From Hobby to Business: The Powwow.com Journey | Paul Gowder

PROFITABLE TALKS...

In this episode of the Profitable Creative, host Christian Brim speaks with Paul Gowder, founder of Powwow.com, about the importance of connecting with Native culture and the journey of building a community around it. They discuss personal heritage, the challenges of creative writing, and the impact of AI on content creation. The conversation also touches on the representation of Native culture in media, the significance of education and understanding, and strategies for monetizing a creative business.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS...

• Powwow.com connects people with Native culture and events.
• Personal heritage plays a significant role in identity.
• Creative resistance is a common challenge for writers.
• Building a community can lead to organic business growth.
• Monetization strategies include ads, sponsorships, and digital products.
• Audience insights reveal a mix of Native and non-Native visitors.
• Cultural representation in media is evolving with shows like Reservation Dogs.
• Education is key to fostering understanding of Native issues.
• AI is changing the landscape of content creation.
• Coaching entrepreneurs focuses on community building and email marketing.

It's time for a CREATIVE rEvolution : Show UP Scale UP Let's F*ckin' Go ➡️
https://www.coregroupus.com/creative-revolution

Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.376)
Welcome to another episode of the Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Cookson, Oklahoma. I have lived 55 years in the Sooner State, never heard of Cookson, Oklahoma. So thanks for listening. Maybe I'll find you someday. Anyway, joining me today.

Paul Gowder of powwow.com. Paul, welcome to the show.

Paul Gowder (00:32.888)
Thanks so much, I appreciate you having me on. I'm looking forward to it.

Christian Brim (00:36.94)
Perfect, so I said in the green room that we might have to discuss your shirt for those listeners. It is a, I would say episode four vintage Star Wars shirt. Kind of looks like the images from the original poster, honestly. That's a cool damn shirt.

Paul Gowder (01:02.862)
Thank you. Yeah, so I have a whole collection of Roosevelt's name, the company RSVLTS, pronounced Roosevelt's. They do some incredible shirts on not just Star Wars, but Disney, Marvel, Harry Potter, all kinds of different IPs. But I love this one because it reminds me of the sheets I had as a kid, it's the same pattern. So yeah, I love the Star Wars.

Christian Brim (01:25.378)
nice.

They didn't get the intellectual property not locked down on that. They should have got a trademark on... Yeah, who knows? Anyway, Paul, why don't you tell the listeners what it is that you do at Powwow?

Paul Gowder (01:41.666)
Yeah, I appreciate it. So powwows.com is a place for anybody to come explore, experience, and we help you connect with Native culture. And of course we have many Natives around the country and North America that also use it, but we really just want to help elevate the Native culture, help people find events, find Native artists, and just really get people more exposed to the culture and help educate. So that's what we've been doing it since 1996.

looking forward or excited. I'm almost 30 years coming up in January that we have been running the site. And so we, we help, we do all of that. What that I said in a variety of ways we have, of course, some writers, we publish original content, we do live streams of powwows. We're doing 25 to 30 powwow live streams a year, as well as we do lots of photos, videos, and all the other things on social.

Christian Brim (02:32.609)
Thanks.

Christian Brim (02:37.429)
I love it. Now you're located where?

Paul Gowder (02:40.684)
I am in Lexington, South Carolina.

Christian Brim (02:42.951)
in South Carolina. All right, interesting. I would have figured you'd been in the West somewhere, but you know.

Paul Gowder (02:49.89)
Yeah, it's not the hive of, we have a few powwows around here, but we are not the center of the powwow world here. So unfortunately for me, it's to get anywhere, I've got flights. Some other people on our team, they live more centrally located and they're able to drive to multiple powwows every month.

Christian Brim (03:08.009)
Are you from South Carolina?

Paul Gowder (03:10.334)
grew up in Sumter, South Carolina. My dad moved there. He was in the Air Force. So we ended up there. He was at Shaw Air Force Base and we moved around a little bit as a kid. I don't remember much of that, but yeah, the Sumter is where they kind of chose to, where he retired from the Air Force. So that's just where we stayed.

Christian Brim (03:28.393)
I love it. So what tribe are you affiliated with?

Paul Gowder (03:31.702)
So I descendant from Cherokee on my dad's side and yeah.

Christian Brim (03:36.684)
Tricky, perfect. I don't know if you know that we are broadcasting from Oklahoma. And it's an interesting story. So I've got a couple of interesting stories, one that I just found out when I was age 54. But growing up in Oklahoma, obviously the native culture was ubiquitous. But it was funny, they sent around

Paul Gowder (03:44.28)
Nice.

