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.
Jonny Nicol · Founder, Stratajet
Find the waste, then spend five years fixing it.
Jonny Nicol left the armed forces to fly private jets and found himself ferrying empty planes across Europe. He wrote the software to end that waste.
Asked how he spotted the gap:
After serving for a decade in the British Armed Forces I became a corporate freelance pilot, which included flying private jets. One day I was flying a jet from Nice to London with no passengers, as the aircraft simply had to be repositioned. Problems like that – inefficiency and wastage – were resulting in hiked prices for passengers and holding back private jets from being accepted as a valid form of transport. In my opinion, the concept of elitism and luxury has outgrown what private jets were originally invented for; and that’s efficiency of travel.
Asked where he found his inspiration:
I took a lot of inspiration from reading one book in particular during the early days of the company, although it actually has nothing to do with building a startup! It’s a book called Death on the Ice, by Robert Ryan, and it’s about the 1910 expedition to the South Pole led by Robert Falcon Scott. A CEO can learn a lot about leadership from the challenges that team of explorers faced. For example, there will be times when all you can do is work and it seems like you’re chipping away at a never-ending mountain, but with crushing lows come equally dizzying highs.
Asked how he won over an old-fashioned industry:
Private aviation remains a very traditional and old-fashioned industry, one where a handshake is essential for conducting business – operators were wary of change and reticent to adopt a new technology. So, to bring the supply of aircraft on board, we had to give physical demonstrations to each and every operator – we bought a thirty-year old, battered twin-propeller Chieftain aircraft and, as a former RAF and commercial freelance pilot, I flew the team door-to-door around Europe. We conducted 150 face-to-face meetings in half as many days. We then repeated this across the United States, conducting 496 meetings in 197 cities within 92 days!