systems, then find they need support with house cleaning and home maintenance.

They start to bring on full-time staff and vendors to support with everything from grocery shopping and cleaning tasks to childcare and home management tasks, and suddenly feel like they’re running a business in their own homes.

And while these families know where to turn for financial support, when it comes to home life, they often don’t know where to turn for help calming the chaos. 

The missing link to effective household management

Many families believe that hiring private service professionals will solve their problems. And that’s a great start — but the truth is, it’s only one piece of the puzzle. Staff need the right support to be successful.

When our team at Nines set out to stop the wealth spiral, we started by talking with hundreds of families and private service professionals about household staffing. Across the board, we noticed a common underlying challenge: without the right household management system, both the staff and the families were set up for failure.

Until now, even for the world’s most successful families, home management has consisted of a cobbled-together mix of Excel spreadsheets, home management binders, paper checklists, sometimes even a phone in a drawer filled with vendor phone numbers and text threads.

Without a centralized household management system to keep everyone on the same page, household staff lack guidance around the home itself and family members’ preferences, leading to simple mistakes and miscommunications with outsized impact. Missed household tasks around preventative maintenance might lead to avoidable damage to high-end home systems. A housekeeper going about her typical cleaning routine might not realize that vacuuming outside an office is upsetting the principal.

Both principals and the private service professionals who support them deserve a more efficient and effective home management system — smarter tools that work harder for them to keep everyone on the same page, create continuity, minimize risk, and set everyone up to focus on well-being and service.

The future of household management

With an understanding of exactly what families, family offices and private service professionals were missing, we built Nines, the household management platform designed for managing properties, people and projects — all in one place.

We believe that with a centralized, organized home management system built with the highest level of security, you can calm the chaos, set staff and vendors up for success, and help everyone in the household live with ease.

Let’s explore some of the key tenants of the future of household management:

• Accessibility. Today’s families and private service professionals need information at their fingertips, whether they’re at their desks or on their phones. Nines is accessible on your computer and via mobile app (with the option for printable to-do lists for anyone who still likes a paper checklist), and it includes powerful search so you can find answers in seconds.
• Flexibility. Spreadsheets are too cumbersome and often require you to enter information in a number of different places. By contrast, information across your Nines account can be easily inter-connected in flexible ways, saving you time and allowing you to organize information in a way that works for everyone in your household.
• Accountability. When families lack visibility into the work being done, it causes confusion, frustration for principals, and the possibility staff feeling under-appreciated. Better systems of communication, documented task lists, and the ability to follow along in real-time as work gets done creates accountability.
• Continuity. Families fear turnover, especially when they have staff members who are doing a good job or who have been with the family for decades. The right support can increase job satisfaction and retention (one, by minimizing frustration and providing better guidance and two, because better visibility allows for more recognition). And, when staff members inevitably do move on, a system of record ensures a backup of all of that historical knowledge.
• Security. Too many families don’t realize the privacy risks they’re taking with sensitive information stored in consumer-grade tools and personal cell phones. Nines is built with the highest level of security, and offers layered permissions settings so families and their house management teams have control over what information each person is allowed to see.
• Guidance. Many private service professionals are hired for trust rather than household management skills, and they deserve better support. Nines guides users with industry-standard templates — and beyond our platform, we offer household management workshops and a community where private service professionals can connect and learn from each other.

Ready for a better approach to household management?

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