Hi and welcome to another episode of Celebrating small family Businesses. And today we are excited to celebrate MJ Brown and Erica Harkaya. I didn't before, I apologize. Of Native Wisdom Hub.

And, and I should say, based on all that we found that we have in common and to talk about and how interesting their story is, I don't know that we're going to get it all into one episode. So bear with us if we suddenly stop and have to do a part two later. Hi guys. How are you? Welcome.

Thank you.

All good? Yeah. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Yeah, nice to see you guys.

You are currently in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Scotland.

You split your time between living in Edinburgh and, and working in Peru. Peru, in the Andes, which is where from. Right. So I mean, right there. That's quite a story.

So how did the, you know, your business that your Native Wisdom Hub business come to be and if you guys met as part of that? Tell me about that.

I think the seed was planted for this business to come together almost 16 years ago.

The seed was certainly planted when, when we met, I was on a really adventurous, as a 19 year old, a really adventurous hitchhiking trip through South America that saw me become enamored with the region's indigenous populations. And then five days after I entered Peru, I met Erica and two weeks later we moved in together. Three months later we married.

And here we are, you know, almost 16 years later.

And that really planted the seed for, for everything because we were, I was in the middle of, you know, what many people out there in the world might classify as a spiritual awakening.

And that spiritual awakening came face to face with my, you know, enamourment with the indigenous populations of the region and seeing their way of seeing the world and their spiritual practices and stuff. And then that rubbed off on Erica and so did my very adventurous spirit, of course.

And she left her secure accountancy job to come traveling back down through South America with me to see me off at the airport of Buenos Aires as I flew back to, to Scotland. And that was really the, the beginning of the path. Right.

We started to, at that point, we started to really look into ancestral wisdom traditions, you know, the indigenous populations of the earth and also of Erica as well. We traveled far and wide with that, gathering information, researching, studying.

Yeah.

And I think one of the things I really wanted to share is about the experience I had. The transition I had when I had to move with him in Scotland. It was a big transition.

It took me almost 10 years to actually feel, you know, these changes of first the language, the culture, and the new family that I was into it. And I think the biggest one for me was when I became a mother.

That's when everything just put everything together to get used to the processes of become a mother.

But then from that, creating the foundation to how to solidify our own business as well as a mother, it brought a lot of responsibilities, but also the foundation of everything that we wanted to create together. Not as just single people, but we had the same dream. We have the same desire to become stronger.

The indigenous culture, the medicine itself, but also how can we, you know, solidify as a. As a relationship, as a couple, as a family into the business?

Yeah. Hope that all made sense.

Yes.

Yes.

So, yeah, you started with family and. And, you know, the business grew out of that and with a strong desire to preserve the.

They strengthen the integrity of the family and use that to strengthen the business, is what I think what I heard.

Yeah. And in the process, also strengthen indigenous sovereignty and indigenous empowerment.

And so it's all about strengthening right along the line family business and who we're impacting with the business as well. Right.

Yes. Wow. That kind of ties in with something we were taught many years ago about loyalties. You know, there's kind of rings of loyalty.

Your first loyalty has to be to yourself, because, you know, it's like the airlines say you put your own mask on first before you try to help somebody else, and then your second loyalty is your family and then your immediate community and then the larger society. And so, you know, you're totally living that.

Yeah.

So, Erica, I just heard the accountancy, but from your website, I got the impression that you're kind of a lineage holder or, you know, you're very much part of a long line of people in your culture that preserve this indigenous wisdom and there's sacred rituals around it. So I wanted to ask, is this more of a medicinal practice? Is it more of a spiritual practice?

Because I know it involves psychoactive compounds, but in a ritualized setting, is that accurate?

Yes. Yeah. So I come from a Quechua lineage.

My parents and my grandmother are the Quechua Lineage of the people from the mountains, specifically, yeah, the chancas. So we always keep everything in a very humble way, you know.

And since I moved here, I was not confident enough to speak the language, to be able to spread to the world about where I'm coming from. I felt like I needed to bring some level of confidence that I'm strong enough to, you know, speak where I'm coming from and feel proud.

Where is my culture coming from? So my grandmother was my midwife. She is the one that those times there was no such nurses or hospitals.

