Pushing Over Your Limit With Nate Dallas

Serial Entrepreneur – Nate Dallas

Why it takes a good 10 years to become an overnight success. The only thing that pays the biggest dividends and has the most residual value is also the ONE thing that will take you the longest to build. How to figure out which one of your thousand ideas is actually worth pursuing. Nate’s 40 Percent Rule that will “ruin your life” and make you super productive!

Check out NateDallas.com?for more info.

Thanks so much for listening!

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Jaime:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Masters. And today on the show, we have Nate Dallas. Now, Nate is a serial entrepreneur. He has a whole bunch of businesses and side passive income streams. And I'm so excited to have him on the line. I just told him to be quiet a second ago because he was spewing out amazing advice. And I was like no, no, no, let's be on the recording before we get too much further. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Nate.

Nate:	Thanks. I'm very excited to be here.

Jaime:	So tell everybody just sort of what you were telling me how you actually still own a dental practice, which is sort of the bread and butter. But what you were telling me about forming these multiple streams of income while you still have the other asset.

Nate:	Okay. So me as a person, I've always been creative. I've always been an entrepreneur from literally age 5. That's what I do. And that's what I love to do. And when I was watching the people around me and the professionals around me growing up and taking mental notes of what works and what doesn't work, my strategy was let me get into a profession that would allow me to have some extra time and some extra money so that I can do all of those other things. And as a dentist, I typically work four days a week and make a lot of money. So there's a lot of freedom there, and there's a lot of margin to do a lot of other things without taking huge risks. 

	I've taken some big risks on some things. Some of those worked, some of them haven't. But I have proven time and time again that success is cumulative. It's one project at a time. But if you're not broke, and it doesn't have to work right now, you have a tempered approach, and you can make better decisions. And so I'm a big fan of telling people to keep their job and work on the side. There are plenty of hours in the day, contrary to what everyone likes to lie to themselves and say. And do it the smart way. Don't put yourself in a position where you have to make bad decisions.

Jaime:	Because then, you start stressing, and you go crazy. And then, you're like entrepreneurship isn't for me. And then, your head junk gets you. And then, you're broke. And if you can't support your family, all hell breaks loose in what you do.

Nate:	Sure. And there's risk in everything. There's money to be lost in everything. There's time to be lost in everything. But I just think a very dangerous mantra that we hear over and over in our space is you've got to be totally committed. You've got to quit. You've got to go all in. And that's crazy. Motivational speakers talk in optimism. But real entrepreneurs, the multimillionaires that I know, mitigate risk like crazy. And they factor in the worst case scenario and make sure they can survive that. And everything else is gravy. So that's kind of where I live.

Jaime:	I love that because I think that's that thing that's so important. After 300 and something interviews, to me, millionaire entrepreneurs are not risky. Like you said, they mitigate. They hedge their bets. They know safety versus not. They know that they could lose whatever they're risking, and they would still be okay, which is huge.

Nate:	Right.

Jaime:	Then, we can be smarter about those risks. Like you said, you've taken a lot of risks. Some of them panned out, and some of them haven't, but your family, and you have four kids, are still safe. And you don't have to be not sleeping at night in order to be able to go through that. 

Nate:	Right. But I think the biggest thing to remember is it does take time. And it is cumulative. And our identity that we create is the biggest asset that we have and the one that pays the most dividends and has the most residual value. So an overnight success takes a good 10 years. So we need to be adding to that always. And then, if we manage to do it, it just gets bigger and bigger. And then, we learn how to automate, and we learn how to get smarter. And then, all of a sudden, we're only doing the things that we really love to do, and everybody is happy. And it works. 

Jaime:	So how do you figure out because, especially typical entrepreneurs, we have 1,000 ideas. So thankfully, you've got your main base. You're like, okay, now, I can experiment. How do you figure out what ideas, and what have you learned with launching all of these multiple streams of income of what works and what doesn't work?

Nate:	My approach is pretty simple. And that's I give everything a good try. So sure, everybody has a notebook full of ideas. If you're like us, that's what we do. But at some point, we don't need to process the ideas more. We don't need more ideas. We just need to do. And the act of doing sometimes prevents us from having too many more things in the notebook, which drives us crazy. We need to be busy. But, for me, even before I became a dentist, the grad school was no joke; it was very expensive, very difficult. But I was an entrepreneur all through that space, all through undergraduate when I was getting my marketing degree, all through high school. I guess one step at a time and the projects get bigger, and I get smarter. 

