What do Tony Blair, Lance Armstrong and Mark Zuckerberg all have in common?

Time MagazineLance Armstrong, Tony Blair and Mark Zuckerberg all have at least one thing in common. They are amongst the 100 most influential people in the world according to Time Magazine. If you have been living in a time warp, Lance Armstrong is the world’s most successful professional cyclist who beat cancer to become a world champion racer. Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister is currently a special “peace envoy” to the Middle East. And Mark Zuckerberg? Well at the age of 23 he is the head of the world’s eighth most popular web site, Facebook. However, these three have an additional factor in common. Zuckerberg stuck to his guns and did not plan any kind of exit strategy from an early sale of Facebook. Instead, in spite of the criticisms and the advice, he has continued pioneering his vision of Facebook.

Similarly, according to Bill Clinton’s assessment of Tony Blair in Time Magazine, Mr Blair also stuck to his vision of seeking peace in the Middle East. This was in spite of advice to take a break from politics and to have a rest – advice given by President Clinton himself, which was ignored.

And then there’s Lance Armstrong, told by the medical profession he had little chance of recovery and that his cycling days were over. His vision for a way of inspiring other cancer sufferers to look forwards to a positive future spurred him onwards.

So, there they are, three influential people who did not let advice or “experts” get in the way of their idealistic and extraordinarily clear vision of what they wanted to achieve. And as a web site owner, what can you learn from them?

Clarity of objective, that’s for sure. Few web sites are clear in their intentions. And that’s because the people running those online businesses have no clear vision for their future either. Armstrong, Blair and Zuckerberg are united in their clarity of their visions for what they want to achieve. That clarity and that single minded focus is why they have been so successful. Your online presence, your Internet activities and the way you run your online business – does it have the same single minded focus and clarity?

Few web sites and online businesses are so supremely focused and that is probably why they are not doing as well as they might. Google became the world’s favourite search engine not because of the simplicity of its design, but because of the vision the owners have of “indexing the world”. That vision drives forward their success. If they had focused on “let’s make a well designed search engine”, they would not have been as successful.

Like the rest of the 100 most influential people in the world, Armstrong, Blair and Zuckerberg all share focused vision. Your web site will undoubtedly improve and certainly succeed if your business has the same single minded approach. Rather than worrying about the font your web site uses, or the colours of the pages, put your mind to work on creating a clear vision for the purpose of your business. One you have clarity of thought on that, what you need to do with your web site will become obvious. Most online businesses fail because the owners do not have any clear, focused, visionary thought as to their purpose.

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