From media maven to small business owner

Christine Escribano spent nearly three decades climbing the corporate ranks as a marketer, leading teams at some of the biggest media companies in the world.

Throughout her career, the college dropout continually bet on herself—starting at 19 years old, when she was kicked out of her house, all the way to her rise in the business world. Escribano points to her work ethic, creativity, and “natural ability to pivot and problem solve.”

In 2023, she placed her biggest bet: After getting laid off that January, she started her own interior design business and furniture studio, Cherry Home Designs, in Westfield, New Jersey.

“I started to side hustle around 2022, when we bought our first vacation rental, where I was the lead designer, guest relations manager, carpenter, painter, all of it,” she told Founder Brew. “My husband and I did that, and that side hustle launched the furniture and design part of my life, and once [my former employer was] going through another round of layoffs, I was like, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ It was just killing me.”

We spoke with Escribano about the difficulties of starting your own business, advice for those thinking of taking the leap of faith, and the systems you need to get started.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Talk to me about the idea of betting on yourself.

I think I always bet on myself because I didn’t have anything else to back it up, right? I didn’t have a college education. I didn’t have any type of family in the industry. My parents’ vision for my life was to be an X-ray technician or a stay-at-home wife or a teacher. That was the extent of their dreams. My dreams were always bigger. There was a statement that I was told when I was young, and that I was always fighting against, which was: You will never amount to anything…So there was a fire in my belly that was way beyond just a career thing. It was about survival. It was about how do I excel and exceed and reach the potential that I know that I have, and sometimes in rebellion of what other people thought I could achieve—mostly my father.

I’m a warrior, and that’s the way I show up to everything. And the bet on myself was not a far stretch, because I think I bet on myself from the time I was kicked out of my house at 19 to where I am right now.

What would you say to someone who wants to bet on themselves but is afraid to take that leap of faith?

Fear is actually the best fuel you can have. I would say fear is fuel. Fear will make you smarter. You’ll look at the things that you have to prepare for, you’ll anticipate and plan according to what those fears are telling you.

Anything you experience in life may look like a failure, but it’s the lesson to the next thing…I fear waking up and saying to myself, “I coulda, shoulda, woulda, but I didn’t.” That is a greater fear than the fear of trying.

How did you manage the transition out of a corporate environment and use that fire and fear to push toward owning your own business?

I think that being the leader of a team, being a developer of ideas, was a great training ground for me to apply to what I’m doing now. There were a lot of translatable skills that I had in corporate marketing, as well as in creative, as well as in leadership…There were a lot of foundational skills that I could build upon.

The things that I was missing were 401(k)s, W-2s, medical coverage, accounting. I missed my HR team and my finance team and the legal team…If I would have known how complicated that would be, that might have been an obstacle for me to start.

So if I was going to give anyone advice of what to do, it’s to have those things in place before you actually take the leap.

Talk to me about the back-end services that small business owners and founders typically don’t have experience with.

There’s a lot of hidden costs related to running a business today because there’s no one solution for everything. QuickBooks is one thing, but I had too many systems I had to learn and teach myself through this whole process between Houzz and QuickBooks and ChatGPT and all the different resources that we utilize.

And then the accounting is really, really complicated. My invoicing comes from one system, and then it has to speak to the other system. And luckily, they now all talk to each other, but it’ll rock your world if you don’t have that foundational part.

You can’t look at profitability for at least five years if you don’t have that foundational aspect of accounting and finance at the forefront.

What would you say was your biggest mistake?

I cast a wide net at the beginning and did too much. I opened a storefront in Westfield. My husband then lost his job a month after me, which wasn’t the plan, right? [He was] the backup plan if this crazy thing didn’t work. But my husband’s a general contractor by trade, and when he lost his job, that’s when I got a little scared.

So I was like, “Let’s do this together.” So we launched the storefront. At first, it was more mostly about furniture with a little bit of interior design and construction. Then I started retail, and I started developing relationships with artists, and I started doing events for artists, and now I’m doing the furniture, and I’m doing the design, and I’m running the business, and all of a sudden doing all of these things. I’m hiring people, and we were also doing our vacation rentals, and we started to scale that business too. So it was so much, so many businesses.

I think the biggest mistake was not having an accountant right from the beginning that I trusted and that was helping me be smart about how to run the business. If I could start over…I would do that. Accountants are the hard bookkeepers that you can trust to help you [with] strategic planning. That is the hardest thing to find.

What’s the most rewarding thing about having your own business?

It’s so funny because I was saying this yesterday. I’m a late arrival person. I’m a 10 o’clocker. I hated corporate because I had to be up super early, and it was just not me. I’m just not that person. I’m a night owl.

And I got up and I was able to mosey around and do my morning espresso…And I walked over to this artist’s studio that he built in his backyard garage, and we learned something new. We learned about metal paint, and we were painting an art piece that we’re doing for the speakeasy, and I’m surrounded by other artists, and then this other artist pops in and says, “Hey, what’s up?” And he was buying some product from this guy who was teaching us. I just looked around. We’re listening to music. We’re rocking out, we’re having a good time. And I’m like, “This is my life. This is why I did it.” So that’s No. 1.

The second is more personal, which is when my daughter calls me and says, “Mom, can you pick me up? I’m not feeling well.” Or, “Mom, can you take me and my friends to the movies at four o’clock today?” I could say yes every time. I could say yes to my daughter. I could say yes to my husband every time. So for those two reasons: I get to live my creative dreams while also being a really good mom.