	And you learn which ones to not pursue and which ones to really go for and really get deep into. But I give everything a try and see if there's any traction. And so if I've got 10 things I'm working on, I'm going to pick - or in my head, I'm going to pick 3 of them. And next month, I'm going to give all three of those a legitimate try and see what happens because we really never know until a real consumer gives us real feedback, which is did they buy it, and what did they think of it. So we can ask our mom, we can ask our best friend. And everybody gives us lip service. But what we really need is real feedback. 

	And sometimes, we need to take that idea behind the barn and shoot it. And sometimes, we need to pump more into it to make it go. But we've got to get it off the ground. We've got to ship it.

Jaime:	So I have lots of questions in the process because the other piece that goes I have these ideas, does it just take off? Or is it the effort that you put into it that determines whether or not it takes off. People are usually like I'll give it a try. And then, if it doesn't take off after a month, then, I need to shoot it. But I don't know that that's always the case. So how do you know where that is?

Nate:	Well, I think we are quick to abort because we're told the lies of how fast things work. And we think the success happens so quickly. But how bad is it hurting you? Is it draining your bank account to keep this thing alive? Is it draining your energy and your attitude and everything else? Is your family suffering because you're anguishing over it? Or is this just something that hasn't caught fire yet that you're actually learning through the process, and you're maybe even having a good time? That's really the kicker on when to drop it or not. But if it's growing, it's growing, and it's going to require more. 

	And it's always going to require more. But the abort, for me, is when I realized this is A) no fun, B) ruining my personality, C) causing financial distress, or something else is doing better and would be better served with that time because we do have to divvy it up. But it's a tough question. And the answer is aways it depends. I mean, everybody's situation is so different. But I just think we should give it a real try not just I'm going to float this out one time and see if it ignites because it's not going to. That's not reality. But the very same idea, if the first time you launch it it's crickets and nobody responds, you think, God, I'm an idiot. 

	But that same idea, if the timing were different, it may be an eight hour difference, and when you launch it, and one key person saw it and shared it or whatever, but that very same launch concept, the very same everything else besides time and changes, and you think you're a genius. But timing is a big part of it. And we can't control that. So we have to stay in the zone and give it a chance to catch fire.

Jaime:	Okay. So what is your process of testing ideas? If you've done this so many times, what's the main process that you go through?

Nate:	I go through, in my head, beforehand, things that differentiate it, how could I stand out, is this a crowded space? What's the minimal I could do to get at real product in someone's hands to get real feedback? And that may be prototyping a physical product. I may 3D print something and, actually, try to sell it somewhere. Or it could be, if it's a digital thing, put it up somewhere and get some feedback. But we've got to - oh, man, I hate to get stuck like this. But it's so relative to our own situation. And it's a hard question to answer. But I think the - I'm sorry. We're going to have to go back.

Jaime:	So what my question is though, too, is because you've done this so many times, over and over and over again, do you know innately these are the five steps we have to take? Or is it - I'm wondering because I work with entrepreneurs all of the time that go through some of this stuff. And some are like this is a process, and then, I put it in front of these people and blah, blah, blah. And other people are like this idea needs this. And they go after it creatively. 

Nate:	Yeah. It depends on what your thing is though because I dabble in so many different sectors that are totally non related. And the strategy is different in all of them. But we have to, actually, put a product out for sale in front of a real audience that's a real representative sample and then see. So that may take a year on one project. It may take 24 hours on another one. 

Jaime:	How do you know which industry to go - is it - because that's the thing. You're like I dabble, and I sort of go in. When somebody has been in an industry for a really long time, like in dentistry, you know so much about dentistry it's insane. But when you pluck out and go I'm going to go after this market and do research and go crazy, how do you even know all of the nuances of that, or how do you figure that out when you're launching?

Nate:	Well, sometimes, it's creating a product or a space that doesn't have competition or doesn't have competition yet. So you know it works somewhere else. It's just you're bringing it to a new space. One of my new businesses is called Illusion 360. We're doing 3D virtual tours for real estate and for different construction. And we're doing yachts and jets and other things that you want to sell where people are buying it from across the country, but they want to be able to go through and look at it. Well, where I live in Georgia, nobody was doing this, even for residential real estate much less the other 10 sectors we're dabbling in. 

