Crisis and Opportunity

Change is inevitable. It's all a matter of how we handle ourselves. Good things happen just as much as the bad things. Here is how we are navigating through these moments.

Keeping our emotions in check

Emotional intelligence are two words that I never put side by side. In my honest opinion, being emotional is not a sign of being logical. When you base your decisions on how you feel instead of the facts that are right in front of you, I have always believed you are taking yourself down the wrong path. Whether that feeling is good or bad, the outcome can put you, and possibly your organization, in a world of hurt.

Now that doesn't mean that having feelings about a certain situation is wrong. As a matter fact, your emotions are an indicator of something changing. But, it doesn't change the notion that basing your decisions on those feelings is the right call.

When things change, it's hard not to be emotional. One of the things that I have been taught has been, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Yet at the same time, if we don't evolve, we won't survive. That has always begged the question of whether or not I am doing enough to keep hope alive.

As you can see, that example can possibly whip some people into a frenzy. Whenever you are in that state of mind, you are always in crisis mode regardless of how good things actually are. To give you better context, being whipped into a frenzy will make you focus on not losing rather than appreciating what you have.

Let me say that just because you act logically doesn't mean that a crisis won't happen. Nor am I telling you how to feel or act. The whole idea of this post is to show you what situations have put us in crisis mode and how we are not making things worse. More importantly, we want to showcase some of the developments that are helping us power through

These developments, as a result, have changed the deadlines on some of the other projects we are working on at Lone Gold. While I am not a big fan of change myself, I believe that these changes will enhance the quality of the services we offer. At the end of the day, this moment will produce an opportunity out of a crisis.

None of this would be possible if we had not kept our emotions in check. Hopefully, you will understand why these changes were necessary. It sucks that we are going to have to push back some deadlines. But again, these changes are necessary for us going forward. Here are the developments we are putting to work and when we expect them to go into effect.

Pathfinder by Lone Gold (June 2022)

Since the very beginning, I have always wanted Lone Gold to have a positive social impact. While we have made great strides in social media, sadly, we need to do more. Over the last couple of years, we have been assessing our capabilities and this is what we came up with.

In the first week of this month, we decided to move forward with the development of Pathfinder. Our goal has always been to develop the advertising arm of Lone Gold. After many rounds of discussions, we always concluded that Lone Gold should focus on marketing. As a result, we decided to develop the advertising arm into a separate platform. Once we had the name established, it was off to the races.

The idea has always been to have the advertising campaign and the marketing strategy in sync. For starters, we are going to be doing advertisements on Lone Gold, Lone Gold Sports, and The Gamer Experience Review. Once we establish more content, we will be able to get more of your brand out there.

Right now, everything is coming together beautifully. We will be offering more services in the time to come. In the mean time, we are also working on an app that will help give your brand more chances to make an impact. We'll give you more information in a later post.

Gold Star Member (July/August 2022)

With the sudden development of Pathfinder, our plans for the membership site has taken a hit. I was hoping that we would have this part of the platform up and running by this month. But, with the struggles of establishing quality content, on top of other unrelated developments, made the decision easier for us to put the membership on hold.

The core concept of Gold Star Member will remain the same. It's just a matter of how we are going to implement Pathfinder into this platform. We'll still be working hard on getting this development off on the right foot. Our goal is to get the membership site up and running by mid to late July. Hopefully, we will be getting that up sooner rather than later.

The RTP (August 2022)

For those of you not familiar with this development, the RTP is a major part of the research that is conducted by Lone Gold. The good news is that the RTP is an ongoing project, so there's no need to rush this development. How we are going to keep evolving this development will be a huge undertaking.

Right now, we are running the RTP on both this and our sports blog. We have also established a group presence on Facebook and Twitter. You can join those groups right now if you like.

The major hurdle is going to be establishing the content, along with the research on the Gold Star Member page. I am confident that once we have an idea of what the content direction will be, the rest should fall into place.

Conclusion

Changes have been know to throw a wrench into well coordinated plans. But, if the plans are not going exactly as intended, then corrections need to be made. It's a part of life no matter who you are.

The good news is that making changes does not have to be a crisis. Instead, this should be an opportunity to see how far you can go. However long that turbulent time lasts will depend on how well you can keep your emotions in check.

When I founded Lone Gold 2013, I always knew that this brand was going to do some good. Given my experience in life, I also understood that bad things happened just as much as good things. The only thing I could do is use my life experiences to get me through those rough patches, and hope that my faith in those difficult decisions would pay off.

Even though we have found a way to get through this difficult time in our development, I know that now is the time to put our money where our mouth is. The hardest thing to do at this present moment of time is to not let our emotions get the better of us and pray that we all can find the right answers.

We are all in a dark time in this present point of time. Now is the time to bear down and get to work. It's the only logical choice we have.

Aaron Phillips

CEO/President/Founder

Lone Gold