Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alex Scribner. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alex, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

It wasn’t the greatest or the biggest or even the one with the best results, but I would say the first professional risk I took was something that really has helped me so much but also changed so much for me.

As a kid, I grew up riding horses. I competed throughout middle & high school and after going to college, I wanted a change of pace and an opportunity to try something new. When you start riding horses as a kid, so much of your identity is determined for you, and you really don’t know any better, so when I got to college, I really wanted to step out of that. But when I did, I realized I didn’t know much else, so rather quickly I found myself looking for a local barn to ride at- it would be a home in the middle of a brand new town where I didn’t know anyone, a place in what felt like a foreign country- that I could actually speak the language. After a few months riding at the farm, making new friends, and fitting into their little family, I began to notice that the head trainer running the teaching program was struggling- she didn’t seem to want to be there, she was lazy and it showed, her lessons weren’t educational, her care of the horses was lackluster at best, and her superiors were frustrated.

So after some time observing, and without really thinking about how it would affect my future, I approached the owners of the farm and pitched them. I had little managerial experience, I was still in college technically, I wasn’t much of a teacher, and I was ultimately taking someone’s job. But despite all the logical reasons, I approached them and said “I don’t know if I can do this job, but I know I can do it better than her.”

I was young, I was cocky, I was naive, and admittedly I was probably way to arrogant. But they were desperate and I was convenient, so they gave me the job.

In hindsight, I don’t really consider that my first risk as much as I consider it my first victory. In unassumingly just creating space for myself and succeeding, I often think about how that victory has been something I have continued to build on. Looking back, I can see how that first real leap had a ripple effect to not only lead to the next thing, but it prepared me so much for what that next thing would be and how I would navigate it. In a sense, there was a feeling of “well I did that, so how hard can this be” and I guess that’s just how confidence is born.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

At my core, I am an equestrian. I started riding horses when I was 7 years old and immediately stopped all other extracurricular activities. I competed through middle & high school and dropped out of college to ride horses as a professional, meaning someone just paid me to ride & compete on their horses. For a very long time, I was ashamed of the fact that I didn’t graduate from college. I was embarrassed and would find ways around admitting that I was a college dropout. I worked in numerous positions within the barn, including riding, teaching, and managing- I was a barn rat as a kid, so the thought of getting paid to do anything in the barn was a thrill. I was living paycheck to paycheck and treated pretty terribly, but I was also lead to believe that this was as good as it would ever get for me because I hadn’t finished college.

In 2016, I was working in Alabama for a small private farm riding & selling investment horses. I received a call from my mom one morning that my younger brother had been flipped out a hammock, severed his spinal cord, and was being told he would never walk again. Devastated & confused, I moved home to be with my family while he was in the hospital. I went back to work after 2 months away and something had shifted in my priorities and understanding of how the world works- suddenly the things that were important to me before, no longer mattered. If a horse wasn’t clean enough, or if a client was upset that their saddle wasn’t in the right spot, I just felt frustrated that those no longer seemed like problems to me.

Three years after my brother’s accident, I made the decision to step away from the equestrian industry and move home and take over my brother’s caregiving. During the transition, I had started to learn more about tiny houses, living on the road, and working remotely. I would spend hours researching vanlife and wanted so badly to find a way to make something like that work for this new life my brother & I were living. Naturally, my search brought me to school buses and the pages and pages of people who were converting school buses into their own custom RV’s. We could have a lot more space and a wheelchair lift? Where do we sign?! So in 2020, I began the conversion on a 2004 36′ yellow school bus into a dream travel vessel for me & my quadriplegic brother.

It obviously felt like such a hard left turn from everything I knew, but I was so hungry for something new & different, I had blinders on to all the challenges that lied ahead, the main challenge being a source of income. After my brother’s accident he wanted to find a way to stay connected to his friends and their activities, like surfing & skating, so he picked up photography & videography. Because in the accident he lost mobility in his hands, as his caregiver I would end up doing a lot of the camera setup and even filming of his friends. While I love my brother and loved the opportunity to work with him, I had always thought being behind the lens, shooting something I loved, would be way more fun.

Fast forward to 2021, I am traveling in the bus full time and my brother is joining me when he can. I spent a summer in Denver helping a friend start her business- a rehabilitation center for injured show horses. I had explained to her the importance of having a website & social media because she was such a niche company, she needed to have a way to reach people beyond just word of mouth. So I built her a website and used some supplied photos to manage an Instagram page. But I knew she would need more and there was no budget to hire photographers & videographers. So I rented some camera gear similar to what I had used to help my brother and just started pointing & shooting.

