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.
Levison Wood · Explorer
Walk the Nile and ask a fisherman what matters to him.
A former paratrooper walks the length of great rivers and mountain ranges, relying on strangers for food and a bed, and finds more that unites people than separates them.
Asked how he connects with a place rather than imposing himself on it:
For me the sense of place is really important because I think it's important to go to somewhere as an objective observer. I don't really consider myself a journalist as such; my background is as a photographer. Seeing that life through a lens had a big influence on my writing and going there trying to draw out the stories from other people and people that live there. For me, that's what it's all about, it's finding their stories and finding what makes them tick, and what the place means to people who live there.
Asked about the most surprising welcome he has had:
There are thousands but probably Sudan, the people were so incredible and hospitable. The hospitality was almost overwhelming, when every single village you get to people run out of their homes, offering you a glass of water or some food. They want you to stay and teach their kids English. One guy offered to build me a house if I stayed. It got so much we had to kind of hide from the villagers because we were getting slowed down on the journey. We camped out on the sand dunes a mile away, and I remember one night we made a little fire. The villagers were curious as to who these people were, hiding from the village, and we got surrounded. They were really upset that we weren't accepting the hospitality. One guy stormed off, came back an hour later – he’d carried his bed on his head from his village and said, “If you're not coming into my home, my home is coming to you.
Asked how he keeps going for months at a time:
Yes, it's not overdoing it – it’s knowing when to stop and actually not doing an extra ten miles. Actually if you do that, you're going to injure yourself. Better to just be consistent and say, “Right, I'm not doing more than 20 miles, that's it.