“Seven hundred chipmunks don't make a lion. You can never build an excellent practice by trying to effect mass religious conversions among the chipmunks. Excellence may be the ultimate liberation, but it limits you to expending your efforts in search of like-minded excellence. Knowing this, and accepting it as a governing reality of your work, is actually the beginning of a business plan. It tells you to forget about 'market share,' and about the percentage of advisors in your territory who are doing business with you, which are the pure essence of chipmunk statistics.... There are, in your territory, a hundred lifers who can become your partners.... One can only help people who believe they can be helped. Seeing is believing, yes, but it's also true that believing is seeing. A true lifer's clients are happy with him, his advice and his service because if they're not, he shows them the door.... Disciplined diversification is the incredibly courageous decision to forego any chance of making a killing, in exchange for the lif-saving blessing of never getting killed.... Act as if. Fake it 'til you make it. Even if you fear you're not a peer yet, do what a peer does, and keep doing it until you're accepted as a peer.... Confucius said, "It matters not how slowly you go, it matters only that you do not stop."... Mark Twain said that a cat, having once walked on a hot stove, would never walk on a hot stove again... nor on a cold stove. [That's how you get people to overcome regret-based fear.]”