So my grandmother used to come to prepare, you know, when it was the time for me to come to the world. And I naturally, naturally, my grand. My mother was giving birth naturally using the medicine of cacao.

So cacao has been a medicinal part for us, like many people nowadays, known as a hot chocolate. But it has its roots, it has a history. And one of them comes from South America. And the medicine has been such a big, massive.

We call it heart opener.

So we will say that this is a theobroma medicine, very legal, very accepted to the world, and it has a lot of history that has brought a lot of connection with community. So as my grandmother was telling me, cacao has been part of their world. She used to take cacao for every single processes of laboring.

You know, when people for mothers were getting ready to give birth, they were not using any sort of medical processes. They just used cacao and hot towel and pot. D said, and the prayers to the apus in Ketu, meaning the mountains. So it's kind of a prayer.

They have no religion but trust, you know, connection to the nature. And she used to always give the prayers to the apus to content that space for the mother to give birth and receive the baby naturally and healthy.

And using cacao was one of the main things that she used it to me as well.

So thanks to her, I am here now, you know, sharing this experience because I think it's very important to appreciate those, you know, those medicines that have been for many centuries, you know, until.

The thousands of years. Yeah. And I'd say, like, it's.

It's not necessarily a religion that they follow, but it has its cosmology, it has its, you know, I mean, it's a deep, deep, deep spiritual standpoint in the world. A deep spiritual entwinement with the natural world. And as a product of that, there is the. The entwinement with the. With the plant that is cacao.

Okay. So the deep connection.

So many of the older, the oldest Religions in the world and oldest traditions have a, this sense of everything being interconnected, you know, and the physical being interconnected and layered with or intertwined with the non physical. Is it, is it similar? Is there also a connection to afterlife or something as part of the Earth wisdom?

Yeah, for sure, for sure. You know, reincarnation is a thing.

Yes. How we met.

Right, of course, yeah. We met through, well, we connected first through a notion and a kind of a sense that we had met in past lives. Right.

Like an inner awareness, a sense, an inner knowing.

Yeah, yeah. Really?

Yeah, really looking at the eyes and just feeling very comfortable to express each other.

And I guess like in the Andean cosmology you have Ukupacha, Kai Pacha and Hanan Pacha. So that's underworld, middle world and upper world. Right.

And the underworld is, I mean the worlds are so massive and so like multi layered and maybe a little bit complex as well. To be sharing on a podcast with the time constraints that we have at the moment.

But like just to give you a brief kind of overview, like the underworld Ukupacha would be where you go, where you have lessons that still have to be integrated. Welcome back. Thank you.

Sorry.

Yeah, all good. So Ukupacha is where you go when you've not completed your lessons on Earth so that you can come back to Earth. Right.

Hanan Pacha is the upper world where you go to once you've evolved from Earth school and are ready to come to either move on to other realms or to come back as a more evolved being to Earth. Right. Just as a kind of brief overview.

But that's, that's the kind of basis of the, of the, of the cosmology of Erica and of course as she said, the Appus and Pachamama, Mother Earth.

So I think it's important that when we use these kind of calling to these energetic different layers, levels of connection in your life using cacao, it's, it's a way of the bigger picture, seeing everything in your life as the bigger picture and where you are at. So when you're having cacao is. It's not just about having a hot chocolate and sitting down and relax.

It's about more about remembering, you know, where you're coming from, remembering how proud you should be about your history of life and how things can improve in your daily life. Whether it would be relationship, whether it would be marriage, you know, whether it would be being how to be a better parent or anything like that.

So it's pretty much about reconnecting to.

Your true essence and reconnecting to your position in the grander, wider cosmos. Right.

Wow.

And this is one of the things that we. You know, it took me time for me to sink in and really rediscover myself to appreciate everything. You know, it was not really easy for me.

It was literally 10 years for me to kind of go back and say, okay, I'm feeling ready now to share to the world. It was lots of processes.

And one of the biggest processes was about when my mom passed away was one of the biggest, biggest process for me because I felt like I needed to take that leadership now, because before it was just like feeling like mom is holding me and I need to do whatever it needs to be, but now it's like I'm by my own now, so I need to create my foundation. And then this is how the business as well came. Came very organically, very naturally. It started with South American moms that was amazing.