	But it was hot on the west coast. And so what I did was contact the big few real estate offices around me, showed them somebody else's product, and said I'm bringing this to Albany, Georgia. If this were here, would you use it? And how much would you pay for it? And so, I sold that before I ever built the business. I had clients that were ready. I know it works in Seattle. I know it works in LA. I can read the forums and participate in the groups. In my space, I don't have to create anything. I just have to bring it there. Another example is I've made games, party games and board games, a lot over the years and licensed some, self produced some. 

	That's just a fun thing that I like to do. And I figured out how to make money doing it, so it's a win/win. But I licensed my first game to Mattel, and we had this big contract, and I sold it all over the world. And that was cool. The next game I licensed to a smaller company, and it totally bombed. So the third one, I wanted to do myself. But I knew I couldn't compete with these mega giants with unlimited budgets. So I thought how can I create a good game? I know how to do that, a party game that people are going to have fun doing. But how am I going to get it in front of them and bypass Hasbro and Mattel and all of these giants with all of the shelf space? 
	And I thought, well, if adults are getting together to play games, they're drinking. So I'll give it a wine theme, put it in a wine package, so the game comes in a wine tote bag with a canister that holds a wine bottle, and I started selling it in liquor stores because if you're about to have a house party, you're going there. So I'm the only one on the shelf in any of these package stores that has a game. Everything else is bottles. Who do you think stood out? And so it worked. And I sold thousands and thousands of games to where now, I've cut out all of the retail distribution, cut out the sales reps, cut out everybody. 

	I just sell it directly on Amazon, and my margins are stupid awesome. And I sell 5,000 of these things a year doing nothing. But the original thing wasn't a brilliant game. It was a brilliant sales strategy, or what I think was a brilliant one. So the other one wasn't my idea either, the 3D scan thing. It was just how can we use this in a different way or present it to someone who hasn't seen it yet. And sometimes, you can sell it before you do anything. 

Jaime:	I love your attitude. So this is the thing. I feel like you're one of those guys who is like I'm just a problem solver. How can I just solve everything? This is the goal. How do I solve this? And then, you can get, like you said, really creative in trying to figure out the way that it goes. But it sounds like those are really successful. What about all of the ones that aren't? What do you think the ratio is between your ideas that are like that was totally awesome and the ideas that weren't? Is it 50/50? Is it like 20/30?

Nate:	No, it's never 50/50. I think the ones that break even are probably 50/50. But the ones that are really viable businesses that I want to continue doing; it's probably more like 10 to 1. I mean, I'm not exactly sure. I used, on my website; I always had a list for what I'm working on and that sort of stuff. I used to have a list of recent failures. And it was a whole page. And it was just that. And it was a paragraph for each one. But that page got so freakin' long, it ate up all of my storage. And I had to take it off. And people were like why do you have so many of those on there? And I'm like because this is real life. 

	But it was probably 10 times longer than what I'm working on and that sort of stuff. And that's real life. It's a numbers game. And so what I want to encourage people to do is produce lots of small things. Small things won't kill you. But small things can make you rich if they grow. So keep putting them out. My personal goal is to launch three new products or businesses every single year. Three of them that make it to market. 

Jaime:	Exactly. Three that sort of [inaudible] [00:23:03].

Nate:	Yes, which, by default, means I've got to make 10 or 15 things every year because some of them aren't going to work. But some of those are in prototype phase. Some of them are in licensing phase. Some of them are in my own production. So I've got a container of one thing coming from China. And I'm shipping something else to Amazon. I've got something else in a focus group, something else in a biology research project. Medical devices are the thing that's killing me because there's so much red tape. You can't just launch it. There are so many gatekeepers. But I've got some really good ones that I want to make. It's killing me.

Jaime:	Oh, my God, this is amazing. So I have so many questions for you. So we'll talk about time in just a second. But when you start going in, and you find these three whatever it is that you're launching, how do you - are you a CEO for every single one - are you the chief bottle washer for every single one? And then, do you create a team that works on them? And are they separate? Or do you have one team? What does it look like?

Nate:	No, I'm very much a solo entrepreneur. And until it has legs, it's 100 percent Nate hustle. And I get it to the point where, okay, now, I can afford to pay someone. Or like the 3D scan business, I now have a permanent, full time salesman. Well, that freed up a lot of time for me because I was trying to make 50 contacts a day on top of raising 4 children, teaching them home school, and running my business, and keeping Amazon stocked. That was a big chunk. But I had to do that on the front end to know is this scalable? Is this where we need to pour resources? But you got to get it there yourself. 

