Spite Is The Greatest Motivator with Watch Duty Founder John Mills | A Bit of Optimism Podcast

Simon Sinek 0:00 What can we do for you? What do you, what does Watch Duty need?

John Mills 0:03 Computers are cheap to operate, but rebuilding 12,000 homes and restoring lives that are lost is just not possible. Uh, uh, I, I think the best thing to do is give money to direct relief efforts like directrelief.org and others who are on the ground helping.

Simon Sinek 0:19 This is why I love you. I ask you, "How do we help you?" And you're, and you ask us to give to other people. I mean...

John Mills 0:26 That's what I do, right?

Simon Sinek 0:28 When the wildfires erupted in Los Angeles on January 7th, 2025, people were frantic. We didn't know where to get information. We didn't know if or when we had to evacuate. At the beginning, we got information through sort of an informal whisper network. "Did you hear?" we'd say to each other. Then we found Watch Duty. This one magical, elegant app told us everything we needed to know, and it was up to date, and it was accurate. And we all had it. We checked it constantly. It was a lifeline, literally. Evacuation orders, fire perimeters, and wind directions, all of it faster and clearer than any government site or news outlet, and we owe it all to tech entrepreneur John Mills. John coded Watch Duty himself to help his community after a series of deadly fires came close to destroying his own home in Northern California. Today, the app serves millions of people. It operates in multiple states and relies on scores of trained volunteers who gather data from radio scanners and other sources to get the information out. The app has skyrocketed in popularity, and John has no intention of selling it, because the value, as he explains it, is bigger than any paycheck. We live in a world where too many put themselves before others. So how can we be more like John Mills? How can we inspire more people to serve those who serve others? I think John may have the answer. This is A Bit of Optimism. [upbeat music] John, thank you so, so much for doing this. I know that your life has been extremely busy. How did you find yourself in this position where all of us in Los Angeles were glued to your app more than anything else? Why you, and how do you find yourself here now?

John Mills 2:36 Why me? Well, they say that luck is the intersection of opportunity and preparedness, and I have the unique opportunity to be able to do this with my life and dedicate my life to this work. And I've been through a couple pretty close calls here on my ranch. Fire has come very close to me. One was, was a 50,000 acre fire that ended about a quarter mile from my property. Another one was a quarter mile away in the other direction. That was another fire that I wasn't alerted about. The helicopters are how I knew there was a fire, not because anybody told me, and so-

Simon Sinek 3:07 So the world is burning outside of your home, and you find out about it because you see a fire helicopter fly over you.

John Mills 3:12 Yeah. That, that's how you get alerted, yeah.

Simon Sinek 3:15 That is... Yeah, that's a good motivation to try and wanna do something.

John Mills 3:18 Sure, why not? Also a motivation.

Simon Sinek 3:18 Or at least... Okay, but hold on, hold on. That's a motivation for a lot of people to complain. That's a motivation for a lot of people to get angry. That's a motivation for a lot of people to, to yell at their mayor or congressman or whoever. You then went and built an app to give yourself the information you needed.

John Mills 3:36 I don't know. It felt like it would be more fun, you know? [laughs]

Simon Sinek 3:39 [laughs] You're an engineer, right?

John Mills 3:44 I'm an engineer. I'm a product person, yes.

Simon Sinek 3:47 I'm trying to understand how you found yourself in this situation. Isn't this what the, the authorities, what the governments, what the local government's supposed to provide? Aren't they supposed to buy, provide us the information we need to stay safe and know what's going on?

John Mills 4:00 You would, you would think so.

Simon Sinek 4:01 That's what I mean by why you. Like, like, it shouldn't have to be you.

John Mills 4:05 That, that is correct. My friends are joking. I just had an article about me in, like, the h- the LA, uh, the Hollywood Reporter, and, uh, I said I'm building this out of spite, and they sent me the episode of Larry David, who makes the Spite Store [laughs] to spite his, the, the, the coffee guy next door. Uh, you know, I mean, spite's a powerful motivator. I mean, really, I do it out of love, but also just out of disdain for, like, this lack of good technology in the government, right? They still call it IT, right? It's kind of like a, it's kind of like a derogatory term, like the guy who fixes your printer. You know what I mean? Rather the actual, like, serious infrastructure that, that has held up the internet or held up cell towers, like, this is critical infrastructure that must exist. And so I just knew they weren't gonna do it, and I could just complain on the internet, but that would've been boring.

Simon Sinek 4:52 And I think people have to understand that the LA fires were not... This is not your first rodeo. Like, Watch Duty is already, dare I say, an essential app in a lot of other places. Is that, is that fair?

John Mills 5:02 Yeah. I mean, we started in just Lake Sonoma, Napa Counties, where I live in Sonoma. About, uh, 2021 is when I first launched it, and since then, I mean, w- I'm in one in every two or three phones in most counties in Northern California already who experience fire, right? We have mass adoption throughout these areas, and there's been some pretty fast-moving wind-driven fires, and everybody knows. And unfortunately, we didn't have, um, enough adoption in LA until now.

Simon Sinek 5:28 Why does yours work? I mean, p-putting the tech aside, that the tech works, why does it work? Because you're basically consolidating information that comes from a lot of other places that is fairly accurate and fairly up to date.

