The ‘Own Your Space’ Myth

You’ve probably seen the advice to ‘own your space’. I’ve probably used that phrase myself over the last few years. But recently, as I’ve been working with clients to help them stand out in increasingly crowded markets, I’ve started to question whether this is actually the good advice it sounds like.

‘Own your space’ is an instruction that permeates most markets, but it is especially true when you are an info-business – someone who trades off an expertise like a coach or a designer or a photographer or a freelancer. Whenever I work with clients who are growing coaching or mentoring businesses it’s a conversation we always have as it’s just so pervasive in this particular market.

On the surface, it sounds like pretty sound advice. It makes logical sense to ‘own your space’, that way you’re the expert and the ‘name’ in your particular niche who everyone wants to work with. On paper, that’s ideal. The problem lies in what it takes to completely own a space

Have you ever watched a nature documentary about rutting deer (promise I’m going somewhere with this)? During the rut, a dominant stag has his harem of female deer that he has to stop other stags coming in and taking over. During the rut he doesn’t eat for weeks, needing to be hyper vigilant at all times in case an interloper approaches and either tries to fight him t the death, or sneak off with one of his does. This always strikes me as a sorrowful existence of constant, unending paranoia and watchfulness, paying no attention to the fruits of your labour while you ultimately waste away.

This is how I feel about trying to ‘own your space’.

If you’re trying to always hold dominion over your niche, then actually you end up distracted and focusing on all the wrong things. You watch for new people entering your market and trying to crowd them out, instead of pouring that energy into serving the clients you do have or creating new offerings that keep you ahead of the curve. You can’t enjoy the life your building because you’re too focused on maintaining it and stopping anyone else from taking a piece. To fixate on owning your space can make running your business a white-knuckled experience that saps your joy.

Because ultimately, it can’t be done.  You are holding a sieve up to a tsunami – as the interest in coaching and courses, in particular, grows, so more people come to market with something they can offer. It’s hard to hear, but they deserve room in the space, just as you do. The rhetoric around ‘own your space’ lends itself to us thinking we need to muscle out any newcomers, but that’s not realistic, and also just not the spirit I want to bring to running a business. The more people start offering coaching, the more it is legitimised, the more demand grows, the better we all do.

Instead, I want us to switch from ‘own your space’, to ‘occupy your space’.

The space is not entirely yours, you are not wasting away defending your herd, but you are confidently asserting your presence there. You ensure that yours is a voice that everyone can hear, you create content and work that is unignorable. If the space you operate in is a fair, then your stall is the one that no one can miss.

When we shift to thinking that we occupy rather than own a space, we start to concentrate on the right things. Rather than always looking around at what other people are doing, we instead elevate our own work – we do amazing jobs with clients that boosts our word of mouth, we create compelling content, we create courses and offerings that no one’s seen before. Rather than try to block other people from the market, we collaborate with them to boost the visibility of the space itself and help more people find what they need (and the odds are that that will be you).

Most importantly, we give ourselves permission to relinquish. We ease our tight fists and start to enjoy it all again. We get deep into the work and the life that was the reason we started this in the first place, and on top of that we get to create a community of colleagues you can lean on if you need to. You get peace.

Often, stags die at the end of the rutting season, having not eaten for weeks and using up the last of their energy on owning their space. Fixating on ownership is a path that comes to a dead end of burn out; taking up space and setting out a marvellous stall in your market allows you more freedom to focus on what’s important to you. Because after all, what’s it all for if not that?

To those of you who are coaches, teachers or mentors who are conflicted around how to be more visible and struggling with owning your space, my new course The Playbook was created just for you. In it I’ll teach you ways to occupy your space, get known and increase your visibility, all through the lens of the specificities of our kind of business model. Read more and get your pre-order bonuses here