Welcome back to the To Promises Podcast. Let's dive right into another exciting adventure with BDN Crew as he pursues his new passion of one day finding the most epic and enjoy responsibly. Swish to whiskey Welcome back again. I'm really excited to be recording this episode with one of my mentors in the SEAL teams. And it's been really great. We've gotten to record with a few SEALs lately and I know that you guys have really been enjoying it.
And I know you're going to get a lot out of this conversation with Mr. Juan Gonzalez. He is the founder of Eagle Eye Production and he's been in the security industry for years. When I first met him, he was one of my instructors when I was going through SQT. We went on, we served together in some of the various SEAL teams and we've had a great relationship ever since then. He retired in 2021 as a Navy SEAL and is now full-time running his security services firm. Juan, how you doing, man?
Thanks for coming on the show. Good, good to see you, man. It's been a long time. It has been. So if you don't mind, would you mind introducing yourself to our listeners, giving them a little bit about your background, what got you into the teams and some of your story moving through the seals? Sure thing, man, sure thing. Okay, so my name is Juan Gonzalez and as a military member, almost all of my adult life, you're automatically known as Gonzo.
So I've been known as Gonzo for many, many years, not just by people in the military, but that's also translated to my civilian world. So I want the readers to know that. If you ever see my stuff online or in socials, you'll see the word Gonzo a lot. So I was an army brat growing up. I grew up within the military structure and framework. but my father was an officer. I was enlisted. So that's a whole different world. Because of his job, he was in the foreign service board.
He was a diplomat for 90 % of his career. I was raised and grew up mostly in South and Central America. So I was very familiar with that culture by the time I turned 15. By the time I turned 14, 15, we then moved to the United States and I spent my last four years of high school in three different schools. By that time, I had already lived on the streets and associated with a lot of kids in South America. I felt older than everybody else by the time I got to the States.
I can almost say that I felt a little bit out of place. I grew up in Argentina, Panama, Honduras, and visited probably every country in Central America, South America, Latin America as a whole. So was very well traveled and I was very, and I had a lot of experience at a young age. You could say that I had lived a lot by the time I was 15. My father loved to travel, so that made it even better, right? So even though he was tied to a certain country for two or three years.
He always took it upon himself on vacations and on all the free time that he had to see all the surrounding countries and understand and visit and integrate with even more cultures. So because of that, I've always been very social, very outgoing. I learned that by default. I wasn't born like that, but I was thrown into being the new kid every two years in a different high school, in a different environment, and in a different culture. So I really learned to get along with anybody.
By the time high school was ending, I knew I wanted to do something. I knew that I was cut out for something special, but I didn't know what that was. And I sure as heck didn't have the skill sets for anything like that. I just knew that I wanted to do something special. I wasn't really prepared to go straight into college. I didn't have the grades academically. I was a little bit behind. I really didn't apply myself enough in high school.
I was a big daydreamer, always imagining myself doing a hundred different things besides sitting in a classroom, listening to a teacher. Eventually I did fix that though. Eventually I was able to lock it down in school and college much, much later. But during high school, I was kind of all over the place. So right out of high school, my senior year out of El Paso, Texas, I joined the army. I wanted to be a uh doctor. You know, I shot for the stars, I guess.
And I went through the army, went through the motions, became a medic with the 101st Airborne Air Assault Division in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and had a great three years. It was awesome. But I knew I didn't want to stay in the Army. I wanted to get my college fund to get out. I was ready to go to college, you know. Loved the discipline, loved the history of the unit, but I just didn't want to be in the Army anymore.
Got out, honorably discharged, and went through various colleges back in El Paso. Then I moved to Dallas for a little bit. And I still had that bug. When I was in the Army, I had seen some of the Special Forces guys running around base and ran into them in Egypt. We did a six-month deployment to Sinai Egypt. Great tour with the MFO, Multinational Forces and Observers. So I got to hang out with them a little bit and see how they operate, talk to a couple guys, and I was hooked.
But like I said, I didn't want to join the Army, or stay in the Army at that point. Got out, went to school a little bit, had that bug, went to the Navy recruiter and said, you know what, I think I'd like to give the SEALs a try. Now leading up to that point, nobody had talked to me about the SEALs, nobody approached, my father never pressured me to go into the military. As a matter of fact, he almost talked me out of it.
