Lessons I’ve Learned From Writing a Blog
Every Sunday, I write a brand new article for Rennsport Report (RS Report); a blog I created about all things Porsche. This blog stemmed from my lifelong passion for cars and has grown bigger than I ever imagined. I started RS Report in October 2018 and running it has not only provided me with insight into managing my own business, but it has also taught me that I am the driving force behind my own success.
Running a car blog isn’t easy. Every day is a new adventure with websites not working, contacts not responding, and the list goes on and on. As a then 16-year-old high school student, it was impossible to manage the blog on my own. This is where the first lesson from RS Report comes in: you can’t do everything yourself. Two months into creating RS Report, I realized that progress was too slow. My weekly views were the same and my new Instagram page had an impressive 31 followers; I was ready to give up. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I had a friend named Kenny who had over 5,000 followers on his Instagram page just by posting pictures of cool cars he saw on the street. I needed a partner and Kenny was the right man for the job. With Kenny on my team, RS Report went from 100 monthly visitors to over 300!
The next lesson was one that I learned rather early on. Since I started the blog, I have been uploading one article every Sunday. When I say every Sunday, I mean EVERY single Sunday. If I wanted to keep a steady upload schedule, it was my job to do it. No one was going to wake me up every Sunday, reminding me to write the article for the week. If I was going to be out of town, no one would be able to write the article for me. It would have to be done in advance. The time management skills I have gained from maintaining RS Report have been paramount in how I live my life, in high school, and now in college. I’m so glad I didn’t have to fail my first college class to learn about time management.
This past May, I was reminded of RS Report’s third lesson: you have to be entrepreneurial aka creative. We had started to run out of ideas for the blog and as a result, our viewership suffered. I had to find a way to provide quality content, even when RS Report had nothing to report. After lots of deliberation and brainstorming, I had an answer: car reviews. In the summer of 2019, we reviewed so many different supercars and networked with so many different business owners and influencers. It was car reviews that brought us to where we are today, and it was being innovative that kept us afloat during the pandemic. Since we had no cars to review, we had to adapt further. Now Kenny organizes car rallies which we promote RS Report through. Everything has become so much easier as I am now accustomed to thinking outside of the box.
In life, we learn from a lot of things. When I first started RS Report, I thought it was pretty stupid. And as stupid as I looked waking up early on Sundays and writing my first few articles that only my parents would read, or going to car meets with Kenny and asking random supercar owners to review their cars, I wouldn’t be who I am today without it. Running RS Report gave me a taste of the real world, and for that, I am eternally grateful. Who knew you could learn so much from a car blog?