Christian Brim (04:06.562)
survey in school every year, and they asked the students if they, you know, had any Native heritage. Actually, I think it was actually the term Native blood, but I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole. Have you read the book Bloodlands? Okay, I recommend that one. Anyway, well it was just the whole idea of this blood quanta being a measurement where

Paul Gowder (04:19.693)
Yeah.

Paul Gowder (04:25.377)
No.

Christian Brim (04:36.554)
Essentially, once they got it down far enough, you were no longer native. Like you're white if you get down to a certain percentage. In any case, my dad, I would ask him, and I knew that we have native heritage, and I'd say, well, don't we need to fill that out? And he goes, no, no, no, that's not for us. And I don't know if it was, you know, he...

didn't want to be, to claim to be Native, or if it was some kind of welfare program that he didn't want to associate with himself. But I found at an early age this strange paradigm that I knew I had Native heritage, but I wasn't allowed to talk about it. And as I have grown old, and I am old,

It's something that actually that I have come to embrace and not for the reasons that I wanted to have a community or I was looking for an identity, but you know, it's part of who I am. It's part of my heritage. Even to the point where I'm currently writing a novel.

It may end up a novelette. I don't know. I originally wanted to write a screenplay, but that's way too hard. I'm hoping to finish this novel and then have someone else adapt it to a screenplay. But the original idea was a movie. And I'm sorry I'm rambling, but living in Oklahoma my whole life, my family is Choctaw. My wife is actually Choctaw too, which we're probably cousins.

Paul Gowder (06:10.776)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (06:33.428)
In any case, I didn't know that there was a separate Choctaw tribe in Mississippi until I was like 45 and I got called as a professional witness in the tribal court. And so I make my trek down to Mississippi and I'm like, I had no idea there was a separate tribe. I thought all the Choctaw were in Oklahoma. And...

It got it planted a seed and I in in my mind What it happened was when the feds had come in and done the forced relocation My thought was well There were a bunch of badass that just went into the hills and said fuck the feds and hid and This was the story I had in my head, right? I was like that'd be a cool story to tell

Then I do my research and I find out now that they actually didn't do that. They chose to stay and were allowed to stay, but that's a completely different story. In any case, have, the novel is around, it's a love story. And I've titled it Dancing Rabbit. And the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit is the final treaty that forced the relocation of the Choctaw people to Oklahoma.

But it's, I looked and there's no, there's no movie about the Trail of Tears. There's lots of documentaries, but there's no movie that's set. And then I'm like, how can that story not be told? that, right? Obviously it wasn't just the chalk doll that were relocated, but like that's my story. So in any case, I'm writing a book. We'll see you on the

Paul Gowder (08:15.566)
That's true, yeah.

Paul Gowder (08:27.404)
Nice. Yeah, it's interesting. There hasn't been any kind of... You would think that's a subject that would have been explored with some kind of screenplay.

Christian Brim (08:37.364)
Well, there probably has no one produced it. That's a completely different animal getting it produced. But, know, I, I kind of feel like just living my life and my generation is it's, it's one of those things that up until this point, I don't think it was sellable. I don't think anybody wanted to go watch that and hear that story. Cause it's not a good story. Right. And, they'd prefer it be in this.

Paul Gowder (09:03.405)
Right.

Christian Brim (09:07.586)
antiseptic documentary where, you know, it's more like going to a history class, but I have this story that I'm telling. It's fictional, of course. mean, some of the characters are real, but. And that's the compelling thing is the story, the people like like what what actually happened that.

Not just like statistics and numbers and dates and places like history is told but the story of the people that lived it That's that's the compelling stuff and it it is an ugly story In a lot of ways, it's a complex story and I don't know if it would ever be produced. I don't know. We'll see

Paul Gowder (10:00.91)
You know, it's one of the things there's probably not a good story arc because there's there's not the happy ending. But interesting, I worked with a 24 studio, a 24 a few months ago, and they let me see a preview of warfare. Yeah, and it kind of reminds me what we're talking about, like it is it's not a story arc, it's here's a moment in time and here's what happened.

Christian Brim (10:12.375)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (10:17.25)
that's such a good movie.

Christian Brim (10:28.62)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Gowder (10:30.254)
I don't know that you could have produced a movie like that 15 years ago, but it's a really compelling story, but it is not an arc. It's not, here's the characters and here's where they end up. Yeah.

Christian Brim (10:36.51)
No, and my... It is.