People from Venezuela, from Ecuador, from Rodriguez, here in Scotland, in Edinburgh. And they start holding a space for me. They saying, like, why don't we do these gatherings? We can try just small amount of people.

And honestly, when we planted the seed, everybody start feeling the color. Word of mouth start coming up, and they start saying, we would love to have more cacaos here. Please, let's do it.

So then it was a nice, you know, way of supporting everyone. And then I start to increase my orders of cacao.

So we started supporting Peruvian people, you know, indigenous people that maintain their traditions to make cacao very organically. So for me was, you know, as a sign that everything is now flowing.

So sometimes we needed to have this kind of really heavy experiences in life, because through it, I think this is when things unfold in a very massive leap of transformation. So I'm very grateful for the experience that we had so far with the business of cacao.

Yeah, yeah. And native Wisdom hub has a wider business as well. Yeah.

Yes, indeed. And then nativism hub came, right?

Well, that's. That's how native Wisdom hub was really solidified. Yeah, yeah. Through our work with cacao.

So the cacao is really a bigger part than the psychoactive waska. Is that right?

Ayahuasca. Yeah. So the cacao is definitely the bedrock. It's what united us even more after a really difficult time of life. It's what brought us together.

Cacao is literally what brought us together. To work together. Yeah, for sure. But we still do work with.

With other plants, you know, down in South America, down in Peru, we're Down there, like once a year for between six and eight weeks per year, sometimes longer, if, you know, life allows.

Yeah. But also native wisdom Hub as well, does a lot of digital work. Basically, Marjong contributes a lot to these. You know, we call it the.

The energy of the eagle and the condor. The condor is the one that works a lot physically and brings all this beauty of working within the heart.

And the eagle is the one that brings all the knowledge, the digital work, you know, this active of representation of how you can create a digital world. So that is what I felt. And it's a really nice science for us, a really nice lesson for both of us.

Yeah, yeah.

We really feel, in the depth of our souls that we are, with every day that passes, moving deeper and deeper into an embodiment of the prophecy of the eagle and the condor, for sure. I think our household is an example of the eagle and condor prophecy. Yeah.

And prophecy is an interesting term. How does. Is it a model for life or is it a prediction of a particular event?

That's a wonderful way of framing the question. Well worded. I would say the latter. So how did you word it? You said, is it the predictive.

Is it more of like a framework of how life works? The way I learned what you're talking about is like the balance of intellect and feelings or two natures and.

But when you use the word prophecy, I think of, you know, a prediction of some future event or.

Yeah, absolutely. So. And it might not be like one single event that happens. You know, the.

The sun goes down and the moon comes up, and then the moon goes down and the sun comes up again, and then everything's different. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't think that's, that's the way it, it is or should be framed.

But it's an ancient prophecy that's rooted actually in the Amazon jungle, you know, of which the Andes mountains are also part of, in large part, because the Andes mountains transform into the Amazon jungle. Right. And without those Andes Mountains, the Amazon jungle might not even exist. But we'll leave the geology for another. For another episode here.

So it's, it's.

It's an ancient prophecy that's rooted in the Amazon jungle that as these medicine traditions started to come out of, you know, like, quote unquote, hiding or being hidden from, from. From the modern world, from modern society, particularly the north. I mean, it traveled up very quickly. It traveled by word of mouth.

It traveled from South America all the way up through Central America to North America and The North American natives, the Lakota, the Cherokee, they really.

There's so many members of those communities that have really grabbed this like, prophecy and like, are making annual trips down to Peru and Colombia. But it's a prophecy that says that there comes a time in history where the eagle and the condor, they.

They're flying together, but they move in separate directions.

And the world moves so swiftly in the direction of the eagle to the point that eagle people living in their ignorance of the condor ways, almost drive the world to. And its races to extinction.

Until such a time comes when many of the Eagle people begin to reawaken to the magic and the truth that the Condor people hold. Right. And. And then they come and then the ego.

The ego people begin to incorporate some of the Condor traits and energies and practices and wisdom into their life.

