There's a version of an artist's life that looks like sacrifice. You give up stability, structure, and the predictability of a paycheck in exchange for the long shot — the audition that lands, the song that charts, or the break that finally comes.
Déja Green, known professionally as Éss, rejected that version entirely.
Not dramatically or with a manifesto. She simply decided early that freedom and mobility weren't things she'd earn someday. They were the non-negotiables she'd build everything else around.
That one decision has shaped every move since.
The Kid Who Couldn't Pick Just One Thing
Éss grew up in Georgia, but New York was always calling. She'd been visiting the city every summer since she was ten, the same age her father sat her down and said: pick five colleges, pick a path, make it concrete.
By then, Éss already knew that she wanted to sing and cook. But what she really wanted, though she didn't have language for it yet, was to express herself fully, in whatever form that took.
She found her way to a performing arts middle and high school, where her schedule kept steering her away from the singing track and toward acting and dance. Eventually, she landed in musical theater, the place where all three finally got to coexist.
But even that wasn't enough to contain her.
At sixteen, she founded a traveling spoken word performance group, weaving poetry together with live painting, dance, and original music. "I knew that whatever it was that I was going to do, it couldn't just be one of the things," she says. "It had to be all the things in conversation because it made the most sense for how big my feelings felt and how big my ideas felt."
NYU, the Hard Way
Éss enrolled at NYU's drama program in 2017 without doing much research on the school. She just knew she wanted to be in New York, and she wanted one of the best programs in the country.
She got both.
What she didn't anticipate was two years in the Meisner studio, a notoriously rigorous method known as "the crying school of acting,” Éss laughs, recalling that period of her life. The training was demanding in ways that felt less like growth and more like erosion, and she almost quit.
"I felt like I had lost the sense of wonder and joy," she said. "Everything became so serious."
But at some point, she joined a lab called Making It as a Multi-Hyphenate Creative, taught by actress and producer Bryce Dallas Howard. For the first time, someone in the industry was telling her the thing she'd always believed: you don't have to pick one.
"For so long, everybody was like, you've got to niche down," she said. "You can't be an actor and a producer, and I was just like, I just don't think that's true."
The lab's culminating project was a $500 short film challenge: produce a complete short film with almost nothing. She produced her own. Then she produced a classmate's. Then she assisted on a third.
People kept asking her: how are you finding these resources? How are you doing this?
Éss had always been the one people came to when they needed the behind-the-scenes figured out. Artists knew how to make art, she noticed, but not always how to organize, resource, and execute it. But she did, and her father had been telling her the same thing for years: ‘Get your LLC.’
In 2020, still a student, she finally did get an LLC, with no clear plan for what the company would become, only the certainty that something would. Before graduation, she also signed with a talent agency and got her real estate license because she refused to leave herself without options.
"What I'm not gonna be," she recalls saying, "is a struggling artist."
Planting Seeds, Building Systems
After graduating in 2021, Éss began building in earnest and doing it the way she'd always done things: all at once.
Real estate funded her early post-grad years while she auditioned and took on creative projects for friends like branding shoots, music video treatments, small productions. Then real estate lost its appeal. "It didn't align with me anymore," she shares. So she pivoted again, this time toward content creation.
Éss started small in content creation. First with twenty-five dollar videos, then fifty dollar videos. Testing products, making testimonials, figuring out the landscape. Then she found Billo, a marketplace platform, and started building a portfolio. Then she found agencies and eventually, brands.
"When I started to treat it like a business, it rewarded me like a business," she says. Within about two years of starting, and four to six months of going full-time, she hit her first $3,000 month with a largest month to date of $8,000.
And she's clear that what brands are actually paying for isn't a camera and a ring light. "They're paying for all of the years of expertise that they won't get anywhere else," she says. "Being a content creator is like being a mini filmmaker. You're wearing all of the hats." Treatments. Storyboards. Mood boards. On-camera performance. Creative direction. Éss doesn't just shoot content, she produces it, and that distinction is what turned a side hustle into a businÉss.
In parallel, she built Tiny Nook, a live music experience inspired by NPR's Tiny Desk concerts, launched in a beloved Brooklyn coffee shop called Nook. The concept was simple: give independent artists an elevated, intimate performance platform without requiring them to be famous to access it. "Everything about Tiny Nook should be artist-centered and artist-forward," she says with pride. "It's my community-centered thing."
It started with two artists, then grew into a recurring series. In 2025, it landed at Town Hall, a historic Midtown Manhattan venue where Éss had worked as an usher in 2019. She remembered standing there then and making herself a promise that she would perform on that stage and produce a show there.
She's done both now.
Choosing What Stays
These days, Éss isn't in discovery mode anymore. Now, she's integrating. "My guiding principle for the year is: I'm no longer discovering. I'm choosing what stays and giving it what it needs to thrive," she reflects.
She’s got DDCE Studio, her UGC content business, Tiny Nook, and DDCE Creative Agency, the holding company she's built to house it all. Plus her work as a singer, performer, and actor. Her goal for the next three to five years is to build systems that can run with her or without her, so that the life underneath everything can finally catch up to the vision.
"My whole goal for my life is freedom and mobility," she shares. "I love doing this, but this is not what I want to do forever, and I've been moving at this speed for a really long time already."
The Moves You Can Steal for Your Own Journey
Éss didn't stumble into a multi-hyphenate career. She built one deliberately, incrementally, and from a set of values she's held since she was a teen.
A few things worth carrying into your own journey:
Stability isn't the enemy of creativity, it's the foundation. Éss chose real estate, content creation, and a day job at the venue she wanted to produce in, not because they were her passion, but because they bought her time and freedom to pursue what was. Financial stability and creative vision aren't opposites. One can fund the other.
Treat your work like a businÉss, and it will behave like one. The moment Éss started sending storyboards, setting rates, and outreaching to agencies, her income changed. The work didn't change, but her posture did.
Your "one move" might not be a single decision. Sometimes it's a principle. For Éss, it's always been freedom and mobility, and every actual decision she's made has just been that principle showing up in a new form.
When asked what she'd tell a younger version of herself, she didn't hesitate. "Trust the process, girl. God's got a plan for you. You just have to listen,” she says immediately. “Listen to yourself, listen to your instincts, and trust the process."
She trusted hers, and look at what she's building.
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The moves you make aren't just about you. They're also about the people you're called to serve through them. If you're a builder like Éss, find out if your foundation is ready. >> Download the free Purpose-Driven Programming Checklist 👇🏾