Christian Brim (10:44.16)
Right. This isn't Lord of the Rings where they're going off on an adventure now. And I went to that movie with my wife and after she goes, that was awful. And I'm like, what do you mean? was, mean, like the, she didn't mean it like an awful movie, but it was just you left feeling shitty. Like it was not right. And the vast majority of entertainment is not designed to make the audience feel shitty. That's not. And, I mean, I think my story,

Paul Gowder (10:48.385)
Right.

Paul Gowder (11:02.38)
Right, right.

Christian Brim (11:13.322)
Although it is shitty, I think it's compelling enough that, and there are good elements of it that, you know, it's bittersweet. And I think that, I think it's sellable. I don't know though. I'm not a movie producer. And historical films cost an ass ton of money to produce. So I don't know if it'll ever make it. But I feel compelled to write this story. The other funny story about my family.

Paul Gowder (11:26.318)
You never know.

Christian Brim (11:44.098)
I don't know why I'm telling you this. movie Killers of the Flower Moon came out and went to go see it. And then I went to go visit my parents. And my dad is telling me a story and the name is escaping me. The woman, the main character that they were trying to kill in the movie. Do you remember her name? Anyway.

Paul Gowder (12:09.506)
Yeah, yeah. I don't remember her name now.

Christian Brim (12:14.892)
She was married to my great grandfather. So after... have you seen the movie? Okay, so after the movie, DiCaprio goes off to jail, right? She marries my great grandfather, who's a white man. And she ends up dying while they are married.

Paul Gowder (12:20.625)
wow. Yes.

Christian Brim (12:44.008)
And he basically leaves town because all the Osage think that he had something to do with her death because that was what was going on. I don't know if he was or he wasn't, but he moved, got divorced, and remarried my great grandmother who was Choctaw. Maybe he had a type, I don't know.

in any case we, we, my family, I was 30 years old before I knew that my grandfather had half siblings, never talked about it. Like it was just one of those things that was, was never talked about because they didn't speak.

What they didn't speak about was when Johnny Cobb died, he had the head rights. And so they were supposed to go to his daughters, but he had decided that he was gonna split it equally between all of his children, not just the ones that were Osage. And that caused this rift in the family, right?

Paul Gowder (13:45.902)
Mm.

Christian Brim (14:04.43)
And fast forward, my grandfather died about five years ago. And my grandfather had told his sons, my dad and his two brothers, that they would get the head rights, that he never put it in a will. And so my dad and my two uncles won't speak to his wife, not their mother, their mother had died.

over these fucking head rights.

How many generations and it was fascinating to me was like there was a line in that movie is like this is cursed money. It's blood money and it was so fascinating to be like watching this movie and then realizing that I saw it in in real life like they were still fighting over it and it wasn't much money at this at this point right and it just anyway, sorry bloodlands the book I referenced is about the Osage murders.

So I think it was the first book that was written. It was not the same as Killer Flower Moon, but it was good. Anyway, I'm gonna shut up now and let you talk. Since I invited you on the show, it seems only...

Paul Gowder (15:17.294)
It's all good.

Christian Brim (15:22.774)
Okay. Good. Do you have any opinion on anything I said?

Paul Gowder (15:24.174)
You

Paul Gowder (15:31.316)
I'm curious to see where your book goes though.

Christian Brim (15:33.334)
Yeah, yes. Well, you know, speaking about creativity, it's it's I found it a real challenge because have you read The War of Art? OK, in that book, I'm so embarrassed. I can't remember the author's name. It'll come to me in a minute. He wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance. He was a novelist and then a screenwriter. But in The War of Art, he talks about

the resistance and like anytime you are trying to do your creative purpose, you run into this resistance and it manifests itself in a lot of different ways, procrastination, minimization, fear, or whatever, but it keeps you from doing your thing. And I've really struggled with writing this book. I've been working on it for close to a year and I'm maybe 20 % done.

And you know, it's just that like that's real. Like anytime you're trying to do something truly creative, you can find all the reasons in the world not to do it.

Do you ever experience the resistance?

Paul Gowder (16:48.846)
Yeah, yeah. I have a list here and I've got a huge to-do list. There's, I get it.

Christian Brim (16:55.222)
Yeah, yeah. So what is it that you, why is it, mean, did, well, let me ask a foundational question. Did you start Pow Wow? Or did you come along after the fact? Okay. Okay, what was the, why did you start it?

Paul Gowder (17:09.068)
website. Yes. Yeah, I started it and yeah.

Paul Gowder (17:15.822)
Uh, so 1996 I'm in grad school, um, at the university of South Carolina and, I was just, uh, I got a master's in public administration. Uh, I was taught how to be a bureaucrat. Um, yeah, apparently. Um, but yeah, you know, in my spare time, I was playing with the whole HTML building web pages.

