Ideas Worth Cloning

Mohnish Pabrai is a man who came from a modest background and worked his way up to being a multi millionaire today. After building a company and setting aside a million dollars for himself in the US, he stumbled across Buffet. He started thinking how could he mimic Buffet and turn his million into a billion. He said to himself "Why work hard when you can work smart?". He didn’t attempt to reinvent the wheel but only focused on figuring how could he best learn from Buffets strategies and apply them in his own investments. Monish calls it cloning. He says "I am a shameless copy cat".

Now think about this. Why should us mere mortals who are nowhere close to having the IQ of Mohnish try doing new things when we can just copy from others and live considerably better lives.

I have tried to implement this strategy over the last few years in various facets of my life. Before I tell you what areas you can work this strategy, there are certain things that you need to be mindful of.

Firstly, be mindful of who you copy. Emulate someone who has decades of track record and not someone who has temporary fame.

Focus on ideas that are sustainable. Many of us may not have the privilege of quitting our jobs and going all out. The cloning shouldn’t come at the cost of your family's well being. Focus on things that are repeatable rather than believing that doing off-beat stuff will make you lucky.

Don’t take extreme leverage because someone else got successful doing it. Don’t set yourself up for failure from day 1.

Let go of your ego. You can also consider hiring experts who will share their strategies and help you reach your destination.

I regularly try to ask myself about my priorities in life. My family, my health, my business, and my hobbies are the four broad categories where I would like to focus. My focus is to learn from the best in these categories and continuously improve.

For example, when it comes to my family, the first lesson is to spend enough time with them and second is to ensure that they always live comfortable financial lives. Destination analysis is another great mental tool that can help you prioritise. I learnt this from Nick Sleep. You need to ask how would you want your family to remember you at your funeral and work backwards. This would mean that you spend adequate time with your family on a daily basis, created life long and happy memories with them. Same goes for the question of how should you ensure that your family never suffers financially. You have to make sure that you spend less than you earn, invest responsibly and continue to ensure there is enough provided for a rainy day through emergency funds and insurance.

I have learnt a lot from Tom Gayner about being directionally correct. Take his health for example. He monitors his weight every day to ensure that it never gets out of whack. If its beyond his desired range, he works a bit harder to bring it back in range. Very few things are required to keep yourself in good health. You need to have good muscle mass, sleep well every night, avoid stress, and eat well. Elimination works well for me as far as eating well is concerned. I generally try to avoid foods that are fried, have large quantities of sugar or are made from white flour. This method of elimination helps me ensure that I eat good food.

Similar elimination strategies work well in my financial life too. For example, I have largely stayed away from trading. I have tried it multiple times and noted that it only increases stress levels for me. I have understood that i am not good at stock picking so I let fund managers manage it for me for a fee. It all about creating space. If I pick stocks, then it reduces the time I have in hand to focus on my business or other areas that are my priority.

As an adult when you have the responsibility of earning your living and managing a family, most of us forget to live our own lives. I decided early that I will ensure that I also do things that bring me joy. When you are trying to take up hobbies that make you happy, consistency becomes far more important than any other metric. Its an idea that has been sold by many and probably on top of the list of ideas worth cloning. A few minutes or an hour a day can take you far away in your journey. So far, running has been the primary source of joy for me. I have run more than 5,000 kms from 2020 and I continue to count the miles. The second source of joy for me has been learning to play the piano. I am taking weekly lessons and try to practice daily for 30 to 60 mins.

Consistency is such a great idea that we have even implemented in our business. Our goal is add 3 to 5 new clients each month. At the end of the year, we would end up with 50 to 60 clients and around 300 clients in five years. The snowball effect of such small steps is something our minds cannot fathom.

There are plenty of great ideas that are worth emulating. Let me share some of them from people I have personally learnt a lot -

Derek Sivers focuses on crafting a life which has lots of time. A fantastic idea.

Taleb talks about the 80-20 strategy also called the barbell strategy. Extreme conservatism on one side and taking risks that have a big upside but doenst carry the risk of ruin.

Avoiding standard stupidities in life by Charlie Munger. He even gave a talk about it.

Redundancy is a fantastic ideas. Nature has factored a lot of redundancy. We have a lot of extras in our bodies. Two lungs, two kidneys, and a lot of extras when we only need one.

I have created a running list of ideas that can be cloned. Feel free to contribute. I will add them with credits. You can access this list here.

On that note...