My mom as well, know, my mom didn't want to see me go back into the military again, but. By this point, there was a lot of people that told me I couldn't do it. It was just way out of reach. They knew what they thought was me. And then they saw what Navy SEALs were like and they're like, there's no way. And that had only lit that fire even more. So I buckled up, I put my head down and I started to do some research. I spent all my times at Barnes and Noble.
Back when Barnes and Noble was a thing, you know, before the internet age, you know, I read every demo Dick Marcinko book that was out there, Red Team, Red Cell. did a research paper on STDs. I was completely immersed and watched every SEAL team movie that there was up to that date that I could find and went for it. I had already had a long break in service from the army and from going to college. So I was kind of pressured to leave college early and go into that.
If I was going to do it, I was told I needed to do it now or I wasn't going to meet the age cutoff. By the time I was 27, I was back in the Navy and at Bud's at 28 and spent the next 23 years in the military after that. weren't doing the best job that I've ever had. You know, I call it a big fraternity is how I think of it. And I really owe all of the grit, all of the tenure, all of the toughness that I had going into that training.
I definitely got, well, growing up in South and Central America. Everything has its purpose. I'm a faithful Christian and I lean on scripture a lot and God a lot. If you don't, I believe it's because you haven't hit rock bottom yet, but When you go through tough times and there's nobody else left to turn to, I know that I've got somebody that's always got my back and that has always been God. And I've tapped him to him more than once. You know, there are no atheists and foxholes. Absolutely.
That's really great to hear you share that. And it seems like we have quite a few parallels in our early life. You got to the Bud's milestone a little bit later in your life than I did. I started almost right out of high school, but I did go right after I graduated. I was very encouraged. I grew up in a very Christian family as well. I still hold to that faith.
And they encouraged me, well, before you make a decision, before you decide what you're going to do with your life, give a period or a season of service back and serve the community, go on a missions trip somewhere or go do humanitarian work or just do something. And I ended up going on a missions trip to El Salvador. That turned into a few extra trips. I'd studied Spanish all through high school. The way that was put out for me just lined up.
And obviously God put me there for a reason, put me in a place. And so there I was really able to improve my Spanish speaking skills, which was really good because I thought I was going to do okay with A's all through Spanish in high school. And then I get there and I'm like, what language are these guys even speaking? This isn't what I studied at all. So when I was down there, you talked about, you felt like you were a lot older.
You had a more mature mindset moving back to the States than your peers. And I can definitely see that. The way of life that I saw down there is a lot different. From what I experienced growing up, I moved around quite a bit too, from Southern Illinois rural to St. Louis, Missouri city apartments to kind of a mountain community in Colorado. And when I was in El Salvador, there was a really big uptick in gang activity. DAC 8, MS 13, those were kind of the big gangs present at the time.
Would you say that? Some of those security concerns were reasons that you came in a little bit more mature or... Absolutely. You know, I spent a lot of time on the streets with the kids that were in the neighborhood. I didn't hang out a lot with the kids from school because the school was far away. You know, usually it was a bus ride or my kids, you my parents had to take me. So all my friends were really from the neighborhood.
And those kids were, even though if they were in the same grade as I was, which was third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and above, I always felt like they were so much older. They looked older, number one. They acted older, they talked older, and they did older people things. So there I was just trying to keep up with them as that little brother most of the time.
So I developed street smarts really early on, situational awareness, how to talk, when not to talk, who to talk to, who to ignore, who to avoid. And I can tell you to this day, when I'm driving around an area in Mexico or Latin America, what a good area is, what a bad area is, way before I even get there. I can't even tell you on a map based on the type of housing that you see, right? Just how things look. I'm able to pick that up easily.
Mannerisms, demeanor, you know, the eyes, the way people look at you or the way they don't look at you. Those are all tells to me that I picked up when I was very, very young. And thankfully my sisters picked those up too because my dad made it a rule that if my sisters went out, I had to go out with them. So all of their friends became my friends. All of my sister's girlfriends became my girlfriends.
And it was always a pleasure to go out and be with my sisters because I was always surrounded by a bunch of girls. And there I was trying to... No, no, that's definitely a pro, you know? So yeah, South America and Central America definitely did shape me and it had big effects on my life growing up. Absolutely. And so you came in a lot more prepared, a lot more mature. You did some college. You had Army experience as a medic.
