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This is Help Wanted, the show that tackles all the big work questions you cannot ask anyone else. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, editor and chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.
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And I'm New York Times bestselling author and money expert Nicole Lapin.
B
The helpline is open. Hey Nicole, has anyone ever criticized you like today? Sure. Or.
C
Or ever? Happens all the time.
B
Jason, what do you do when somebody criticizes you?
C
I used to respond very defensively. I actually, I think we talked about this in another episode where one of my first bosses said like this is going to be a big problem for you if you don't get it together. Laughing and I did and actually really enjoy criticism. I like it a lot more than
A
compliments because it helps me learn, grow, rinse and repeat.
B
Well, today we are going to be talking to someone you criticized because you are not just the receiver of criticism, but you dish it out too, but
C
in a kind, in a thoughtful way.
B
Yes, we're going to talk about the difference between being nice and being kind, which is very important to you. And also what to do when people criticize you because it is not easy to hear, but sometimes it is the best thing that can happen to you. And we criticize someone right here on this show. And when I say we, I mean you. And that person was Kim Kalp, my friend who did a thing that I thought was really smart and you thought needed a little refinement. Why don't we first hear a little bit of what you said? So here's just a random email from my friend Kim Kalp where it says, note.
C
Okay, Note, colon. I check my email every other day and try to respond to messages within one to two business days. If there is something that is urgent, contact my assistant, whatever her name is.
B
So I called Kim and I said, what is going on here? So she said it started with her recognizing that because she is ultra responsive to all her clients, her clients expect that she will be ultra responsive to them, which means that she's got to be checking her email all the time, which means that she's got to be responding all the time, which means that she doesn't have time for the deep work and thought of doing the actual work that they have hired her to do.
C
I don't love that email signature. Even if you don't have a signature in your email that explicitly says how frequently you respond, just by doing it, you're setting the same message. I am sure Kim is the most lovely, very lovely, super smart, super successful. I always find it a little off putting when somebody's like, reach out to
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my assistant no matter what.
C
I don't love it.
B
Yeah, just fine. At first blush, Kim will take at least a day to get back to you on that.
A
Makes sense.
B
Okay, so you had some words for Kim and guess what? Kim is here. Hi, Kim.
D
Hey.
C
Hi, Kim.
B
Kim, you are not just a person who writes emails that I talk about on podcasts. Can you explain who you are?
D
Yes, I'm Kim Kalp. I write emails all the time as part of my work with Bright Ideas Only, my marketing agency that I have had for the last 12 years with my co founder, Abby Moffatt. And we work with entertainers and stuff, sports teams and music artists to help them connect with their super fans. And we work with everybody from the New York Mets and Daddy Yankee to Katy Perry and Shawn Mendes. And so I write a lot of emails.
B
You didn't hear that for the first time right now. You heard it when it went live and you did something about it. Tell me about that.
D
I go through a process whenever I get feedback. I work in a client facing business, so clients are always giving feedback all the time. So it's really, is this an easy fix? Does this make sense? Is this something that I could interpret one way but somebody else could interpret a different way? And if it is like a low hanging fruit and it's an easy fix and I think it's going to help communicate better what I'm trying to say, then I'm always game to make it. If it's something that's a personal preference or something where, you know, somebody wants something one way but I want it another way and there's kind of no right answer, then defer the way I do it. But in this case it was an easy fix, so I fixed it.
B
How do you decide that something isn't a personal preference? And then we want to hear the fix. We want to hear what you did.
D
The way I determine if it's a personal preference or not usually stems around communication or around if things are just physically easier. So for example, I was working with a client and my legal team had sent a very long winded thing for them to sign and the client signed it, but they wrote back and said, next time can you just put this in a docusign? I'm on a 6 hour car trip and to try to download this PDF, edit it in acrobat, send it back now. That really wasn't feedback for me. It was kind of for my lawyers as well. So I was like, hey guys, moving forward, I don't care what you do with your other clients, but when you work with me docuSign from here on out. So little things like that are easy fixes. And in this specific case, my first thought process was Nicole is right in terms of should there even be a note caveat depending on age. So I'm 37. Do I think that between the ages of 21 and call it 31 or 32, 33, like your first decade in work, can you have this message? Absolutely not. That is when you are like hustling, you're a slave to your phone. Jason, you and I were just talking about like my publishing days at Conde Nast back when I had the BlackBerry. And yeah, my boss is writing me at 6am or 2am and I'm writing back, you know, yes, you sort of have to pay your dues. Now I'm going to have like a millennials attacking me. Like, why do we have to pay our dues just because you paid your dues?
B
It's how dues work.
C
I agree with you, by the way.
