It's not just really hard. I think the hard part most people can get by. It's the luck part that a lot of us are missing. You have to be lucky enough to be that 1 person who catches the train at the right time.
Imagine the odds of that. That's what gets me. It's not necessarily how hard you work. It's the window of opportunity that most people miss.
This is simply not true. It's a myth. And the only time it is true is when you're born into an underprivileged background (I was born into a working class family with little money) or environment (in a rough part of England.)
Look, life is easy: we all have hopes and dreams, problems and pain points. We want to make the hopes and dreams come true whilst we resolve the problems and take away our pain points.
Business is easy: make or do something that helps people bring their hopes and dreams to life. Make or do something that solves a problem for someone. Make or do something that takes away a person's pain point(s).
Luck doesn't make or break your business: hard work does. Time. Patience. Persistence. Being smart with money. And yes, to a point, having some money that can be used to bootstrap, but for most people on this site, that's not an issue.
A year or so ago I had a choice: take home my daily contracting pay rate (which is a lot) and keep it in investments, or find some problems to solve and invest it in a business.
I now have two businesses: I continue to contract whilst building training and managed services around the technologies being used because businesses and people need those things. And I brought my brother in law onboard the business (made him a director) and invested in him building a VR workshop service that helps teachers deliver complex, hard-to-teach aspects of the Australia science curriculum.
Luck is a factor, for sure, but it's not the main ingredient in your success. Yes I do get that being in the right place at the right time can land you a big deal, investment, or something else that sets you off, but thinking along those lines is equivalent to thinking that the only way to get rich is to win the lottery.
If you're relying on luck, you're headed in the wrong direction. I was very late in the game, at least 2 years past the big market boom in my area of expertise, but I saw that the momentum was there to keep carrying on. I was working during those two years to be ready to fully launch, and I'm now making a modest but comfortable $200k/yr in a place with moderate cost of living.
If this hadn't come along, I had several backup plans I could turn into a viable business. You have to learn to see the money and take the money, but that's a learnable skillset.
I also had an uncle that just had a nose for what the next big thing was going to be. He made more money than I do, but he knew what the next big thing was going to be because he learned everything he could about small reaches from his current operation and talked to everyone.
Successful solo entrepreneur here - I agree 100%. Owning a niche is based on experience. I could restart at 0 in my market and be back to profitable in a year.
Imagine the odds of that. That's what gets me. It's not necessarily how hard you work. It's the window of opportunity that most people miss.