Christian Brim (17:24.172)
Studying what?

Christian Brim (17:32.546)
You have to go to school for that?

Paul Gowder (17:43.406)
I've always loved to tinker with technology. at the time I had friends that were just introducing me to Powwows and I was learning how to make the outfits and what the songs were, all that. So I built a few pages, not, back then there wasn't blogging or anything like that. I just built pages because it was a subject that I was exploring. So I just threw up pages like, hey, there's what this is and here's what this is and here's some pictures I took. At the same time I built another website. I actually built a

Christian Brim (17:43.436)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (17:53.634)
Hmm

Christian Brim (18:00.055)
Right.

Paul Gowder (18:13.25)
website on vintage Star Wars toy collecting, going back to our previous conversations. But that was in 1996. Disney had not bought Star Wars. There were no other movies. Nobody really cared about vintage Star Wars toys except for like, know, 10 of us on bulletin boards. So that website's still out there in its state of 1996. But the Powwow website, people started coming, started asking questions.

Christian Brim (18:16.673)
Nice.

Christian Brim (18:32.065)
Right.

Paul Gowder (18:42.062)
They wanted ways to talk with each other, not just to me, but they wanted that ways to interact. early on I added a community. Back then was forums. We didn't have Facebook groups, it was forums. And the community grew and it was, it was never, I never sat down and like, hey, I'm gonna become an entrepreneur. was, it kept growing and kept growing. At some point there were bills. It's like, okay, well, how are gonna pay for this thing?

So it was a kind of organic thing that turned into more. I ran it as a side thing, just something I did in my spare time while I worked in state government in South Carolina and retired. I was actually able to retire from state government a few years ago and now do this and other stuff full time. So yeah, it was never.

Christian Brim (19:12.802)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (19:27.788)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Gowder (19:35.916)
I never set out to build a business. was just the community just kept coming and we just kept building.

Christian Brim (19:40.385)
Right.

Field of dreams, if you build it, they will come. Right?

Paul Gowder (19:44.878)
Who knew? We didn't even know that that kind of stuff could happen in 96.

Christian Brim (19:51.274)
Yeah. So what got you interested in Patwell's and dancing and.

Paul Gowder (19:58.004)
was, that was, when I was first learning about, what my actual family heritage was. And, I had some friends that were going to Powwows themselves. And so I was like, Hey, tell me more about this. And so they, they took me under their wing and, you know, those early days of learning Powwows that I had people that we'd go and spend a weekend at their house and we, you know, make crafts all weekend and, and then we'd go to Powwows and dance. Yeah. So it was, it was just the beginning of really figuring out all that stuff. So.

I liked the, you know, learning new stuff. liked the, the, meeting of people and, know, sitting after a powwow dance, you know, sitting at the, at the campground and all of us fellowshiping and, know, food coming out of everywhere. And we, you know, sit around all night long, just eating and talking. so that was, that was how I was introduced to powwows. And so like, this is really cool. I want to talk about it. And so it was just a place for me to.

I never thought anybody would come. Really, was not meant, I didn't even build, weren't, in the beginning, they weren't even, I didn't have good navigation. We didn't know, you you didn't know what like breadcrumbs and SEO and backlinks and internal linking structure. I didn't know any of that stuff. That stuff didn't exist. So it was just literally just a hodgepodge of pages thrown together.

Christian Brim (21:19.66)
So, so how have you monetized the website? mean, they're like, do you sell ads? there, do you do sponsorships? Like what, what do you do?

Paul Gowder (21:27.808)
Yeah, as it's grown over the years and we've done lots of different monetization revenues. Currently, we have several different revenue streams for the website. We are a part of Mediavine Ad Network, so they do most of our ads on the website. We have some direct sponsors we work with. So we have some brand deals, that kind of thing. we also, the Powwals, those 25 to 30 Powwals that I was talking about, they hire us to come in. So that's a service we provide.

to the powwows where we come in with our camera equipment and do the streaming. But then, you we also make money from YouTube and Facebook and all the social networks. And I have a few digital products and we have a Shopify store. You know, it just all adds up to be able to, yeah, to build what we have.

Christian Brim (22:11.744)
down.

Christian Brim (22:15.234)
That's cool. So do you know if the people, the traffic are natives or are they people that are not native, that are wanting to learn more?

