Colleen McCarthy was working a corporate job she was never “super excited about” when she started creating floral arrangements in her free time.
Two years later, she’s designed floral arrangements for stars like Sabrina Carpenter and Drew Barrymore through her business Colleen Rose Florals.
McCarthy, 27, grew up in Ridgefield, CT. She majored in environmental studies and communications at Fordham University, but after she graduated in 2020, “it was hard to find a job, period, let alone a job that I really wanted to do,” she says.
She landed a job at a PR agency, but viewed the job as a “temporary thing” while she figured out her long-term plan.
A couple years into her job, McCarthy says she had a “mini quarter-life crisis” about her career. She took a step back to reflect: “What do I like? What have I always liked? What am I good at?”
McCarthy has always loved flowers — “I would always be the person in my apartment who would buy flowers from the grocery store and arrange them nicely,” she says — so when she came across floral design as a potential creative career, she decided to give it a try.
In late 2022, McCarthy took an introductory class at Flower School New York, a floral design education institution. Beginner classes currently cost about $175, per their website.
“I remember the instructor came over to me, and she was like, ‘Oh, is this your first class?’ And I said, yeah. And she was like, ‘It doesn’t seem like it. You seem to have a natural talent for this,'” she recalls.
Hearing that gave her McCarthy the confidence to seriously pursue floral design, she says.
‘I just started telling people I was a florist’
While still working her full-time job, McCarthy started buying grocery store flowers each week to practice making her floral designs, and she began sharing her work on Instagram and TikTok and in several local Facebook groups.
Social media was “really huge” in helping McCarthy grow her business, she says.
“I just started telling people I was a florist, even though I wasn’t really that established,” she says. “I think just telling myself and telling other people, like, ‘Yeah, I’m a florist,’ it made it happen more easily.”
McCarthy holding one of her floral designs.
Jenna Yandle Photography
Her first official sale was to a member of one of the Facebook groups in March 2023.
“I was just so excited, just the fact that someone would pay for my work,” she says. “That was also really validating.”
In May 2023, McCarthy officially registered Colleen Rose Florals as an LLC – a costly process, she says, but ultimately worth it.
“I don’t regret it at all, because then I had all the official stuff done, and then when I really started getting more traction and getting more business, I was happy that I had that,” she says.
McCarthy started working with event planners to design florals for brand events, and even booked her first wedding at the end of 2023.
“After I did that, it also gave me so much more confidence that I could do larger-scale events and figure it out,” she recalls.
Focusing on florals
Halfway through 2024, McCarthy says she started to “really consider” quitting her day job.
“There were more and more instances where I was having to turn down flower jobs because of my nine to five,” she says. “That was kind of a tipping point, I think, because I was like, ‘Wait a second, I would like to be saying yes to these opportunities.'”
In December 2024, McCarthy decided to leave her job to focus on running Colleen Rose Florals.
“I kind of was pretty confident that I would be successful,” she says. “I didn’t really feel nervous or scared about it. I think maybe my mom was a little more nervous than I was.”
In 2025, the first year she focused on the business full-time, Colleen Rose Florals brought in over $175,000.
An arrangement McCarthy designed for a brand event.
Courtesy of Colleen McCarthy
Her main business expense, naturally, is flowers. High-quality blooms are “really expensive,” she says, and “there’s a disconnect between what the average consumer thinks flowers cost, and what flowers actually cost.”
McCarthy provides floral arrangements for a variety of occasions, including weddings, brand events, book launches, photoshoots and even concerts.
She charges a minimum of $250 for a single “bespoke” floral arrangement and typically charges $1,000 or above for smaller events, while small-to-medium weddings can cost between $5,000 and $10,000.
Starting in the spring of 2024, Madison Square Garden began commissioning floral arrangements from McCarthy to decorate artists’ dressing rooms.
This year, she’s provided bouquets for the dressing rooms of stars like Katy Perry, Lainey Wilson, Haim and Renee Rapp.
One of her most exciting moments was being asked to create a bouquet for Sabrina Carpenter in October.
“That was so exciting and validating, that someone felt confident enough in me to order my work for a huge artist,” she recalls.
A floral arrangement that McCarthy designed for Sabrina Carpenter’s dressing room at Madison Square Garden.
Courtesy of Colleen McCarthy
Looking ahead
Right now, Colleen Rose Florals is a solo operation, though McCarthy sometimes hires freelancers to help out with large events.
Every day running her floral business is “super different,” she says, but she usually wakes up at 6 a.m. to buy flowers from Manhattan’s flower district.
She typically starts preparing for major events the day before, she says, and depending on the scale of the event, she either takes the flowers back to her apartment, or rents a studio space for the day.
McCarthy has to “process” each flower – a “pretty time-consuming” task of taking off the leaves, cutting the stem, peeling off any old petals, and putting it in water – before she can start working on her arrangements.
Once she’s finished with her designs, she transports them to the venue by hiring a driver or renting a van herself.
A bouquet McCarthy designed for an engagement party.
Courtesy of Colleen McCarthy
As a solo business owner, one of the biggest lessons she’s learned has been “knowing when to ask for help,” she says.
“There have been a couple times where I pulled an all-nighter to finish everything, or I made all these arrangements by myself, when it would have taken half the time if I just asked for help,” she says.
McCarthy’s main business goals for 2026 are to rent a permanent studio space and to launch a weekly floral arrangement subscription program as a way to create “another consistent stream of income.”
She still posts her floral designs on social media, and often receives messages from aspiring florists hoping to learn about her career journey.
“That used to be me, reaching out to florists, wanting to learn from them,” McCarthy says. “The fact that I am now someone that others are inspired by is really crazy.”
“It makes me feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing,” she continues.
Want to give your kids the ultimate advantage? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course, How to Raise Financially Smart Kids. Learn how to build healthy financial habits today to set your children up for greater success in the future.