And the Condor people are able to have the eagle wisdom and knowledge and acumen applied to their world to the point where the two worlds merge and eagle and Condor fly in harmony once more and the world returns to harmony. So the Eagle people can be seen as industry, intellect, engineering, all of that stuff, all of the global north stuff.

And the Condor people can be seen as the world's living indigenous populations who are living from the heart, connected to their feelings, connected to the earth, connected to nature, to the elements, with a symbiotic relationship with the natural world. And so when these two come together, the world begins to return to harmony. And well, here we are. I've got the wings tattooed on my arms and. Yeah.

And then also we can in this way of living as well, we can find the perspective in different angles, depending where you are at, depending of your beliefs.

You know, there are many Christian people that have another beliefs as well, which is totally acceptable because everybody has some transitions in their life.

This is more into the shamanic understanding of the spirituality understanding, but it has a lot of meaning, you know, and that's the thing that we really need to feel what is right for us.

Yeah. So. And this all, of course, all of this, everything that we're talking about right now, it all informs our business.

It all informs the way we lead our teams. It all informs the way we operate in the world.

So the perfect transition. I was just looking at your LinkedIn profile and you had a post that was talking about leadership and particularly about self leadership.

And where does that start? And that's very close to our heart. When you also do individual coaching, Mark John. Right. With. With business leaders.

So how does that, is that completely separate from your, your Earth wisdom business, Indigenous Wisdom or, or very integrated.

Well, it's a separate offering and of course like if we were to talk branding, it would be more my personal brand, but it's definitely integrated into native Wisdom Hub. And I'm basically with, with that coaching, I'm basically giving condor medicine to ego people, right?

I'm basically, I'm basically allowing high performing people, allowing high performers to relax a little bit, to get connected with themselves, to learn what it means to connect with community, to learn what it means to connect with creativity, to learn what it means to connect with their heart again, to remember what they used to dream about as children, to remember what it, what it feels like to hang upside down from a tree. Right?

And these types of things, you know, and it might sound a little bit wishy washy if I, if I, you know, express it in that way, but ultimately, you know, it can be seen through the, through the, through the more soft eyes. So through the eyes of more soft skills. Or we can look at it through the, the eyes of slightly harder kind of factual science based eyes. Eagle eyes.

Let's just say we can look at it through condor eyes or eagle eyes. And if we look at it through eagle eyes, then what we see is that, is that actually high performance is only sustainable to a certain degree.

If the person is not feeling whole within themselves. It will, you know, maybe they'll be high performing for a certain time.

Even though they might be depressed, anxious, fearful, living out inner child wounds or whatever, but they're still able to perform high in their field. Whether it be, you know, as an athlete or as a high level business person, a CEO of a company or whatever.

But it has an expiry date, you know, and then when it ends, when it ends so many times life goes southwards, life goes, life plummets. You know, for them, their sense of identity, their sense of security.

Yeah, these things, these things that we take for granted so much when we are at the helm of performance and influence, right? And then when it comes around the corner to be taken out of that throne, let's just say we can so often go into crisis, right?

So ultimately, what is high performance? What is success?

Are we going to run with that definition being having the expiry date attached to it of it just being tied to our bank account and our business success? Or does success, what does success actually mean?

Does it mean having a happy heart, a peaceful mind, a regulated nervous system, being a good father or a good parent to our children? How does our impact create legacy?

Isn't that most more important than the current bank balance or the current running of our team or whatever, you know, KPIs we're reaching. So this is the kind of coaching that I help people with on an individual basis because that's the only thing.

You can take with you when you transition.

Ask somebody on their deathbed if all that stuff's important. Exactly like.

Exactly.

So one of the little exercises I like to play with is as for, you know, show of hands, who'd want us to have a million dollars? I say, okay, now we're going to condition this just a little bit.

That million dollars is encased in a big block of clear material that's hard as a diamond. You can't get into it, you can never touch it. You have it, you can put it on display in your living room, but you can't spend a dollar.

Do you still want to have a million dollars? It's not the having of the money that matters, it's what you do with it. Right.

That's what experiences are going to come from spending and using that money to our benefit and, and the feeling. And ultimately it boils down to a feeling. Right. Or Right.

And an amplified capacity to express yourself as the person that you are. Right. As who you really are.

Yes, yes. Well said.

Like a volume.

Well said.

