Artist-entrepreneur Amo Kise argues creators should stop relying on art sales for income. He outlines three traps keeping artists broke: ignorance of financial tools like LLCs and OPM, desperation that leads to bad deals, and chasing streaming revenue instead of building wealth. Kise achieved 518% investment returns by mastering what he calls the money game.
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I didn't figure it out by selling more music. I didn't figure it out by getting a brand deal and growing my streams or any of that. I figured it out by learning how the financial rules of this game that we're all playing works, how the wealthy elites actually create, grow, and protect their wealth. Within 8 months, I had accessed over $150,000 in business and personal funding. That following year, I generated returns on my investments as high as 518%. Not from my art or dancing on reels, from mastering the game that was running in the background the entire time. And because I figured that out, my art stayed free. Stop trying to make money from your art. I know that sounds insane. You clicked on this and maybe you were expecting me to give you the top 5 ways to monetize your music, your photography, or maybe even your content, whatever your craft is. And I'm sitting here telling you to stop trying to make money off of it. Hear me out, because what I'm about to share with you has completely changed my life for the better. It's allowed my wife and I to live a life of complete freedom, able to travel the world and even fund my music with less than 10 monthly streamers on Spotify. And if you're an artist, someone who's been grinding, creating, and pouring everything that you have into your work, but still financially struggling, then this might just be the thing that changes your entire reality and that of your lineage. Real quick, before we get into it, why should you even listen to me? I'm Amo Kise. I'm an artist, investor, and founder of a private wealth mastermind, Alchemy Academy, where we help our students live a life of complete freedom by becoming financially independent. I've spent the last 6 years of my life learning the secrets of the 1% and how they play the money game. I've personally invested close to $60,000 just in my own knowledge and personal development to be able to reach a level of freedom that most could only ever dream of. I travel the world as a digital nomad, create music, and teach others how they can find their own dreams and create the impact that they've always been destined for. And in today's conversation, I have so much that I wanna share with you. So let's get right into it. I want you to pause the video right now and look up how to make money as an artist on YouTube. Go ahead. I'll wait. You know what you'll find? 1,000 videos telling you to sell prints, pitch brand deals, post on TikTok more consistently, license your music, sell your beats, and maybe even start a Patreon. And look, none of that advice is necessarily wrong, but however way you look at it, it's all treating the same surface-level symptom and completely ignoring the underlying financial dis-ease. Here's what I mean. Every single one of those strategies has one thing in common. They all require you and your art to work harder. They all put more financial pressure on your creative output. And that pressure to perform is exactly what's killing your creativity. I want you to think about the last time you created something purely because it just called you to. No algorithm in mind, no market research, and no asking yourself, "Will this sell?" Just pure, unadulterated, childlike expression. Think about how rare that feeling has become nowadays. And that's not a coincidence. The moment that you turn your art into the primary source of income, something quietly shifts in the background. You stop creating what God called you to create, and instead you start creating what performs. And eventually you look up one day and you realize that the very thing you loved most about creating art is gone. I watch it happen to artists all the time, and truth be told, I almost let it happen to me. Look, I'm an artist myself. Music happens to be my ministry, and for me, it is my direct line to Source. Music is not a side hustle for me. It is literally how I connect to God and with those that I'm meant to serve. I moved from the Philippines to California when I was just 6 years old. I watched my parents work themselves to the bone, playing by every rule society gave them. Get a good job, work hard, save your money, live better, Walmart. Then 2008 happened. My parents lost the very home they worked so hard to get. My brothers and I experienced firsthand the devastation that comes from relying on only one source of income. I spent most of my childhood sleeping in other people's homes, couches, and even floors. Fast forward to 2016, I decided to try the traditional route anyways because I didn't know any better. I moved out of my parents' home, worked Several, several jobs, lived paycheck to paycheck, and I told myself that this was all just temporary, that once I got stable enough, then I'd focus on the music, then I'd create the art. That stability never came. So I quit my 7th job with less than $100 in my bank account. Here's what I learned. I didn't figure it out by selling more music I didn't figure it out by getting a brand deal and growing my streams or any of that. I figured it out by learning how the financial rules of this game that we're all playing works, how the wealthy elites actually create, grow, and protect their wealth. And once I learned the rules of the game that I was playing, I decided to use those tools and that knowledge for myself and my family. I took a path that would seem incredibly uncomfortable for most. I invested way more than I could comfortably afford into mentorship, and within 8 months, I had accessed over $150,000 in business and personal funding. I took a large portion of that funding and I invested it into various assets. Across 3 different categories: crypto, disruptive tech stocks, and metals. That following year, I generated returns on my investments as high as 518%, not from my art or dancing on Reels, from mastering the game that was running in the background the entire time. And because I figured that out, my art stayed free. I don't need my music to pop off just to survive. I don't need record deals. Heck, I don't even need people to necessarily like my music. I create just to create, to express what God has placed inside of my heart. I can do that because money was no longer dependent on the art performing. The art got to be what it was always supposed to be, an act of praise, a divine assignment. That, my friend, is the level of freedom that I wanted to talk with you about today, and hopefully something you yourself can experience firsthand. So what is actually keeping broke artists broke? Here's a hint. It's not talent. I've seen incredibly talented artists and creators stay broke their entire lives. It's not work ethic either. In fact, most artists work harder than the credit they're actually given in public. It all comes down to 3 specific things that nobody is talking about. Number 1, artists aren't being taught how to leverage the financial tools that are available to them. An LLC, business credit, OPM. These tools were not solely designed for tech founders and real estate investors. They are available to you right