Weekly Summary
Quote, Mental model, Twitter thread, Question
Quote
“Through ambition, greed, arrogance or naivete, many bright, hard-working people have strayed into gray areas.” - Guy Spier
Mental Model
Cloning: A model popularised by Mohnish Pabrai, this is one we all should be using. Let’s say there are two people who have grocery shops in front of each other. One of them decides to give the customers free delivery and the regular customers can buy goods and pay later. This causes that business to grow in the neighbourhood. The guy who is on the opposite end of the road sees this and knows the reason for the shop’s success. He still decides to do nothing because he did not want to copy him. It seems very stupid to not copy something that is working. After a point, the shop which chose not to copy the other’s idea shuts down. It sounds like common sense to do what works and simply do that but yet it is very uncommon. All of us including me have a tendency to do things our own way. This is good but if you simply follow cloning shamelessly and follow what successful people have done you cannot help but do well. You don’t need to clone a person but you need to clone their ideas based on competence. So if I am looking to learn about investing it is very simple. All you have to do is clone what you understand and what works. This is what Pabrai did and look where he is now. The most respectable thing is that he did not even leave charity work to be original. He took Buffet’s principles and applied them to his home country and started ‘Dakshana’. Cloning is something I want to use in sports. By this, I don’t mean I want to copy their technique of batting or the way they bowl. I want to shamelessly copy their process and their mentality. It is just that simple yet very hard as people look down on copying others. A perfect ending to this is this quote:
“Everything in my life is cloned... I have no original ideas”~ Mohnish Pabrai
Twitter Thread
The year is about to come to an end so this is a good set of things to look back at:
Question
I am following Pabrai’s cloning shamelessly and forwarding a question asked by James Clear.
How can I use the negative experiences in my life to drive me? What fuel can I draw from my failures?
You can read his substack here and I highly recommend you subscribe to his substack. (although that would make my substack look very bad).
That’s it for today. Thank you for reading and kudos if you read the whole thing!!