And then from there, you decided, hey, we're going to go to the SEAL teams. We're going to go into special forces. You liked what you saw with Army SF, but it wasn't all about the Army culture that you had already experienced. You wanted something different. That's right. And it couldn't get more different and more difficult than the SEAL teams. I always loved the ocean. I don't love it so much now, just like a lot of team guys, because of dealing with the cold water.
And of course the Pacific is always cold, which is where we do a hundred percent of our training at Buds. And I just chose to go for it. And like I said before, had I not experienced a lot of tough situations, I think maybe the story would have been different at Buds. Buds was just another big trial. If you get through that six month trial, then you triumph, but it's not over yet. But because you get through that Buds pipeline, that crucible, it enables you to go through SQT, right?
And then you get through SQT, you're still not a SEAL, then you go to your SEAL team and then you're proving yourself again, but you're using all of that history from Buds and SQT to get into the SEAL teams, become a good SEAL, maintain yourself and sustain yourself as a good SEAL. And then hopefully when you're done, your reputation is intact and you can get out, do bigger and better things with all of that behind you.
All the positive historical attributes that you gained from those 20 years or 10 years, however long you were in, they carry with you for the rest of your life. And in some ways it becomes your identity, which is sometimes a problem. And I equate it to being in a prison, right? When prisoners get out of, know, whether it's five, 10, 15, 20 years or more, and they get out of that prison life, that's all they know.
don't, can't even assimilate back into society because it's really all they know and they believe, they feel that that's all they'll ever be. It's a con doing con things.
And I think in the military, because transitioning in the past was always a little bit gray, it wasn't for a lot of guys, it's not an easy transition, even though nowadays in the last 10 years, I think the government, not just through themselves, but also in the civilian world, there's a lot of transition programs that'll help a guy get out. and re-identify themselves, reset themselves, and find that true purpose, that true identity, which is what you need now.
I'm not saying forget about the SEAL teams or forget about the time you did in prison because you can definitely use all that as learning points. Just like you and I did, we used everything I learned in the SEAL teams, I parlayed and I used it in the business world. I use it in my civilian world. I use it in how I carry myself. I use it in how I speak to people, how not to speak to people. but all that takes time.
And I had to let go of pieces of who I was in the SEAL team so that I could carry on and be successful in the civilian world. Yeah, you bring up a lot of really good points and there are some things that I've touched on in a lot of my writing. And I think that we could dive a little bit deeper in here. So you talked about identity and I think some very interesting things that you brought up was how as a kid, you were always learning, you were always active.
Maybe you weren't the most active in the educational academia, but you were striving through street smarts, through learning people, through development in those ways. And you always had a goal. And it was that foundation, you'd already had developed some sense of identity and you went into the army and you felt there was not a congruence. Whatever it was that was culturally there, it was a great learning experience. It helped as a stepping stone to bridge a gap, to put you on your way.
And then you finally found your community, your fraternity as you kind of described it earlier. And then all of those little pieces of resilience and all those struggles and trials that you mentioned, all were a part of your success story. And so then you mentioned reputation and that foundation and how that reputation, a lot of times, so we would have terms like perception is reality, how you're being perceived, how you're carrying yourself, do you look lazy? Are you actively working?
Are you actively volunteering? Are you doing the work to help out the team? Are you the first person to jump in the showers? So you've really hit some really great points on developing that good reputation because that's what's going to follow you. That's what's going to, once your 20 years is up, once your five years is up, however long it is that you do in the military, once that up, your reputation is really that foundation of what sets you up or sets you back for the rest of your life.
That's right, mean, perception is reality and how people perceive you, I mean, that is a reality of life. People are gonna judge you by your looks, the way you walk, the way you talk. And coming out of the SEAL teams, you can either get invited to that next room when you get out or you'll stay on the other side of the door, right? Once you get through though, it's your turn, it's your responsibility to show that you've earned wherever it is that you're at.
We have a saying in the teams, I know you've heard it, you earn your Trident every day and it's completely true because... I can't tell you how many times I was going through something and I asked myself, especially when I was younger, why is this happening to me? And let me tell you, it's all happening for a reason. And the best thing to do is just embrace it.
If it's tough, if it's hard emotionally, physically, those are the best things to be going through in life because you will learn something from every single point of pain that you experience in your life. It's the people that neglect that pain, discard it or push it away. It's a shame when people do that, then they don't get to learn anything from that. And the reason we're all here is to learn from our past mistakes. And some people call them mistakes. I call them just experiences, right?
