Contently's Shane Snow: Look for Patterns of Success (Podcast) In this podcast, the founder of technology startup Contently explains ways to think bigger and think weirder.

By Linda Lacina

Kian
Shane Snow at Mixopolis Recording Studio

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

As a web programmer in college, Shane Snow made $8 an hour at a startup in Idaho. 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.

Snow would 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 looking for patterns can teach you.

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Linda Lacina

Entrepreneur Staff

Linda Lacina is the former managing editor at Entrepreneur.com. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Smart Money, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Family Circle. Email her at llacina@entrepreneur.com. Follow her at @lindalacina on Twitter. 

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