	And it takes a lot of good, old fashioned hustle. And the game that I mentioned that I'm self producing, to get to 5,000 units per year in sales that was a 3 year process. So the first year was me begging people to put it on the shelf. The next year was me begging sales reps to beg people to put it on the shelf. And now, it's all automated. I love Jeff Bezos and Amazon. They warehouse it. They ship it. They bill it. They do everything. It's the greatest thing since canned beer. And it just goes straight off the boat to Amazon, and I'm out. But it took three years to get to that phase. 
	And you better believe there was a lot of extra hours put in and a lot of Nate time that I would have loved to have been doing other things on. But I knew if I could just stay in my lane, I could make it work. But look, there are 24 hours in a day. If you sleep eight, which is very healthy, I don't because I can't, but if you sleep eight, and you work eight, every single one of us have eight more hours every day. I mean, where does the time go? But I have zero sympathy for someone telling me they're too busy.

Jaime:	Nobody can compete with everything that you're doing. You have four children. How old are your kids?

Nate:	They're 2, 6, 7, and 9. 

Jaime:	So you have four kids.

Nate:	All boys.

Jaime:	All boys.

Nate:	It's awesome, yeah.

Jaime:	You're home schooling them all. Hopefully, they're helping you package stuff if you need it.

Nate:	They are all employed, yes. 

Jaime:	But that's the thing that's insane. So your extra eight hours, normally, what you hear from people is that's my family time. So how much time do you actually work with the family and how -

Nate:	I'm so glad you're asking this because the family thing, I think - well, we make excuses for everything. I want to go to the gym, but. I want to spend more time with my kids, but. But you have to play defense with your schedule. You have to learn when to say no. And you have to carve out sacred time. So I'm insanely busy. But my deal is when I'm working, I'm working. And when I'm playing, I'm playing. So there's no crossover. And so every morning, I have 40 minutes of meditation before anybody else in my house is awake.

Jaime:	You meditate for 40 minutes a day? Okay. Keep going.

Nate:	That's sacred time. And that's dedicated just to that every single day. I automate as many things as possible. So when I come down the stairs, I get my same cup of coffee that's already ready and my same granola bar every day. I don't have to think about that. Then, I have 40 minutes to meditate. I don't take a notebook. I don't take my phone. I just sit and make space. What's his name, the designer, Stephan Sagmeister, have you ever seen his Ted Talk or heard anything? Incredible guy. He takes a full one year sabbatical every seven years. He takes a year off just to clear his brain to get new ideas. But his quote is you have to create pockets of nothingness to allow for redirecting. 

	And I don't know, I started doing it at like 10 minutes, and it wasn't enough. Then, I started 20, and it wasn't enough. So then, I went to 40. And it's the greatest thing ever. And I try to pray. I try to clear my head. I try to be grateful. But I'm not real good at prayer. So sometimes, it's just sitting, but oh, my goodness, the stuff that you can sort out. So anyway, that's sacred time.

Jaime:	I want to talk about meditation for a second because I really feel like it's really important, especially for entrepreneurs because our brains are so constantly crazy.

Nate:	Yes.

Jaime:	So I definitely meditate. I find it way easier to do guided meditations, but I do regular mindfulness also. But our brains are nuts. How do you - give us just a couple of tips. Like you said, you started with 10 minutes. Why 40 minutes? And is your brain constantly going for 40 minutes? How do you know it's successful or not? People ask so many meditation questions, it's insane.

Nate:	Well, I think it's different for everybody. I know some people that can just immediately shut it off, and they get into by way of breathing or by way of something else. I'm not that good at it. It takes me 20 minutes to be able to have a normal thought because it's just all over the place. So the reason mine is 40 is because I want to have 20 minutes of real time. And it takes me 20 to breakthrough. But I mentioned to you earlier, I drive 30 minutes back and forth to work every day. And there's one spot in the road, I wrote a blog post for it, it's like where I know magic is going to happen. But it's about eight or nine minutes into my drive.

	But it takes that long for my brain to just chill out so that anything can happen. So that's part of the schedule I was talking about the sacred time. But the family deal, when I come home from work, and I usually get home about 6:00, from 6:00 to 8:00, everything is off. The phone is in the drawer. The laptop is closed. It's all family time. We eat dinner together every night as a family. We read books together every night as a family. We do family prayers. All of that stuff. At 8:00, then, my wife knows, hey, you're home. You're available. Let's hang out. So usually, an hour and a half, we talk, we do whatever we're going to do. 