John Mills 5:42 That's actually the easy part, right? So as a technologist, the challenge isn't to go and just scrape all these government websites and to make a beautiful product and package, et cetera. Like, people know how to do that, right? Like, Silicon Valley is very good at getting your attention and keeping it, making sure you doomscroll endlessly and then buy a bunch of random stuff that you don't need, right? Like, it's very good at that. But the magic is actually in the people, and what I mean by the people are these radio operators and reporters who are listening to fire scanners constantly.So those folks in real time are hearing everything and disseminating that information across the application via push notifications. So that newsfeed is coming from human beings who are spending their days and nights hearing the fire ground, and that's what the magic actually is. There's nothing else to it. Anyone could have done what I did. The hard part was to find these people who were get- who were just bound by their own, like, sheer will a- and, and the w- and the desire to help people, and so that was the really key insight here. That's the data that's missing.

Simon Sinek 6:44 So this, uh, uh, it begs two questions. A, tech is obsessed with AI, and AI seems to be the answer to absolutely everything, and yet you chose to go human. Why human and not automation?

John Mills 6:56 Well, in my opinion, AI is unable to do this job right now. It's just not there yet. That might be a reality in the future, but we, we do use some AI, and we use that to help do signals and noise processing, right? So we do have a lot of AI that are scraping and scanning government websites, that are trying to interpret random things, and they feed that information into Slack, where the human beings are able to see it and interpret it. So to answer your question shortly, I don't think it's ready yet, and then finally, like, even if it was ready, I would be concerned about mistakes being made, and I just don't like that idea right now. It's life and safety, you know? This isn't, like, a silly chatbot helping you write a paper or something, right? This is like, do I run east or west when I leave my house or not? It's a little bit too dangerous, in my opinion.

Simon Sinek 7:46 Yeah. It's a little bit like autopilot, right? Which is, I think every single one of us is fine with computers helping pilots fly the plane, but at the end of the day, we, we like the idea that there's two pilots sitting there evaluating the, the, the automation. I think y- we trust people sometimes more than we trust computers, which I think is a good thing. A- and so, and then how... You know, again, playing off the Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley very much is about a business model, an IPO, giving everybody equity, you know, to get people to work hard, to

Simon Sinek 8:16 l- to get to that, quote-unquote, "liquidity event" that everybody's obsessed with, and yet you are a not-for-profit who the people who work with you so hard are, are volunteers. What was it about starting a not-for-profit and versus the traditional Silicon Valley route, and then how did you get the people to, to sign up?

John Mills 8:37 So we do have some paid staff, obviously-

Simon Sinek 8:39 Right

John Mills 8:39 ... like any nonprofit does. We had zero for the first 18 months. It was just a bunch of volunteers. So, so let's start there, right? So these radio operators were already doing this job on Facebook and Twitter, right? The first really big mega fire was the Valley Fire, I think, 2015 or so, and then we had the Tubbs in 2017, and Paradise was either '18 or '19, I believe. And so we've had these series of events that have driven these radio reporters to start putting this information out on Facebook and Twitter, and they were doing this for free anyway, right? Some had, you know-

Simon Sinek 9:08 J- just-

John Mills 9:08 ... Co-

Simon Sinek 9:08 ... just concerned citizens.

John Mills 9:10 Correct. Uh, and again, some were ex and active retired firefighters and all different types of people. It's kinda all over, all over the board. Um-

Simon Sinek 9:17 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

John Mills 9:17 ... so they were already doing a nonprofit, right? Like, some of them had Ko-fi links to buy them, you know, a $5 cup of coffee, but they were doing this because, how do I... It's a hobby, right? Like-

Simon Sinek 9:28 Mm-hmm

John Mills 9:28 ... why do Wikipedia do this for free, right? Like, why are there, like, Redditors who are, like, just avid geeks about keeping their subreddit community organized and clean? It's like it's in their hearts to do this. And so-

Simon Sinek 9:39 Mm

John Mills 9:40 ... taking that, that idea, like, of course they wanna do a nonprofit. It's in their heart to do it that way.

Simon Sinek 9:46 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

John Mills 9:47 And so for me, like, on a very personal level, I understand why they do that. I feel their pain. This, this shouldn't be for sale. This can't stop, right? Maybe one day the government will do it, and we'll stop. Uh, a nonprofit's job should be to finish its job and delete itself. That would be ideal, right? The program finishes running, and then it gets deleted. But unfortunately-

Simon Sinek 10:11 Mm-hmm

John Mills 10:11 ... we're in a growing industry, as my friends like to remind me.

Simon Sinek 10:14 What can we do for you? What do you, what does Watch Duty need? Um, what do you need from us? What do you... Like, how can we help? How do we support you?

John Mills 10:20 Well, the community is supporting us. I mean, it's amazing to get, you know, such amounts of funding in such a short period of time, and obviously donations are super important to keep our operation running. Um, it's hard to ask because right now the relief efforts are gonna take, you know, almost a decade. I mean, we still have towns around me that have not been rebuilt, and so part of it-

Simon Sinek 10:43 Mm

John Mills 10:43 ... is challenging for me to ask for anything else rather than give money to direct relief because Watch Duty is a capital-efficient business. We will continue to operate and not stop. We are in the business of bits, not atoms, right? Computers are cheap to operate, but rebuilding 12,000 homes and restoring lives that are lost is just not possible. Uh, uh, I, I, I think the best thing to do is give money to direct relief efforts like directrelief.org and others who are on the ground helping.

