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.
Will Dean · Founder, Tough Mudder
A business-school idea, then three million people in the mud.
A Harvard Business School idea that became three million people in the mud. Dean on purpose, luck and only hiring people you could have dinner with.
Asked whether there were hard lessons that could have derailed him:
Yes. It’s a cliché to say resilience is important as an entrepreneur – what drives that resilience is probably a more interesting thing. For me, it was a deeper sense of purpose. We scaled from ten employees to 150 employees in the space of 18 months between the beginning of 2011 and the end of 2012. I mean, that was just exhausting. I'm proud that we went through it, but with hindsight I wish we could have grown just a little bit slower, because I look at a photo of me at the end of 2012 and it looks like I've taken up heroin or something! I just look exhausted. It's an irony that Tough Mudder's all about of living a healthy lifestyle, and all I seemed to do that year was sit at my desk, or on planes.
Asked for a second lesson:
Only ever hire people you can have dinner with. Culture is so important. Culture is just how people behave when their boss isn't looking. You know, it's nothing to do with beautiful tables or beer in the fridge, or anything like that. It's just irrelevant, that stuff. It's about people trying to make the company better tomorrow than it is today, and getting the right people into the organisation, and crucially, getting the wrong people out as quickly as you bloody can.
Asked how much of it was timing:
I think any entrepreneur that doesn't think they’ve had a huge dollop of luck is deluding themselves. Yes, you have to work hard. Yes, you have to get a lot of things right, and I do think execution matters hugely; but you have to be in the right place at the right time. Things that seem like small decisions at the time end up being huge. I think we identified there was a demand, a need for events that were not timed, that were about teams, getting people together. I think we identified there was a need for an event that was about all-round physical fitness, not just aerobic fitness.