Amanda Golka is taking her fan base on an adventure—lots of them, in fact. In an age when content creation has become more about profit than creativity, Amanda has built the Swell Entertainment brand into something that is both successful and entertaining. Whether she’s at a Formula 1 race or attending San Diego Comic-Con, she’s bringing her audience truly genuine slice-of-life stories.
In an interview with TVBrittanyF.com, Amanda spoke about what motivates her creatively. She talked about the versatility of her career—from attending major media events, to motorsports, to discussing viral pop culture moments. Plus, she opened up about the honest realities of being a content creator and the things that viewers may not know.
Brittany Frederick: What made you want to go into business for yourself as a content creator? Where this wasn’t just entertaining, but also professionally viable?
Amanda Golka: It all started when I was 16 and I wanted to be famous and an actress. I saw YouTubers getting cast in movies because they were YouTubers. And I was like, this is it. If roles come to me, then my parents can’t tell me no—because I was a minor. I had all these goals and dreams… If roles come to me, then everyone has to say yes. And so that’s how it started. And I was very bad at it.
But over the course of the rest of high school, I learned to love the creative process of writing and editing and basically directing little mini-videos. I took a hiatus and came back to YouTube in 2018, because I wanted that creative outlet. I was a student, I was working in retail and miserable, frankly. My dad was a writer and all this stuff for most of my life. I was always encouraged to like pursue creative endeavors. And I realized that, you know, making videos really fed me creatively.
That’s where I also kind of came up with the “internet big sister” type of thing. I’ve always been a student of content, as they say, and a viewer simultaneously while being a creator. And I saw a lot of people promoting products and things like that, that I was like, I know you’re not using that. And you have a 13-year-old audience. Someone has to actually do a review that’s not getting paid for this.
It was a lot of oh, this could be the one that blows up—and then it not being that one that blows up. It just kind of came to a point where it’s like, it would be super-cool if I could make money from YouTube, because I see all these people making money, while also getting to talk about things they love. I just started treating it like a job in one video, launched everything and five years of work paid off finally. I did the work, and then the work paid off. But luck meets opportunity and persistence.
Your Swell Entertainment channel is amazing in the breadth of topics that you cover. It runs counter to the accepted wisdom that you have to specialize in one thing. Why did you choose to be so versatile?
When I was still in college and all that, if you watched any “How to Get Your First Thousand Subscribers on YouTube” videos—because I watched all of them—they would tell you to pick a niche, and an unsaturated niche at that, and only make content in that and be the best person in that niche. I was like, but I like all these different things and I want to talk about all these different things. I’m doing this because it’s fun for me. I am a multifaceted person, as we all are. I have all these different interests that I want to talk about, that I have too much information about, and eventually someone will want to watch this particular video.
That’s where I feel like my sweet spot is with my audience. I have a lot of people that maybe only watch my film reviews, or only watch my product or event reviews, or my commentary videos, or the sports videos. But such a large portion of my audience is there because I’m the one talking to them about it. Probably the most common comment I get is, I don’t know what this is about, but Swell’s going to tell me about it, so I’m locked in.
You’ve built a following in motorsports, in Formula 1 and IndyCar. What interested you about that space, which is still primarily male-dominated?
I always knew of IndyCar, always knew of NASCAR, I always knew of Formula 1. But my family is a baseball family. We’re not a car family in that way. We’re not a motorsport family. And so it wasn’t until, I want to say 2023, when my friend Hannah was like, you like fast sports… I need you to watch Drive to Survive, because I need someone to talk about this with me, and I think you’re going to love Daniel Ricciardo. And so it started with Drive to Survive. I am a Drive to Survive fan, as everyone speaks down on. [Laughs.]
I just loved the different moving parts of the sport more than anything. And then after I started going to races for Formula One, people were like, I need you to review IndyCar. I need you to review the Indy 500. People have been asking for the Indy 500 review for a couple of years before I even started covering motorsports—when I started covering kind of wackier sports and things like that, like I covered the Florida Man Games. And people were asking for the Indy 500.
By nature, people get to see the fun part of what you do—going to events and meeting people. But it is, as you say, a job. There’s so much that you have to do to enjoy those moments. What do you wish your subscribers knew about your career?
The amount of times that someone sends me, you have to go to this event or something within 14 hours of it starting. [Laughs.] They forget that I’m based in California, mostly a one woman production. I’ve got my editor, William, who I adore. I have a digital assistant, Sparkly, that I adore. But the actual going and doing the thing, that’s all me. That’s also all of my own money as well. People don’t consider the cost of that. Last-minute hotels, a lot of events, hotel rates go up like crazy.
I’ll never forget, I was talking with one creator and I was like, I’m just so exhausted. And he was like, but you’re on vacation all the time. And I’m like, you think this is a vacation, what I’m doing? I’m doing 20, 30,000-step days when I’m gone. I’m up for 16 hours. I’m working that whole time. I’m not resting. These aren’t good night sleeps. I’m in a random hotel in Colorado. This is exhausting a lot of the time.
This month we’ve just basically done a full no-travel month just to try and get me some recovery time, because I think there was one weekend for each of the last two months that I wasn’t on a plane at some point, or wasn’t in a hotel. Not to be like, woe is me. I have the most fun job in the world. I get to do what I want. And I’m a workaholic. I could say no to these events, but also I want to know everything and see everything and experience everything. And so it’s me having to tell myself no a lot of the time as well.
I think it’s just the little things that people don’t think about. Someone’s like, oh, the tickets are a hundred bucks. And it’s like, okay, that’s travel. That’s a hotel room. That’s transportation to and from the hotel to the con. And then I also have this crazy thing as a human being where I have to eat and sleep. There’s costs associated with literally everything that I think people sometimes forget about. It’s just like, go make the video. Because they see the final product, and I don’t always talk about those parts.
For more with Amanda, visit and subscribe to Swell Entertainment on YouTube. Photo Credits: Photos by Ben Cope, with styling by Anna Schilling and hair/makeup by Blondie.
Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at [email protected].
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