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.
Shane Dorian · Big-wave surfer
He kept his mentor's nerve and unlearned the recklessness.
Shane Dorian paddles into waves of 60 feet. His mentor died surfing a North Shore reef, and Dorian has spent his career chasing that dream while learning how to survive it.
Asked how much Todd Chesser shaped him:
Yes, for sure, he had massive influence on me. He was extremely wild. He was pretty young. He was pretty radical; he was very opinionated and he was very sure about the way he felt and thought. He basically taught me everything I knew at that point about surfing big waves, and girls and how to deal with money, and all these major things in my life that were happening… He was like that big brother that took me under his wing and he wanted all of us to do our best. His dream was always to become one of the world's best big wave surfers. Then when he passed away, I think subconsciously I felt like I needed to do that for him.
Asked what Chesser taught him about facing big waves:
He was very simple, man! He just wanted to go out there and absolutely go for it 100%, leave nothing left. He was pretty radical and very risky back then. There were no safety measures in place, there was no safety plan and a team of people to help watch you or anything like that. When the waves were big you just grabbed your board, you waxed it up and you'd paddle out wherever the waves are big, and you’d charge. Over the years I've had to unlearn some of that stuff. It was so dangerous – I had to unlearn that as I got a little bit older and I had a couple very close calls myself.
Asked about his closest call:
My confidence level was through the roof but on the second day I had a bad wipe-out and fell, and I got held under for three waves. I ended up losing consciousness and nearly blacking out completely – I just barely survived. [...] I got rescued and really it was a very, very close call. Had I been underwater any longer it would've been really bad. That for me was a real turning point. After that I came up with the inflatable wetsuit vest. That thing has been really, really good for me personally and really good for a lot of people in the surf world now… having that really bad wipe-out, that really changed my perspective on risk versus reward.