Paul Gowder (22:30.4)
It's a mix. mean, you the first 10 or 15 years, it was mostly powwow people because it was, that was who was coming to our forums. That was who was interacting. but with social media and how we've grown, our Facebook pages is, is really, really grown over the last few years. so I know it's just looking at the Facebook page, you know, it's more than, just powwow people this past weekend, our live stream, we had two live streams going at the same time.

Christian Brim (22:35.01)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Gowder (22:57.486)
One of them had 500,000 viewers over the weekend from 67 countries or something. So yeah, it has grown tremendously. we, try, especially with our newsletter, I try to kind of provide content for whether you're, know, a powwow person, you're a native person, you're looking to connect with, you know, make sure you stay connected, find where powwows are. kind of have some segmentation and some.

Christian Brim (23:00.949)
Wow.

Paul Gowder (23:25.834)
messaging for those folks, but then we also have some more of like what to expect at your first powwow and what does all this mean? you know, so we try to do content for both and then on social media really the goal is just to educate, highlight, and elevate the culture.

Christian Brim (23:44.31)
That is, that's a great story. I love that story. Have you seen, I don't know why I'm asking this, I'm just gonna ask it. Have you seen Reservation Dogs? Okay, I'm gonna withhold my opinion. Tell me your opinion of the show.

Paul Gowder (23:54.168)
Yes.

Paul Gowder (24:03.918)
I thought I was hilarious. I know some of the folks in the show. I've been able to interview a few of them, but like the Little Mike and Funny Bone, I've spent time with them at several powwows. So those guys I actually know. So it's fun to see them in roles. I think it was a...

A very innovative show in telling a contemporary story of Native life. When I interviewed some of them, some of the folks from it, one of the things I kept saying was, it's really cool to have a modern show about Native culture where we didn't, where powwow wasn't the feature, right? So many times that's the default that you go to in TV or film. It's like, oh, okay, we're gonna talk about natives. Well, that has to be our powwow.

Christian Brim (24:49.953)
Mmm.

Paul Gowder (24:58.284)
And while we're a powwow focused website, I thought it was really cool that I think there was maybe only one powwow scene in the whole series. So I thought in that perspective, it was really good. I think it was also a really cool way to highlight some of the issues that people on reservations in some of these tribes are facing in a funny, approachable way for people outside the culture. It was fun to hear some of my friends

Christian Brim (25:16.31)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Gowder (25:27.214)
talk about the show with me that maybe didn't know about these things beforehand and hear their perspective. So that was interesting. So I loved it. I thought it was a really cool show. I wish it would continue, you know, those guys that, I don't know if you go back and look at some of the early YouTube videos of the 1491s, those are some of the guys who wrote and produced it. They're just really creative and funny people. So hopefully we'll see more from them in the future.

Christian Brim (25:32.544)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (25:57.666)
Yeah, I'm glad you liked it because I didn't want to have to disagree with you. I love the show. Some of the funniest shit I've seen in a while. But but to your point, I, you know, I looked at it as it didn't do this. The Hollywood stereotypes and it felt but but it wasn't irreverent. You know, even though the humor there was humor, it wasn't irreverent.

Paul Gowder (26:05.484)
Yeah, crazy.

Paul Gowder (26:18.124)
Right.

Christian Brim (26:26.242)
The spirit guide is the spirit guide warrior. Yo ho! I mean, he is my favorite character in the whole show. I mean, it's just it because you could do it all the wrong ways, but they did it the right way. So go watch Reservation Dogs, not Reservoir Dogs. That's different. Reservation Dogs. Yes. Yeah. And then I also thought it interesting because they filmed that all in Oklahoma.

Paul Gowder (26:45.195)
No, totally different. Yeah.

Christian Brim (26:53.954)
And we don't have reservations here. So, yeah, interesting. yeah. And it was set in Oklahoma and I'm like, well, that's strange. We don't have any reservations. which is a strange word to use anyway. You know, I didn't know growing up in Oklahoma had said that phrase, many times off the reservation didn't understand that it was potentially offensive. Right? Like that, you know,

Paul Gowder (27:20.857)
I mean, there's so many of our phrases. Yeah. When you go back and look at some of the stuff.

Christian Brim (27:25.898)
Right, right. But I'm kind of one of those people, you know, that I don't intend to, I mean, I used to try and attend to offend. I try not to intend to offend anymore. But, you know, sometimes things are said that someone may take offense to, but understand I don't intend any offense. And I think that's what's missing from the dialogue, not just with natives, but just in general is that

people are looking to be offended as opposed to, you know, and certainly there are people are out there saying things to be offensive. There's no question about that. But like then there's this vacuum where it's like, I can't, I can't talk about this. can't say this because I don't want to offend anybody. And then I'm like, that just there, there's so much out there that needs to be discussed, but we were, we're afraid to discuss it because we don't want to offend anybody.