now as an independent artist. Your music brand is a business. Your photography studio is a business. Your creative practice is a business. But nobody ever told you that. Nobody sat you down and said, hey, you can access $50K, $100K, $150K in business and personal funding, that you can build a credit profile that is completely separate from your personal finances, that you can structure your income in a way that allows you to keep more of what you actually earn. And gives you access to capital on your terms. They kept that part quiet and you kept grinding harder trying to make the art pay for everything. Just sign below the dotted line and we'll help your music pop off, says the record label. Which brings me to point number 2. Desperation makes you sign predatory deals. Every artist who gave away their masters for a check They did it because they needed money and the art was the only leverage that they had. I want you to think about what that means. The label knew you were desperate. The brand knew you were desperate. The manager knew you were desperate. And desperation is the most expensive energy that you can ever walk into a negotiation with. But if you've already built financial sovereignty that is separate from your art, nobody can hold that over you anymore. You negotiate from power. You say no to deals that don't honor your work. You wait for the right opportunity instead of taking whatever's available to you. In other words, you become unfuckwithable. And that, my friend, changes everything about how your career unfolds. Number 3, artists are playing the wrong game entirely. Teaching an artist how to make more money from their Spotify streams is like teaching someone to bail water out of a leaky boat faster. It doesn't fix the actual hole in the damn boat. First off, The game is changing entirely for music artists anyways. Fractions of a penny per stream is disrespectful to the blood, sweat, and tears that you poured into your craft. Nowadays there's more talk about selling your music direct to fans, and while there's necessarily nothing wrong with that, and I see that as a better alternative, I personally prefer not to just rely on that. The problem here is that you've been operating without a financial foundation. You have no entity structure, no business credit, and no understanding of how to actually leverage OPM, other people's money. In other words, you have no understanding and no knowledge of how to access the same capital that the wealthy elites have been leveraging for centuries to create generational wealth, let alone how to multiply it and let money work for you instead of the other way around. You've been competing in a game that is designed for you to lose and working yourself to the grave for scraps. Please, sir, may I have this crumb of bread? That, my friend, is slavery. So what actually changes when your art no longer has to pay the bills? Everything. You create from a completely different place, and just like yo mama's favorite toy, you vibrate differently. There's no desperation in your work anymore, no algorithm whispering in your ears while you're trying to be present. With the creative act. No second-guessing whether this song, this painting, or this video is going to perform well enough to cover next month's rent. You create from abundance instead of lack, and people feel that. Your audience, they feel that. There is a frequency to the art that was created from a genuine place. Authentic expression that cannot be faked, optimized, or AI slopified. And that frequency is what builds real, lasting, loyal connection to the people that you are genuinely meant to serve. You also negotiate differently. When a label comes to you and you don't need the deal, the energy in the room is different. When a brand reaches out to you and you're not checking your bank account before you respond, The power dynamic shifts completely. I want you to really sit with that. Financial sovereignty doesn't just change your bank account. It changes your posture in every room that you walk into. It changes what you're willing to accept and what you're willing to walk away from. And your art, the actual creative act, becomes better because it's finally free to be what it was always meant to be. Here's why I'm telling you all of this. I built my private mastermind, Alchemy Academy, because I went through exactly what I'm sharing with you today. Through wondering how I was going to pay rent the next month, through making expensive mistakes, through finally getting access to the right knowledge and people. And watching my entire financial reality shift. And I built an entire community that I wish existed when I was just sitting with less than $100 in my bank account wondering, how the fuck am I going to make this work? Alchemy Academy is not a course on how to monetize your art better. It is the complete financial independence blueprint. Whether you're an artist, creator, or someone who's just working a job and wants more freedom in their life. We teach people how to set up the right business structure, how to build business credit from scratch, how to access OPM and funding that most don't even know is available to them, how to think about strategic debt, crypto, AI-informed investing, and building multiple income streams that have nothing to do whether your latest release performed well enough or getting a raise at your 9 to 5. It is designed specifically for people who are done playing small, people who are done with the financial system making decisions for them, people who are sick and tired of being anxious about money. It is for those who are ready to build the kind of foundation that protects their art and financial future simultaneously. If that's you, The link is in the description. Come check it out. Read through what we've built. And if you're not ready for that yet, that's okay too. Keep tuning in, keep learning. Everything I share here is designed to give you real value, whether you ever even decide to work with me or not. We have an entire newsletter and resources that are intended to educate you on things that I would probably get sniped on social media just for posting. So for the purpose of keeping my socials, they will remain private. However, if you want access to them, just sign up. It's completely free. My mission here is not to convince you. The mission here is to ensure that the artists who are supposed to change the world actually get a real shot at doing so. I want to leave you with this: your art has always been a divine assignment. It was given to you specifically, and it deserves to be protected from financial pressure so that it can fully become what it was always meant to be. You don't have to choose between the art and making money. You just have to stop asking the art to solve a problem that it was never designed to solve. Learn the game, build the foundation, and then create from complete and total freedom. As Jesus once said, "Be like the wise man who built his house on the rock." That's what this is all about, and that is what I'm here to help those of you who I'm meant to help do. So if this resonated with you, consider subscribing, share this with an artist or friend who genuinely needs to hear this, and drop a comment down below. Tell me which one of those 3 traps I shared with you hit closest to home. I do my best to read everything. And with all that being said, much love, stay blessed, peace be with you.
