How a single family office principal reduced stress around estate management

Joe M Sergi and his brother have built multiple businesses and founded their own family office, Westshore Capital Group. As Joe’s success grew, so did the complexity in his everyday life. 

“The discipline and attention to detail that we wanted in the day-to-day business wasn’t translating into the home and how we were structuring things,” explains Joe. “Every time I came home I was tired, but I also just wanted to spend an hour or two with the kids, with no distractions and none of the nonsense.” 

At the time, he and his family had just moved into a brand new home, where construction was still being completed. His goal was to centralize and keep track of 3 key pieces: 

• Open household and construction tasks  
• Vendor relationships, and which vendors were approved or not approved 
• Protocols for vendors 

Joe was trying to build dashboards with Google Sheets, Smartsheets, and a handful of task management tools, all with the goal of understanding what was happening with each vendor and each part of the project.  

“None of it worked,” says Joe. “I spent hours on it, and I just finally had enough.” 

He realized he wanted a purpose-built household management system, and a late-night search for “estate management software” led him to Nines. 

“I was blown away,” says Joe.  

A smooth Nines implementation with Alerion Estate Management 

While Joe knew Nines was the right platform, he was just hiring a house manager for the first time, and felt that he needed to bring in people with more knowledge and experience to set his team up for success.  

Enter Catherine Smith and Stuart Smith, Co-Founders of Alerion Estate Management and Nines implementation partners who have helped dozens of Nines clients get a jump start on setting up their Nines accounts.  

Joe hired the Alerion team to implement Nines, and gained not only the hands-on support, but also a wealth of estate management industry expertise.  

“They’ve helped with the software and documentation, but also with industry standards and best practices, because it was still new to me,” explains Joe. 

They started with a call to set priorities and talk about gathering relevant information.  

“Because it was new construction, I had the as builts, paint colors,” says Joe. “I knew how I wanted things to look and feel, and they knew where it should live in Nines.” 

Then, Catherine and Stuart came to Joe’s home in Chicago for two days, documenting and photographing the property and each room (or zone), as well as the important operational assets. From there, the team built out tasks and to-do lists, vendor profiles, and protocols remotely. 

Over time, they trained Joe and his new house manager on best practices, guided them on setting up access and permissions, and showed them how to keep track of tasks quickly and easily. Luckily, Nines is user-friendly enough for anyone to learn quickly. 

“There’s people who are techy and there’s people who are not — Nines is not that techy that it should scare anybody,” Joe explains. 

And with Catherine and Stuart’s help, Joe and his team have confidence that they’re working as efficiently as possible.  

“Having the sounding board of someone who’s in the system and using it every day, I wasn’t as intimidated or afraid because I knew I had a resource I could lean on,” says Joe. “They’ve made it enjoyable and fun to use, and now I know I’ve got the right system.” 

The impact of a purpose-built household management system 

Today, Nines functions as the go-to place for keeping track of everything across Joe’s household.  

“It has given me time back,” says Joe. 

For example, every vendor relationship is tracked in Nines. Vendors were a key piece of the puzzle for Joe, because of the volume of contractors coming in on a regular basis. With a background in real estate and construction, he understands the risk around each new vendor, and wanted to make sure his team was collecting insurance and making sure vendors followed all the proper procedures. He also wanted to minimize disruption for his family, since they were already living in the house as construction continued.  

Now, Joe’s house manager has the information she needs to onboard a new vendor, can easily share vendor house rules and protocols, and can see how each vendor should be paid. It’s allowed Joe to take a step back, and hand off responsibility to his team. 

“I don’t need to be there 24/7, and you can plug and play any player at any level to go get that information,” says Joe.  

Nines has also brought continuity through staff turnover. When Joe hired a new house manager, Nines made the transition smooth for the new hire, because she could quickly learn everything about the household.  

“The transition validated the importance of having procedures, policies and protocols in a central place,” says Joe.  

The Alerion team has also implemented Nines for Joe’s brother’s household, and up next, Joe wants to bring the same structure and support to his parents’ homes. 

“From a generational standpoint, I’m trying to know where and how things are, and be on the same platform to make it less stressful later in life,” says Joe.  

Manage tasks, vendors, and every aspect of household management with Nines

Want to see how Nines can help you save time and bring order and continuity to your household? Schedule a call with our team today.

Special thanks to Joe M Sergi for sharing his story during our Nines Retreat. Check out more insights from the retreat here.