Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to help build and grow several successful businesses, and I’m often asked about the key to success for entrepreneurs. A lot has been written on the subject, with people offering different opinions. Some say it’s about having the right connections, access to capital, or even a bit of luck. Others focus on innovation, strategic planning, or being in the right place at the right time. From my experience, however, it all boils down to three essential elements without which even the best ideas will struggle to take off.

While creativity is undoubtedly an important part of entrepreneurship – it goes without saying that you can’t start a business if you don’t have an idea – the most important aspect lies in the raw elements: hard work, grit, and resilience. No matter how brilliant the idea or how creative the vision, without relentless commitment, success will only remain a distant dream.

At its core, entrepreneurship is about converting a vision into reality. Imagination sparks ideas, fuels innovation, and makes certain entrepreneurs utterly awe-inspiring. But vision alone, no matter how brilliant, cannot make a difference. That’s where old-fashioned hard work comes in, of the backbreaking variety. Obstacles, late nights, early morning, self-doubt: these are the markers along the entrepreneur’s path.

Take Steve Jobs, for example. His creativity and visionary approach revolutionized entire industries—from personal computing to entertainment and mobile technology. He created demand for products out of thin air. He created whole markets.

But his journey was also about his unyielding pursuit of perfection and his dedication to making those ideas a reality. Jobs was renowned for his exacting standards, work ethic, and ability to push his team to bring his visions to life. He didn’t just imagine the future—he built it. “If you build it, they will come,” the famous line from the film Field of Dreams (one of my favorites), could easily have been Jobs’ motto. Sure enough, they came.

Or consider Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. What started as an online bookstore in the mid-1990s – one that I remember quite fondly – has since evolved into a world-straddling tech giant. We all just take for granted that we can search for practically any product in existence on Amazon, purchase it in one click, and have it delivered to our doorstep within days – if that. It’s almost like magic, and if you were to transport someone from just a couple of decades ago in a time machine to our present day, they would be stupefied. It’s easy to forget how much our world has changed in such a short period of time. Much of that is due to Jeff Bezos.

Bezos’s vision was clear: to create an online marketplace where people could find anything they wanted to buy. But the challenges were immense. In the early days, Bezos worked long hours, often sleeping on the floor of his office, and faced skepticism from investors who thought his ambitious plans would fail. His drive to implement his vision, coupled with impressive innovations (the amazing Kindle, for example), transformed Amazon into a global tech powerhouse.

Of course, Jobs and Bezos are entrepreneurial archetypes and most entrepreneurs shouldn’t expect to become one of them. But what they can do is learn important lessons about hard work and tenacity. Sacrifice is at the core of entrepreneurship. Failures along the way are inevitable. There is blood, sweat, and tears. But it is the entrepreneur’s grit that turns imagination into reality, setbacks into learning experiences, and failure into fuel to get up and try once more.

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About Elliott Broidy

Elliott Broidy is a serial entrepreneur and investor, focusing on defense, homeland security, and law enforcement technology businesses that support public safety and security of the United States and its allies. He is the Founder, CEO, and Chairman of Broidy Capital Management, an investment firm that participates in public and private capital markets and invest in a wide range of sectors in the U.S. and overseas.