	And then, she usually goes to bed at 9:30 or 10:00, and then, I kick it back on for another hour and a half. And so that's how my day goes. But it's compartmentalized. And everybody knows, and everybody gets benefit out of knowing, exactly what the routine looks like. And so my kids don't have to compete with whatever. My phone can be blowing up, and somebody has a horrible emergency. Well, guess what? I'm unavailable for two hours. And I think we have to learn how to do that. We think the world is going to fall apart. But how bad would it be, really, if we checked email once a day or twice? 

	But most people check their social media and their email 30, 40, 50 times a day. And it's a three minute interruption. And there's some interesting research now that's showing that it takes about 20 minutes to get back on task once you get broken off. So our day is just one giant interruption. And we never get into flow. So you have to play defense. So some of that is just discipline. It's just like if you want to be healthy, and you want to stop eating junk food, you've got to stop buying it. If it's in the house, you've already lost. But it's the same way with your schedule. We have to plan for success. It doesn't happen accidentally.

Jaime:	You sound so ridiculously efficient, which I really appreciate. I've got kids, and I'm working. And every second matters to me. I have this obsession with clocks. Every journal, everything seems to have clocks on it. Do you ever get bored though? You're like, okay, and then, it's 6:00, and I do this, and then, we make dinner, and then, we do this, and then, we go to bed. And this is sort of the repetition of life. So do you ever go like today, I just don't feel like doing any of that?

Nate:	Sure, absolutely. I mean, come on. We're humans, right?

Jaime:	So what do you do then?

Nate:	Well, I get bored of routine. Honestly, I get bored of the stuff that's not productive. I mean, it's my disease, right? It's how a lot of us are. We can't stand it. 

Jaime:	Having to be so efficient.

Nate:	But when Saturday or Sunday rolls around, it's really hard for me to have nothing to do. So I hardly ever do that. But there still has to be pockets of it, and we have to relax. But, absolutely, there are some days I'm just totally exhausted. And for my night round, I decide, once a week, I'm going to watch a friggin' documentary. I'm not working. But I don't have a show that I watch. I don't really spend a lot of time on leisure like that. But the other part of my structuring my life around a good full time job and other gigs that give me life and that are my drug, I purposely schedule real vacation and a lot of recreation mostly outside. 

	And if I go to do something like that, that's what I'm doing. I'm 100 percent into that. I shut everything off. And think about the word recreation. We just think about play or whatever. We're talking about recreating. And if we have a sacred space built around that, and we say, for the next four hours, I'm going to leave it all here, and I'm going to just go be, and you can insert whatever you want to put in there whether it's romance or God or the great outdoors or harmony or whatever, go smell the roses. I don't care. But whatever that thing is that can recreate you, your spirit, your mind, everything, we've got to do it, or we'll just go crazy.

	And then, we end up so busy on being busy. And it's not actually productive. We just feel the need to look busy. But we're killing everybody. Everybody suffers if our head is not healthy. So we spend so much time and so much money on insecurity. And a big part of that, I think, is figuring out how to be satisfied with yourself. And a big part of that, I think, is figuring out what you were designed to do. And so we all have to be doing that in some way, or we're never satisfied. And we can never relax. And we can never have recreation. And we can never have good meditation. 

	Whatever you want to put in there, good marriage, good family life, all of it. But, really, the thing we have to work on is ourselves. And the only gatekeeper is our big head. And we are the only ones with the key. We have to figure out how to do that and be honest with ourselves. We all need therapy. 

Jaime:	Tell me more because when you were going and talking about all of this stuff, it's like this ever evolving process of trying to figure out what works for you specifically because, like you said, everybody is different. We've all got our own stuff going on. And, unfortunately, nobody can just tell you what to do. So when we're listening to things like this, we're like, okay, this works for him. This works for him. Getting out in nature might work for him. But it's so much harder to invert that and look at yourself and try to figure that out because, no offense, most entrepreneurs, at least the ones that I know, are these not necessarily over busy but over achievers. 

	So we're never exactly happy with enough. There's always a little more. I just want a little bit more, squeeze time out of this, squeeze money out of this. How can you ever be satisfied? Because in some of the things that you wrote, you're like I am so grateful, so happy. But are you ever satisfied?

Nate:	Yeah. I'm satisfied in the fact that, at the end of the day, I've give it all I've got. That brings me satisfaction because, in the morning, when you put your feet on the floor. There's only one thing you can control, and that is your effort. Everything else is going to be nuts. And everything is going to fall apart. I've had a lot of tragedy in my life. I mean, I can't even talk about it. I'm sorry, I get emotional now. But it's going to happen. But the only thing you can control is your effort. So the people around you need you. And it seems unfair because you just want to take a break and have a second glass of wine. 

