Luck is an element, I also think you need a certain amount of psychopathy.
You need to bs a lot of people, be single minded to the extreme.
I'm not saying it's universal, I'm always surprised how people look up to successful business people as if that success suggests they are a 'better' person.
I am in 100% agreement with that. As a kid in school I was taught the industrialists and moguls were great men, and a few things like the occasional anti-trust (Standard) or corruption (Teapot Dome) were aberrations, regrettable excesses to be reined in.
Flash forward to my adulthood and me realizing that history as taught in US schools is a farce.