Paul Gowder (28:26.624)
It's an interesting time. you, we have some Facebook groups and of course the Facebook page. So we have a lot of interaction and people posting comments and sometimes it's frustrating because the littlest thing can set people off. And then we get into these flame wars and going back and forth. I, I like to focus on the positives and I think if we, if we can shine the light on more stuff and if we educate more people,

then we raised the bar for everybody, right? So that's what we try to do with our content is I don't, there's a lot of issues out there and we definitely like Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, we try to highlight that when possible. But as far as like the controversial topics, I like to just focus on the positives and really try to shine spotlights on like native artists and people in the community doing cool things. There's plenty of other.

Christian Brim (29:10.38)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Gowder (29:26.218)
spaces for those other topics. But I want to help. I guess my philosophy is the more we can educate, the more people understand and the better the understanding, the more they'll care about it and the more they're protected. So maybe we can prevent people from doing offensive things if we can educate better.

Christian Brim (29:44.79)
Yeah.

Christian Brim (29:51.274)
Yeah, think that's spot on because it's too easy to be othered. And when you truly understand someone and their culture, you can't really just think of them in terms of a faceless group that you put in a box and say, you know, this is what they are.

Paul Gowder (30:01.101)
Yes.

Christian Brim (30:21.162)
I think about like growing up, I was raised on old Westerns and my grandfather loved old Westerns. He watched the riflemen all the time. But, you know, there was this Hollywood portrayal of natives for decades and it perpetrated this otherism.

Like, you know, I remember talking to people when I was young and they'd find out from that I was from Oklahoma. And I said, do people live in teepees? And I'm like, what? Like that was a serious question, right? Do you guys ride horses? I'm like, no, no, no, I don't. mean, I can, but. And and then it kind of shifted, I think maybe with Dancing with Wolves was probably the first mainstream that was not that.

And there were a lot of good films, but Hollywood was really shaped that up until the current time. But I think what's what's fascinating to me is and maybe it's because I'm in Oklahoma and it's more prevalent here, but like how. How timely this is like this is, you know, native culture exists and persists and flourishes in the modern day.

And there are a lot of people that just don't have any clue that it's going on.

Paul Gowder (31:54.99)
Right. And, you know, there are people, again, you're talking about our different audiences, you know, there are people that come into our Facebook group and they'll ask questions. And the questions could be construed as offensive, but they're not coming from an offensive place. They're coming from a place of ignorance. They don't know. So my approach with that is, you know, I try to cut off or, you know, kind of get ahead of any kind of

blow back they're gonna get and like, okay, let's before we just throw them out of the group and run them out of town, let's tell them what they did wrong. Let's explain to them why it was wrong and let's educate them on what the correct thing to do. Because if we just throw them out, they're just gonna go into it. They're not gonna know what the issue was. One of the things that happens all the time in the Facebook group and I finally, we now have a rule in the Facebook group, specifically.

If somebody uses the word costume, you cannot reply to that and be and tell them that's wrong. Because it's people get offended by the word costume. Well, nobody's coming in asking about costumes as trying to be with malice, right? They don't know exactly or Halloween costume, right? Yes, that is not the correct term for for powwow outfits or regalia or, whatever the dance clothes is, you know.

Christian Brim (33:06.134)
Like a clown costume or Halloween costume. Right, right.

Paul Gowder (33:18.776)
But they don't know that. So if we just wholesale go after them, they're not gonna know. So yeah, it's those kinds of things that I really wanna focus on. Let's educate, let's teach them instead of just being mad about it. And now, of course there are things like when somebody in the news says that we didn't kill enough Indians. There's...

Christian Brim (33:24.79)
They don't know what they did wrong, right, right.

Christian Brim (33:36.332)
this.

Paul Gowder (33:44.472)
That is maybe from more of a malice play. I don't know what her intentions were, but that's a different subject, right? That's not what the people in our Facebook group are doing, for the most part.

Christian Brim (33:56.934)
Yeah, I mean, and this is the thing, I don't, the treatment of native tribes by the federal and state governments is, it's an abomination. It really is. I use the term fuck the feds because like, don't, mean, if,

If you as a citizen of the United States, native or non-native, you don't know that story, then you don't know how much you should distrust your government. And this was way before the internment of the Japanese in World War II or any of that stuff. So the way they treated natives was awful.

