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.
Harrison Ford · Actor
Snow shovelled at eight, and a work ethic he never put down.
A carpenter before he was a star, and Indiana Jones again in his late seventies. Harrison Ford on a Midwest upbringing, learning on the job and a life built beyond film.
Asked where his work ethic comes from:
I grew up in the Midwest (Chicago) in an era when hard work was something that was ingrained in your upbringing. My ancestors were all farmers. I lived in a big city because my father was working in an advertising agency. [...] My first job as a kid was cleaning snow off sidewalks and driveways. I must have been eight or nine years old. And then I learned to mow the lawn. I did all these things to earn myself some extra spending money which I usually spent on chocolate bars and candy. [...] But the idea of learning to work when you are young and maintaining certain job responsibilities while you grow up is something very typical of the Midwest, and it is something that has stayed with me my entire life.
Asked about the years before the big roles came:
That’s right – I worked around Hollywood as a carpenter and thought that was what I was always going to be. Sergio Mendes asked me to do work on his recording studio and it cost $100,000. [...] But what was funny is that it was pretty much the very first time I had done a job of that size and I was working from a book on how to get it right, which thankfully, I did.
Asked why he has never taken the industry too seriously:
I think a lot of that is to do with the fact I’ve always taken a lot of time out and away from movies. I don’t feel I need to keep feeding this thing and it certainly isn’t the one thing that fuels me and gives me my purpose. [...] In the Seventies and Eighties I stepped it up a bit, sure, but there’s been a lot of other stuff I’ve wanted to take care of outside of film, so I’ve built a life around that too.