The cold, hard truth about the world is that hard work does not make you successful. People like elon musk, Steve jobs, bill gates, etc, while they may have posessed some level of talent or education above the average person and no doubt they all worked hard, they also all got very, very lucky. And that last part is by far the largest contributor to their success, because there are hundreds of thousands of people who are likely smarter and work harder but also never had their life line up as perfectly as the 'successful' people did. They didn't have the right home environment, they didn't make a crucial but seemingly meaningless decision, etc. etc.