Ep. 595 - Rythmia CMO Dr. Jeff McNairy – How to Lead a Visionary Founder Without Choking the Dragon

What does it take to keep a brilliant, unpredictable founder from burning down the very thing he built?

In this episode, Cameron Herold sits down with Dr. Jeff McNairy, Chief Medical Officer and second in command at Rythmia, the only medically licensed ayahuasca facility in the world. Jeff gave up his psychology license to help build something the medical world said could not exist.

He and founder Jerry Powell turned a jungle dive into a 245-person operation that has guided roughly 23,000 guests through a seven-day program. Jeff gets into the two-year fight for a medical license, the indigenous partnership, and the daily work of bridging a medical team with a shamanic one.

Most of all, he explains the real job of a second-in-command to a wild founder: not running the strategy, but keeping the person steady enough to keep the company alive. Listen now.

• [00:07:09] – What Rythmia actually is, and why it calls itself the only one of its kind in the world.
• [00:08:31] – How many guests have come through the doors, and what the week demands of you before you ever arrive.
• [00:10:36] – The medical reason a single “healthy” supplement can turn dangerous with ayahuasca.
• [00:12:42] – Where ayahuasca comes from, and the two plants that have to be combined to make it work.
• [00:13:56] – The three moments in life your body floods with DMT all on its own.
• [00:17:02] – How a rehab patient ended up becoming the founder of a company.
• [00:19:14] – The flaw Jeff kept seeing in Western medicine that sent him looking for something else.
• [00:21:10] – The addiction that nearly ended Jerry Powell before Rythmia ever existed.
• [00:24:37] – The decision to build something safer and cleaner than what they first found.
• [00:31:18] – The license Jeff knew he would have to surrender to go all in.
• [00:33:44] – How he convinced a conservative government to allow this on the books.
• [00:36:14] – The hunt for an indigenous lineage still living in the mountains.
• [00:40:53] – The hardest balancing act in running Rythmia today.
• [00:43:51] – Why the body absorbs stem cells differently after a week of ceremony.
• [00:44:37] – The community Jeff and Jerry are building beyond the resort walls.
• [00:47:37] – How to lead a visionary founder without choking the dragon.
• [00:51:52] – The advice Jeff would give his 21-year-old self.

Dr. Jeff McNairy is a doctorate-level psychologist (Psy.D., M.P.H.) and the Chief Medical Officer and second-in-command at Rythmia, the only medically licensed ayahuasca facility in the world, located in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. He spent decades in clinical care, from training at UCLA Medical Center to running a drug and alcohol rehab in Malibu, before co-building Rythmia with founder Jerry Powell. Jeff led the two-year effort to secure Rythmia’s medical license with the Costa Rican Ministry of Health and now oversees its medical team of doctors, nurses, and a paramedic alongside the center’s shamanic team, guiding the safety and clinical side of a program that has served guests from all over the world.

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