So…….Yeah. I am only about 9 weeks late getting to this, BUT I promise it is only because of so many curve balls lately that it’s been hard to see straight and not because of me being lazy. I’ve attended 3 funerals in 2 months, my best friend from college’s wedding (Where I found out that I am now a diabetic ) followed by multiple doctors appointments weekly. I’ve been interviewing and hiring employees for Gooch & Fifty (Including setting up tasks, doing training, etc.), making real estate calls, trying to find buyers, and preparing for my post-license exam. Yeah, it’s not been a breeze, to put it lightly. Please forgive me for getting to this so late, but hopefully anyone could understand where the priority lies with updates, considering all of what’s been going on. Now that I have a team of employees to help me, though, I should be able to catch up and get things back to normal!

Anyway, let’s get started! First, I’ll start with the important updates, and then, I’ll get to the Gooch & Fifty Trivia and Rewards Quarter 3 Standings! This round of standings will not include only 3rd quarter standings (Weeks 1-39), but also 1st and 2nd quarter standings. The standings will show how much prize and rewards value has been earned, by who, and how much each person has won. Winners will be based on total winnings and number of times won. The winner(s) WILL receive a grand prize reward!

Gooch & Fifty Updates:

 

From A Project To A Business

The time has FINALLY come that I now have 4 new employees to take my project and turn it into a business. With 2 new operations managers and 2 new content creators, I have the help to turn the vision I had into a reality. My 2 new operations managers, Mandy and Sarah, have a combined experience in management within the tourism industry and in sales! Both have already been great assets to the team, making sure that goals are being achieved, plans are made, and tasks are completed! These are the 2 you will be speaking with when you have questions, complaints, concerns, or anything else that comes to our daily operations. Our new content creators, Michael and Sally, will be the ones you will be seeing and hearing from a lot as they run the day-to-day social media content. This includes Gooch & Fifty’s Trivia and Rewards, daily posts, upcoming short videos, and so much more still in the works. They both have extended experience in social media content creation and management, photography, videography, and more. I am excited to have them all on board!

 

Walking Tours

Yes, walking tours! We hope to have them starting by mid-to-late May, and we are pretty excited about it! However, while we have a few tour guides on board, we need more! To have successful tours, we will need people to depend on who can consistently give the tours on weekends! We are looking for charismatic and friendly applicants who are at least 18+ years old and are available for at least 4-8 hours each Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. They need to have great public speaking skills and the ability to remember the facts and/or scripts that they are assigned to tell throughout the tours. These applicants will be required to walk 2-4 miles per day, of course, depending on their schedules. Starting pay is $10/hour (And may rise as time goes on, depending on performance) PLUS tips AND bonuses! Right now, there are 2 different kinds of tours and the hours will be from 11 A.M.-7 P.M. Thursday – Saturday. These tours will be an exciting addition to Union County and Downtown Blairsville, giving tourists a chance to learn more about our community in a social group setting right in the heart of downtown. Now, when you have a friend or family come into town, this will be a great way to show off our community and its impressive and overshadowed history in a fun way! We can’t wait to get started! If you or anyone else you know is interested, please send your information to operations@goochandfifty.com and the team will respond as soon as possible!

 

Podcasts

Yes, they’re still coming, and yes, we are still working out just when we are going to get them started and how exactly we will do them. We are currently still in talks with Jamie Crump about collaborating with the Union County Historical Society on this. Whether we work with them or not, the plan is to have our own podcast where we discuss subjects that the murals and tours touch on. We will be reaching out to descendants of our featured legends, those connected to specific locations, landmarks, and icons, and those connected with crime and murder stories that we feature. Before each podcast interview we will allow those who plan to follow the interviews to ask their own questions for our interviewees! This is another addition to Gooch & Fifty that we are excited and anxious to get started with!

 

Merchandise

Last time I made an update on this section of the website, it was not even up and running yet. As promised, I’ve been updating the merchandise that we offer with the addition of the “Bear With Me T-Shirt” (In honor of Ed Mauney and his pet bear Bozo), the “I NY T-shirt” (In honor of Glenda Gooch and Ryan Bryar and their miracle story), and the book Blood Mountain Covenant: A Son’s Revenge. However, although I had plans to add more than this, I also want to give local businesses and vendors the chance to add their products(Strictly Union County history/culture based) to the section. I am in the process of having consignment agreements written up that will give businesses and vendors the choice to pay either a flat fee or to share a percentage of their sales with Gooch & Fifty. This will be a great opportunity for local businesses and vendors, as it provides another platform on which to sell their products. If you would be interested in participating in merchandise arrangements, reach out to operations@goochandfifty.com so we can set something up for you!

 

Tutorial Videos Coming Soon!

For those who have followed Gooch & Fifty the past 4 years, you know that it’s the product of a lot of hard work and time. You may not know, however, the annoying process of getting things organized when there are technical difficulties that come up or when timing isn’t down just right or when things occur outside of my control. In other words, I have a vision of things going a certain way and then things turn out(Due to technical difficulties) looking a whole other way. So, with this, comes confusion, not being on the same page as others, and people getting lost. Thanks to my 2 new content creators, we are going to provide tutorials showing just how things work, how to navigate different aspects to (the website, the murals, the articles and archives, etc.) what needs to be fixed and when to expect those changes. Other non-tutorial videos will also follow, and if you loved the Black History Month and Women’s History Month posts, then you’ll be sure to love these videos coming up!

