Josh Horrocks on How to Live a Full Life

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There is a sign that hangs in the home of Josh Horrocks, associate general counsel at Nature’s Sunshine Products (NSP). Horrocks, his wife of fifteen years, and his five children see it every single day, a quote from Peter Pan playwright J. M. Barrie: “To live will be an awfully big adventure.”

The attorney understood early that the competition and unending cycle of billable hours wasn’t what he wanted out of his career or his life. The AGC has a countdown clock on his desk that he resets a few times a year, letting him know how many days, hours, and minutes his family are from their next great adventure. It’s those escapes when he intentionally stays out of communication.

Horrocks’s early realization that he wanted to go in-house wasn’t just a feeling, it was the result of seeking out as many possible experiences as he could early in his law journey. He took on a legal externship for a Utah property rights ombudsman, served as an intern for the chief justice of the Utah Supreme Court, and clerked for a general counsel at a Provo, Utah-based business.

“Working with the general counsel was really where I hit my stride,” he remembers. “I loved working with different departments and not having to pigeonhole myself into a certain area of law. I loved the variety, the adaptability required, and the challenge that comes with being in-house.”

Just three years out of law school, Horrocks landed at NSP, his first in-house role. Initially a growth hire, the lawyer’s responsibilities have continued to escalate; he now handles all legal support for NSP’s Asian and European business units along with securities work and human resources support. And while he’s willing to juggle and trade different areas of NSP’s business, there’s one he’ll go to the mat to keep.

“You can switch me around anywhere you want, but nobody is taking the international work away from me,” the lawyer says, laughing. “I just love it, and I think it takes a level of humility to understand there are a lot of things you’re just going to have to figure out. You know it’s probably going to be different from the US, but you’re never sure what that might actually mean until you really dig into it.”

One of Horrocks’s other responsibilities includes drafting NSP’s annual proxy statement. Every year, he spends the first few months drafting, updating, reformatting, and perfecting the proxy statement. In fact, the lawyer and in-house designer have spent so much time on this year after year, Horrocks figures they’ve saved the company five figures in outside design fees alone.

This year (a year he’s unlikely to forget) Horrocks’s time to prepare the proxy statement was condensed significantly and with very little warning. A multimillion-dollar cyber incident hit, and suddenly, the AGC was on a plane to Japan. He spent a week investigating during the day and tweaking the proxy statement at night. He had early morning calls to update the executive team and late night FaceTimes with his family.

“After I came home, I had to stay on Japanese time for the next month. I would work a full day, spend some time with my kids, then work another four hours with the Japanese investigation team,” the AGC says. “But everything went as it needed, and the proxy got filed on time.”

It’s an adventure Horrocks wanted, and it’s one he gets both inside and outside NSP. But it’s clear that what matters most is his faith, family, and friends. His children range from toddlers to teenagers, and he has coached every one of their baseball and T-ball teams.

Whether it’s a family cruise, a four-day hiking trip to the tallest peak of Hawaii, or whatever adventure comes when Horrocks’s clock counts down next, he will be there fully present. There’s no better way to live an adventure.

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