Friction is the best teacher we’ll ever have, but the hardest to accept. It acts like a mirror. And our level of growth depends on our willingness to look at our own reflection.

The Let Them Theory certainly helps to reframe how you can approach the unknown—specifically with empowered decision-making. Where it falls short is in accountability. This is the “Let Me” part of the theory, where you can decide what to do after you’ve let them be.

We also talk about power, authority, and the ability to reprimand.

Oh, and the problem with meeting confusion with aggression.

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The Unobstructed Podcast is for people making sense of modern work and life. We share honest conversations, personal stories, and systems you can use to build clarity without burning out.

About the hosts:

Derek MacDonald, former wilderness guide navigating AI and tech at Unobstructed.

Rachael Sink, owner and business consultant at Rachael's Ink, LLC, a HubSpot Gold Solutions Partner agency.

Visit Derek’s website: theunobstructed.com

Visit Rachael’s website: rachaelsink.com

It’s not your responsibility to manage how others perceive you.

Most people won’t realize how much you filter yourself. At least, I’d hoped they wouldn’t. And it worked for a while. They might not always notice when you swap out your words mid sentence. Or when you redirect conversations away from personal details.

But they will when you do it all the time. Even if it comes from a good place, like not wanting to be abrasive.

In this episode, Rachael and I talk about what happens when filtering becomes an engrained personality trait (a la yours truly).

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The Unobstructed Podcast is for people making sense of modern work and life. We share honest conversations, personal stories, and systems you can use to build clarity without burning out.

About the hosts:

Derek MacDonald, former wilderness guide navigating AI and tech at Unobstructed.

Rachael Sink, owner and business consultant at Rachael's Ink, LLC, a HubSpot Gold Solutions Partner agency.

Visit Derek’s website: theunobstructed.com

Visit Rachael’s website: rachaelsink.com

There’s a kind of exhaustion that comes from pretending to show up. You post because you’re “supposed to.” You rearrange your words to be seen a certain way. You aim for engagement, but not connection.

But if you stop, your career suffers.

People want a stamp of approval before they make a decision about you. And we’ve all collectively, stupidly, agreed to hawk our ideas to the highest bidder in exchange for that stamp.

Bella Cowdin joins us to talk about the over saturation of content that’s watering everything down for all of us. On many, many platforms, but especially on LinkedIn.

Bella’s a RevOps consultant, Hubspot Admin, and all-around systems badass. She also has a background in snow science. Which turned out to be a pretty fitting metaphor for the ol’ avalanche of thought leadership on LinkedIn.

Aside from sharing a lot of laughter, she offered some very unique insight. It was really interesting to see how she thinks about posting online. She’s refreshingly honest. And it helped us get to the bottom of some hidden, but pretty big, contributing factors to the LinkedIn content mess.

You can find Bella (ironically) on LinkedIn and also on her website.

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The Unobstructed Podcast is for people making sense of modern work and life. We share honest conversations, personal stories, and systems you can use to build clarity without burning out.

About the hosts:

Derek MacDonald, former wilderness guide navigating AI and tech at Unobstructed.

Rachael Sink, owner and business consultant at Rachael's Ink, LLC, a HubSpot Gold Solutions Partner agency.

Visit Derek’s website: theunobstructed.com

Visit Rachael’s website: rachaelsink.com