How Most Florists Become Florists

Recently, someone with zero experience but a heart full of passion reached out and asked if they could intern with me. They wanted to know how I became a florist and whether I always knew this was what I wanted to do. It got me thinking.

I don’t think anyone decides they’re going to become a career florist right out of the gate. At least not the florists I know.

It usually starts with an itch you need to scratch. You’re drawn to flowers, working with your hands, being outside, creating something from nature. There’s this quiet pull of your intuition that keeps coming back until one day you finally decide to give it a try.

You make flowers for your friend’s baby shower. You buy bunches from Trader Joe’s. Before long, your kitchen floor looks like a compost pile. You second guess each arrangement, asking yourself, Is it finished, Am I doing this right? You compare yourself to the florists you follow online, but your curiosity keeps pulling you forward.

Then someone asks if you’ll do their bridal shower. Then their wedding.

When people start introducing you as “a florist,” you immediately correct them. No, no. You just happen to be someone who really likes flowers. You arrange them from time to time, but that doesn’t make you a real florist. At least not in your mind. So you keep saying yes.

One night you throw together a website, even though you feel completely unqualified. Somehow someone you’ve never met finds you and books you. Suddenly you’re responsible for someone’s wedding flowers.

You’re stressed out of your mind because you care so much. You survive on coffee, adrenaline, and very little sleep. Somewhere in there you develop a tiny eye twitch. The wedding comes and goes, the flowers are beautiful, your couple is thrilled, and somehow you pull it off.

Then another inquiry comes in. And another. Before long, everyone around you thinks you’re a florist except you.

I think this is the first big crossroads. The to-do list is long and your inbox is piling up. You start wondering if you should quit and go get a real job. Instead, you hire your first freelancer because you realize you can’t keep doing everything yourself. People start calling you a florist, but it still feels strange because there was never a graduation ceremony. No certificate. No official moment where someone told your lizard brain, “Congratulations. You made it.” You just keep figuring it out one wedding at a time.

Eventually you hit another wall. You’re working late into the night, waking up before the sun, eating like a trash panda between checking off your never ending to-do list, and saying yes to everything because you’re afraid the inquiries will stop if you don’t.

Around this point, you become convinced everyone else knows something you don’t. You look at the florists you admire and assume they’ve cracked the code while you’re still trying to keep your head above water. Their businesses seem to run effortlessly, and you can’t help but wonder why everything feels so hard for you.

For a minute, you think about dusting off your LinkedIn profile trying to remember what a resume is even supposed to look like because for the past few years you’ve had your head down in flower buckets. The thought of starting over feels just as exhausting as figuring out how to fix the business you’re already running.

That little eye twitch isn’t so little anymore. For some of us, that’s when our health starts asking us to slow down. Years of running on caffeine, stress, drive-thru dinners, and too little sleep eventually catch up. My autoimmune disease wasn’t necessarily caused by flowers, but the way I was running my business certainly wasn’t helping.

That’s when it finally clicks. The business isn’t the problem. The way you’re running it is. So you build systems.

At first, you’re convinced systems are going to make your business feel rigid or take away the creativity that made you fall in love with flowers in the first place. Instead, they give you room to breathe.

You stop reinventing the wheel for every client. Your pricing becomes consistent. Your team knows what they’re doing. Your clients know what to expect. You stop impulse-buying flowers because you’re worried you don’t have enough, and you put back those Claire de Lune peonies your ego wants but your client’s budget doesn’t. Your business becomes profitable and starts to grow. Instead of spending every day putting out fires, you finally get to think about design again. You get the freedom to work on your business, not just in it.

You can finally take a vacation without your business falling apart. You don’t have to be physically present at every event. You make dinner at home more often than you eat it in your car. You even find hobbies that have nothing to do with flowers.

That’s when I think you’ve really made it. Not because you’re booking bigger weddings or growing a successful floral reputation. Because you’ve built a business that supports the life you actually want to live.

Some florists love the hustle. I don’t, well I don’t any more. Don’t get me wrong, I will always love flowers and the rush of dopamine I get from searching for the seasons best. But, I also love having dinner with my family, taking time off without feeling guilty, and having enough energy left over to enjoy the life I’ve built outside of my business.

The funny part is, I don’t actually think anyone ever has it all figured out. The florists I looked up to when I was starting were figuring it out too. They’re still figuring it out. Their businesses have changed as their lives have changed, just like mine has.

There isn’t really an arrival. You just keep adjusting.

The business you needed in your twenties probably isn’t the business you’ll want in your forties. Success isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about continuing to shape your business around the life you want to live, staying curious, and trusting your intuition to guide your next steps.

Maybe that’s how florists become florists. Not all at once. Just one small baby step at a time.

If you’re reading this somewhere between your first wedding and dusting off your LinkedIn profile, I built À La Carte Made Easy for you.

It isn’t a flower arranging course. You probably already know how to make beautiful flowers. It’s everything I wish someone had taught me about the business side of floristry. Pricing weddings with confidence, creating a repeatable client process, setting healthy boundaries, and building systems that give you enough breathing room to actually enjoy the work again.

If you’re ready for that part of the story, I’d love to have you inside the course.

À La Carte Made Easy. Evergreen. Ready when you are.

Image from 2015 from a 1:1 workshop in my Santa Ana Studio.