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.
Sam Sunderland · Dakar Rally champion
Twenty-five broken bones, and every one of them taught him something.
Eighteen hours a day on a rally bike, at speed over ground nobody has seen before. A motocross rider learns to slow down, takes his lumps, and wins the Dakar.
Asked what a motocross rider has to learn for the Dakar:
To understand the navigation's always hard, coming from my motocross background, and to kind of tame yourself down a bit; to learn to sometimes slow down, to take a bit of extra time just to get through a section safe. You only learn the hard way by kind of getting lost or having a crash or all that kind of stuff. Then you kind of sit back and, “Oh, OK, perhaps that wasn't the best way.” People can tell you but in the end you normally learn the hard way, as with most things in life.
Asked how he came back from a broken femur to win:
You can take it as motivational, or you can take it and sit and feel miserable and dwell on it. I used it as motivation to think, “right, I know I can beat the guys that are out there winning,” and wanting to prove it to myself. Because in the end it is for yourself; you don’t race for somebody else, you race for yourself.
Asked what he would tell someone starting out:
A lot of it’s about preparation; the better you can be prepared, the more chance you have. You’ve got to put in the time and sometimes you've got to make sacrifices. It’s not an easy road. I started rallies about seven years ago and have had many injuries and setbacks. You've got to just keep trying and not give up. Anything that’s worth having, you have to work and put yourself out for it. You put value to something by working hard at it and that's been my philosophy.