My MBA didn't prepare me for this. Neither did my years at a top consulting firm. Something was missing.

I had the credentials. The career. The paycheck. Yet I felt hollow. Empty. Like I was climbing a ladder only to discover it was leaning against the wrong wall all along.

Then I found an unexpected teacher. Not in business school. Not in the C-suite. But in the ancient wisdom of plant medicine.

What psychedelics revealed about business success can't be taught in any classroom. Won't be found in any textbook. Isn't discussed in boardrooms. Yet these insights revolutionized how I approach everything – from leadership to innovation, from team dynamics to strategic planning.

The irony isn't lost on me. While climbing the corporate ladder with my prestigious consulting badge, I discovered that the most profound business wisdom came from experiences our culture dismisses as recreational or worse – illegal.

Awakening a New Business Consciousness

MBA programs teach us to optimize. To quantify. To compete. "Maximize shareholder value " becomes the mantra. The bottom line becomes the only line that matters.

I excelled at this game. My analytical mind thrived on frameworks and structured approaches to business problems. For years, I helped companies streamline operations and expand margins while climbing the ranks at my consulting firm.

Then, through a series of synchronicities, I encountered psilocybin mushroom rooms. The first experience shattered everything.

In those hours of altered consciousness, I saw the interconnectedness of it all – not as something abstract, but as felt reality. I glimpsed what business could be when freed from our current paradigm. This wasn't about hallucinating better quarterly reports, but fundamentally reconceiving what business is for.

By the way…if you’re thinking of trying psychedelics, press here to check out my preparation manual.

I call this perspective "Integrated Business Consciousness" – the awareness that business success and human flourishing aren't separate pursuits but aspects of the same holistic system.

When I returned to my consulting work with this new perspective, everything shifted. I found myself asking different questions:

Not just "How can we increase productivity ?" but "How can we create conditions where meaningful work flourishes?"

Not just "How can we maximize profit?" but "How can we create value that serves our people?"

Not just "How can we outcompete rivals?" but "How can we co-create an industry that elevates everyone?"

The Psychedelic MBA : Five Business Principles

According to a 2023 Gallup poll, 70% of professionals under 35 report experiencing burnout even when achieving their career goals. The model is broken.

But there is another way.

1. Ego Dissolution as Leadership Development

The single most transformative aspect of the psychedelic experience is ego dissolution – the temporary suspension of your sense of separate self.

There is no longer a feeling of I, Me, Darren.

In business, our egos constantly filter information, defend territory, and seek advancement. My first major insight came when my sense of separate self dissolved. I could see how my decisions were often driven by fear, insecurity, or the need to be right – rather than serving my work and life.

This doesn't mean abandoning healthy ego boundaries. It means recognizing when ego is driving the bus – and having the courage to hand over the wheel when necessary.

In practice, this looks like seeking challenging feedback, building teams with complementary strengths, and making decisions based on purpose rather than position.

2 . Interconnectedness as Business Strategy

Business schools teach us to dissect organizations into isolated components: departments, cost centers, discrete metrics. This reductionist approach creates artificial boundaries where engineering battles marketing, short-term profits undermine sustainability, and customer experience is sacrificed for operational efficiency.

Psychedelics revealed to me not just the concept but the lived reality of interconnectedness. I experienced how every decision ripples through the entire ecosystem, how seemingly separate parts function as a unified whole when allowed to flow naturally.

When we recognize interconnectedness as fundamental, we stop optimizing fragments at the expense of the system. We map decision impacts across all relationships, identify cascading effects beyond immediate outcomes, and create feedback loops revealing hidden connections.

3. Presence Over Productivity

My MBA taught me to maximize productivity – to optimize every minute. This approach treats humans as machines to be utilized efficiently until depleted.

Through psychedelics, I experienced states of complete presence – fully immersed in the current moment. I discovered that true productivity doesn't come from pushing harder but from aligning with natural rhythms of energy and attention.

The paradox: when we stop obsessing over productivity and focus on presence, we become more productive in ways that actually matter.

When we move, relax, and breathe - that is when great ideas come.

4. Pattern Recognition and Innovation

Innovation emerges from seeing patterns others miss – connections between seemingly unrelated worlds, solutions hiding in plain sight.

The psychedelic state dramatically enhances pattern recognition. Neural connections form between regions of the brain that don't normally communicate. Rigid thought patterns temporarily dissolve, allowing new connections, thoughts and ideas to form.

This isn't just theoretical. Steve Jobs called his LSD experiences "one of the most important things" in his life. "It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money," Jobs reflected. Apple's revolutionary design philosophy—merging technology with liberal arts, intuition with engineering—emerged directly from Jobs' ability to recognize patterns across seemingly disconnected domains.

The business breakthroughs of tomorrow won't come from conventional analysis but from expanded perception. While psychedelics offer one pathway, there are others: immerse yourself in environments that shock your assumptions, deliberately combine unrelated concepts, or practice techniques that quiet the mind. The point isn't altered consciousness for its own sake, but accessing the pattern-recognition capabilities that transform how you see problems—and reveal solutions invisible to everyone else.

5. Purpose-Driven Decision Making

Perhaps the most profound business insight from psychedelics is also the simplest: we are here to create meaning, not just money.

Purpose isn't just a nice-to-have mission statement. It's the organizing principle around which truly great people and businesses are anchored. It's the compass that guides navigation through complexity when metrics alone lead you astray.

Most of us will spend 80,000 hours working over our lifetime—more time than we'll spend with our families, our friends, or pursuing our passions. This stark reality transformed how I view business decisions. Each choice isn't just about efficiency or profit, but about how we're investing the precious currency of human potential. Your work isn't separate from your life's purpose—it's a primary vehicle for expressing it.

When purpose guides every decision, a business builds not just market share but meaningfulness. It creates products that solve real problems rather than manufacturing artificial needs. It fosters cultures where people thrive rather than merely survive. It serves communities rather than extracting from them. It generates not just revenue but reason to get out of bed each morning with fire in your belly and conviction in your heart.

The tragedy isn't failing in business—it's succeeding at something that ultimately doesn't matter.

The Integration Challenge

Implementing these principles in a business world still operating from outdated paradigms requires courage, patience, and skill.

Start small. Find allies who share your vision. Speak multiple languages to translate these concepts for different stakeholders.

Measure what matters–impact, fulfillment, connection––not just conventional metrics.

Practice self-compassion through inevitable resistance.

The journey I've described isn't about abandoning the skills you've acquired, but about supercharging them with a new operating system.

The business leaders who will thrive in the coming decades won't be those with the most prestigious credentials or ruthless tactics. They'll be those who can integrate diverse ways of knowing, hold paradox with an open mind and create value that ripples outward.

Businesses will create unprecedented value when they optimize for the flourishing of all life, not just the wealth of shareholders.

My MBA taught me to calculate value.

Psychedelics revealed what truly counts.

This path may not be easy or conventional, but I hope this has offered a glimpse of a more conscious way forward.

Hope you enjoyed this one,

Darren