My New Account Intro

Hello Dear Readers,

I own @senseiphil and this is my introduction for a new blogging account. I am retiring my old one.

I've learned a lot of lessons since joining Hive 2 years ago, and I'm going to share those with you.

When I think about my 2 years on Hive, I see all my rookie mistakes.
I wanted to start a blog for many years. However, I never felt like I had enough time to do it. When the pandemic started in 2020 I felt like it was my opportunity.

My original intention was to blog about martial arts. I joined the Sports Talk Social community and got off to a relatively good start. There was a learning curve, but when I figured things out my posts started getting noticed. That's when I started making mistakes.

Mistake 1: Inconsistent posts

I lacked good time management so I didn’t post regularly. Content creation is hard work and I underestimated how much time I needed to plan my posts. Poor planning led to my second mistake.

Mistake 2: Inconsistent quality

When I felt like too much time passed between posts, I would put together something low-quality. These rush jobs didn’t represent my brand, which lead to my third mistake.

Mistake 3: Not staying on topic

Brand management is critical in business, and you should approach Hive like a business. The best strategy for me is to stick to a familiar niche and stay in my lane. For example, when McDonald’s strayed from their niche (inexpensive burgers, fries, and breakfast) they were no longer recognizable to their core customers. They had to do a 180 and refocus on what made them successful.

Most of my early posts were curated when I put effort into them. But some were flat out ignored. I took it personally when my posts got very few votes. I wondered if I picked the wrong topic, the wrong heading, the wrong images, or the wrong community.

I started chasing the votes and strayed from my niche.

Also, my niche wasn’t well defined. A martial arts blogger must find their home within martial arts. “Martial Arts” is a catch all term for thousands of different fighting styles, and every style is unique. To make things more complicated, you can write about fitness, self-improvement and spirituality and still say you’re in the “martial arts” niche.

I understand now that having a consistent message is the most important thing. Every post is like an advertisement for your brand and readers need to understand what that is.

Once I strayed from my niche, I found it impossible to get back on track. This led to my fourth mistake.

Mistake 4: Writing for myself

I used Hive to vent, and this is never a good idea. You should only post when you’re in a good mood. If you’re feeling tired or depressed the chances of you posting something negative increases. I should have held myself to a higher standard. One of the strategies I'm going to use to stay professional is imagining myself as a well respected author. Can you see Ryan Holiday, who wrote The Obstacle Is the Way and Ego is the Enemy going on a mindless Twitter rant? He wouldn’t unless he wanted to destroy his own reputation.

Mistake 5: Trying to please everyone

Not everyone’s going to like you. If you take negative comments and downvotes personally like I did, you’ll be reactive instead of intentional. But if you ignore the noise, you can create a loyal following. Years ago, somebody figured out that you only need 1,000 true fans to be a successful creator. Given the vastness of the Internet this is well within everyone’s reach.

My New Beginning

I basically stopped trying to grow my old account because of my mistakes. I settled for the return I was getting from curating. The @ascendingorder account represents a new beginning for me. It’s strictly for blogging about self-improvement. Self-Improvement is the domain I’m most comfortable with. I still practice the martial arts, but I don’t enjoy writing about them. If I do write about martial arts again, it will be within the context of self-improvement.

My Inspiration

When you write about self-improvement you end up giving people advice. What makes me qualified for that?

Social media is saturated with self-help gurus. These are twenty something’s who apparently figured out life before they lived it. I’m not that, nor will I pretend to be. I’m past my twenties anyways.

There’s a saying in combat sports that goes “You learn the most from the fights you lose.”

I’ve lost a few fights, figuratively and literally. But I learned from my losses and that inspires me to write. Defeat builds character, you just don’t want to make a habit of it.

Jim Rohn was one of my favorite motivational speakers. He would always tell the story of how he became financially independent by the time he was 30, and lost it all a few years later. I admired that about him. Anyone who tells you they win at everything in life is selling something or they haven't taken enough risks.

I’ve read a ton of books, but my advice comes from life experience. If you’ve read this far, thank you. I hope you enjoy my content in the future.

All photo's are original and edited in Canva