Today we’d like to introduce you to Shane Ashton
Hi Shane, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I “Started” very early. I began my career as a professional actor on television when I was 12. There was a creative emotional energy in me that instinctively hurtled towards acting. I wasn’t prompted by anyone like my parents, as people might assume. There was just a powerful and insistent urge to meaningfully articulate this malleable emotion in me, and to align myself with a creative environment that celebrated and welcomed the artistic interpretation of that emotion. There was the hunger for alignment, but also the hunger to experience the exhilaration of real stakes and pride in my efforts that it felt like childhood’s caution was missing. By the time that career finished, four years had gone by, yet it felt like a lifetime had been compressed into that relatively short period. Nor did I see the world the same way, because after you thrive, even for a little, in that otherworldly creative space, part of it still lives on in you. Part of you is forever altered and can’t fit back into what it left.I had spent my early career fulfilling myself through the expression of my own emotions, but I quickly accepted that I no longer fit in the world I’d left behind. It was clear to me then that the next chapter would be about giving voice to my own ideas, resuming that creative journey on a new order of magnitude.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road’s never been smooth. The truth is the road’s as stressful and frightening as it is rewarding. But before there’s any reward, there’s a lot more stress and fear, and I’ve found these struggles primarily psychological. Much of the stress comes from trying to build something that wasn’t there before, because what you’re doing doesn’t come with a set of directions or a leader (like a traditional first job) to tell you what’s right or wrong. You don’t have the parameters there waiting for you, or the criteria for what makes your product great, or the recipe for what ensures your success. You have to create that criteria independently, and there’s stress in that because sometimes there’s doubt about whether the direction you’re taking is the right one. And especially at the beginning, there’s stress in shouldering so much of the responsibilities of entrepreneurship on your own before you can afford to delegate to a team that can relieve the pressure. You are the designer, you are the marketer, you are the customer service portal, all in one. Having to juggle these roles simultaneously without any relief everyday can be grueling when the funding hasn’t kicked in yet. It’s hard enough to work long hours over difficult problems when you’re paid, but when you’re not getting paid a lot yet because you’re still trying to kickstart a business, there’s an additional feeling of vulnerability that’s impossible to ignore. I’m so tempted sometimes to maybe stop and do something more traditional that just pays and keeps me afloat. And yet I fight this tendency and remind myself what’s motivating me to keep pushing another ten miles despite financial and emotional exhaustion. At this early stage, I’m also fighting the fear of failure. Of course once you have a few investors accrediting your idea with their investment, you have some confidence, both psychological and financial, to cushion you through obstacles. You get some immunity to struggle because of those resources. But in the early stages, when you’re still trying to build your platform and haven’t yet acquired users or a revenue stream, you don’t have that gravitational field yet to shield you from those doubts and challenges. You can be easily bombarded. And that stress and fear of failure feel like anchors that drown my stamina, undermining my resilience at the moments I have the least strength to resist. Those anchors are so heavy because the fear of failure is really the fear of disappointing yourself, the proof that you weren’t as great as you thought you were. This mindset was real for me on days when weeks go by and the software still wasn’t developed, a chunk of my savings was dwindling, and I was wondering how I could possibly get through another few months in time to launch my product. The greatest struggle there is one of imagination. Because at this point all you have is the future you can envision to give you a kind of psychic loan on the good that might be coming. And despite it being something you can’t touch or cash in, you have to have faith in it and go forward anyway. Sometimes that can be a challenge… 😉
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I specialize in concretizing vision. If it’s something that I can vividly imagine, then it’s something that I can create. At the moment, I’m the founder of the platform Fantascape. I love the idea of taking an interface similar to Uber’s, but instead of a car, you get a person. Yes, it sounds strange at first. But each of those people is a carefully selected “Host” of a certain “Escape.” An Escape is a thrilling nonobvious creative experience that a host has put together for the enjoyment of a guest based on what the host is deeply familiar with and loves. The idea of being able to spontaneously whisk yourself away with a spiritually generous and charismatic person who’s passionately cultivated a thrilling experience based on her own knowledge and personal interests is what I find most exhilarating. Everyone has some skill, some specific appreciation of what make’s life electrifying, especially in culturally rich urban environments. So we hand select the most passionately committed individuals who have a superpower they want to share, onboard them onto our platform, so that Guests can effortlessly request them like a magic carpet ride to that experience.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
Luck has definitely played a role, but I tend to view it as just one part of a much larger picture that has less to do with luck than something else. In both life and business, I’ve learned that while luck can open doors or present opportunities, it’s ultimately the way you respond to those moments that matters most. Luck isn’t a deal sealer, it’s just a gateway, or an invitation. But you still have to walk through, and you still have to do the work to “arrive”. Luck doesn’t visit isolation. That is, you won’t get lucky just sitting at home in the living room, waiting for the phone to ring, or an email to come in. There are no conditions for the creation of luck there, because luck needs relationships. It needs collisions of people and ideas, whether to lead to that chance meeting, or that “chance” realization that completes the puzzle. So to the extent I’ve been “lucky” and had investment that enabled me to pursue and scale up my ideas, it’s really just saying I’ve made it a point to strategically share what I’m fascinated by with others in the right places. And with enough of those encounters, and if the idea itself is worthy, and your reasons are persuasive, statistically you are bound to find a bridge that can accelerate your journey. But that isn’t so much luck. When you have knowledge you can use to control the statistical outcome of decisions, luck diminishes. It’s only when you control little, and you’re in a swirl of randomness, that luck comes into play. So maybe, let’s not call it luck.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Fantascape.io
