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
If he trips, he trips. Never getting the chance is worse.
People kept telling him the Rambo chapter was closed. Decades into his career, Sylvester Stallone still boxes in private and still goes out looking for the next opening.
Asked why he wanted to bring Rambo back:
There were enough people telling me that chapter was done, and yet I had never told myself that. It’s strange, when someone tells you something about yourself that they think they know, your immediate reaction is to rebel against it. In this case I couldn’t because I hadn’t made a Rambo movie in maybe 10 years, but it was always there in the back of my mind that I should want to prove people wrong, and this was surely the best way of all to do it. [...] I think as you get older, though, you realise the biggest battle is often with yourself. It’s not something on a film set, it’s not from behind a computer screen when you’re arguing with someone on Twitter – it’s from within.
Asked what he thinks of when he gets into Rambo's mindset:
It’s interesting – I always believe we have three or four crossroad moments in our life. I think back to my early days and I did some film projects that I wouldn’t ever have even contemplated normally, but I was completely broke and needed a break. At the time I was always cast as a mugger or a thug, but I soon learnt that every movie I did presented an opportunity. [...] Not everyone is not going to be a star, but everyone wants the chance. It's the opportunity, and then the lack of opportunity drives people crazy, in any aspect of life. So I say, just let me run, and if I trip, I trip – but to not get an opportunity is the worst. So go out there and find it.
Asked how he trains for the role now:
I box a lot in private, and for me a lot of being in shape and training is about staying competitive, no matter what I’m doing. I’ve always been competing against something or someone in my life, and that’s what keeps me alive.