Simon Sinek 11:12 This is why I love you. I ask you, "How do we help you?" And you're, and you ask us to give to other people. I mean-

John Mills 11:19 That's what I do, right?

Simon Sinek 11:22 John, seriously, man.

John Mills 11:24 [sniffs]

Simon Sinek 11:24 You bring me to tears. You bring me to tears.

John Mills 11:26 You're gonna make me cry. I've had a fucking hard week, man. [sniffs]

Simon Sinek 11:31 [laughs] You okay?

John Mills 11:34 I'm exhausted. Yeah, I'll be all right.

Simon Sinek 11:36 You okay?

John Mills 11:37 I've had a couple of hard ones, but, you know, it's, uh, [laughs] it'll be all right eventually, you know?

Simon Sinek 11:44 What, what happened?

John Mills 11:45 I mean, you just have some days you're just so proud of what you're doing, and then you're just in the shower fucking crying because, you know, you know, people are running for their lives, and it's, you know, like, uh, it's just, it's, it's tough because I'm looking out my window, and behind me is my forest, and it's gonna be overrun with fire again. And so it's not my turn right now, but it's gonna be my turn again. And so it's just the cycle of life. I just, I, I just, I'm just coming to grips with it, you know? Um-

Simon Sinek 12:12 You, you know, one of the weirdest experiences I had in this, all of this, is two, two, two incredibly weird things that happened to me. One was as the evacuation zones got closer to us, and we got very lucky. The wind changed direction and... But they came, they s- they were creeping towards us, you know? And IEven though they didn't reach us, we didn't get to yellow, we were one zone away from yellow, I sort of s- you start preparing. And I walked around my house and I started saying thank you to my stuff, you know? Like, I, I went through this crazy gratitude. Like, one of my favorite paintings in the world that I've owned for years hang on my wall. It's too big for me to put in a car, and I look at it and I said, "Thank you. Thank you so much for, for the joy you..." [laughs] I'm gonna cry. [laughs] I just... I went through this crazy gratitude practice. You know, the r- uh, and it was the just the... And it's n- whether the stuff survived or didn't, I, I didn't have fear that I got, that I was gonna lose it. I got to say thank you. You know, and you, you hear this from people who, uh, who lose loved ones, and they say, "I, I'm, I'm glad I was by their side to say goodbye. You know, they had cancer, we knew it was gonna happen. I'm glad I was by their side." And there was some shit I didn't give a shit about, you know?

John Mills 13:34 Yeah, of course.

Simon Sinek 13:34 I walked around, I'm like, "Ooh, I don't care about that." [laughs]

John Mills 13:37 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 13:37 "I don't care how much it costs. I care nothing about that."

John Mills 13:39 No, that's the time you spent together.

Simon Sinek 13:40 And there was some stuff that I was like... You know? So that was one crazy experience, and I realized I don't need a lot of stuff.

John Mills 13:48 No, you don't.

Simon Sinek 13:48 You know? Which was a beautiful thing to come to, come, to come to terms with. And the second thing, which I s- I s- is just a strange experience, which is watching your app, watching the winds, and I remember the winds change direction, and I thought, "God, thank you. I'm so grateful." And in the same moment, fully aware that somebody's watching the app going-

John Mills 14:13 It's going somewhere else

Simon Sinek 14:13 ... "Oh, no." And to have to reconcile that my good fortune is somebody else's ill fortune. And by the way, nobody wants their house to burn down to save somebody else's house. That, like, that doesn't exist. And just the, the, the paradox that there's no winners in this, that, that my happiness and relief and sigh is somebody else's increased blood pressure and fear. The world is unfair.

John Mills 14:40 It is unfair, and that's what fire, uh, teaches you, man. It takes from everybody equally, and it's, it's not fair.

Simon Sinek 14:46 Yeah.

John Mills 14:46 You know, I remember the first time I, uh, I evacuated, it was... I was, I was gone for eight days, I think, and, like, after six days, I was just like, just burnt already. I'm done. I'm just so stressed out. I'm up all night. There was no Watch Duty. I'm listening to radios. I'm just like, "You know what, man? Just get it fucking over with." I was just done. I just really resigned. I resigned myself-

Simon Sinek 15:07 Yeah

John Mills 15:07 ... to the outcome.

Simon Sinek 15:08 Yeah.

John Mills 15:08 It was a strange, strange feeling.

Simon Sinek 15:11 I hope the lessons are learned, and I, and this is the shitty thing about people, right? Which is we forget. And I remember September 11th, I lived in New York during September 11th, and for weeks, dare I say months, but definitely weeks after September 11th. Yeah, I'll, I'll say months. New York was the most incredible city in the world. Crime disappeared. There was nothing. There was no crime.

John Mills 15:31 That's right.

Simon Sinek 15:31 Somebody who might have mugged me a week before was holding a door open for me.

John Mills 15:35 Yep.

