Earlier this year, we launched a podcast to sit down with some of our favorite content creators, and find out what it takes to build an audience and a career out of their passion projects. 

Hosted by our very own Ariel Burstein, The Thought Leaders Podcast has featured interviews with Adam Ragusea, Rich Antoniello, EriktheElectric and The Goal Guys. However, there is one episode that really stood out this year, and that was our interview with Simon Whistler. 

You might know Simon from his various YouTube channels, which include Today I Found Out, Top Tenz, and Biographies - he now has so many channels that he admits himself in the interview that he often loses count! Simon is one of our favourite general knowledge YouTubers, and there’s a huge audience out there that agrees with us: we launched the episode in May, and it has already received almost 5,000 views on YouTube, and has 5 times more listens as our next most popular podcast episode!

During the interview, Ariel spoke to Simon about how he got his start with educational YouTube content, how he grew his channels, and what's coming next. He also talked about what it's like running multiple YouTube channels, why he started each of them, and what he would do differently if he were starting over today. 

Watch the full episode here: 

Or listen to the podcast here: 

Here are some of our top takeaways from the episode: 

1. Simon got started doing voiceover work after someone at university said he had a nice voice
2. His first videos on Top Tenz actually started as an audio book
3. Simon acknowledges that new competitors in the general knowledge space push him to make his channels better
4. Part of his success is due to the fact that he prefers to make longer content to give viewers a more in depth understanding of a topic - a style which works well for the YouTube algorithm
5. He describes setting up Biographies as “scratching my own itch” because he loves biographical stories and saw that no one else was doing this on YouTube

Subscribe to The Thought Leaders Podcast on your favorite listening platform for more great interviews: 

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You can also see more of Simon Whistler on his YouTube channels: 

Today I Found Out

Top Tenz

Biographies