TURNING POINT
A career-changing moment or experience
Conspiracy Theory Pays Off
One wintry afternoon in 1999, two émigrés, an Englishman and a Russian, hunched over their espressos at a Dunn Brothers coffee shop in Roseville, Minn.
At their feet: a brutish, beaten,
rusted cannonball with a handle—the
Russian’s treasured import from his
motherland. He called it a kettlebell,
and asked his English friend, “Do you
think this kettlebell thing can work in
the United States?”
Pavel Tsatsouline, a grizzled former
Soviet Special Forces trainer turned
entrepreneurial fitness author, was
skeptical. The kettlebell was a forgotten tool in the west, gathering cobwebs
in moldy basements and dusty gyms. In
Russia, only the roughest characters—
grizzled military, burly strongmen,
surly comrades with tattoos in all the
wrong places, scarred faces and broken
noses—sought out the kettlebell.
The Englishman, John Du Cane,
the owner of a niche fitness publishing
company, Dragon Door Publications—
had an eye for a good thing. “You
know, Pavel, I think we can really do
something with the kettlebell in the
United States. I think people are ready
to return to a simple tool that yields
spectacular results. But to succeed,
we’re going to have to give people a
vision of what they can really achieve
with kettlebells, train a cadre of instruc-
tors in their proper use—and, of
course, get authentic Russian kettlebells
made right here in the United States.”
The comrades downed a second round
of espressos and planned their move:
Tsatsouline would write
the first-ever book in the west
devoted purely to kettle-
bell training, create a video
on kettlebells and offer the
first-ever kettlebell instruc-
tor certification in the world.
Du Cane would promote
this pioneering Russian
Kettlebell Challenge (RKC)
to an unsuspecting public.
Lesson learned? Having a strong
partner, whose talents may be different
but passions similar, can spur you both
not only to achieve your vision, but
exceed it.
John Du Cane founded Dragon Door Publications in 1991 to publish esoteric works on Chinese internal martial arts and healing. After
securing Pavel Tsatsouline as an author in
1996, Du Cane steered Dragon Door to
become a publishing powerhouse. Visit www.
dragondoor.com.
