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.
Carl Lewis · Olympic sprinter and long jumper
You will be old longer than you are young. Plan for it.
Nine Olympic golds, but he was a late bloomer who learned to succeed without winning. At seventeen he wrote down what he wanted, then gave up the parties to get it.
Asked how the small, skinny kid became a champion:
The great thing about that was that I had to learn how to be successful without winning and my parents really encouraged me to focus on being my best, even though I was only finishing about seventh or eighth place or didn’t even make the final. I was doing it with a cheer in my heart: “Oh, I got a personal best, today.” I worked hard to get to my best all along.
Asked whether being number one or being your best matters more:
Well, here is the thing. I tell my student athletes now and I tell everyone who I work with the same thing: It’s your personal best – you can’t control who wins, you can only control what you can do, so you can only focus on what you can control. [...] Well, guess what? My team-mate in that final, Joe DeLoach, goes and runs 19.75 and I ran 19.79. So, when I turned to look at the times, I said: “All right…” because what can you say? I did what I had set out to do and it was just that somebody else had an amazing day, that day.
Asked for advice to someone trying to excel:
What do you want to be at 40? What do you want to do with that degree? What do you want to accomplish? You may not get there. But that is the goal and it makes it easier to move through this phase in life and when you get to the next phase, you keep you going, you keep pushing, you keep doing it. So, decide things really early when you’re a freshman, for example, and then allow yourself to focus on getting there all the way through. In some cases, you may get there when you are 30 and then you can readjust. Because a lot of my goals were ahead of themselves, but you have to live it and I will tell you something: you are going to be old a lot longer than you are going to be young, in life. [...] Therefore, plan the time to make all of that part of your life being older, easier. The greatest gift that I have right now in my life – other than my son and my grandchild – is the fact that I am 58 years old and I do whatever I want, I can make my own choices.