Let’s admit it. Everybody wants to be famous. But fame comes to a select few. Not you everyday Joe. So in the world of entrepreneurs, if you had to showcase a select few , then the media better need some good fodder to drive up its page rankings or views. So to drive up their page views, they go around choosing

a.the most photogenic entrepreneurs to grace their covers

b.the youngest entrepreneurs, because let’s face it – everybody is amazed by that 22 year old kid who built a billion dollar company when we were working our hinds off in some cubicle in a large firm filling out student loans.

c. the 0.001% of entrepreneurs who got a stroke of a sensational idea, the ultra-rare unique idea and decided to build on it.

But here is the kicker,” you don’t need that fame to be a successful entrepreneur”. For practical reasons it’s important to differentiate between good and bad ideas ( how else would you drive up magazine sales / page views), but for the most part, failures can be attributed more to the lack of audacity you approach your work with. Let me elaborate.

I recently had a friend of mine quit the Solar EPC venture he was working on citing the market wouldn’t grow for quite a few years. With all due respect to his reasons behind that decision, I am but forced to analyse his rationale.  Was he quitting because ‘the market wouldn’t take off’ or ‘because he didn’t have the patience to stick it out ‘ or maybe he figured that he would fit into a better industry than this one. That analysis is precisely what I am getting at.

To succeed in any endeavour, our idea does not need to be unique or new. That myth, propagated by media sensations,  has become the accepted dogma of entrepreneurship because the media only covers the miniscule percentage who made it overnight with a sensational idea. There’s no excitement in the story of the guy that built an empire by aggressively buying local delis, the guy who started a series of grocery stores ( the second one – started seven years after the first one!! )  and built a $200 Billion empire, the guy who started coffee shops all over the place, the guy who sold chicken in retail all over the country.  You don’t even need to innovate ( gasp! ) . Just find things that other people do, and do them too. But sticking it out with audacity, is the most difficult part.

So it’s up to us to decide what we really desire. Glamour or success. Most often than not, the former is just a by-product of the latter. Not the other way around.