D
Your first decade in work, you are glued to that phone and you are answering very quickly. But I think at some point it was me saying, okay, when are the dues paid up? That you can say, yeah, it's going to take me 24 hours to respond to this. And if I am on a plane or I am in a meeting. I'm not going to write back to you at 10pm in my hotel room when I flew to LA and took three meetings off the plane. You know, I'll write back to you in the morning. And so that was really my thought process.
B
The other thing that Nicole had criticized was using the word assistant. I think that your original note said, please email my assistant. You took the word assistant out.
D
I did. What's funny enough is I don't actually refer to Shelby as my assistant. Like, 99% of the time I was going through my emails and, like, when I introduce her to people, I'm a big Harry Potter fan, but I actually introduce her as, like, the Hermione to my Harry. Because if you watch the series, like, Hermione's the really smart one and she's super organized. And Harry, he's like the lead character, but he's kind of a mess. And I was like, that's us. Like, you're the smart, organized Bookworm one, and I'm kind of the main character, but I'm a mess and you're here to help me. So, yeah, that was actually one of the few places that I was referring to her as my assistant. So, yeah, I just took it out. Now it just says, if there's something urgent, please email Shelby so she can hunt me down.
C
I love that. So, thank you so much for doing this, Kim. You're so gracious. And I think this is gonna help a lot of people doing that learn, grow, rinse, repeat thing that we all have come in our older age now,
A
after paying our dues for so long
C
and walking miles in the snow, to really appreciate. And I think that's totally genuine for all of us. The nice versus kind thing that Jason and I have talked about for a very long time is around this idea that I think the nice thing to do is to tell people what they want to hear. And the kind thing to do is to actually take a little bit more time and tell them maybe what they need to hear. And it actually takes more effort, I think, to do the kind thing than the nice thing. Like, the nice thing is, like, give the kid the candy. It's easier. Give the kid the iPad. Right? The kind thing to do is to discipline or do the right thing.
B
Thing.
C
Right? And this happens with friends all the time. Jason asked me for feedback a lot. My friends asked me for feedback, too. And I think this all started, Jason, right, when you sent me a video and, oh, yeah, you were like, tell me about my appearance on whatever TV show. And I Probably could have been like, hey, it was great. Congratulations, awesome. Like, I'll post about it. Rockstar, Hashtag go team. And. And instead, like, I took time and I watched it and I gave him, like, feedback that might not have been, like, warm fuzzy to hear.
B
You said I was very thirsty, so
C
definitely not warm fuzzy vibes, but it
B
was really useful because I was thirsty. That's the thing. And it has haunted me, but in a good way.
C
But hopefully you think about, like, you know, going to TV appearances and slowing down.
B
Right? Having a drink beforehand.
C
Exactly. My best girlfriend had me look at her resume also recently, and it had a photo on it. And the photo had her boobs. I was like, sarah, you gotta crop the boobs out. And, you know, I could have been like, gorgeous, stunning, amazing, perfect 10. But I was like, the boobs have got to go.
D
Well, I guess it depends on the job. True story.
B
That's true.
C
Victoria's Secret model. I tend to try to offer the kind thing, the feedback that may help others learn and grow, and perhaps I can learn how to deliver it better. I don't know, you guys both tell me, but I think generally, like, it takes a little longer, and for me it always comes from a good place.
B
So this is actually an interesting moment that we have here because I think part of the reason people fear giving very direct feedback is because they worry that it'll be received in a harsh way. But here we have Nicole. You weren't talking to Kim when you criticized her thing, but you might as well be because she was listening to you and so she received it. So here we have Kim. Kim, do you like hearing feedback in that very direct way?
D
I mean, I feel like that's how most of my friends give feedback. So it just felt like Nicole was a friend I never met and was giving me feedback in terms of nice first kind. A lot of times I will actually ask people. So when they ask me to look at a resume or they ask me to look at a clip of them on tv, I will say, do you want the real talk? And what I've realized is sometimes people say no. They're like, that was such a hard thing for me. I came to you just kind of needing like a pick me up. I realized I wasn't making the delineation between, like, am I being your friend or am I being, like your peer?
C
I love that. I think I'm actually going to incorporate that. I mean, I think that's in relationships too. When somebody says, do you want comfort or advice? I think I'm going to ask, hey, Jason, do you want me to tell
A
you you're being thirsty?
B
The answer is yes. Every time you see thirst, I need you to call it out immediately. The thing that you're highlighting right now is really interesting because there are going to be some people who have come to you just for the confirmation that they need. And if you're going to challenge that, you might be popping a bubble that they weren't prepared to pop. So I like asking, but I also like the idea of, and I think, Nicole, you have done this just naturally with your close friends, is establishing yourself as the person who's just going to give it to you straight. And therefore, when somebody comes and asks you for advice, you. If you are that person who has established that particular relationship, then when they come to you, they know they're going to get something a lot more real than if they go to someone else. And so I guess it's incumbent upon all of us as individuals that to decide what kind of expectations we want to set as the advice giver to everyone who might come to us for advice.