You're gonna learn from whatever position you're in right now or whatever position you get yourself into, the harder the better. Cause you're always gonna come out a better person, a better seal, a better father, a better husband. You just gotta accept it, embrace it, learn from it and move on. That's awesome. The other kind of saying that we have is get comfortable being uncomfortable. And you just hit the nail on the head that we're all going to experience pain. Pain is going to come our way.
But if you can look at it for that lesson that you're supposed to learn from it, what you can get out of it and what you can become the way you can improve yourself and the things around you. Like you said, there's a reason you're going through it. In my transition story, I let some of that negativity kind of beat me down. And it's something that you I'm not proud of, you don't want to advertise that and be like, you know, like this was me at my worst. I mean, it's the truth.
I was having a lot of health problems. I was going through a lot of the things that many people with combat experience or special operators, they kind of have their internal demons. talk about it a lot. all of those things were hitting me all at once. I was getting denied healthcare and I just went in some negative spirals and I couldn't sleep. I was having chronic pain. I kept breaking things, I broke my foot, I got a hernia. It was just like everything was going wrong.
And here I am just being like in my head, I'm like, oh, I worked too hard for this. I shouldn't be losing everything. I don't deserve this. But there was a reason behind all of it. And when you're going through it, sometimes it's hard to lift your head up, lift your vision up and see beyond it.
But what I would encourage anybody, if you're going through what I went through, the sooner you can get your head up, and start looking out at the environment, start seeing what else is out there and not being zoomed in, either watching your feet or at your problem, the quicker you're gonna get out of it and the quicker things are gonna get better. That's 100 % right. And right now when you were talking, I was thinking about some of that pain and trials.
And the best thing to do is you take that pain, those trials, hardship, and you chew on it, You chew on it till you can't chew it anymore. And then eventually you push through it, And then it's gone. None of it lasts. If you look back, all that stuff is over. It's gone. But we get into this mindset, this emotion, that it's never gonna end. How can it end? I'm never gonna get through it. And once you stay in those negative thoughts and you allow them to consume you, then you suffer.
You suffer, you quit, you die, you contemplate suicide, you hide in alcohol, you hide in pills, and then it's a bad ending after that. And it all comes down to mindset, Mindset, how you perceive things, all the bad things that happened to you in the past, how do you perceive them? how you let them carry you or keep you back, right? I started to never look at things as actual problems. I started to look at everything as a learning experience. What am I supposed to be learning right now?
And one thing I learned that took me a while, it took me almost a year to learn this, is that whenever you have a trial or a hardship, something you don't think that you're gonna get through, you don't have anywhere to turn, first and foremost, give it to God. That's the first thing you have to do. Now that doesn't mean no action, just to give it to God and roll over and go to sleep. No, give it to God and then start taking steps to confront that hardship.
Whether it's a situation, a person, something internal that's just within yourself, and most of it is, you know, we tend to uh really drown ourselves in anxiety because we start thinking about what things are gonna be or how they could be. We start thinking too far in the future, things haven't even happened yet. and we're already giving ourselves a heart attack.
So pull back from that, get rid of those thoughts of things that haven't even happened, be in the present, and deal with what you have in front of you right then and there, and definitely don't think about the past. The past is over, it's gone, it already happened, you're never gonna get it back, you don't want it to come back, learn from it, it'll only lead you to depression. If you think about the past, it'll lead you to depression.
If you think about the future too far, you'll be in an anxious state. Stay in the present, confront all your problems, talk to whoever need to. If you have a problem with your boss or a coworker or a family member, your spouse, work it out right there. Communication is key. Get to the bottom of it, solve it, and move on. And there's a lot of gold there. ah Everything you said about mindset, about staying out of the past, staying out of the future, I dig it.
And we kind of talked about in Bud's just making it to that next meal. You're not looking all the way through all the trials. You're not looking at the rest of that six months. You're getting that next step. What's actionable? What can I do right now? How can I improve my immediate space? And if there's something you can do, great, do it, take action on it. If it's something out of your control, release it.
Yeah, you said something you said right now that just piqued my interest was that something to remind me of what you just said right now where you have to take every task by the minute by the second because you're solving problems right then and there was pool comp if you remember pool comp You're given the instructions of what you're supposed to do that day to pass that evolution that morning You're giving that those instructions that morning.
