# How to Get Rich So Fast It Feels Like CHEATING (Cloning)

#source #method

## Source Metadata

- **Date:** batched 2026-06-15; underlying video undated. Duration 12:31.
- **Raw path:** `raw/sources/How to Get Rich So Fast It Feels Like CHEATING.md`
- **Source type:** YouTube video conclusions — <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJSSvOY1UOk>
- **Ingestion date:** 2026-07-17
- **Provenance role:** The full primary source behind [[cloning-over-originality]] (previously single-sourced only through the distillation's "Pabrai/cloning" citation). Centers on [[mohnish-pabrai]].

## Core Claims

1. **The fastest path is shameless, total cloning** of someone who already won — including the boring parts. Almost nobody does it; the blocker is **ego, not information**.
2. **Two ego traps:** the *originality trap* (schools call copying "cheating"; adults inherit the shame) and *half-hearted cloning* (dipping a toe for a week and quitting). Pabrai's rule: **10,000% or nothing** — sampling single ideas is tasting, not cloning.
3. **Originality is an emergent property of deep, multi-source cloning** — not a starting condition.
4. **Letter of the rules > spirit of the rules, at the start.** Spirit-of-the-rules thinking is for masters; beginners use it to skip discipline.

## Key Evidence / Details

**The gas-station parable (full form):** two stations across the street, identical product. One wipes windshields and checks tires free and is packed; the other watches daily and refuses to copy it, and goes bankrupt — from ego, not missing information.

**Pabrai → Buffett case study:** picked up *One Up on Wall Street* at Heathrow; learned Buffett returned 31%/yr for 40+ years (most investors don't clear 10%); decided "copy everything, don't add my own twist"; read every Buffett letter, watched every interview, attended the Berkshire meeting 20+ years, copied the morning routine, business structure, 5–6 hrs daily reading, working alone; outcome ~**$154M**; in 2007 paid **$650,000** for a charity lunch with Buffett, framed as *guru dakshina*.

**Multi-source cloning:** Buffett for investing, Charlie Munger for thinking, Benjamin Graham for principles, philosophers for life decisions — "nobody else stacked those exact pieces the same way."

**Illustrations of the method:** the *food-channel story* — a friend's polished, edited, subtitled recipe channel grew slowly; the niche's top channel had no subtitles, no music, no on-screen text, ~30-sec videos, proven topics. She was doing the opposite "to be original." She cloned the format exactly → first video 100K views, next 500K, *then* experimented. The *barber analogy* — nobody invents their own haircut technique on day one; you stand behind the best barber for weeks, copy the wrist/grip/small-talk, then experiment. Beginners skip exactly this step when starting a business or channel.

**Practical method:** (1) pick ONE (not five inspirations — Pabrai went all-in on Buffett before branching); (2) go deep, understand *how* they think; (3) clone the boring parts (success is ~1,000 small stacked decisions); (4) adjust only after your hands understand the craft.

## Connections

- [[cloning-over-originality]] — this is the concept's primary source
- [[methodology-as-moat]] — the tension: a cloned method vs. a defensible one (resolved via "the combination is unclonable")
- [[sales-discipline]] — discipline is precisely the "boring part" to clone
- [[mohnish-pabrai]] — central figure

## Open Questions

- Buffett's 31%/40yr and Pabrai's ~$154M / $650k lunch are stated as fact but uncited here; broadly consistent with public accounts of Pabrai, but not independently verified in this vault.
- Combination-as-originality is asserted, not argued — if a combination becomes public (as it does once sold), what stops it being cloned in turn? See [[cloning-over-originality]].

## Change Impact on Wiki

- Upgraded [[cloning-over-originality]] from single-source-via-distillation to a fully-sourced page; the `Status: tentative` was relaxed to reflect a real primary source (though still one advocacy video).
- Created entity [[mohnish-pabrai]]; Buffett/Munger/Graham are recorded there and in [[cloning-over-originality]] rather than as separate pages (supporting cast).
