Last week I watched “The Imitation Game”, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, a British mathematician recruited by the British government during World War II to help crack the code for the German “Enigma” machine, which was helping the Nazis send encrypted messages before and during the war.  Turing created his own machine, which he called “Christopher”, to crack the code and assist the Allies in defeating the Nazis.

There’s one scene that got me thinking about coaches and their businesses.  In that scene, Turing’s superior wants to destroy his machine because he sees it as a tremendous waste of money with little chance of success (at this point it had been unsuccessful with what it was built to do). As he’s standing outside the building where Christopher is housed, Turing sees his superior approaching with a group of men intent on wrecking his machine.  He runs back inside and jams the door to keep the men from entering.  Even after they break the door down, he struggles to protect it, because he’s convinced that it’ll eventually be successful.

Coaches must have the same fierce determination that Alan Turing had with his machine.  The man was convinced that it would be successful, and fought off any doubts that people through at him over the years.  He stuck with it, and eventually it was successful.  But had he listened to the naysayers, he could have quit many times before it finally worked.

Think about your business – do you have friends, family or strangers telling you that it won’t work?  Pay no attention to them.  Block your door and keep them out of your head – just keep working away at it and know that if you keep at it, you’ll eventually “crack the code”!