Simon Sinek 15:35 And there was this shared hardship, and we were there for each other. And you see it now in LA, the insane-

John Mills 15:42 That's right

Simon Sinek 15:42 ... outpouring of love. There's also idiots and looters and people who are raising the h- the rents on their houses because they're assholes, you know? Talking about ethics over, over money, you know?

John Mills 15:52 Talking horrible.

Simon Sinek 15:53 Uh, like, nobody's saying you can't m- make money, but my goodness, like, raising rents, you know? Anyway, but we'll forget, and New York went back to being New York. And I remember, I remember being in the middle of it going, "This is utopia, and it's gonna go away because we forget." We forget, and this is my fear, which is the people who are now struck by this weld of emotion, "I'm gonna live, devote my life to service," for how long? I, I hope forever. I hope forever, but for how long, you know?

John Mills 16:27 This is, uh, this is why I like the disaster business, because I see the best, uh, in people. Um-

Simon Sinek 16:34 Yeah

John Mills 16:35 ... I have a couple friends in the industry before I got here, and I always wondered, I was like, "How do you guys do this?"

Simon Sinek 16:41 Yeah.

John Mills 16:41 "How do you..." My friend is Jose Andres, his right-hand man.

Simon Sinek 16:44 Sure.

John Mills 16:44 Uh, he's the one who lost his, his fr- his, his employees in, uh, in Gaza, uh, twice. Uh, I mean, like, he's just... His nickname is actually Doomsday Daddy. I gave him that name. [laughs] I mean, that guy has no pilot's license, has landed multiple planes. He's in fucking horna- tornadoes, hurricanes. He's just... He, he lives it, and he feels more alive at the edge of death than anyone else I've ever met in my entire life, and he embodies this, this spirit, you know? And he sees the best in it.

Simon Sinek 17:14 Yeah.

John Mills 17:14 And now that I'm here, I understand why he does what he does, and I'm, I'm hooked. I'm an addict.

Simon Sinek 17:19 Yeah. I, and I, I see it. I, I, I've spent time... You know, I spent a lot of time with the military, with people who lived these lives of service, who, who, as somebody said when, you know, he described a life in, in service as my get rich slow plan.

John Mills 17:33 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 17:33 You know? Um, [laughs] like, everybody knows they're not doing it for the money, you know? Like, you know that when you sign up. And, and you don't have to f- you don't have to be, uh, uh, l- like your friend, the Doomsday Daddy, to, to have that, that, that intensity. It's a shame that they call it disaster, right? Because the, the flip side of disaster is an inspiration and a joy and a fulfillment like you cannot experience anywhere else. There's no, there's no company, there's no, there's no liquidity event, there's no client you can win, there's no game that you can, you can, you can top that will recreate the feeling of service for those who need it more than you.

John Mills 18:14 Very much agree, and that's what the firefighters do, man.

Simon Sinek 18:17 Yeah.

John Mills 18:17 They're my heroes. I mean, these people, you know, are just... They're, they're like no one else. Will do whatever is right at all costs, and I've seen them risk their careers and their lives to, for the betterment of the world, and they get paid jack shit. And they-There are [sighs] just above and beyond anyone else I've ever worked for. So it is not a boring group of people to be around, and that's just my favorite.

Simon Sinek 18:42 I'm so enamored by who you are and what you stand for. I mean, you've had success as a technologist. You've had success in Silicon Valley. You've lived the movie life, the trope, you know, that a lot of technologists, you know, and startups go through. You've done it. I've met a lot of people who, as a result of selling their business or going public, whatever it is, they've made generational wealth, and if you ask them, "What do you do now?" They say, "I'm an investor."

John Mills 19:10 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 19:11 And I don't understand why people who've made generational wealth, their goal is to now make more money. And what I so appreciate about you is you've, you've done that, you've made the money, and somebody says, "What do you do?" And you're a philanthropist. And you may invest, but you're a philanthropist that invests, not an investor that, that is a philanthropist, and I think that's really important. When I look at who you are and what you stand for, what goes through my mind is, first of all, thank you. I mean, I used your app, and it, it, you know, I checked it like a teenager looking at T-TikTok, you know?

John Mills 19:42 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 19:42 And I'm grateful, but it's more the example of who you are and what you stand for that I think is even more important than the app. 'Cause there's a lot of other problems that need to be solved that good people who can afford to do it and do know how to do these things and/or have already built a business and understand infrastructure and people and, and all of the things, even if they build it out of spite, like, we need more of you.

John Mills 20:08 I mean, I'll take the compliment, thank you, uh, and I agree. And [laughs] part of it is, like, you know, I'm an operator, right? Through and through, so, like, I can't just sit there and invest. It just doesn't make sense to me. Like, I need to build things. I want my hands on equipment, machinery. I had a choice. I could, like, go get a yacht and travel the world and hang out with billionaires, or I could go, like, fight the man and change the world, right? There's nothing more thrilling than this.

