> I don't know of anyone who actually works/worked that hard and 'failed'

Are you seriously handwaving away survivorship bias?

I am speaking of people I know personally, as well as anecdotes I’ve heard.

to be fair, if they really failed you wouldn't know of them

Around 20 years ago I fell in with a bunch of screenwriter wannabes. Roughly 100 people, plus or minus, including myself. A difficult, highly competitive creative field.

Every person in that group who worked hard at it has had success at some level. That varies from making distributed indie films to running a network television show, but some level of success.

None of the successful people half-assed it, none of the hard workers utterly failed, none of the half-assed people made it.

The degree of success is largely out of your control. Innate ability, luck, etc are all factors. But the time and effort expended are in your control, and they're the primary factor of being able to make a run of it.