 

Gooch & Fifty Trivia and Rewards Revisited and Participating Businesses

If you are a business who has supported and provided prizes and rewards for our contestants this past year and 1st round of Gooch & Fifty’s Trivia and Rewards, we want to give you a heads up that our Operations Managers will be reaching out to you shortly to see if you would like to participate in the next round of 52 weeks of Gooch & Fifty’s Trivia and Rewards once the first round wraps up in late May. Those businesses and business owners who have participated this past year, along with their employees, will be rewarded with an invite to our first “practice” guided walking tours (Both of them, which will be announced once ready to go)! This is to give thanks for your support and to let you be the first to see what these new tours are like and what they’re all about! If you are a business who didn’t participate for the first year, but would be interested in joining in on the next round of Gooch & Fifty’s Trivia and Rewards, please reach out to operations@goochandfifty.com and we will figure something out! As far as revisiting the Trivia and Rewards for next round, it will look and work a little differently than this first go round. We won’t go into every new detail, but we will let you into a few small things. Here are some of the plans we have in mind:

● Instead of having the questions asked in the format where we post the question and wait for you to answer, we will instead be asking the questions in a video format.

● The way the questions will be asked will typically be in fill-in-the-blank format but may change from time to time and be asked in different ways. For example, one part of a question may ask you to fill in a blank to a sentence, while another may ask you to claim a sentence is true or false, while yet another may have multiple choice options.

● Instead of being the first to answer the question correctly to win, there will be a check-in period where contestants will have to check in to be eligible to play to win. They will also be required to claim what prizes they want if they win. This ensures that we will have contestants playing AND that we know what prizes and rewards they want!

● Depending on the number of businesses who sign up to participate, the total number of prizes that can be won may increase. However, we will have to see where participation stands before making any promises on this.

● Winning an actual individual round of trivia will be based on who gets the most points in the round. Points will be earned in each round of trivia by filling in the blanks or answering true or false or multiple choice questions. You ARE NOT required to fill in each blank or answer each question. Even if you answer just one right, but get more points than the other contestants, you win! Gooch & Fifty Trivia and Rewards overall winners (Through 52 weeks), however, will most likely be determined in 2 different ways: by the contestants who win the most overall rounds and by contestants who have the most points. This may change, but for now, this is the plan.

 

Legends Mural Voting Not Happening This Year/Pricing Changes May Be Coming Soon

Yes, unfortunately, because Gooch & Fifty didn’t quite get off to the start we intended and too many other things got in the way, as well as not having enough membership purchases to financially support adding onto the Union County Legends mural, there will NOT be any voting this year to add someone to the mural. This, however, does NOT mean voting won’t be happening in the future, and if you purchased your annual Gooch & Fifty membership already, it will still be honored by the time voting does come around, and you will still be eligible to vote! On that same note, there may or may not be pricing changes coming soon, but this will require more consideration. From making additions to the Union County Legends mural, to funding the website, to raising money for future local renovation and preservation projects, money will be needed to make everything happen. The question at hand, however, is just how much money will it take and how much support is the community willing to give! to bring it all to fruition.

 

Gooch & Fifty Trivia & Rewards

Where We Currently Stand

The 117 rewards that have been won as of the end of Quarter 3(Week 39 Question 3), as well as the 39 rewards that are left to go, can be seen below in the blue boxes(NOTE: Most prizes shown may have already been picked since we are now 3/4 of the way through the 4th and final quarter). As of the end of the 3rd quarter standings, out of the 26 sponsors(Really 23 with Gooch & Fifty sponsoring 4 lists of rewards), there were 14(17 including all of Gooch & Fifty’s lists) total businesses whose rewards had all been chosen and that you could no longer pick from. Clearly, those businesses are the ones who have the red X’s over them. These businesses include: Gooch Trucking, Lance Law, Kenya Patton Attorney At Law, Colwell Construction, Jeff Davis State Farm, River City Bank, Country Financial, Jim’s Smokin Que, Gooch & Fifty, Odom Springs Vineyards, Living Water Vineyards, Roadside Distilling, Grateful Hiker, and Blairsville’s Ice Cream & Mini Golf. Of the rest of the rewards available, those clearly will be the rewards still showing without the mark white outs with winners’ names placed over them. The businesses that still have rewards being offered include the following(Number of rewards left to choose from will be included by each business): G&G Bakery and Cafe(2); Sushi Shack(2); Lucky’s Taqueria and Cantina(6); Teppanyaki Time(6); Pizza Belly(6); Sammies(6); Glow Hair Salon(6); Keen Creations(3); And Maters, Taters, and More(2). To make following these standings easier to understand, here is how they are ordered in the slide below: First are the combined total standings of each quarter completed(Quarters 1-3 and weeks 1-39) as of the end of week 39, by total winnings and by rounds won. Next will be the previous completed standings for the halfway point by total winnings and by rounds won, weeks 1-26. Following the complete standings will be the individual winnings and rounds won per quarter. As you can see, Ken Howell is the strong front runner in the complete standings so far with $1,019.90 won in total rewards, having won a total of 43 rounds in all. Placing in 2nd is Sharon Parker Howell who has won a total of $905.90 in total rewards won, having won a total of 35 rounds. In 3rd place sits Julie Rachel with $394.41 won in total rewards won, having won in a total of 18 rounds. In Quarter 3 alone, Sharon Parker Howell took 1st place in total winnings, winning a total of $341.90 in total rewards after winning in 12 rounds for Quarter 3. This also ranks her 2nd in total rounds won. In 2nd place for total winnings was Ken Howell, who won a total of $308.95 in total rewards won after winning in 13 rounds for Quarter 3. This ranks him in 1st place in total rounds won. Patty Cagle Schatz finished in 3rd place, having won a total of $97.95 in total rewards won after winning 4 rounds. This ties her for 3rd with Julie Rachel in total rounds won for Quarter 3. Be sure to give it a shot and try to give yourself the chance to get on the board in these last 4 weeks!