John Pierre moved to a farm seven years ago while running his company, Empire Blueprint. He argues happiness isn't found but created through presence and gratitude, and that work should fit your life, not the other way around. Nature beats the concrete jungle.
So, name is Jean-Pierre, now fast becoming the Corporate Cowboy. I live at Elysium Hill and I work at Empire Blueprint. The journey from farm boy to Corporate Cowboy is a story that's progressing in real time. It began as a dream, I guess, let's say 7 years ago when I moved to the farm. I was never a farm boy before that, and then Since then, it's just grown into becoming the Corporate Cowboy, which was never a thing 7 years ago. Life's happened in that time, work's happened in that time, and it just seems to be the natural progression of who I was to who I'm becoming. How do I find happiness trying to find balance between work and life? I don't think it's found, I think you create it. So to say that it exists and there is some interesting balance where it's 50/50 is probably not so true. For me, I've been able to find a balance in enjoying being present, my work at Empire Blueprint, and with the team I've created and the culture that we've got there, I'm then able to offset the stress and the high intensity with being at the farm and being in nature, being with these guys and with this beautiful girl. And I'm able to find happiness in the balance of those two. But the key secret has been to be present wherever I am and finding happiness even through the challenges, because I've surrounded myself with beautiful people. And then I come back to the farm and it is so humbling and so peaceful that it makes up for all imbalance in terms of hours. So it's just been being present and being grateful. So gratitude, um, and, and being present have been really my guiding lights. Yeah. So challenges I face, uh, living a corporate life and trying to run a company, um, and the way that they've been influenced by the cost of living, by life circumstances, and that just things aren't cheap— life is getting dearer for everybody— has it affected my personal happiness No. What it has meant is it's definitely more challenging. Traditionally, you would have found you could maybe get by on a 9-to-5 or just do a normal job and that was okay. What we're finding is more and more people are doing a lot more hours for a lot less reward, and that's why we exist, was to be able to change that and make people's lives a lot better, that the work would revolve around them, not them revolving around their work, effectively chasing your tail and never getting to an end goal. I think through COVID a lot of people thought, screw this, life's gotta— there's gotta be more to life than this. And there was an awakening that happened there for a good majority of people. I think for the most part it is easier to be happier in nature rather than in a concrete jungle. If you look at what we're meant to be and what we're created to be, we were never meant to live like that. In an ideal world, you'd have a beautiful family, you'd live on some land, you'd be able to run your own, you know, vegetables and fruits perhaps, or your own livestock, and that would be somewhat sufficient. And what it would do is add gratefulness to your life because you'd be a lot more thankful for what you have instead of taking things for granted. The pursuit of happiness, it's not a destination, it's definitely a journey. I like to call it a dance, and I think people should do it dancing and smiling instead of just waiting to arrive. Practicing gratitude, being present, and realizing that you can be happy even when you're in like one of the hardest situations is the ultimate key. Because I don't think there'll ever be a time where life will be easy or where the urban restraints and constraints won't be a problem. There will always be a multitude of issues happening. The only time that stops is when you're dead. But then you're dead, and so you're not happy either because you're dead. Happiness does exist for everybody all the time. So between being alive now and getting to your deathbed, you can make a choice to be happy and say, no matter what comes my way, No matter how difficult this is, I've got a loving partner, beautiful children, parents who care for me, I have a job, and thank God for that, and actually move forward on that. And probably really concentrate on the good and not so much like the bad and life sucking. It inherently is a gift, and if you can look at life being a gift and time being a loan, well then you'd really look at it differently.
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