But the reality is, and I'm not here justifying what the government did, but the reality is from the time that the Europeans showed up here, there was going to be a conflict because it was a fundamental conflict of technology and culture. And they could not coexist in the big picture. They tried.

and they did it for a long time they coexisted but at one point the technology was going to prevail. The Europeans had the better guns, they had the better technology and they were going to prevail. If you look back through history of the world and this may sound bad but you know when the Romans came in

they would just kill people. They were not interested in your tribe, your culture, or preserving it. was like you assimilate or die, just like the Borg. And so in some ways, you can look at the story of natives in America as an attempt to do it the right way, but it was never gonna work. I mean, it just wasn't. But it did work.

Christian Brim (36:12.916)
in the sense that native tribes have continued and thrived and the culture still persists. And in that way, it is a success story.

Paul Gowder (36:26.04)
There's still a long way to go. Yeah. There's still some issues we need to deal with. Yeah.

Christian Brim (36:29.474)
100%. But you know, that can be said of a lot of people in the United States. mean, again, going back, fuck the feds, I don't trust them. But anyways, I want to talk about Andor real quick. I don't know why I also want to talk about Andor. What do you think of the show?

Paul Gowder (36:52.238)
I love the show. actually, I have friend that we played disc golf every weekend and he yelled at me the other day. He's like, why have you never told me about the show? was like, Chris, I did tell you about the show, but it just flew under the radar for so many people. love, yes. I love seeing the Star Wars world expanded with these new characters and these new plots. And I love the...

Christian Brim (37:05.92)
Yes, it did. You've watched the second season. Okay.

Paul Gowder (37:20.578)
the detail and the minutia of, you know, seeing what it was taking to build the desk, you know, and not knowing really at first like, that's what they're doing. Yeah, all that kind of backstory and the politics and the, the, yeah, yeah, all that stuff is, it was really, I think it was a cool way to tell a different story in the Star Wars universe. I hope we see more of that. I think the Mandalorian was a,

Christian Brim (37:25.674)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (37:30.849)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (37:35.478)
Mm-hmm, espionage.

Paul Gowder (37:49.742)
a good attempt. Maybe first season was good. We straight away as we went on, Boba Fett was disappointing. But yeah, I love seeing the Star Wars universe expanded. You know, I've got Star Wars all over my room. You know, I've got my R2 here. So for me, any more content I can consume in the Star Wars universe is always good. But I thought Andor was really above what they had done for a long time.

Christian Brim (37:51.904)
First season was good.

Christian Brim (38:20.032)
Yeah, and don't follow Disney well enough to know why Andor was different, but it is definitely different and it's not the normal crap that Disney has produced in the universe. And my son and I were talking about it. We're watching season two together. We haven't finished watching it. But, you know...

as he said, there's like so much there because he was all into Clone Wars, all the animated. And so like he, you know, he grew up watching that too and was much more familiar to the universe than I was. I'm like, I didn't even know that existed. The books, I've never read any of them, the comics, whatever. And he's like, there's so much material here that Disney could draw from. Like what, why do they produce crap? And I'm like, I, the only answer I have is, is that

just like most of large companies and virtually all of Hollywood is risk averse. just, don't, they don't want to take any risks.

Paul Gowder (39:23.864)
Yeah. It was also with the streaming wars, know, they produced way too much Marvel. They produced way too much Star Wars content trying to make Disney plus such a, you know, a must have streaming platform and try to keep up with the Netflix's. Yeah, I think there was definitely an oversaturation of content. So I'm glad to see them slowing down on some of that.

You know, yeah.

Christian Brim (39:55.042)
Well, mean, you'd think they'd get sick of wasting money. I don't know.

Paul Gowder (39:59.694)
You know, I don't know. But you never know, like everybody's saying Elio was a box office failure, but they're expecting it. I've heard some people talk about that once it hits streaming, it's going to go nuts. I don't know how that converts. I don't understand the streaming model and how that actually converts to revenue. But yeah, it's such a weird time now for content.

Christian Brim (40:24.288)
Yeah. Well, and to, to, I look at Spotify and the, the, to me, it's easier to see it in the, in the music than it is the movies. And it's, it's like, there was a book that came out 20, 25 years ago called the long tail. I don't know if you read it, but it was basically talking about the internet's impact on things like that and, how you could, you know,

Paul Gowder (40:45.454)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (40:54.72)
because of technology really make money off of very, very small segments of the market. But then you still have the Spotify's or the Netflix that come in and suck all the oxygen out of the room and they still control the gateway to the technology. like you still can't self-distribute a million dollar production.