So let's go back to the business part of it a little bit. What did you two overcome in your, in your process? You know, can you give us just one thing?

Because I know we all go through lots, lots of things, but just one experience that kind of transformed you and your business by working together.

Yeah, that's easy. I'll let Erica begin to answer that. And maybe. You want me to start. You want me to start? You can start. I've spoken lots already.

So you can start doing like transitioning in the part of the personal development or.

Yeah, like what difficulties.

Yeah, yeah. And into the business because, you know, everything you do obviously in the personal is going to affect your business.

Yeah, yeah, without doubt.

I think. Yeah. Quite a lot of factors that affecting. One of the main thing was about the financial situation.

You know, one of financial issue was one of the biggest thing and I think there was a lot of. One of the main reasons why one of the things is about maturity.

You know, sometimes when we don't find that maturity level everything, we just take it for granted easily. Like you just see and disappearing.

So I think the level of maturity that has helped me to like be the core of the family, you know, the anchor of the family has created a lot of foundation in my family. And this is why I feel grateful because my family come from a very humbled way of growing, you know, farmers.

And one of the biggest things that we always, you know, wanted to make sure in our life, in our whole process of growing, was about togetherness, you know, about time to spend together whether we had money or not. And this is one of the things that I brought here when we used to live in Scotland.

It's about the time to be together and to talk about things that are not easy for us in order to grow smart, you know.

And I think this is one of the things that I actually put on the table with Marjon when the times that are very, very difficult time, especially when we just had our first daughter, our first child.

Having children always brings all the problems online, right?

It was really, really, really hard.

So how to put that together, you know, and also if you feeling the pressure, you can feel the pressure as mother, you feel already the pressure of your partner saying, how can I provide? How can I make it better? How can I not? You know, all these questions, but then you realize that we don't need so much.

You know, we don't need so much. When we are crew, we are growing, we need the priority, we need a roof, we need food, we need company to each other. From there, we start growing.

If you have all these three important things, the rest of them start growing, the rest of them start flowing. So I think the biggest challenge was.

As I said, securing stability in the family nest. Right.

But actually what this is what we found out, that the problem was not the money. The problem was about how to create a foundation. So when we have the foundation, then everything started changing.

You know, that was a different perspective that we figured out.

After all, it took us a long time together, but like, yeah, we, you know, Erica was in her world, I was in my world, literally Eagle and condor. I was away, like on my path. And she was like doing her thing.

And for a number of years, there was an ever deepening lapse in connection, you know, and like proper communication between us.

I'm living out my traumas of like trying to be the provider, the guy who brings the money and the sustenance and grows our, you know, our business and whatever. Erica, typical story, right? Erica trying to take care of the children.

And it's probably, you know, it's probably not too far away from the homes of the people that are. That are listening. Maybe they can maybe resonate, right?

Surely.

And it just seemed like, you know, over the. Over a number of Years, we just became more and more kind of, like, distant because of that. Until we went through some, like, really big processes.

Crashes, burnout, you know, me, me, like, going through doubts with my level of commitment and whether or not I actually wanted to be doing this. Like, you know, the whole, like. I think many men go through this, you know, like, can I do this? Am I capable of being this father? Kind of like, no.

Oh, my goodness. What is this all about? Holy. You know, I gotta run away. Gotta escape. Gotta escape. Gotta get out.

Well, that's. Yeah, that's that maturity that Erica mentioned.

I think there's a point at which we have to stop seeing ourselves as the child and start seeing ourselves as the adult. Sometimes that's forced on us by the. A passing of a parent, and sometimes we just have to come to a realization. It's like.

Because I know for me, I felt like a kid inside for a lot. I was way past my childhood years. In fact, I remember somebody saying, yes, sir to me that was a little younger than me, and that shocked me.

And I remember someone referring to me as a man. I worked in a family business. I worked with my father. So it was always, you know, dad and son. And. And I remember being shocked, feeling like man and.

But being referred to as a man. I thought, whoa, I need to take a look at that. There's these little things that we just don't even. We don't notice until they become a big thing.

Yes.

And then we have to deal with them.

Yeah.

Right.

Sorry.