Simon Sinek 20:32 Yeah. I, I mean, it's an interesting conversation because all of those folks who made that money, they had the attitude to get there, you know? And something happens, and I don't know what it is. I ha- I mean, I have some ideas where it, it stops. And, and I guess what I'm trying to get at is what is it in your DNA that I n- that how do we replicate you? I mean, we both agree on two things. We both agree that you shouldn't have to do this. Government should be doing a better job of doing it and not you, number one. And we both agree there needs to be more of you. Like, how do we raise a generation of people who, whether they, whether they achieve generational wealth or not, that service is built into how they want to live a life and grow old?

John Mills 21:16 Yeah, I mean, something that really, like, I tell people that I run a nonprofit because I hate them, and what I really don't understand is like, if you're a really good operator, why would you give your money to philanthropists who don't know how to run a business, right? Like, some of these nonprofits that I've seen, like the homeless industrial complex in San Francisco, is like one thing that really upsetted me about 10 years ago when I was getting involved is like those, those executive directors didn't actually know each other, right? Like, the largest ones with the largest buildings don't ever meet, and it, it occurred to me one night walking home after this big event that I had thrown, and I, I put these executive directors together, and, and I realized they knew each other's names and didn't know each other. And I finally realized they're actually in competition with one another.

Simon Sinek 22:04 Yeah.

John Mills 22:04 They do not want to solve the problem, and that, right then and there, I was like, "I'm... First of all, I'm done. I'm not working in the homeless industrial complex anymore until I can come back and make a difference." And then I realized that, like, I'm not giving money to these people. They do not know. They are not good stewards of capital. So as an operator or an investor, why am I gonna invest in a failing business? Show me the outcome, right? W- wh- where is it? I, I don't know where it is. So again, more spite, you know? [laughs]

Simon Sinek 22:32 But this is a, but this is an important insight, which is... And I hate the term not-for-profit, right? That is a tax delineation. That is an IRS delineation on your, on a, on a, on a form. Of course, they should be profitable. They just measure profit differently. So if your, if your charity exists to rescue kittens out of trees, then I wanna see that you're rescuing a lot of kittens out of a lot of trees. That to me is, that is the profit, right? That is... And so instead of calling them not-for-profit, we should call them for-impact because I want, and I want a metric, to your point. And you're right, which is whether it's homelessness or whether it's cancer, whatever it is, they're, they're competing who will come to their gala-

John Mills 23:10 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 23:10 ... as opposed to working together and trying to actually cure cancer, and you're right, which is it's, it's the worst kind of corporate competition, which is trying to undermine each other rather than cooperate because there is no winner in charity. It doesn't, like, oh, you win cancer charity. You know, like, you're, you're-

John Mills 23:28 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 23:28 I think you said it best, which is they win when they go out of business because we don't need them anymore. Um-

John Mills 23:33 That is the goal. And in the fire service, I've seen the same thing. I mean, there are a couple community groups that are fire wise, fire safe groups. That's what they're called, and some of them are at odds with each other, and some of them even have their monthly meetings at the same time, so you have to pick one.

Simon Sinek 23:51 [sighs] It's the charity industrial complex.

John Mills 23:54 It's challenging.

Simon Sinek 23:55 It's challenging.

John Mills 23:55 I, I do not like it.

Simon Sinek 23:57 S- so let's take a step back. I'm a well-intentioned person who I have a wallet, and volunteering is one option, but not everybody i-i- can do that. But we sometimes we, we like to give financially. How do I know to g- give to you and not to somebody else who says all the right things to me and makes me feel pretty and invite me to the gala, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? You and I are having a conversation saying, "It's n- it's nonsense. They compete with each other. It's, they're not trying to solve the problem." All we're doing is telling people, "Don't get involved."

John Mills 24:29 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 24:29 So how do we get people to stay involved? How do we get people to know w- who to volunteer for and, and who to give to?

John Mills 24:36 I bet it's a great question. It's something that I wanna set out to solve, right? There's a couple things going on here at Watch Duty. One of them is leaving, you know, leaving a better blueprint behind, right? And so something we did this year in our annual report is it reads like a startup... uh, a monthly update from a founder. It does not read like a bunch of pretty pictures and a bunch of nonsense and maybe some video that is a tearjerker that gets you to open your purse. What I did is I tore down our metrics well beyond what the Form 990 is, which is the nonprofit reporting form, and I really went deep. Here's how much we spend on an office. Zero. Here's how much it costs to operate this thing. Here's how many dollars per page view it costs. And I really went whole hog at it and just started to go extraordinarily transparent, like no one ever does. Uh, whether you're a public or private company, you gotta be crazy to do what we're doing, and we're just crazy enough to try and do that, and hopefully open the door and show people that we are impactful and your money actually goes really far. So I think that's step one. That's almost an after fact, though, right? Like, you wanna have more money come in and then show what you're doing is impactful. But the obvious one is the reason I'm on this podcast, right? You and everyone and their mother and Paris Hilton are all talking about Watch Duty on, on TikTok, right? And Instagram. And so taking from Silicon Valley, that's what we call product market fit, right? Product-led growth and product market fit. We delivered an incredible product, and still deliver incredible product every day, that people are constantly talking about. And so there's a couple things at play here, um, that really hit home. And when you're hitting someone's a million brain of, like, this is life and safety, it becomes very relevant and top of mind for you, right? Um, and I think there's a confluence of events here that are allowing us to do what we do.

