I'm glad to hear you're venturing out to your own side gig, as you said it can be super rewarding to do something you "want" to be doing instead of "have" to be doing.
With that being said,not sure I can agree with the "there is one surprising similarity between 9 to 5 careers and entrepreneurial ventures: success in either correlates very highly with how hard you work and your level of ambition to do well". This may vary from industry to industry but from my own personal experience, variables such as office politics, nepotism, poor management and being "black balled" all can play factors in your success, (or lack there of) in your typical 9-5. Not saying that happened to me, but I've known VERY hard workers that will forever be "stuck".
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It's very true that there are things at the office which are outside your control and which can hold you back. The same is true in entrepreneurialism, however, and if you have any amount of success, things like office politics and nepotism will likely come to exist in your own venture as well. The world is vast, and wherever you go, things will happen that you aren't prepared to handle and that can feel unfair.
In both cases — working for yourself, or working for someone else — how well you do is a combination of your own talent and luck. How big a factor each separately plays is hard to say, but since all you can control is your own efforts, I believe those should be your focus no matter what you do.
I went through several careers before I found one that was stable, rewarding, and in which I felt valued for my own contributions. To those who work hard but feel the deck is stacked against them, whether in entrepreneurship or in life, all you can do is roll the dice another time. The hardship of life is that sometimes you get "stuck," even when you did everything right; the beauty of life is that you can try again.