I think HK Rowling is a solid counter to that argument. Success is far more about leverage than drive. Drive is still extremely useful, just not the root cause for success.

Two points perhaps worth considering:

1) Defining "success" as "made a ton of money" is reductive and probably not very useful

2) Many (most?) successful people are ambitious, but lots of ambitious people do not succeed, at least by their own standards

Writing novels while you're dirt poor and riding a train to your low paying job does not count as "drive"?

I would love to hear your definition of "drive" then.

By her own words she took five years to write the first book, but mostly wrote it while unemployed at coffee shops. Ignoring her later success, most unemployed people sitting around coffee shops writing are considered to have low drive.

I mean if you think she qualifies that’s fine, but kind of lowers the bar to irrelevance.

There's writing aimlessly, and then there's successfully writing a coherent book. The latter is very difficult.

> That is what makes ambitious people successful.

No, that's the myth sold to you.

If hard work made you successful some guy who busted his ass for 50 years would be president instead of a dude who was born obscenely wealthy.