What to do with unsolicited advice

Last Thursday morning, I opened my inbox and found this reply to my newsletter:

"AI slop :("

That's it. That's the whole message.

My first response — and I’m gonna be embarrassingly honest with you about this — was to type "fuck off" and hit send.

I did. I actually sent it.

And then, thank god, I unsent it approximately three seconds later.

Because here's what happened in those three seconds: I thought about who I want to be. Not who I want to be when things are easy and everyone is kind. Who I want to be when someone says something that burns — and this BURNED in the worst possible way.

Telling her to go fuck herself is not that person.

So instead I wrote back: "That one stung. Can you tell me what specifically felt that way to you?"

What happened next is what this newsletter is about.

Before I get into the framework, I want to say something I've been thinking about since this whole thing unfolded.

Yes, I use AI as part of my writing process. I'm not going to pretend otherwise, and I'm not going to apologize for it either.

What I am going to say is this. The stories, the thinking, the emotional content, the structure, the voice — that's me. I spend hours on every single issue, in the planning, the drafting, the editing. AI doesn't write my newsletters. It helps ME write them faster and better, the same way any good tool does.

And here's what this experience made clear to me…there is a widespread assumption right now that using AI means surrendering your voice — that it inevitably flattens you into some boring, palatable, lowest-common-denominator version of yourself.

That assumption is wrong. You can use AI and preserve what makes you distinct. You can use it to amplify your voice, not replace it.

I haven't talked about this nearly enough, and that's something I'm going to change. Because the conversation about how to use AI without losing yourself — that's one worth having. More on that soon.

For now, back to the feedback.

I want to say something before we go any further.

If you are building a business and putting yourself out there — posting on social media, sending newsletters, showing up at events, doing anything that makes you visible — you will receive some version of this.

I promise you. It's not a question of if. It's a question of whether you have a framework for handling it when it arrives. Because it will. From strangers, from acquaintances, from loved ones.

I know this because I have walked through some version of this framework with my clients at least a dozen times. It comes up constantly — the unsolicited critique, the LinkedIn comment, the reply that stings, the advice from someone who has no idea what they're talking about delivered with complete confidence.

Every time, the question is the same: what do I actually do with this?

Without a framework, your default will be one of two things: spiral into self-doubt and let it knock your confidence sideways, or dismiss it entirely and miss something that might actually be useful. Neither of those serves you.

Here's the framework I've been using for years — and what this specific experience taught me I needed to add to it.

A quick side note before we get into it: this is actually a perfect example of why building systematic frameworks for how you handle recurring situations is worth the effort.

When you have a framework, you come back to it over and over. And every time you do, you have the chance to notice where it's incomplete — where reality outran the model.

That's exactly what happened here. I knew how to evaluate whether advice was worth taking. What I didn't have was a clear step for what to do before you evaluate it at all.

One experience, one upgrade. That's how frameworks get better.

Not general intelligence. Not strong opinions. Actual knowledge and experience in the specific area they're weighing in on.

The subscriber who called my newsletter AI slop told me, in the same thread, that she doesn't create content online — though she's working on a book. She then proceeded to tell me that em dashes were an AI tell in my writing. When she gave me an example of what she meant, she used a hyphen.

For the record, I've been using em dashes for nearly a decade, long before AI was any part of my writing process. Why? Because I like them. And I feel that they help the reader add natural pauses and emphasis while they read.

And I’m not the only one. I read 12 to 15 novels a month and it's a legitimate stylistic choice used across modern publishing.

She also decried my use of shorty punchy sentences and sentence fragments. Another writing style that has been part of my process for YEARS. I've been publishing content online for 13 years — blogs, social media, newsletters, ebooks — and the patterns she was reading as artificial are just how I write, because it's how I talk.

She wasn't wrong that those patterns exist in my writing. She was wrong about what they meant. And she didn't have the expertise to know the difference.

Not just their results — their values, the way they treat people, the kind of life they're building, the kind of person they are.

This isn't about being elitist. It's about recognizing that advice comes from a worldview. Someone whose version of success looks nothing like what you want for yourself is going to give you advice shaped by that worldview — and it may not fit yours at all, even if it's technically sound.

This doesn't automatically disqualify someone's feedback. But it's a filter worth applying. The person telling you that you absolutely need to run paid ads to grow — are they selling a paid ads course? The mentor insisting you need to niche down immediately — do they make their money helping people niche down?

Skin in the game doesn't make someone wrong. It just means you should know it's there.

Note: You should view ALL of my advice through the same lens. Yes, I’m always trying to give you my best advice and I will never bullshit you. But I absolutely have an ulterior motive too. I have a business and I would love to sell you my products and services.

This is the one I added after last Thursday. And it might be the most important one.

My instinct was to react. To defend. To either crumble or fire back. What I did instead — after unsending the "fuck off" email — was ask a genuine question: what specifically? I stayed in the conversation. I got curious.

And here's what happened. The more she explained, the clearer it became that everything she was calling AI was actually me. My stylistic choices. My voice. Patterns I've had for years. The critique dissolved the moment I understood it.

Getting curious does two things. It gives you real information instead of just a sting. And it makes it so much easier to let go of feedback that doesn't hold up — because you've actually examined it instead of just reacting to it.

Once I understood what she was saying and why, staying true to my own conviction wasn't hard at all. It was obvious.

One person, low credibility, feedback that doesn't hold up under examination: that's a data point. File it. Move on.

The same feedback from multiple people — especially people who pass filters one through four — that's a pattern. That's worth taking seriously. That's worth stopping and actually examining.

The number of people giving you a piece of feedback matters enormously. Don't let one loud voice — especially one that doesn't hold up to scrutiny — carry the weight of a pattern it doesn't represent.

Here's the thing I keep coming back to about this whole exchange.

I don't actually blame her.

I looked her up. She is a serious, accomplished professional woman. I am genuinely certain she would be horrified if I called her out publicly for this (something I would NEVER do).

And I am equally certain she would never have walked up to me at an event and said "AI slop :(" to my face.

We have been collectively trained — by the internet, by social media, by the distance a screen creates — to say things to strangers online that we would NEVER EVER say in person.

The anonymity of a reply button does something to people. It removes the friction that would otherwise make us pause, get curious, ask a question instead of issuing a verdict.

I'm not excusing it. I'm contextualizing it. Because when you understand where it comes from, it's a lot easier to respond from your values instead of your wound.

I stuck up for myself. I was direct. I wasn't cruel. I came back with evidence, calmly and without apology, for every point she made.

She didn't respond again.

Which tells you something. She wasn't looking for a conversation. She wanted to criticize, and when it became clear that the critique didn't hold water, it was no longer interesting to her. No engagement. No apology. Just silence.

And I felt some empathy for that, too. Being met with clarity and evidence, when you expected either silence or a fight, has its own particular discomfort.

That's the person I want to be known for being. Not the one who sends the "fuck off" email.

The one who unsends it, gets curious, stays in the conversation, and comes out the other side with something worth sharing.

Which, I suppose, is what happened here.

In love, growth, curiosity,

Kasey

P.S. Have you received feedback like this? How did you handle it — did you spiral, dismiss it, or find a third way? Hit reply and tell me. I read every single one.