Right. You got to have someplace to put it. And, I think the technology will finally evolve that it's not going to be the YouTube's that, that, that you're going to be able to go to alternative platforms and find the content that you want that, that smaller producers, music or video can, make money off.

Paul Gowder (41:45.26)
Yeah, and that's the issue now. mean, whether it's video content or blogging, there's so, with AI and all this, it's how do we continue to pay creators to produce content, but let the Googles of the world make their money? It's a really interesting time for that. was just, before this, I have a group of friends that...

Christian Brim (42:04.642)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Gowder (42:11.69)
we're all in kind of the same space and we were on a call talking about, you it's different creators. There was a travel person, there was a recipe person, a pretty wide array of content creators. And, you know, right now it's tough to be a content creator in a lot of ways because of all the AI and other things going on. But we're all still hopeful that there is a model out there.

that will continue to support small creators and surface the content. But for so long, Google organic search was that way. With that changing, what will be the next way? I don't know. But I hope people will continue to want the content, right? That's the thing.

Christian Brim (42:54.048)
I don't know, but I think.

Christian Brim (42:58.044)
Right. And I think that the, the, I think the AI kills, I think AI is what kills the big boys, right? Like, you know, AI is going to kill LinkedIn and Facebook and Google because it, it's, it's producing so much and so much crap. I think it actually gives birth to these miniature, we'll call them miniature Netflix or it's a, it's a subscription service. It's based on the same technology.

but it's hyper-focused and they're not going to have hundreds of millions of users. They're going to maybe have 10 million users, but it's economically viable. And I think that it's going to be centered around authenticity. think, you know, it's going to be kind of like, not that the content creators can't use AI to produce the content, but it's not going to be AI

produced content. there's going to be, see, two. There's going to be the AI world where we live now, and then there's going to be the people that are seeking authenticity that want a certain type of content, and they want to trust it. And that's what's the new opportunity.

Paul Gowder (44:20.044)
Yeah, it's how do you continue to be authentic in an AI world? Right.

Christian Brim (44:24.16)
You don't play that game. I don't think you win it. If nothing else, you drown because there's so much out there that no one's ever gonna see you.

Paul Gowder (44:33.614)
Yeah, yeah. I'm actually working on the talk now. I'm going to do it a conference in August. that's one of the things I'm talking about is in this world of AI content, how do you stand out and how do you raise yourself above the noise? And for any entrepreneurs out there, my thing is we've got to go back to some of the original things. And that is community. That is email. Those things will continue to be successful.

I've been bullish on email for years, but I am doubling down and doing even more with our email community and really focusing on what we can do with that. Because it's a great way I can talk directly to my audience without an algorithm deciding who gets to read it.

Christian Brim (45:24.982)
I'll go a step further. I'll go a step beyond email and say, newsletters, magazines. Like I could see a resurgence of that where it's not like they were in the past. They're hyper-focused, small subscription, but people are paying for it because they want the authentic content. I can totally see that happening.

Paul Gowder (45:31.021)
Yeah.

Paul Gowder (45:44.941)
Yes.

Yeah, and think Substack is a place that's kind of like that. I just don't know if Substack has the mass reach yet for creators to be discovered on it yet. But I understand what they're trying to do in the model is cool for you to have that kind of magazine or very specialized content and people pay you for it. That's cool. They've got to get to the point where, like with Facebook, it's easy to surface and discover new content on Facebook.

Some of the other platforms aren't there yet for discoverability.

Christian Brim (46:21.26)
I agree. Well, real quickly, what kind of coaching do you do? You said you do coaching. So what do do?

Paul Gowder (46:26.572)
Yeah, thanks. I love helping entrepreneurs level up their business. I do that, like I was just saying, I do that really helping people find who their community is and how to serve them through email, newsletters, building email segments. So we do a lot of that really learning what your audience, how they break down and let's create segments and sequences that will serve them. As well as, you know, how you do community building and how you can

really grow your business with, whether it's with Facebook groups or other kind of community or social media. yeah, that's really where I focus on is helping people understand their businesses and using these tools like email to go forward with their business.

Christian Brim (47:10.72)
And how would people find you if they wanted to learn more?

Paul Gowder (47:13.58)
Yeah, I'd love for you to come over. PaulGadder.com is the place where I do all of that. If you're interested in seeing some of the things I do with email, PaulGadder.com slash email tools. I go through kind of my favorite ways to grow my list. At powwals.com, our email list is about 110,000 subscribers, a very active list. And so if you want to see how I do that, PaulGadder.com slash email tools.

Christian Brim (47:41.918)
Lovely listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you heard, shoot us a message and we'll get rid of Paul. Until then, ta-ta for now.