Early Life
Shane Carson is an American born actor, producer, entrepreneur and community social activist.
Born in Detroit, Michigan and having lived in both Georgia, and Ohio, and has also spent time in California and Florida.
By the time Carson was in 9th grade he was offered, a “double promotion,” to skip over a grade level, not once, but twice! His mom had accepted the first one, which took him from the 1st to the 3rd grade in elementary school…and later, she declined the second “double promotion” offer, because of the certain adjustment concerns she had with Carson being around sometimes much older and at the time sophisticated teens. For his 9th grade year Carson attended Redford High School on the west side of Detroit, MI, which was a Detroit Public School, that has since been closed and demolished. Carson’s mother, eventually held him back for a year because he skipped school a lot, thus putting him back into his correct age-appropriate grade level. For Carson’s SECOND 9th grade year, his mother sent him (at extreme financial difficulty to their family) to a boarding school in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, called Assumption College School. Carson would live there for the entire school year, while coming “back home to the States” every so often to visit family and friends. Even though he was living in another country as a young adolescent, because of Detroit’s geographical proximity to Windsor, Carson was never more than 20 miles away from home. Carson states, “In high school, I wasn’t the most popular kid, or best dressed, most handsome, or most athletic (although I did win the “Best Hairstyle – Men’s category” in our H.S. Mock Elections …go SMR Rustics). But even way back then, I’d always felt like a leader, even though frequently I didn’t outwardly exhibit leadership qualities.”
When it was all said and done, Carson had been to 3 high schools, in two countries, over a five-year period. Carson ended up graduating from St. Mary’s of Redford High School in Detroit, MI., at 18 years old.
In high school, I wasn’t the most popular kid, or best dressed, most handsome, or most athletic, although I did win the “Best Men’s Hairstyle”.
Acting Career
Early Beginnings 2010 – The Summer of a Career Change
The story of how Carson began his acting career is somewhat uncanny. After recently resigning from his job in corporate America in early summer of 2010, and not having no clear direction on where to go career-wise next. He wrote a relatively short blog post that was titled, “Hollywood In Michigan”. The blog’s main point was to trumpet the economic diversification going in Michigan at the time with the new film incentives and the state’s “green” initiatives. For a long time economically, Michigan, had been one of the most distressed states in the entire country, and Jennifer Granholm, the then current Governor of Michigan had recently enacted the nations largest Film Industry Tax Incentives, which were a whopping 42%. Carson’s blog post highlighted this film industry incentive along with the “green” or alternative energy initiatives that were also ramping up at the time.
Carson states that he remembers tweeting about it (and having maybe 100 twitter followers at the time), when suddenly he gets a random tweet (DM) from a guy saying something to the effect of “Hey Shane, we like your positive energy and everything! How would you like to be on the show?”. Carson had no idea what show he was talking about. Long story short…he was a producer for a new television show that was being filmed in Detroit called, Detroit 1-8-7.
Hey Shane, we like your positive energy and everything! How would you like to be on the show?
Because of the fateful interaction mentioned above, and not long afterwards, Carson began working on the ABC network television show Detroit 1-8-7. Carson first began as an extra, then eventually became a Stand-In. Although there were literally hundreds of extras, featured extras, day players, guest stars and other crew and cast members working on the set of 1-8-7 at one time or another… because of sheer will power, preparedness, and his marketing & social media savvy, Carson’s stock began to rise.
In steps of the #Backchannel
By October of 2010, while working on the set of Detroit 1-8-7, Carson knew that the Michigan gubernatorial candidate (who’d eventually be elected Governor of Michigan in Nov. of 2010), Rick Snyder, had a campaign platform that was staunchly against the nation leading film incentives that Jennifer Granholm had enacted. And if Snyder won the election (which he did), the film incentives would be obliterated, which meant Detroit 1-8-7 would be gone, and the entire industry film industry in Michigan would be in jeopardy.
Falling back on his marketing prowess and training, Carson began organizing with other like-minded Michigan film industry supporters through various social media campaigns. Although Carson was an administrator on the leading Facebook fan page for Detroit 1-8-7, Carson’s true social media platform of choice was Twitter!
Local ABC news affiliate, WXYZ-Detroit, began to take notice of Carson’s efforts and momentum on social media. The pioneer of the #Backchannel, Stephen Clark, a local news anchor at WXYZ-TV, invited Carson along with 10-12 other movers-and-shakers in the metro area, to their broadcast house for a sit-down and strategy session.
Since beginning his acting career in the fall of 2010, Carson has taken several acting and film classes, one-on-one acting coach lessons, and been a principal cast member in over 35 film productions.
It’s true, that leaders usually have charisma…but most leaders aren’t popular, or shall I say they didn’t start off popular. Leaders in media, industry, entertainment, government, business or whatever, at one point usually found themselves having to go against the status quo and carve a name or niche out for themselves. Eventually their creation caught on and has become the product, service, process or intellectual property we’ve become familiar with today. This is the sequence.
Entrepreneurialism
Record Label – Nexus Records
Previously, Carson had been the owner of an independent record label named Nexus Records, from 2000-2007. At it’s highest point there was a staff of 14 people. These staff members ranged from artists, support staff, producers, management team, and etc. Two offices locations were acquired, one in downtown Detroit in the Ford Building, and the other, in Detroit’s Rosedale Park neighborhood on Grand River avenue, in a two story building above a hair salon. The business operated for close to 7 years, with highlights including: logging over 350 performances (with some being as far away as in L.A. & Miami, FL), 3 CD’s were published , a Detroit Hip-Hop Award for “Best Live Performance” was earned, and etc.
Carson, states, about running the label. “I started the label with $30,000 that I pulled from my retirement account. I learned a lot, we did a lot, and we achieved a lot.” Carson goes on to add, “…after a while, with all the booze, weed, women, studios, fake gangsters, real gangsters, promoters, swindler attorneys, loud music, late nights, long hours, and other things, I was completely burned out! It’s like,… We hadn’t made the next step yet. It got to the point that I didn’t want to spend any more time or money on trying to make this business highly profitable…I tell you what, for a while I didn’t want to even SEE a music CD….” Although the last CD that was created by Nexus Records was in 2005, it was never released, or even given a title. By 2007 the label was had closed it’s doors.
Geo-location web based, smartphone application – Mywerm
After close to In 2006 while living in Ann Arbor, MI, Carson began the exploratory stages of an web-based geolocation entertainment directory targeting wireless mobile device users in the Metro Detroit area. At the time the internet-enabled mobile device industry was what most would consider, embryonic. Carson hired two University of Michigan PhD. candidate students who lived in his apartment building to help him bring to life this groundbreaking platform that Carson had created in his mind and on paper. Part technology, and part advertising & marketing… MyWerm, was the dream that evaded Carson. The product never reached the marketplace. (On a side-note, a few years later during Carson’s employment with a very large telco corporation, they began to roll out a web-based product that was very similar to what Carson had worked on years earlier. “I was SICK about it for weeks,” states Carson. Being small can have it’s advantages…often times you can move quicker and seize upon opportunities faster. Carson has vowed to never make the same mistake again.)
Internet Radio Show – The WowShane Radio Show
Carson’s “The WowShane Radio Show” or sometimes referred to as, WowShaneRadio, was launched on Thursday, February 3, 2011. The last episode aired in the spring of 2013.
Professional Work Experience
Advertising and Marketing field for an American fortune 50 telco.
Line assembly worker for one of the “Big Three” automotive manufacturers.
Counselor in the public sector for state government.