Álvaro Vizcaíno: 48 Hours Between Life & Death | Fear, Survival & Acceptance | Tomorrow, Today

Álvaro Vizcaíno (0:00)

When you have a plan, there's no plan B. That's dividing your energy.

That's playing the game against you. There's no plan B with yourself.

Shekhar Natarajan (0:15)

You're simply like at the mercy. I missed everything, because that's like a highway, right? And if you hit something, you're dead.

Álvaro Vizcaíno (0:25)

Acceptance and gratitude save my life. It not only saves my life, I push the reset button.

Shekhar Natarajan (0:39)

If this actually calls your heart, and if the answer is what do I have to lose? I just go do that. And I don't care. I don't care about the implication of what I'm doing. I just do it.

Álvaro Vizcaíno (0:53)

I will do it with fear. It's not a question of...

I've heard, no? Face your fears. Fight your fears. Life starts at the end of your fears. And I say, no way.

Shekhar Natarajan (1:34)

Welcome to yet another episode of Tomorrow, Today with Shekhar Natarajan. It's a great honor for me to have Álvaro Vizcaíno. He's a surfer, he's a survivor, he's an entrepreneur, and he's an amazing guy.

And I'm really excited to talk to you, Álvaro, because I've been reading about you, I've seen your Netflix video, what an amazing story. And I could relate to some pieces of it, but I think your story is going to be super inspirational for a lot of people, a lot of people. And so I'm excited to have you on the podcast, and let's get started.

So tell me, before the life changing event that you had, it kind of dates back to when you were a kid, okay? And where you were born, what was your life like? Did you have any angels in your life? Because I'm sure there was something which is protecting you, right from like when you were born. And who was that? And what was the whole upbringing like? I just want you to kind of reflect on your early days of your life and kind of walk us through how it was and how it got shaped.

Álvaro Vizcaíno (3:10)

Okay. I was born in Madrid here, where I studied, raised and I mean, I had a job in the commercial department of a big company. Years passed, an apartment, friends, hobbies.

But you know, some mornings, I woke up with the sensation of, okay, but what's this all about? Okay, I wake up another week, another week. And I knew I was lucky. I mean, I was happy with my life, but do you remember what happened back in 2008, nine, the crisis, no? So everything was kind of difficult. Still I had my results, but some mornings was like, what's the sense of all this?

And then you just continue with your life. And time passed. And I remember that day I received a call, my friend, Matias. And he asked me, hey, Álvaro, how are you doing? How is life going? And I told him, and he asked me, hey man, why don't you come to the Canary Islands? We can start up a tech project, e-commerce for tourism. And so, so back in 2009, it was the early days, no? And I thought, well, a technological company in the Canary Islands, well, he was living in Fuerteventura, which is an island in the middle of the Atlantic, in the middle of the Sahara. It's a desert, volcanoes, beach, touristic place. And I thought, this is crazy, man. And make company.

So that made no sense to me, but neither my mornings. So I thought, why not? I need to change, no. So I moved there. I moved there and, well, there's something else. I am a surfer, living in Madrid.

Imagine how frustrating that was, no? I felt like a penguin in the middle of the Sahara. It was crazy.

And for Teventura, they call it the Hawaii of the Atlantic, big waves. So I say, yeah, yeah, I'm traveling for surfing. I spend all my free time, no, searching for waves, but I can live near the ocean now. So I moved there. We were hard. We invest all our savings and much more.

New life, new people. And after some time, I can say we did it. Then suddenly the numbers thriving. And one day we were like 16 people working all over the world, not the technicians, I mean. And wow, I can say one day I had the life of my dreams. A house with a pool, a company, surfing every day. And that's it. That was the first change in my life.

Shekhar Natarajan (7:25)

That's the first change of your life. But like before that, you were born in Madrid. What are your parents like?