Simon Sinek 26:25 You know, I, I... The podcast is called A Bit of Optimism. I brought you on here to inspire and to share who you are and, and the goodness that you've, that you're doing. But, you know, I, I... You're making me angry.

John Mills 26:40 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 26:41 Uh, and I now am filled with spite. Uh, as you say, spite's a wonderful motivator, because I'm literally going through a list of people who are incredibly smart. They're engineers, they're marketers, they're brilliant leaders, and they, they did it for their companies. They had brilliant market fit. They solved a problem. They became the, the gem in whatever industry they're in. They m- made their money, and they're not doing what you're doing, and I'm angry. I'm so spiteful right now that very talented people... And you, you said it right, which is well-intentioned people go into not-for-profit. They're full of why and they lack how, right? L- lots of desire to do good, lot of good intention, you know, and it breaks down and politics show up, and they just, they don't have the product stuff. And then on the business side, you have a lot of product ingenuity [laughs] , you have a lot of how, sometimes lacking, lacking the why. You're doing the thing that is, that is the way a business and a charity should both work. Um, so I'm just very angry, so thank you very much for that.

John Mills 27:47 You're welcome.

Simon Sinek 27:47 Do you think you would've, do you think you would've done this if the fires didn't come close to your own home? If you didn't have that existential crisis, do you think you'd be on this path?

John Mills 27:57 I, I doubt it. I mean, how would I know, right?

Simon Sinek 27:59 Yeah.

John Mills 27:59 Here's the irony. The irony is I moved to the woods and I built a nonprofit. The nonprofit existed before I built Watch Duty. I knew I was gonna do this. I knew I was gonna apply my skills to do something crazy for the world, um, and really help, like, first principle, bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like food, water, shelter, safety, sanitation. Like, things that I really care about. So I knew something was gonna happen, didn't know what it was gonna be, and I just met the moment.

Simon Sinek 28:28 I talked to a friend who, who lost his house in the fires. I mean, he, he... It's all gone. There's the initial shock, and then there's a little bit of denial, and the, the, you know, I think the bigger shock will, is still to come. But he, he's... You know, he lives in the Pali- he lived in the Palisades. Um, and he was saying that he's worked really hard to accumulate a lot, which is how he could afford a house in the Palisades. And, and losing it all, as traumatic as it has been, it makes him realize the, that he has to change his life. And he realizes he now needs to say yes to being on the committees and he needs to say yes to being on the boards, and he needs to take his incredible talent that, uh, helped him achieve what he's achieved and redirect it. And I think that's wonderful. I- the thing that upsets me is why does it take trauma and loss for us to want to devote our lives to, to, to service? If you go back to World War II, for example, right? There were more cases of young men who killed themselves because they didn't get drafted than those who did. You know, what happened to our society after the Greatest Generation? We went from greatest to Boomer, X, Y, Z, [laughs] and Alpha. There's not even, there's not even a, a description of our generations anymore.

John Mills 29:45 Yeah, I mean, I, that's, uh, I notice it, too, obviously, and, and this country has definitely lost solidarity with, with our neighbors. I think that consumerism's a big part of it. We started to understand marketing and psychology really well after the Second World War, and started to sell consumerism and really use the things that we learned during war to, unfortunately, sell goods and services, really. Uh, and then of course, you know, bedroom community neighborhoods moving out of city centers, and I think that was kind of painful, and I... And then I think the death nail for it really is, is how the internet has become a, a, a, a dirty place at times, you know? I think it's just like I'm skipping ahead many generations here, but I think it was all just inevitability. And then it becomes so easy to reach people through their phones and have them doom scrolling, and then have them be angry, and then respond to people and fight on the internet, and it's just, it's just divisive. So I, I wish I knew. I've just, I've seen it, too, and I wish I had a better answer. I think we all wish we had an answer, right?What do you think?

Simon Sinek 30:47 It's an interesting insight how we took the skills we learned from war. We took these skills that we had to learn, like fast manufacturing, which wasn't a thing until the war, and the brilliance of the assembly lines, and we could churn out tanks and boats and planes like nobody's business. You're right. We learned these skills in war, and then we applied them after that. At the end of the war, they, they all looked at Joseph Goebbels, this brilliant propagandist for the Nazis. They were so impressed by his ability for propaganda to move populations to do things that, you know, they wanted, that the regime wanted. Edward Bernays saw what Joseph Goebbels did and was so impressed and, and he takes this thing that was called propaganda, and he saw an opportunity. Couldn't call it propaganda. He renamed propaganda, da, da, da, da, public relations. But I guess, like, you know, the question that I grapple with, and this is part of, you know, even the work that I do, is, is where... what happened to the ethical under- un- the underpinning? We see, you know, uh, a, a drug company that has a patent for es- an essential drug raise the price of that drug a th- you know, 1,000%, 1,500% 'cause it helps them surpass their financial goals. Disgusting. And when we drag their CEOs in front of Congress to testify, they all say the same thing, which is, "We followed the law. We didn't break the law," which is true. None of them broke the law. That is not illegal, but it is horribly unethical

John Mills 32:05 Unethical

Simon Sinek 32:05 And the law is a lower standard than ethics, and I'm just curious. [laughs] It definitely changed, where ethics were a thing. I mean, chivalry was a thing, where your word was vital, and, like, this thing about ethics and chivalry, your word and honor, these words have... they're gone. Now it's just show me the metric, and if it, the metric is good, I'll do it. If it's not, I won't.

