Law 13 · Build Before You Are Ready
The man who paid for his own risk.
Tom Hardy put $2.5 million into Taboo knowing half the room would hate it. On why permission never arrives, and why he stopped waiting for it.
Tom Hardy · Actor
Law 18 · Become Dangerous, Then Govern It
The challenges on the mat are bigger than on set.
The director has a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He says the mat is harder than any film set, because nobody can help you there.
Guy Ritchie · Director, jiu-jitsu black belt
Law 13 · Build Before You Are Ready
Doing things rather than dreaming about them.
DJ, actor, kickboxer, and now director. Elba on a father who died at seventy-two and the urgency that followed.
Idris Elba · Actor
The first cup is the quiet one.
A washed Colombian for the hour before the day gets its hands on you.
Red apple, panela, a long clean finish. Roasted in the UK to order and posted through the letterbox, so it is on the counter when you come down. Grind it while the kettle runs. Drink it before the phone.
Inside every bag there is a card. One of the twenty-two laws, printed on thick stock, yours to keep or pass on. The coffee is the point. The card is the gift.
250 g · Huila, Colombia · Washed · Whole bean or ground
More stories
All stories →One story a week.
Someone who earned their ground, read slowly, in your inbox on a Sunday. The coffee ships to the list first.
About the author
Shane Quigley
The people I interviewed
Actors, athletes, adventurers and founders. Tap a face to read their story.
A code · not motivation
The 22 Laws
of Growth & Freedom
Twenty-two patterns, found in the lives of people who had to earn their ground. Read them slowly. Come back to one.
A man does not rise in one heroic moment. He rises by returning to the work after comfort, failure, resentment, fear, and distraction have all invited him to stop.
One slow, painful brick at a time.
In life, everything meaningful is earned.
Rise Strong. Nothing’s Given.
A new story every week.
RSNG Coffee · No. 01
The Foundation
Washed Colombian. Red apple, panela, a long clean finish.
The first coffee in the range. A clean washed lot from Huila, roasted light to medium for clarity rather than weight, so it is as good black at six in the morning as it is with milk at ten. Roasted in the UK the week it ships, posted flat through the letterbox.
- Origin
- Huila, Colombia
- Process
- Washed
- Roast
- Light-medium
- Weight
- 250g
- Roasted
- UK · to order
- Inside
- One law card
The first roast is on its way.
Inside every bag
A card in every bag
Thick uncoated card, one colour, one of the twenty-two laws on the front and the whole of it on the back. It comes stapled to the back of the bag and tears off clean. Keep it on the fridge. Give it to someone who needs it.
Stop wishing it was. Start building.
rsng.com/laws/1
Later · the tool
Pocket will hold you
to the code.
It reaches you only when it needs you.
An agent on your phone that carries the 22 Laws as its operating code and runs one practice a day in the law's voice. It is not ready. The coffee, the laws and the proof are. Leave your email and you will hear when it is.
No blue. No streaks you did not earn. The accent appears only when something needs you.
Today
Become Hard To Threaten
You named your salary yesterday. If it stopped on Friday, what is the first thing you would do on Monday?
Practice
Do the work.
Short, plain exercises. Each one serves a law. Most take minutes a day. Pick one and start tonight.
Adrian Hayes · Polar adventurer, entrepreneur
In a crisis, the leader is whoever steps up.
Everest, K2, both Poles and Greenland by kite-ski, after a career in business. Adrian Hayes on honest teams, unlikely leaders and leaving the phone at home.
Asked what leadership means to him:
We tend to look at leaders as assertive, charismatic people who can inspire us. But to me leadership is not just about the figureheads; I think leadership can take place on every single level. There's a great story about this child in a school in Ontario. He was the school nerd and nobody took any notice of him, until one day a girl in the class was choking on a piece of her food; the teacher screamed and froze, all the ‘king jocks’ – the assertive guys in this classroom – froze, and no one knew what to do. Then this nerd stepped up and gave the girl the Heimlich remover to save her life – that, to me, is leadership.
Asked whether strong leadership is essential on an expedition:
I would say teamwork, more than leadership, is essential to the success of an expedition. I’ve led some great expeditions over the years, but I’ve also been on expeditions where there’s been a complete breakdown, and one of the major reasons for that is ineffective team agreements. [...] You have to get your agreements in place right at the very start, because you can't talk about issues unless you've got the agreements in place on how you're going to talk about them – you have to put your cards on the table, and have absolute transparency. Honesty breeds trust. If you don't have that trust and understanding in the corporate world, you might lose some sales and profits, but if you get it wrong on an expedition you can lose your life.
Asked what else adventure has taught him:
Our brains cannot handle the amount of information currently available to us and we’re losing touch with how to think deeply and critically – how to solve problems, think strategically and overcome. When you go into nature you come back on a different wavelength, so I would encourage everyone to leave their damn smartphones at home, even if it's just for a few hours, in favour of savouring the natural world and talking to people.