	But if you forfeit those responsibilities, you're going to look back and have guilt. And then, you're not going to be satisfied. And then, you're going to overcompensate and be like tomorrow, I've got to be so friggin' busy because, yesterday, I was a total jerk. But, I mean, that's a cheap answer to say satisfaction only comes when you're busting your butt. But it's true. And totally leaving it all on the floor may mean turning the business off and going and jumping on the trampoline with your children or whatever. But, now, I'm teaching them to be entrepreneurs. And so now, I get to do my thing, and they get to soak up daddy time. 

	And they get to learn real life skills and stuff. So this is a whole new recreation for me. And I get to cheat. I still get to built stuff. But I don't know. We've got to look at ourselves in the mirror and figure out why are we doing the things that we're doing really. And I think a lot of people have never asked that question. Who am I doing this for? And now, we're talking about real psychology. But we can't ever be satisfied until we start working on our own heart and our own mind and the person that we are. And we're all a product of what everybody else did to us. 

Jaime:	What the heck? 

Nate:	So there should be some comfort in that because it's not my fault that I'm this way. You all did it to me. 

Jaime:	That's a good way to look at it.

Nate:	But all we can do is the best we can do. But I don't know. I love Steven Pressfield's The War of Art because he, basically, says if you're one of these people, if you're an artist, you have to make stuff. You have to. And you have to keep making stuff because it's who you are. But the minute you shut it down, you start feeling bad that you're not using your gift. And then, it suffers. And then, you kick your dog. But it wasn't the dog's fault. You're the one who stayed in bed. So it's complicated. That's a whole other thing. This is like Tony Robbins material now.

Jaime:	That's what I mean. Like life is so complicated. It's funny because business is actually kind of simple. Not easy in any way but simple in terms of getting feedback and then testing. And you sort of go through a process. And either it works, or it doesn't work. And you get feedback based on that. And, like you said, you make decisions with what you have. But then, there's this whole other layer of our own mental states and our brains and what we're willing to do. And even inspiration and what sort of actions we end up taking based on that. And that, I mean, we could dedicate - I mean, we do, we dedicate our entire lives to this entire thing. 

	And we still may not figure it out exactly to a T. Isn't that frustrating?

Nate:	Somewhat, I guess. But I don't know. It's real life. Everybody has got to figure it out. And the only way anybody learns anything is experience. And so we have to be doing something in order to grow. But just expecting magic to happen and us to become somebody else, I mean, it doesn't work. We have to actively work on it. And it sucks a lot of times. But it's hard work to have a good marriage and to be a good dad and to manage a bunch of employees that don't hustle enough or whatever. But we only get one shot. What are you going to do' Go for it.

Jaime:	What do you do when you're so - because you work ridiculously hard. And you move forward, and you keep going. And you have this awesome, no matter what, do it anyway attitude. So what happens when you actually get really down, or you're like not even sick but just like, oh, my gosh, I can't do this right now? Do you ever give yourself a break? 

Nate:	Yeah.

Jaime:	It seems like you're the guy that doesn't.

Nate:	No, I absolutely do. And I schedule those breaks in ahead of time.

Jaime:	You schedule -

Nate:	Well, with my business, for instance, with the dentistry, I'm booked a month out. Every hour is already accounted for. So I can't have a bad day. I can't be sick. I'm expected to be perfect all of the time. That sucks. It really does because you have to play hurt all of the time. But in the other stuff, absolutely. I just finished, a month ago, writing my first book, which should be out hopefully in October or November. It's being highly scrutinized right now and edited. And they're fixing all 100,000 of my things. But it's 48,000 words about preparing to be successful at a thing called fatherhood. 

	And so I hate writing, hate it. And there were so many times when it was like, okay, today is writing day, and I just had to say no. It's not working today. I'm going to go do something else. I'm going to go fishing. But so that's something where I do have the ability to shut it off. But the dental practice, that's tough because I can't call 40 patients and say I just don't feel good today. So sorry, you'll just have to do it without me. 

Jaime:	But, thankfully, at least the creative side on the dentist, I'm assuming, is not as much as - it's really, actually, refreshing to hear that, sometimes, if the writing isn't coming, the creative stuff is the hardest thing to push through and just be like I have to hustle because there's a thing called Einstein Time, which I also love. And it's sort of like you were talking about in flow. And, sometimes, that creativity stuff comes out so much easier when you're feeling that versus I'm a dentist, and I know exactly what to do. 

