As I said before in Success vs happiness, success can be personal or social. Even if personal success is the one more likely to bring you happiness, social success comes with a lot of benefits. Successful people are always in the spotlight (getting a lot of attention which feeds their ego), get more offers of collaboration and work which will allow them to charge higher and get better deals, and enjoy a lot of other benefits. This is why many people try to achieve success.
Social success is defined by the exposure you get. This can be obtained in two ways: do the work, invent, create and deliver something important and meaningful for others or create enough buzz, get enough attention to get in the spotlight.
Sometimes exposure can be all you need in order to become successful, even if the work you have done is not that important. This is usually achieved by people who can create enough buzz around them to get noticed. You will usually see them on TV on different shows, at networking events, meetings and conferences talking about their work, about their success and what great things they have achieved.
On the other hand there are the people who have done the work, the meaningful stuff everyone is talking about. You will notice that these people are the ones about whom people usually talk without them saying a word or even with them being there. These are the ones focused on delivering. They know that their work is important and meaningful that they don’t need to talk about it and so they focus on doing their thing.
You can either talk your way to success or do the work that will get you there. The only difference is that the work will remain even after you shut your mouth.