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.
Mark Kalch · Expedition paddler
He went for the adrenaline and came back with the people.
Shot at, flipped by a waterfall and nearly run down by a tanker in the dark on the Amazon. Mark Kalch on why the people of the river became the real story.
Asked when he realised his approach to adventure was missing something:
It was probably once we had successfully run the whitewater of the upper Amazon and cleared the Red Zone, or the area most well known for its prevalence of cocaine production. To some degree we could relax and just get on with things. That meant I could appreciate exactly how fortunate we were to be paddling the entire length of the world's largest river. What a privilege. [...] The adventure and adrenaline was definitely a key part of it, but seeing what was going on around us on our little jaunt was supremely interesting. Looking back, for me, the most beautiful moments of that descent were when we got to visit with people for whom the Amazon was their home, their lives. They welcomed us and gave us a little peek into what that meant.
Asked why he changed the stories he tells:
I am a big fan of adventure and excitement but on these long journeys that aspect is kind of a given. I had grown tired of repeating ad nauseam my tales of derring do while ignoring stories, that to me at least, were even more interesting. Imagine spending your life living high in the Andes or on an island in the middle of the Amazon River?
Asked how he copes with the endurance and the solitude:
It really is the combination of sustained, peak physical output and that solitude, which makes for the challenge. One or the other alone is pretty easy to deal with, together it takes some work to overcome. The first 10 days or two weeks of my long descents can be jarring. I go from being super comfortable, eating whatever I want and being with my family to the exact opposite of that. [...] Keeping your mind in check to get beyond that period is paramount. I wouldn't say it’s a breeze but realising that I voluntarily put myself in these positions, that I leave my little kids by choice, I don't really have a valid excuse for moaning, for giving up.