So is there any other words of wisdom that you have, especially for small entrepreneurs that are trying to either, you know, grow their business or. Or know where they're going or figure.

Out these family issues.

Yeah. Do you have any words?

You know, there's one of the things I want to say. I don't know if it's going to be just by video or by voice, but one of the things that my daughter gave it to me, she. She's a great creator.

She loves growing, drawing and crafting work.

So she's very tapped into us.

Yeah, so she's very tap. She's very somatic. Feeler.

Attuned.

Attuned into what we are at or what we're doing. So she said. She set it up on my phone, on the case. She sent me a message. She said, mom, this is for you. So it's called Be Kind to Yourself.

You see that? She just put on my phone this one she created as a paper. And I put it on my mobile phone.

So I think this Is one of the message that myself, I go through.

Like, I just almost brushed my teeth when she gave me that to me because I have no idea how our children can sense you and say, I'm going to send this message to her because she needs that, you know, and that word, be kind to yourself. It's like really in general, as mothers, you know, as women, we always try to do everything the best as we can.

And sometimes, you know, we, we really self sabotage ourselves because maybe we didn't do good enough or we should have done that or this way. But actually what they really, what your children want you to see is to be kind.

You know, to be kind with yourself, to accept what you did, what results you, you overcame. That's the main thing.

Mistakes. Yeah.

You know, and that's the main thing for me to share to others, entrepreneurs, family that are there. You know, be kind with yourself and.

To each other and to each other.

Always appreciate, appreciate every single step or even the mistakes that you made. Because for every mistake there is something positive to overcome.

Yeah. And I think for me, I would say like, yeah, okay. Spend a lot of time, like do what you are doing. Do what you're doing.

Spend a lot of time building business acumen. Spend a lot of time on analytics, structure, leadership principles, all of this stuff. Right. But also in equal measure.

As much time as you are spending building your business skills, sales, marketing structure, the whole, the whole thing, the whole dance, as much time as you spend studying that stuff, spend the same amount of time building your levels of empathy. Build empathy, learn how to connect with people, learn how to really feel them.

I mean, empathy is perhaps one of the core principles of good leadership, in my opinion. And so if you want to lead powerfully, you know, okay, it's good to have like the structure.

This person's doing that, this person's doing that because they're skilled at that and you know, based on their qualifications and blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. Okay, cool. But who are they? Who are they and how do they feel today? What is their, what is, what is going on for them at home?

You know, like what's, what's their world looking like? How are they doing? Connect with them.

Build empathy as much in equal measure as you are building all the other hard skills for having a successful business.

Smart Eagle and condor balance.

That's right. Thank you so much.

What a great model. Yes, thank you. Yes. We, we're going to put all your.

Contact information in our, in the show notes.

Yep. So people can find you. I know you're you're leading an Earth Wisdom healing retreat to the Andes in December, I believe so 10th to 20th.

Yeah, we've only got a few spots left for that actually because it's proven really popular.

There's a lot of call from people from United States that are feeling the call to join us. So it's amazing to have a call. But anyone that feels a call, anyone at all, reach us out to Native Wisdom Hub.

Yeah, nativewisdomhub.com or if you want to reach out, you know, our contact details will be in the, in the show notes.

Absolutely. I'll make sure I include your LinkedIn profile and so email and more to come.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess so. We're so up for another episode at some point with you. We really resonate with you guys and love, love just hanging out.

But also what I wanted to say is like I would love to. It just came to me now. I have a, I have a free gift that I would like to offer to the audience.

Okay.

It's, it's called, it's just a, like a, a guidebook, a little like four or five page guidebook that's called From Trauma to Triumph. Learning how to overcome serious difficulties in your business world.

All the mistakes that you made, recuperating from the trauma of that to integrate it all, heal from it all, regulate and find your purpose once more and go at it again.

Thank you so much.

Wonderful. Thank you.

And just for, for the last sharing. Yes.

And I would love to connect with many people that feels to work from the heart, especially moms and with children as well, to just reconnect with their feelings and yeah. Bring back to reconnection with nature. Fabulous.

All right, well go get your little darlings and.

And we will, we will, we will talk again.

Yes.

Can't wait.

Thank you so much for your sharing and your understanding.

Thank you again. Ciao.

Thanks guys.