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.
Dieter Roylance · Trainer to Olympians and actors
Advice should come from education, not a follower count.
He made Olympic swimmers lean and got Wolverine through a five-month build without breaking him. His first rule is to stay unbroken.
Asked whether he worries about fitness advice from anyone with a following:
It’s too late to worry about it, because it’s happening every day, everywhere you look. We are in danger of forgetting the key principle of advice – that it must come from education. When I’m asked for my opinion on fitness, health and stuff that I know about, I like to give people some real situations where they’re going to get real information and real education. Like anything, whether it’s someone getting into crypto currency or fitness, you need to be educated. If someone goes out and buys crypto and they don’t know what they’re doing, the chances of success are really low. It’s the same with strength and conditioning – there are so many people out there touting that they are the next this and that because they have a million followers on Instagram, but there’s not a whole lot of substance behind it. I like to go out and learn from the best.
Asked what links training athletes and film stars:
There are no second chances; nor should a good fitness trainer really need one. That’s what links athletes and movie stars – you’ve got to get it right. Everything they do is conditioned so that they are at the peak or optimum performance level on a set day. There are lots of images of people lifting silly amounts of weights. When that person finally breaks it’s not going to do much for your performance, so why do it? Someone like an entertainer can do a 200kg deadlift, but it’s not going to help their acting, it’s not really going to help the look of their leg muscles, and it is eventually going to injure them!
Asked what happens when athletes become coaches:
The result is they just regurgitate what they did or what worked for them. That means there’s little evolution or innovation in sport because these guys go from being a pro athlete to going back and doing the same thing which someone did with them. A lot of the time, sports are 30-40 years behind where they should be because the whole thing is so incestuous, and people just repeat what worked for them. This leads to bad habits and bad performance. This is why it’s imperative we keep moving forward and keep ourselves informed of real, modern sports science and technique.