	I can sort of do it no matter what instead of pulling out the, oh, my gosh, I need the most amazing idea and sitting there and thinking about it.

Nate:	Yeah. But instead of taking like a day off or an afternoon off or something, I like to take a whole week and just shut it all down. And I usually do that in a remote location where a cell phone won't work. And if you need me, I'm sorry, you can't get me. So I like that kind of stuff. And traveling, for me, is when I get the most ideas. There's just something about it. I don't know. I think we all get more cultured and more exposure is always great. But when I'm jet setting here and there and whatever, even if it's for business, just having a few hours on the plane or whatever is the greatest thing ever. I love it. 

Jaime:	I can shut off everything else, so then I - and it's amazing. Just like what you're saying is that clear mind, I guess, sort of, the letting our entrepreneurial brain slow down a little bit, which is kind of hard to do sometimes. But that's where a lot of the amazingness can sort of come in. Sometimes, entrepreneurs don't do that enough. They don't give themselves the space that you're giving yourself, especially with 40 minutes of meditation a day. That's impressive.

Nate:	Yeah. Well, the other thing is we do have to build endurance and mental muscle. So I think, in general, now, this is the Nate 40 percent rule, I think this happens in sports, I think it happens in business and marriage and everything else. But we get to about 40 percent of our actual capacity, and we think I'm tapped out. I'm tired. I'm frustrated. I'm fill in the blank. But when I was in college, I decided to get into competitive power lifting for whatever reason. I have no idea. But, in a year and a half, I broke every record. 

	I mean, going from never doing this to a year and a half later, every competition I entered, and I'm not trying to brag, I'm just trying to prove a point, but I broke every collegiate record. My school didn't have a college team. But I broke every collegiate record in the country for the events I was competing in in my gym and in the competitions I was in because I learned that where my body told me to stop was not actually my limit. And so I had to have two partners. I'd work out in the morning with one and the afternoon with the other because their brains were saying stop. And they would stop. 

	This is kind of like Tim Ferriss territory now. But you don't realize you can go beyond it until you do it. So a navy seal, when they're learning how to hold their breath, if you ask them before training how long can they hold their breath, they'd probably say 52 seconds. And then, when they put them in the water, they do it for 2 minutes and 15, and then, they die, and then, they bring them back to life. It's like good news, you're alive, and you can do a lot more than you thought. But it's the same deal. So we have to push ourselves over the limit just to see where it is. And I always push that. I push that in everything. 

	And it's not that I'm super human. It's that every year, I realize I have more endurance. It didn't start that way. But it's a little more, a little more, a little more until you realize you're working 2.5 times more than your average Joe because Joe has never pushed past what he perceives is his limit. So that's a tricky one. But I think everybody has got a little more gas than they want to really tell themselves that they do. And I just keep pushing it. But I think you should put some stuff on your schedule, and push it until it breaks. And you'll be amazed. But all of our jobs swell to the time we allot for it. 

	You can do something in 30 minutes. But if you give yourself two hours, it's going to be two. So keep squeezing it until you fail, and then, you realize, okay, that's actually the limit.

Jaime:	I enjoy this conversation. It's so funny. As you're going through, I'm thinking about having children because I remember I had my first one, and I was like, oh, my gosh, this is insane. He had colic like crazy. And then, I had the second one who also had colic like crazy. And I was like how did I - the first one alone should have been easy. And I thought it was end all be all of no sleep -

Nate:	But at that moment, it was the worst thing you had ever tried. But you didn't realize you could survive beyond that until you had to.

Jaime:	I remember going I think I'm legally insane at the moment. Children, colic, screaming, yeah, I'm sure I'm insane. 

Nate:	Yeah. Why does anybody do this?

Jaime:	No more children ever. I don't know how you have four. You're crazy. 

Nate:	I'm married to a very, very disciplined, amazing woman. That's the secret.

Jaime:	Exactly. Oh, my gosh. This is an awesome conversation, Nate. I know we have to start wrapping up already because the -

Nate:	No, let's do it forever.

Jaime:	I know. That's what I mean. If I wasn't back to back, we'd just chat forever. But it's going to be 6:00, and then, you only have from 6:00 to 8:00, so you'll cut me off anyway.

Nate:	That's right. You're getting booted in a few minutes. 