John Mills 32:27 Yeah, I think everyone, uh, is waiting for the hammer to drop, right, on Watch Duty being a nonprofit. Like, I get, like, that question all the time, and I'm just like... I just look at them. I'm like, "That's just so boring."

Simon Sinek 32:37 Yeah.

John Mills 32:38 We've heard that story before.

Simon Sinek 32:39 Yeah.

John Mills 32:39 Who wants to hear that again? Like, that's not what I wanna leave behind. It just seems like we're in a generation of, like, if you can, it means you should, and I just don't, I don't like it. Like, again-

Simon Sinek 32:51 Yeah

John Mills 32:51 ... to your point, like, my word matters to me, you know? And, uh, I don't, I don't know why it's gone. Again, I'm hoping we can find more examples of work like this, and I leave a legacy behind of other people who wanna do this, and I give a, a, a roadmap and ways to do this easier. Because man, the amount of people who want me to, you know, either convert or take their money or why aren't you a B corp? You can still do this. And I'm like, "This is not what's interesting to me." And they, they can't-

Simon Sinek 33:17 Mm-hmm

John Mills 33:17 ... understand, like, what is wrong with me. Did I have, like, some sort of traumatization, and I just, I can't get over it, and, like, I don't need the money 'cause I'm so filthy rich? That's just not, not the case. I put a million dollars of my own company into th- uh, my own money into this company, right? 'Cause I just wanted to prove to myself it worked, and now that it worked, it's making money. I'm finally taking a paycheck again as of January 1st. Not much, but, you know, whatever, man. Like, uh, money will come and go. Like, this is a once in a generation, you know, thing, and I really wanna lead other people to this, uh, path and hopefully, again, leave the world a better place than we found it.

Simon Sinek 33:53 Mm. Amen. Tell me, tell me an early specific childhood memory. I'm just very curious about you.

John Mills 33:59 Hmm. Well, I mean, when I was really young, uh, I was, um, you know, building with my, my father, uh, which was always really fun for me. Um, he's a woodworker. Uh, actually, he's an IBM executive, but he, um, had a woodshop, and he grew up that way. His father was World War II. He went to war at 18, you know, 17 or something, lied about his age, and went to the Pacific theater. Um, became an engineer. It's in my blood to build, right? We're builders, and so I was, you know, helping him restore anything that I could, and I really just loved spending time doing that and in creating things out of nothing. And, um, I took that into computers as well because there are times where he wouldn't wanna help me, or I, I was too young to use a power tool, so I would start hacking on computers. And so that's kind of how I got into this.

Simon Sinek 34:47 Is there a specific one that stands out, a specific project on... you worked on with your dad, something that really stands out?

John Mills 34:52 I remember one. Uh, my favorite class in middle school, I think, was, was called technology. It's really a woodworking class mostly, and we had to build little, uh, little air-powered robots. So it's like a little robot arm that has a bunch of syringes with air, uh, lines going to them. You can, like, articulate the arms back and forth, and so I remember my dad helping me do this. And of course, I won because my dad built a lot of the damn thing. But, uh, it was super fun to, like, get to, like, make wood and things move, you know? 'Cause wood doesn't really move. If it does, it's breaking usually. Uh, so it was fun to, like, kind of build little, uh, toys and robotics and things like that and win the science fairs and whatever. I, I, I just feel like it's cheating, but anyway, whatever. I learned how to, how, how to make really cool stuff with my father.

Simon Sinek 35:38 W- what do you think it is about that memory of all the fun things and all the things you built with your dad? What do you think is... What do you think it is about that one that stands out that's, that you wanna talk about it right now?

John Mills 35:49 Man, I thought these questions were coming. Um, I don't know how to answer that one. I just... I think it was fun-

Simon Sinek 35:54 Well, you thought I was gonna ask you the same questions as all, as all the other TV shows.

John Mills 35:56 No, I did not. Thank God. Um, uh-

Simon Sinek 35:59 [laughs]

John Mills 36:00 What was... Again, again, I think I said it before. What was fun for me was, like, reimagining, um, wood in a different way, right?

Simon Sinek 36:08 Yeah.

John Mills 36:08 Like, wood is not supposed to move, and it was fun to be able-

Simon Sinek 36:11 Yeah

John Mills 36:11 ... to use these things to, like, prototype a moving object. Um, it's just not something-

Simon Sinek 36:16 Yeah

John Mills 36:16 ... you normally would, would do, and I like mixing materials, which I do now a lot in my life, um, software, hardware, machines, cars, computers. I like the, I like the, the, the, the part of The Matrix, uh, where the little kid is bending the spoon, you know? And he looks at Neo-

Simon Sinek 36:33 Mm-hmm

John Mills 36:33 ... and is like, "You have to remember there is no spoon," right? None of this is real, and you can bend reality.

Simon Sinek 36:38 Yeah.

John Mills 36:38 You know? And so, like, these moments allowed me to realize I, I'm as li- I'm limited by my own beliefs, right? And so I think that's what really got me to think bigger.