So you can't be thinking about yesterday You can't be thinking about the next dive pump You got to be thinking about right then in there because you're gonna be expected to solve that problem in 30 minutes with the information you got 20 minutes ago. uh And if you're thinking everywhere else, you're not retaining. Great stuff.
You'd mentioned communication and that's something that as I grew as an operator and throughout my time as an adult, I kind of had the conversation myself and I tried to share it with others is that if you're going to invest in something, invest in personal development or something, anything like that, developing your communication skills is probably your biggest force multiplier.
that you could possibly do because communication affects every area of your life, not just your career, not just your profession, but your relationships with family, friends, coworkers, everything. So you mentioned communication. Is there anything you'd like to share? Because it seemed like you were all on it. Would you mind sharing anything about that to give us some tips on? Yeah, mean communication is top three things that you should have. Number one is a human being.
You have to be a good communicator. It'll serve you well all of your life in every situation. I can kill you with words, or I can build you with words. You have to really be careful the words that you let slip out of your mouth because they really shape and mold not just the people around you. but they also shape and mold yourself of what you tell yourself, right? As a SEAL, I was a communicator. So I was always communicating.
I always had multiple radios on me and I was communicating with multiple units, multiple people of rank structure, branches, and then also communicating down to the guys in the SEAL team as you become a chief, know, communication of who you want to do what, when do want them to do it, how you want them to do it. all of those things become critical toward your mission.
Now, in the civilian world, your life as a man, as a husband, as a leader, or as a follower, communicating your wants, your needs to your spouse, communicating to your children, not just verbally, but also with your actions, right? Because actions are also a good way to communicate, and they can tell you a lot about somebody without them having to even open up their mouth.
Verbal communication skills are probably something that has taken me the longest to learn, at least to the level that I need to know it. As a businessman for the last 15 years and as a father and a husband for the last 18 years, communication will make or break any man's relationship, any man's career. So you really need to focus on being a good communicator your whole life. And it never ends.
And certain people, you're going to communicate this way, other people you have to communicate with them this way. So there's also lot of emotional EQ, a lot of EQ involved as to how you communicate with certain people. And that's only learned through experience. If you don't get out there, put yourself out there, you're constantly trying to learn things, associate with people. In this digital age, it's really easy to get lost on your phone and get lost in the web.
And I tell my kids that we're social animals, you know, we're meant to talk to people and liaise with people. and learn about each other. And the only way you can do that appropriate is through good communication. Absolutely. And you mentioned so many good things there is the way that you need to communicate with just different people and it's a learning process and it's very dynamic. And you look at success and you think, I'm going up. I'm always improving, right?
You know, 1 % better every day or whatever it is. But a lot of times it's kind of a wavy line and you have some successes, you have some setbacks and things like that. So there was maybe a medical thing happens and you're not as present. You're not as much yourself. And so your communication skills kind of fall back a little bit. You're angry, you're projecting. Any of these things will happen to any human being throughout their life. And so you can't really beat yourself up.
Kind of what you're talking about. How do you communicate with yourself? If you just keep beating yourself up of, I'm not as good as I used to be, or, I made this mistake or anything like that, that negative self-talk is just gonna keep just driving your performance down. Being able to let it go, being able to know that, hey man, life is a process. This is a learning process.
We're gonna have good days, we're gonna have bad days, but as long as we're intentional about our growth, intentional about our improvement, and really trying to improve those behaviors and skill sets that we believe in, that we know we want to be the person that we know ourselves to be and that we want to be, then that is a success in and of itself. 100%, man, 100%. Now getting to that point, that's a whole different story.
Getting to the point where you can understand that takes a lot of self-reflection. Meditation for some, I like to call them quiet moments where you just, I know you've heard a tactical pause or a pregnant pause. You know, sometimes in life, especially as you go through trials and you're gonna reach a certain plateau where you feel like you can't go any further or you don't know how to get further, you have to be able to take a step back and look at how far you've come.
You know, look at all your positives. Realize your negatives, learn from them, but turn them into positives. You can turn any negative into a positive. It's all about mindset. So yeah, I couldn't agree with you 100%. super great. oh joining us today on this curious roller coaster of life. Please exit peacefully and enjoy rest of your day. If you're for another one, just push play. Just a final note before you go, thank you. And thank you for feeling.
The coaching process is different for everyone. I'm not quite sure what you're ready for. sip slowly. and enjoy responsibly. Yes you