$10,000 and Consistency Started Daphnique Springs' Career
Daphnique Springs Quit College To Chase Her Comedy Dreams
- Daphnique Springs pivoted from a chemistry degree to comedy, dropping out to pursue her passion.
- She built a large social media following by collaborating with others and honing her production skills.
- Springs connects with audiences through relatable comedy that explores universal human experiences.
Daphnique Springs went to college to make lipstick formulas, not jokes. The chemistry major turned comedian interned with a pharmaceutical firm. She wanted to work for a beauty company.
“The goal was to work in cosmetics,” she tells HelloBeautiful.
Springs planned her future between classes and labs. It looked familiar to those in her circle. “You go to work a nine to five. Every day you come home. You have a family and a husband, and a house, and you go on vacation twice a year, and then that’s it.” It was not enough for her.
She stashed a nest egg away, slowly building an exit ramp off that predictable path. She dropped out ten credits shy of graduation when her bank account hit five digits. “One thing I’m not into is going somewhere, being unprepared, or struggling. So, I moved to Los Angeles with ten thousand dollars.”
The number felt like a sign. It represented security.
Having a place to crash didn’t hurt either. Springs moved in with her grandmother, who respected her hustle. “I’ve always had that in me, so my grandmother never had to be over my shoulder. I was working on sets every day, leaving at like 5 a.m. coming back at 10 p.m., so she knew I was working,” she says.
Related: ‘Stranger Things’ Star Priah Ferguson On Sisterhood, Style And Authenticity
Sticking to Plan A
Abandoning a formal education to focus on the entertainment industry is risky. Some people opt to ease their way in. Springs didn’t feel that option fit her goals. “What worked for me is to go all in,” she said. “That’s what I did. I didn’t look back.”
Some suggested that Springs should finish school as a backup plan. She refused, seeing it as a sign of surrender. “I said, no, because that was my old life. This is my new life, and I embraced this,” she continues.
“I never want to create a safety net for myself,” she adds. “It’s no plan Bs, plan Cs, plan Ds, it’s just plan a.” The commitment to plan A was clear to her grandmother who supported her choice to pivot after watching her work towards her goal every single day. “She saw that I was on my grind,” says Springs. “I’ve never been lazy ever since I was a child.”
“I always tell people, I believe that hustle is something that you’re born with, not something you could develop. It’s a talent as well. People that are just like go-getters, and that’s gonna make a way out of nothing that’s a talent and sometimes that talent can manifest into greatness.”
Creating Through Service
Greatness is often the result of teamwork. Springs performed at comedy clubs and appeared on series including Black Famous, It’s Flordia Man, Kenan, Pause With Sam Jay, and First Lady of BMF: The Tonesa Welch Story.
She also built a large social media following, acting and producing skits with a rotating group of collaborators who shared her dedication. She played whatever role she needed to in the moment to get the content out. One day she was the lead, the next she was the DP. “I would go over these influencers’ houses, and I would hold the camera. I would help pitch sketches, pitch jokes, or whatever so that I can learn their skills so that I can eventually, you know, lead on my own,” she said.
Her leadership skills were on full display in her 2025 comedy special LOL Live, released by Hulu in 2025.
Connecting Through Laughter
By distributing her content online, she found an audience that appreciated her relatable comedy.
“I’ve had people say my content has helped them with grief and death, and also with even chemo and cancer,” she says. “That’s what’s important when people can share things and laugh in their darkest moments. That’s what motivates me.”
The themes in her comedy include the romantic setbacks, petty squabbles, and toxic showdowns everyone has had to endure at one time or another. The downsides of oversharing on dates, this economy’s struggles, and child support drama get explored in her videos.
“We’re all living a human experience, and that’s what I really aim to tap into,” she says. “One of my biggest videos recently was about the friend zone? Everybody can relate to that.”
“It also doesn’t matter your sexuality, people experience that at least once in life,” she adds. “We all have a lot more in common than we think.”
Crafting A Signature Look
Springs beats her face quickly when rushing between sets and stages. Lengthy GRWM sessions are not high on her professional agenda. “I like quick, good coverage makeup that I can do in, like 10 or 15 minutes when I go on the road,” she says. She declines the offers for free beauty services that result from her excess of 800,000 Instagram followers for efficiency’s sake.
“Makeup artists are taking like an hour to put on your face, and to me, that’s just wasted time,” she says. “I don’t have to look different every day.”
She prefers a signature look. “I like full coverage matted. I don’t like to look oily and shiny,” says Springs. She also likes mascara and “ Little, little baby hair, not a lot because you know, the baby hair [is] getting crazy out here.”
Her love of lipstick might not have ended up in her mixing them up, but they’re never far away from her makeup bag.
“I love lipstick colors. I love to pop,” she explains. They are the core of her look. “I want you to see my lips before you see anything else.”
Curating Life Offline
Shifting algorithms might have helped her succeed in comedy, but she appreciates the beauty in offline moments.
“I also encourage people to get outside, go outside, touch grass,” she says. “Mingle with other people. Get back to community, and we’ve created such a community online, but real life, human experiences, and community is very important as well.”
She dreams of being in a big budget comedy but she is more focused on continuing to build her own content than chasing down the traditional path to stardom.
“If you get clouded with all of this, it starts to make you disgruntled and bitter, and you don’t want to do that,” she says.
“The biggest thing is consistency.”
