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.
Alastair Humphreys · Adventurer, author
Be rubbish at something in public, and eat on what it earns.
He has cycled round the world and rowed the Atlantic. Then he crossed Spain with no money and a violin he could not play, busking for bread in town squares.
Asked why he took on the violin at all:
It’s one of the most interesting adventures I’ve ever done. I did it just as a personal thing because I loved the book As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, and I wanted to walk some of the same route. But it was also about the whole process of starting from scratch at the violin, and being rubbish at something. I can’t play the violin at all, and one of my big fears is singing or dancing in public. It’s my idea of total hell, so just the idea of doing it terrified me. I started from zero and I had seven months to learn so that became a thing; learning the new skill.
Asked how he was received in the Middle East:
Well, the first time I went to the middle east was when I cycled around the world and I was very worried about going there for all the obvious reasons. But equally I was surprised by how worried I was, because I thought of myself as very open minded, and I knew I was judging an entire region on what I’d seen on the news. I rode through Syria before the war started, went through Lebanon and Jordan, on other trips I walked across Oman and Sudan. I love the Middle East, the people are so kind, and unquestioningly welcoming, and generous and hospitable. I felt safer in most of those places than in most other places I’ve travelled, which is so at odds with their outside perception.
Asked how to find adventure on a well-worn route:
Well, it’s just about taking random detours and embracing the spontaneity of travelling. I never regret the times I accepted an invitation or took a detour instead of taking the motorway, but I sometimes look back and slightly regret the times I just boshed out 1,000 miles down a main road just to make some time up. If you go to Egypt, for instance, you want to see the pyramids, but the most interesting part is probably what happens on the back streets you take to get to the pyramids. You’ve seen the pyramids before you get there – the real downside of travel now is the difficulty of being surprised. But I try in my trips to make scope for being surprised. I walked across Southern India from coast to coast and deliberately didn’t pick a bit that had any tourist landmarks – I just bought a plane ticket and went, so that anything I discovered would be a surprise. So, one morning I walked down a hill and found this huge gold temple full of Nepali monks – it was vastly better because I came across it by accident rather than scheduling it in.