Daniel from@thinkgaming fled his country in 2022 with no job, no money, and no plan. Three years later he's running one of YouTube's most dedicated nerdy strategy channels — 500+ hours into Elder Scrolls, the official How-to-Play creator for Too Many Bones, and somehow he's never missed an upload week.

We talked about losing everything in a single day, sleeping on a friend's couch in London, why he treats his channel like a library instead of a newsstand, and what it actually takes to build a niche board game channel without selling out to the algorithm.

If you've ever been told "the only way to grow is top-10 lists and preview videos," this episode is your permission slip to ignore that advice.

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Chapters

0:00 — Cold open

1:24 — Fleeing Moscow with nothing

6:15 — The bus across the border

9:14 — Discovering the Global Talent visa

10:25 — Falling into board games (Mice and Mystics → Gloomhaven)

14:23 — Finding purpose during visa limbo

16:11 — The first (failed) YouTube channel

20:03 — "A library, not a newspaper kiosk"

23:26 — Hobby vs. business: the Ali Abdaal scale

31:55 — Ikigai and the why behind the work

34:17 — The two things he's most proud of

35:50 — Two jobs, never a missed week

44:30 — Watching metrics without serving them

49:58 — Only covering games he actually loves

57:44 — Family, Cheltenham, and the introvert problem

1:04:08 — "I have to do this. This is my mission."

1:14:15 — Going deep on Grimcoven

1:24:03 — Too Many Bones and the Wave 2 wait

1:29:15 — Filming the official Too Many Bones tutorial

1:32:41 — Elder Scrolls vs. Too Many Bones

1:39:17 — Why he still hasn't reviewed Elder Scrolls

1:49:03 — Advice for aspiring creators