Swell Entertainment<\/a> brand into something that is both successful and entertaining. Whether she\u2019s at a Formula 1 race or attending San Diego Comic-Con, she\u2019s bringing her audience truly genuine slice-of-life stories.<\/p>\nIn an interview with TVBrittanyF.com, Amanda spoke about what motivates her creatively. She talked about the versatility of her career\u2014from 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.<\/p>\n
Brittany Frederick: What made you want to go into business for yourself as a content creator? Where this wasn\u2019t just entertaining, but also professionally viable?<\/strong><\/p>\nAmanda Golka:<\/strong> 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\u2019t tell me no\u2014because I was a minor. I had all these goals and dreams\u2026 If roles come to me, then everyone has to say yes. And so that\u2019s how it started. And I was very bad at it. <\/p>\nBut 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. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s where I also kind of came up with the \u201cinternet big sister\u201d type of thing. I\u2019ve 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\u2019re not using that. And you have a 13-year-old audience. Someone has to actually do a review that\u2019s not getting paid for this.<\/p>\n
It was a lot of oh, this could be the one that blows up\u2014and then it not being that one that blows up. It just kind of came to a point where it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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Amanda Golka of Swell Entertainment. (Photo Credit: Photos by Ben Cope, with styling by Anna Schilling and hair\/makeup by Blondie.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nYour 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?<\/strong><\/p>\nWhen I was still in college and all that, if you watched any \u201cHow to Get Your First Thousand Subscribers on YouTube\u201d videos\u2014because I watched all of them\u2014they 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\u2019m doing this because it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s 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\u2019m the one talking to them about it. Probably the most common comment I get is, I don\u2019t know what this is about, but Swell\u2019s going to tell me about it, so I\u2019m locked in.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve built a following in motorsports, in Formula 1 and IndyCar. What interested you about that space, which is still primarily male-dominated?<\/strong><\/p>\nI always knew of IndyCar, always knew of NASCAR, I always knew of Formula 1. But my family is a baseball family. We\u2019re not a car family in that way. We\u2019re not a motorsport family. And so it wasn\u2019t until, I want to say 2023, when my friend Hannah was like, you like fast sports\u2026 I need you to watch Drive to Survive<\/em>, because I need someone to talk about this with me, and I think you\u2019re going to love Daniel Ricciardo. And so it started with Drive to Survive<\/em>. I am a Drive to Survive<\/em> fan, as everyone speaks down on. [Laughs.]<\/em> <\/p>\nI 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\u2014when 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.<\/p>\n\n