“When we're younger, and we're hungry for these opportunities, there's always this tendency to feel like you have to compromise more, or that you need to let somebody else define your value or your worth.”

On this episode of Entreprenista, we welcome back the talented Cheval, who was one of our very first guests on the podcast. When we initially connected with Cheval, she was selling bridal dresses as a head designer with her name being used for the collections. As a designer, she brought over 10 bridal product lines to market and dressed noteworthy female icons like Dove Cameron, Chrissy Teigen, and Carrie Underwood. Except, living this dream came with a lofty price when she signed away the right for her name to be trademarked, without first properly consulting legal counsel. After seeking to renegotiate this one-sided contract, her former employers served her with a lawsuit in federal court that forced her out of the trade she loved and prohibited her from using her own name in any business, commerce, or public social media page. Now, life has changed, business has changed, and Cheval has certainly evolved through, what she calls, her reckless optimism and turned it into a responsible optimism. In today’s episode, she shares how that original contract is still currently being enforced and interpreted in ways that she never could’ve imagined. She discusses how she began picking up the pieces to move forward and allow her lesson learned to be of value to someone else. Learn about how this experience inspired the founding of her non-profit called A Girl You Might Know, which aims to foster a community and network that provides a safe and encouraging environment for artists to create without being subjected to unfair terms. And hear how she now finds herself in the shoemaking business, her secrets to resilience, why we should all honor our mistakes, and so much more!  

We talked about: 

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Connect with Cheval: 

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