Updated

Listen to Ready For Anything podcast Episode 3, with Linda Lacina and Shane Snow with the audio player below.

In one web programming job in college, Shane Snow made $8 an hour. He’d calculate down to the minute how much money he’d earned, dime by dime.

Meanwhile, he watched his boss create a system to automate his small business, ensuring much could run without him. The experience taught Snow a host of lessons, including the importance of seeing time as an investment in something greater, something that an hourly wage can’t really measure.

He’d continue to look for patterns of success, charting everything from what makes the best pizza to the best blog or magazine article (slideshow below). That practice serves him today in his journalism career as well as in a series of ventures he's run, some that funded his expenses at Columbia’s graduate journalism school. He’s currently a co-founder for Contently, a technology company that connects brands to more than 55,000 freelance creatives and the author of Smart Cuts: How Hackers, Innovators and Icons Accelerate Success, a book that decodes how the fastest changes happen.

We talk to Snow about not trading money for time and what drove him to chart and study things like the Michael Jordan of every industry or the world's fastest revolutions. He'll explain why he wasn't worried when he had just 63 cents in the bank before Contently secured funding and why the biggest mistake anyone can make is often not thinking big or weird enough. Learn more in this podcast about how he studies success -- and what that practice can teach you.

To follow this podcast series and others in the future, follow us on the following platforms:

SoundCloud

Stitcher

iTunes