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.
Bubba Watson · Golfer, two-time Masters champion
His father's rule: never take a day off, however big the win.
Self-taught after a single lesson, he never plays the field, only the course. The habit that carried him came from a father who rarely broke 90.
Asked how he learned the game:
I played my first tournament when I was eight years old and then I began to start improving and watching the other players around me. I shot a 62 when I was 12, but I wasn’t interested in being better than anyone else. What I wanted was just to improve for myself and try and do that by practicing, shoot lower scores on each hole more consistently, and go from there. I wasn’t a kid who wanted to be better than anyone else – I wanted to better myself.
Asked whether he plays to win:
I don’t think that I have ever truly played to win, and I mean that honestly. Obviously, when the thing escalates and we’re coming to the end of a tournament on a Sunday and I’m in with a chance, I will be playing to win, then. But up until then, I have genuinely never gone into an event thinking that I should be looking to win that tournament, or that if I don’t win I’ll be disappointed, or anything else. The reason for that? Well, because on any given Sunday, any player can play their best round, regardless of how I play and then that would mean that they would win, even though I hadn’t made a mistake. Golf is one of the few sports where you can’t physically affect your opponent, and you can’t stop any player from doing their best. In football, soccer, boxing, basketball and all kinds of other sports, you can. So, my feeling is that you just go out there, do the best that you can and see if it’s good enough when the other players post their scores. If it is, then that’s all great. But if not, I’m just grateful to be out there trying to do my best.
Asked for the best advice his father gave him:
Yeah, that’s right. I would give that same advice to anyone else who – no matter how their form was, to keep on practicing every day they’re not playing in an event. Because you don’t know when that day is going to come when you can’t anymore. That day comes in all of our lives and when it does, it suddenly hits us the older we get. We get closer to retirement, we get closer to not being as fit as we used to be and we no longer have that joy in our lives. So, my advice is to do the things that you like to do, for as long as you are able to. Earn for your families, be happy, play your sports, have the good times – and the bad, we can’t avoid those – but do as you wish to make you and yours happy.