D
I'm sure you guys have had this too. Everyone has that friend that comes to you for advice, and then they do the exact opposite. And you're like, we just had a two hour conversation about how you need to break up with him. And then two hours later I see you on Instagram stories like going to the movies, like, what are we doing? Why do we just have that two hour conversation about that you need to break up with him? It's that friend where after a while you're like, okay, well, obviously you don't want the truth because I keep giving it to you and you're going to do what you want to do.
B
I have always emotionally bailed on those kinds of friends. I'm like, I am so here for giving advice to anyone. And look, if you don't follow it, that's fine. But if we have a pattern where you keep coming to me for the same thing and we keep having the same conversation and then nothing changes, then at some point I cut bait. You know what that person is doing? I think that that person is buying Men's Health in January, which is to say, because I used to work at Men's Health and January was always the best selling month for Men's Health. You know why? Because it would be the new year and millions of people would be like, you know what? This is the year I'm going to get fit. What am I going to do? Oh, I'm not going to go change my habits or join a gym. I'll just buy a copy of this magazine and then I will have felt like I did something. There's a lot of that where people just, they need to feel like they did something. And so the thing that they do is do something that doesn't actually make any kind of difference. And look, you can buy Men's Health all day Long. Men's Health is very happy to sell it to you, but you can't ask for my or your time all day long, all the time. Because eventually that is a resource that runs out if you're not actually putting it into action. Stick around. Help Wanted. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Help Wanted. Let's get to it.
C
I think that's right. And also I was trying to search. We have a lot of texts, by the way, Jason, where we say thirsty. Because I just searched thirsty. Cause I was like, what did I actually say? Like, I didn't say it super harsh like that. Like I wrote, I remember like a whole thing, you know, I took the time to do it. And my intention for that is to make you succeed, you know, and my intention for Sarah was to make her get all the jobs. And I am ultimate woman's woman. And Kim, now we're friends. I'm so glad that you took it as like a long lost friend or a not friend yet or friendly advice, because I want you to succeed. That's where the intention comes from.
D
I'm thinking of like this tight group of girlfriends that I have here that we sort of mastermind together, if you will. And so that's really a space that, you know, we're, we're friends outside, hanging out all the time. But then we sort of meet once a month and say, okay, you know, everybody leave their, you know, warm fuzzies at the door. You know, bring in your numbers, bring in your pain points, and let's really criticize, feedback, whatever you want to call it. Like, you didn't think of this, or ooh, these numbers are bad. Or revenue here is really struggling.
C
Why?
D
And so I think it's also just sometimes making that intentional effort to be like, let's form a little like criticism party like once a month or whatever it is with your group of friends and sort of dig into it.
C
I think of it in my mind as like fixing somebody else's crown. Just like it's like a little off or telling them they have something in their teeth or whatever. I actually had a very awkward discussion with myself at a conference that I was just at with an old friend who I was then, like, talking with at a meeting to potentially work with. And as he got up, I noticed that his fly was open. And I was like, oh, like, he's gonna go to a party. In my mind, I was like, do I tell him? Do I not tell him? Like, he is a friend. But now, like, I kind of want to work with him, but, like, his fly is fucking open. Is anyone else at this conference gonna tell him? Ultimately, I did tell him. I can't, like, leave a man down like that or like, a woman. I don't know. There's something about it that I would want to know. Like, I want to know if there's something in my teeth. But then, like, I have this whole conversation with myself about whether or not that person is gonna receive it well,
D
because then it turns into, like, he could have come back at you and been like, were you looking at my crotch? That would have been, like, the ultimate power move if he was like, sure, I'll correct it, but why are we looking down there?
B
The zipper thing is interesting because the whole thing is awkward.
D
Yeah.
B
But let's just counter narrative for a second. Would this person ever say, thank you for not telling me that my fly is open? I am so glad you did not embarrass me by telling me that my fly was down.
C
Right. One embarrassment is better than hundreds. Now I wonder if he thinks I was looking at his crush.
B
Damn it. Well, you were.
C
But to be fair, like, I was sitting down, and then he got up to, like, pay.
B
Look, I think that we all just, as a society, have to acknowledge that we have all looked at all of our crotches.
D
It's a public service, really.
B
Yeah. We haven't inspected them, but we've seen them. When I speak in front of audiences, there's always a moment about three minutes into my talk where I will try to, as subtly as possible, touch my zipper to make sure that it is in the upward position. I do it every time because I am paranoid.
D
This is real.
B
Yeah. If my fly was down, I would appreciate anybody telling me. And I think that that's something that we must remember, is that sometimes we are just the last line of defense for somebody, and it is just a good public service to say something. If you see something, say something.
