How do yall deal with imposter syndrome?

I met up with my secondary school clique recently and we usually meet up twice a year. Amongst us, there is a management consultant in one of the world’s biggest consulting companies and an entrepreneur that did not make it to any university (back then). The rest of us are just normal local uni grads and typical employees now.

During the meet-up, said the management consultant was talking big as usual. We are used to it. Things took a turn when he commented on the entrepreneur’s business. The consultant even gave ideas on how the business could be run better. The business owner just kept quiet and we could all tell that he was not interested in the conversation. This ticked the consultant and he doubled down, saying how he does this for a living and business owners usually pay loads of money for his company’s inputs.

The business owner snapped and retorted that while the consultant was enjoying life in university, he was out getting slaughtered in the real world. What does a uni grad know about building a business with 8-figure revenue while maintaining a decent margin and still thriving despite covid? Salaried employees should just stick to their lane and learn from their bosses and stop pretending that they are the shit. Especially if they are fresh grads and have less than 10 years of experience in the real world.

While that was directed at the consultant. The rest of us heard it and felt damn bad about ourselves. We thought we worked hard for our degrees but there is no denying, objectively, that the business owner had it harder than all of us. Most of us enjoyed our time in hall and our biggest worry back then was exams, while our friend was out there trying not to be bankrupted and struggling to find customers. But does that mean our degrees mean nothing? Some of us tried to ask the business owner about being an entrepreneur and he replied that we are better off climbing the corporate ladder since not many survive in the business world.

However, how did he survive? Our time in NUS made us believe that we can achieve anything but I can’t help but feel small in light of the real competition out there…..