Jaime:	All right. So I'm going to ask you the last question, and it's what's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Nate:	I'm going to say something that I hope no one has ever heard before. And this is something that I have tried the last year and a half with amazing results. Here it is. Give up your lunch break. And I'll explain why. So the whole country takes an hour to eat lunch. It does not take an hour to eat lunch. And that's probably the only time of your day where people aren't messing with you because they're all eating lunch. So what happens is at 11:40, you've got 30 minutes worth of stuff to do, but you don't want to start it because you know it's going to run into lunch, and you can't finish. 

	So lunch break really starts at 11:40. And then, when you get back, it takes 20 minutes to get back into flow. So your lunch break is really an hour and 40 minutes. When, really, what you needed was 15 minutes to eat and never break flow. So I know that that's asking a lot. This is going back to the Nate 40 percent rule. But if you try it, you'll be totally jacked that I introduced you to it because it's going to ruin your life and make you so productive. But it's going to ruin your social hour lunch. But, anyway, so I don't take a lunch break anymore. 

	I just eat when I can. It turns out to be more healthy because I eat little things like four times a day instead of one giant meal. Another bonus. But I'm telling you, do it for a week, and watch how much you actually get done. America is doing it wrong. 

Jaime:	My face hurts from smiling so much. I haven't eaten lunch, so it's 4:30, so I totally -

Nate:	You knocked out four interviews today.

Jaime:	So far. We have one more to go, and I still haven't eaten. So efficiency.

Nate:	Yeah. Other mortal, normal people could not do that, Jaime. 

Jaime:	It's so funny, and it's so awesome and refreshing talking to like you just because I think a lot of people don't understand. Eventual millionaires that are listening do. But the level of efficiency that people can have when they actually do the stuff that is the most important, and they actually pay attention and not necessarily being like don't ever eat. But if I eat a shake during the day, and it takes me two seconds to actually make and eat comparatively to putting something crazy together, I'm efficient with every second that I have because we only have so many seconds. And our lives are the addition of all of these different moments. 

	And I want to squeeze as many freakin' moments as humanly possible into what I've got. 

Nate:	Well, let me ask you one question. Have you ever figured out what an hour of your time is actually worth in dollars? You don?t have to tell me, but do you know that number?

Jaime:	Well, I know how much I charge for clients, but I'm sure I'm worth way more than $1,000.00 an hour for sure.

Nate:	But if you know what the number is, it helps make decisions a lot of times on how you're going to spend your time. I ask people that all of the time when I'm doing mentoring or coaching or whatever. And they don't have a number. And I'm like, okay, these are the six ways you could spend this hour. What's this one worth? What's that one worth' Once we establish that, you better make sure that whatever you're doing is worth this much. 

Jaime:	And that's the thing that's a slippery slope though because, then, I know how much a minute is worth. And, therefore, it's literally me doing the dishes, I have somebody else who does that stuff for me because I go not worth two minutes. So my team hates this because I'm like if you take more than five minutes, I don't care.

Nate:	We're so neurotic. We're so messed up.

Jaime:	I know we are. It's great. I'm glad I'm not the only one, Nate. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Where can we find out more about you and all of the crazy antics that you do in your life?

Nate:	Well, I try to keep them as private as possible. But I'm not that interesting. But I do have a website. It's NateDallas.com. There's nothing ground breaking on there. I just try to share some stuff from time to time. I'm on Twitter. That's the only social media that I really use because it is the most efficient. You can't get lost on there. But I'm Father's Brother. My brother is a Roman Catholic priest and a wonderful person. And so a lot of times, when I got visit him, people say, oh, you're Father's brother. So I'm Father's Brother. That's my handle on Twitter. And then, my website is natedallas.com. But I'll tell you this, I love to help. I really do. 

	That's why I agreed to do this thing. I want to benefit people's lives. I want my experience to add value to other people. I don't want them to make mistakes I've made, and there are a lot of them. I'd love to spend an hour talking about just failures. We could do that. But email me or tweet to me or get me on Linked In. I have a 1 megabyte inbox for nate@natedallas.com, which means I can do 10 of those a day, 10 emails. So my wife cut me off because she was like you're too generous. And people take advantage of you. But if you email me, and you get it in, I will respond to that. 

	But just be considerate of my time please because I'll tell you what it's worth per minute. 

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services

Tags: Beta Testing, Daily Routine, Focus, Idea Validation, Mentoring, millionaire interview, Nate Dallas, Testing, Time Management, Work Life Balance

Categories: All, Best Life, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Goals, Millionaire Interviews, Productivity

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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