There’s this notion that getting the “Right Idea” works just like a light bulb. It turns on, the world is wowed — and success follows exactly like the end of the original Muppet Movie — the crew breaks into Orson Welles’ office and gets issued the standard “rich and famous” contract, just for the asking.

This is not how things work, but we all know that. Instead, I thought about what you really need to bring something from Step One into a going concern. I came up with five that you absolutely need to have:

1. Right Idea. You have a good idea, but you need to be able to explain what you want to do very concisely. Even more important, make sure you can explain why your idea has value. You may have 15 different value propositions, but you need to pick the simplest, most compelling items to lead with. This is really hard to do when you are eating, breathing and sleeping your vision, but remember there’s more time to follow up once you have somebody’s attention.

2. Right Person. Just because you have an idea doesn’t automatically mean you understand it fully. I’ve developed pieces of code, just as conveniences for myself, and never saw any potential in them. A year or two later that somebody made a buck (or a ton of bucks) off the same kind of thing. I wasn’t ripped off, the truth is I didn’t have the vision to see the value and lost that opportunity. This has to do with your background, your experiences. Not everyone is capable of seeing the value right away. The lesson here is to look critically at everything you do, document everything you do, and occasionally look back in a fresh light.

3. Right Time. Some ideas are too early or too late. Everybody has that moment where they think of something and find out there’s 5 other people doing it. But before you trash it, take a little time to look critically at the competition. You’ll often see the first few people doing idea A all exactly the same way…maybe with a minor change, you vastly improve on A.For ideas whose time hasn’t come, be sure you document them really well, as well at what market change makes it “time to do it”. In a year or two (or five) you may find yourself dusting off that idea because it’s time. This has happened to me more often than I care to admit.

4. Right Place. With the surge in collaboration tools in the last few years, physical location matters a bit less. For $250 you can give the appearance of a Park Avenue office and a 212 number. Despite this, location still matters.. You can’t stray too far from your customer or you lose touch. Being too far from the competition might blind you to the market; but being next door may force you into a difficult fight with those same competitors for resources.

5. Right Team. I’d argue team is a key component because nobody ever does it alone. You need people who compliment the skills you may lack, who you trust, and who you can work with. You should already have an idea of who these people will be, and hopefully you’ve convinced them your idea is sound. And this is where your whole idea gains momentum, as you begin to pull more people into the enterprise.

If you are missing any of them, you’re going to have a very hard time making a business of it. Finding all five in the right amounts seems like lots of luck, and sometimes it is. But the true key is persistence — like playing the lottery, your chances get better the more you try. There’s good examples from history to support this:

Edison held 2,300 patents worldwide (almost 1,100 in the United States) but the vast majority were duds. And he certainly didn’t do it alone. Persistence.

In perhaps one of the humblest quotes of all time, Einstein said, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” Persistence.

Think of it this way: luck is persistence multiplied. You’re not going to succeed every time (in fact there’s a whole tome to be written about failure) but having a plan and a structure can help your chances.