Simon Sinek 36:47 I think that theme has repeated. You are inspiring us to reimagine. You're inspiring us to reimagine, you know, how to apply our brains to solve problems. You're asking us to reimagine how a charity works. You know, you'll pay them real world salaries because you can. There's just no shareholder to extract, you know, profit for. Um, and you're asking us to reimagine what a charity looks like, that w- that maybe that you don't have to, you don't have to have these for-impact companies that have IPOs, but rather just keep building charities that pay really well and solve real problems. You're asking us to reimagine what a metric is, what... how to define profit. You're asking us to reimagine what it means to l- live a life worth living. If we follow your route, we're cheating. Like, we're, we're beating cancer. We're overcoming these challenges. Like, we're... We, we win because we're cheating, because we're using our, our talents in a different way. Um, you've definitely given me a lot to think about, about how, how we re- reimagine business, charity, all of this stuff.

John Mills 37:44 Yeah, I really like this idea of, like, human potential. There's, like, something so incredible about, like, when you give people the conduit to do something, right, that they're kind of already doing, like, you can really harness that to be extraordinarily, like, dangerously kinetic, and that's what we've done with all this potential energy from all these people. And speaking of World War II, a story that I've been obsessed with since I was a kid is, is how we broke the Enigma. We weren't able to crack the German, uh, cryptographic machine, which was called the Enigma, for quite some time. And so the, the, the way that we got it was actually, again, same thing, idle human potential. And so we put out crossword puzzles in all the Allied newspapers, and a bunch of people were able to break these things repeatedly. One of them, her name was Joan Clarke, who became the first cryptographer. But we used all these people's just, uh, like, this mass crowd of intelligence and, and found the brightest people, and without her, we would never have, well, maybe never have defeated them, right? And it was a pretty incredible endeavor of the human condition a- and potential energy becoming very kinetic.

Simon Sinek 38:54 To your point about sort of how we reimagine, we reimagine how we can recruit, which is we put in the j- in the regular newspaper these impossible crossword puzzles and, and if you could solve it, we, we wanted to talk to you. We didn't, we didn't hold mass interviews [laughs] and then try and-

John Mills 39:11 That's right

Simon Sinek 39:11 ... you know, t- take, take this test, take this, you know, personality test and we'll assess if you're, you know... It's, it's, it w- it was reimagining even how to hire.

John Mills 39:21 That's right.

Simon Sinek 39:22 Um, which-

John Mills 39:22 It didn't take convincing, right?

Simon Sinek 39:23 It didn't take convincing.

John Mills 39:23 "Here's money. Do this job." It's like, "I'm gonna do this anyway. This is who I am."

Simon Sinek 39:27 "I'm gonna do the crossword puzzle anyway. I love a problem. I, I'm bored of the problems in the newspaper. Give me a more difficult problem 'cause I like this stuff, 'cause it's fun. Put all those people in a room [laughs] and see what happens."

John Mills 39:39 Here we go.

Simon Sinek 39:39 It's genius.

John Mills 39:40 And that, that's how we did it, right? And this is no different. We've done similar things before. It's just not how we think about, to your point-

Simon Sinek 39:47 Yeah

John Mills 39:47 ... hiring and creating things. It always seems like specialized people who have degrees in whatever.

Simon Sinek 39:53 Yeah.

John Mills 39:54 I mean, we just proved that a lot of experts did not know what they were doing, right?

Simon Sinek 39:58 Yeah. Go, go hire cryptographers.

John Mills 40:00 Very, very drastically.

Simon Sinek 40:00 Go, go hire crypto- g- go hire people who, who break codes, and that's what we do. We, you know, like, we... And because what they didn't, they bring old thinking and old ways.

John Mills 40:08 That's right.

Simon Sinek 40:09 And what people who are, have that natural ability, what they do is they bring th- new thinking, new ways, and they are unrestrained. They are unrestrained in their imagination, and this theme is keeps coming up, which is reimagining, you know? And reimagining starts with people who don't know. I, I, I've always maintained one of my greatest assets is my naivete. I just didn't know that I couldn't do it.

John Mills 40:28 Beginner's mind, as Einstein would say. It's super incredible, right? It's just such an incredibly powerful way to go into a problem and really just hear everything, which is hard as an engineer, right? Because you have a, a belt full of all these tools. "Man, I got hammers, I got air nailers, I got all this machinery. Just sh- show me what to do and I'll do it." And it's like, "Actually, don't touch anything," right? "Just, just observe for a while."

Simon Sinek 40:53 Let us raise a glass, uh, to those, to th- to those who serve others and that true fulfillment in life. If you, if, if all of these people looking for joy and purpose, a- a- as you have learned, there is no greater joy and no greater sense of pur- life purpose than to be in service to those who serve others.

John Mills 41:17 Absolutely. Cheers to them.

Simon Sinek 41:20 All right, my friend. Be safe, be well, uh, and let me know how I can serve you.

John Mills 41:25 I appreciate that.

Simon Sinek 41:26 Thanks a lot.

John Mills 41:27 Thank you much, man. [upbeat music]

Simon Sinek 41:29 If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simonsinek.com, for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other.