It wasn’t always pretty, but somehow I was creating a business where I could help someone tell their story through multiple mediums. And overtime, what was just a few single snapshots turned into a couple video clips, which then turned into produced short stories that depicted our client’s vision & lifestyle.

Fast forward to today- we are a media agency & content creation company that helps equestrian businesses build a brand, create a strategy, establish a library of photo & video materials, craft websites, and manage social media channels, all while allowing them to focus on what they do best. Whether riding horses, selling equine health supplements, practicing veterinary medicine or just training young riders, Mipsy has become a staple within the equestrian space in less than three years, for all things media & marketing.

After 10+ years of shame surrounding my decision to drop out of college, ironically, I am not only ok with the decision, I am proud of it. So often when working with new clients, mainly professional riders, I am told the same familiar line “this is all I am good at” and I fight the urge to grab them by the shoulders and shake them. I can confidently say today- I would have NEVER learned the things I learned working in the barns, in a college classroom. I am able to run a company, not because I understand this industry, but instead because of all of the fundamental life skills I learned from working with the people I did, in the places I did, with the expectations they had- ironically, I was able to achieve so much more because I dropped out of college and did what I did and for that, I am incredibly proud of the decisions I made.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I started the business, I was committed to life on the road in a school bus. I had dreams of parking in a desert somewhere with satellite internet and I would just log in a few hours a day building a website here and there. I thought I knew myself well enough to know that I didn’t want to interact with people, I just wanted to live out this gypsy vagabond dream.

Over time, as the work increased and the needs evolved, I found myself more involved with my clients- visiting their farms, going to horse shows- and plot twist, enjoying it! I truly thought that I wanted to check out and just be some mysterious designer who delivered exactly what the client needed. Yet, over time, I began to realize so many of the clients had no idea what they needed and really what they wanted was someone who believed in their brand like they did. Not only was I enjoying the client interfacing, but the business was exploding because the client was so happy to have someone who cared.

I think personally, I was so committed to not being a people person, it was weird and such a shock to realize this language that I knew how to speak was coming in handy, and more importantly, I enjoy speaking in it. Eventually, the work became less design and more photography- as a business, I was able to tell the client’s story through photography and videography even better than through a flat website and because I was spending more time with them, I became more invested and ultimately the product shined brighter because there was a legitimate investment on my end.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I have always said, the best marketing I can do for my business, is marketing someone else’s successfully. More often than not, when I receive a call from a potential new client, they not only tell me they saw someone else’s Instagram and found us from them but when I ask “who has a social media channel that you watch and really like” they often respond with a client’s page that we are managing.

But to be honest, I have always felt that because I did not go to school for film, because this is something I am still learning every day, because I don’t have a marketing background, there has to be a bigger reason why people chose to stay. Organization gets my foot in the door- if I can create something that looks professional that speaks to the equestrian demographic, it gets noticed. But what keeps clients with Mipsy is the customer service.

In a world where getting someone on the phone and speaking out your problem in the hopes of reaching a solution is nearly extinct, it is my main focus to create a level of comfort & convenience for my clients. And in addition, if I don’t know how to do it, I will learn, and if I can’t do it, I will find someone. Business owners value someone who they feel is a partner in accomplishing their goals and taking the time to learn their vision and see it with them is something that feels really special so I do my best to make sure the client feels like they have that support from me. I want them to feel confident that I have their best interest at heart. What I have learned is that two very important things come from that trust.

First, I have a lot more leeway and creative freedom to accomplish a goal. I spent many years in very toxic work environments where I was extremely micromanaged and I swore if ever given the opportunity, I wouldn’t do that. So when we take on new clients, I explain that I want to know their vision through and through so they can focus on what they need to get done and I can focus on my responsibilities without them feeling like they have to micromanage what I am doing.

The second, and perhaps the best thing that comes with my clients’ trust is their understanding. Because I am not formally trained and because I am still trying to learn so many things, there are times when grace goes a long way. If our competition is coming out with a better, stronger product, I am trusting that I have the support of my clients to try harder or do better- the trust & support goes both ways.

Contact Info:

• Website: mipsymedia.com
• Instagram: @mipsymedia
• Facebook: Mipsy Media LLC

Image Credits
All mine :)