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
Why he never rests on his laurels.
Deckard again at seventy-five, a helicopter he flies on volunteer rescues, and a plain rule for why he still turns up.
Asked whether it matters to him to keep working:
A real man should never rest on his laurels. He should prove his mettle every day. That has nothing to do with being macho, but with taking responsibility for yourself and your family. With all my experiences, I have to say that I still struggle with a lot of the same problems and frustrations I've always had in life. But I do know how to better manage it all and approach problems and make my way through life with a little more grace and honour.
Asked what he gets from his flying hours:
Flying gives me a combination of freedom and responsibility. You know, the freedom to be in charge of your own destiny, freedom to live by your own skills. It gives me real focus and a discipline and a commitment to the process and a freedom from everything else you're doing. So for me it's become very important to me because I like to acquire skills. I like to take responsibility for myself and I love being in the air and I love airplanes and I love seeing the world. I love the feeling of sitting in the cockpit high up above the clouds more than anything else. It's almost like meditation. It's the best relaxation in the world.
Asked whether his heroes are flawed by design:
Yes. I have never been interested in playing heroes. I've certainly never been interested in playing a character that didn't have a degree of complication even when they were meant to be, ultimately, heroic. I think that's much more interesting than playing the sort of slick, classic, All-American hero. We are all flawed as human beings and the only thing which gives life and substance to characters in movies are the flaws and contradictions which define them. I would like to think that those un-heroic elements are what have helped me have some longevity in this business. I play men who have particular dilemmas in their lives. More often than not, when these dilemmas and confrontations are dramatised, the characters I play come off as heroic but at heart they remain basic, down-to-earth individuals.