D
Somebody has to eat the shit sandwich. Right? Like, in that case, Nicole was like, I will eat the shit sandwich of embarrassment to tell you that your fly's open and you really saved somebody else, because you wouldn't have been the Only one to spot that. Then the next person in line would have been like, do I eat the shit sandwich and tell him, or do I just pass it on to the person next?
B
Kim, I think as a final thought here, I want to go back to you having created this group of women who sit down and just have open feedback. As you were talking about it, I was thinking, that sounds great. And I don't think a lot of people have access to that. How did that get initiated? And do you have any advice on how someone can turn friends into the kinds of people who have that kind of open relationship?
D
I think as we're founders, we're all a little abnormal and we talk about our work all the time, and that's weird for most people. I think if you have a corporate job, you have to be a little more intentional about it. You get around founders, they're going to talk about their work, their cold plunge, their latest psychedelic microdosing. You just have to be willing to make that an intentional journey. If someone's working at a corporate job, for example, I think it's helpful because I did it when I was at a corporate job too, actually. I would set up time with friends and be like, hey, I really want to get ahead. I want to get a promotion by the end of the year. And I would be like, would you be down to once a month, once a quarter, whatever it is, like, help me strategize how to do that. And a lot of times the people that are opting in are people that are also like that. Like, you're not going to really get somebody who's leaning back in their work saying, yeah, I want to sign up to help make you better. No, I mean, the people that are signing up to help make you better also selfishly themselves want to be better. If I could have, like, a takeaway for everybody listening to this, I would say, ask for more feedback. I don't think people ask for feedback enough. I think that they think that their shit doesn't stink and everything's going great.
C
Kim, do you have any feedback for us?
B
Oh, ooh.
D
I listen to the podcast. I think it's super fun. You guys are helping other people and no, I don't really have any feedback. You would tell us? I would. I'd be like, you guys are thirsty, but you're not.
B
Well, Kim, if you hear any thirst at any time, the kind thing to do is to let us know.
C
Our helpline is always open.
B
Help Wanted is a production of Money News Network. Help Wanted is hosted by me Jason
A
Pfeiffer and me, Nicole Lapin.
C
Our executive producer is Morgan Lavoy. Do you want some help? Email our helpline@help wantedoneynewsnetwork.com for the chance to have some of your questions answered on the show. And follow us on Instagram at Money
A
News and TikTokoney News Network for exclusive content and to see our beautiful faces.
C
Maybe a little dance?
B
Oh, I didn't sign up for that.
C
All right, well, talk to you soon,
B
Sam.
Podcast Summary: Help Wanted – "What To Say After Getting Tough Feedback"
Money News Network – August 11, 2026
Hosts: Jason Feifer (Entrepreneur Editor-in-Chief) & Nicole Lapin (Bestselling Author and Money Expert)
Guest: Kim Kalp (Founder, Bright Ideas Only)
This episode explores how to handle tough feedback at work—giving it, receiving it, and the difference between being "nice" and being truly "kind." Jason, Nicole, and special guest Kim Kalp dig into real-world examples of constructive criticism, dissect their strategies for making the most of negative (and positive) feedback, and share tips for building a feedback-friendly community in professional and personal relationships.
[04:05]
“I actually really enjoy criticism. I like it a lot more than compliments because it helps me learn, grow, rinse and repeat.” (Nicole, 04:35)
[05:21–10:48]
“If it is like a low hanging fruit and it’s an easy fix… I’m always game to make it. If it’s something that’s a personal preference… then defer the way I do it.” (Kim, 07:17)
“Now it just says, if there's something urgent, please email Shelby so she can hunt me down.” (Kim, 10:09)
[07:59–09:59]
[11:03–13:16]
“The nice thing to do is to tell people what they want to hear. And the kind thing to do is to actually take a little bit more time and tell them maybe what they need to hear.” (Nicole, 11:03)
[13:16–15:34]
“A lot of times I will actually ask people. So when they ask me... I will say, ‘Do you want the real talk?’ And what I’ve realized is sometimes people say no.” (Kim, 13:42)
[15:34–17:19]
“...you can buy Men's Health all day long. Men's Health is very happy to sell it to you, but you can't ask for my or your time all day long…” (Jason, 16:00)
[17:57–18:41]
“It’s also just sometimes making that intentional effort to be like, let’s form a little like criticism party... and dig into it.” (Kim, 18:25)
[18:41–21:20]
“If you see something, say something.” (Jason, 20:48)
“Somebody has to eat the shit sandwich.” (Kim, 21:03)
[21:45–22:59]
“If I could have a takeaway for everybody listening to this, I would say, ask for more feedback. I don’t think people ask for feedback enough.” (Kim, 21:45)
For listeners:
If you have a work problem, email helpwanted@moneynewsnetwork.com for a chance to have your question answered on the show!