David Kahl

What David talked about

David Kahl built and sold a company for $100 million, then found the aftermath of the exit harder to navigate than the years spent scaling the business. He describes discovering how fused his identity had become with the company only after leaving it, triggering a difficult period of disorientation. A meditation practice had given him a foundation of presence, but he says psilocybin journeys took him into expanded states he believes would have taken decades to reach through meditation alone.

He now works as a guide for psilocybin journeys, focusing on entrepreneurs and CEOs, a population he describes as particularly difficult clients because their professional success depends on control, comparison, and judgment—traits that have to be surrendered for a journey to work. He talks about the role of preparation, a trained facilitator, and integration work afterward, arguing that without integration people simply fall back into old default patterns.

The show

The Total Entrepreneur is a weekly conversation with founders, researchers, and health experts about what actually moves entrepreneurial performance across mind, body, spirit, and business.