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.
Sylvester Stallone · Actor, writer, director
Life owes you nothing. Fight to make it better anyway.
Sylvester Stallone grew up in Hell's Kitchen, thin, teased and with a speech impediment. He built two fighters who never accept defeat, and wrote himself into both of them.
Asked what Rocky is really about:
In contrast to Rambo, Rocky is different with his optimistic view of the world and of his own life. He quickly realises that he is not special, and that life owes him nothing, but he tries as much as he can, to make his life better and to be special. [...] Also, it's a common misconception that Rocky is a boxing movie, it's not. It’s more a movie that has boxing in it and Rocky exists in isolation, and is reborn once he meets a woman. Boxing is just his job; he could have been anything in life. But the boxing element is a metaphor because life is a fight against the odds and a race against time. It will always be that.
Asked why he was teased as a boy:
Well, I had a speech impediment which I probably still carry to this day and it was one of those things which I just had. I was born in Hell’s Kitchen, so I had my accent to overcome and I was very, very thin. [...] So, it wasn’t until I saw a film called Hercules Unchained and I thought: “Hey, here’s a guy who can single-handedly defeat the Roman army with the jawbone of an axe.” I was obsessed with trying to emulate him and wondered what he was eating to get like that.
Asked whether he is resilient himself:
There is something about the nature of man and woman, just the creatures themselves and we’ve been through so much upheaval over thousands of years. We’ve seen civilisations being destroyed, only to come back and I am very much into that theme of fighting back and not accepting defeat easily. [...] If we do get defeated, then we mostly rebuild ourselves and come back. I do think that it’s a very interesting cycle, which is also timeless.