Ismael Cala says that he began to know himself when at 15, his mother took him to a psychiatrist. In his paternal family everyone committed suicide — his father tried it — and his mother, who was alone in charge of the family when his father left them, feared for him when he began to suffer paranoid crises. It was not so much due to genetics, but to school bullying. 

"The kids would see me angry. I didn't know how to use my fists for lack of a father figure," Cala explained in an interview with La Vanguardia.

But it was not the psychiatrist that saved him, but the radio.

"I listened to radio theater and escaped from my life and dreamed of other worlds. And I decided that I would do radio," he added.

Since then, Cala has dedicated himself to journalism, first as a broadcaster in Havana, working for the Cuban delegation at festivals. However, the regime branded him a traitor and he had to go into exile. It was 1998, and he was 28 years old. In the U.S., he began working for CNN en Español and soon had his own talk show, Cala, like his last name.

He has interviewed the most famous Latin stars, from Jennifer Lopez to Alejandro Sanz, Larry King, Carolina Herrera, and Evo Morales, president of Bolivia. 

After eight years of interviewing, Cala left the program to devote himself to listening to himself and writing books, like El poder de escuchar (The Power of Listening), which became a bestseller.  In this book, Cala teaches us how to listen to evolve and improve our lives. After talking to presidents, intellectuals and celebrities from all fields, Cala confides to us the key to his success as an interviewer: to know how to listen to others, so that they share with us how they are and how they think. This is also the key to our success in business, love and relationships with everyone around us.

His latest book, Fluir para no sufrir (Flow, Don't Suffer), is now out in Spain through the publishing house Planeta after having been unveiled in Miami.

The book summarizes the 11 principles of bamboo leadership (methodology developed by the author).  The 11 principles of bamboo leadership offer a path towards the transformation of a human being into a leader capable of beginning to make a difference in their life and in the lives of others. The pages are the result of a research process on the path to happiness, fulfillment and personal self-realization.

In Cala's words, "although I have written other bestsellers, this is the first time that we carry out a process of editing and adaptation to the language of the Spanish public, which excites me greatly because I feel that this time, the text will be closer to the reader's way of expressing himself. In this way, as an author, I can feel more connected to whoever approaches the book in this intimate act of reading."

After two intense months (August and September) full of conferences and activities in Ecuador, Mexico, Guatemala, USA (Los Angeles, Houston), Spain, Morocco, Dominican Republic and Iceland; October will begin with Cala's participation in the America Business Forum in Uruguay, an annual event that brings together prominent personalities from that nation in the southern part of the American continent.