Tricky indeed! We ran in to this twice in our history so I can relate. The first time was when we were exploring the idea of opening a second Office Nomads across town for the same reasons you mentioned. With our diluted attention our first space wasn't what it had been and we received our first (and only) negative yelp review. Remember when Susan sent a similar letter out to this group? To weather it then, we pulled back from our expansion plans and ended up scrapping the idea.
Turns out that was a good move for us because soon after another floor in our building opened up and we did expand in this location. We doubled our size causing everyone to spread out and then our membership dropped significantly. They call that the empty disco effect. You need a certain amount of activity or people just move along. This time we powered through it but did incur more debt than we originally projected. As for what we did to power through it was really about presence and intention. It's the same kinds of stuff you do to make any space great. The critical component is the community managers. Who is there to know what is going on and make adjustments as needed? Who is there to say good morning or go for a walk with a member if someone needs to just cry it out? Who is helping smooth out the process of becoming a new member and keeping things fresh for the long timers? If the answer is no-one, or you are trying to do it in two locations, then that is your issue. Each space needs it's own team. That is all I have for now. Hope it helps! Jacob -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
