This week, Thea sits down with Audrey for a mid-process check-in on what "locking in" actually looks like when you're committed to doing it differently this time. This is the unglamorous, honest conversation about what happens when high-achieving women try to expand their lives without repeating the patterns that led to burnout in the first place.

We end up in the middle of a frank discussion with no concrete answers about the difference between producing and protecting the experience, the value of training foundational practices instead of relying on talent and tenacity, and why the finish line matters less than the discipline of showing up (even inconsistently!). If you've ever felt frustrated when rebuilding feels slower than the shortcuts you took before this conversation will feel like permission to do hard things at a more human pace.

TL;DR ...

1. Why the rhetoric around "locking in" rarely includes the messy, frustrating middle of the process.
2. Training small muscles with lighter weights instead of relying on big movements and talent to power through.
3. How comparing your current chapter to your own past production levels creates a different kind of pressure than external comparison.
4. The critical distinction between producing outcomes and protecting the experience of your life.
5. Why structure isn't the enemy of creativity, but the foundation that allows high performers to expand without breaking down.
6. What it means to rebuild practices from the ground up when you've spent years skipping foundational steps, and why that process feels frustratingly slow.
7. The role of friendship, wisdom, and delusion in equal measure when navigating the gap between where you were and where you're headed.
8. How to navigate the tension between optimization and pace, especially when you feel the pressure of time.

Where to Go From Here

1. Your turn: What hit home? Are you caught between chapters, rebuilding practices, or navigating the messy middle of sustainable ambition? Tag Thea @thea.does.all.the.things and Audrey @audreyetta and let's keep this conversation going.
2. Trade frustration for framework: Download the Cowgirls Over Coffee Playbook, your quick-win guide to building sustainable practices that support doing it all well without burnout.
3. Looking for something more? Consider joining the Cowgirls Over Coffee Membership.
4. You've entered the group chat: Subscribe to the podcast, share this episode with a friend who's done with toxic productivity culture, and keep coming back for conversations that honor both your ambition and your humanity.

There's a difference between trying hard and training hard. One is an inevitable path to burn out while the other creates the capacity to sustain the life it feels like many people tell you to stop wanting. This week, it's just Thea on the other end of the line here to convince you that it's truly okay to want the high-effort life.

After speaking at the Boss Mares Lead the Herd Workshop in Fort Worth, Thea came home with a singular clarity about what rural women entrepreneurs actually need to hear: validation that wanting it all: the ranch, the business, the marriage, the community, the energy to show up fully in every role ... it isn't selfish. And the path to getting there isn't hustle culture power moves OR soft-girl simplification. It's a solid and strategic commitment to training for it.

This episode neutralizes the two narratives we've been sold as far as a solution to our overwhelm and exhaustion to either push harder or want less. Thea walks through her four-stage planning order of operations (Prime, Plan, Process, Preserve) and makes the case that planning itself is the training ground for the do-it-all life you're trying to create. You don't climb Everest on grit alone. You train for it. The same goes for juggling livestock, kids, a business, and your own sanity.

1. Why the "high-effort life" isn't a flaw to fix but an innate calling worth nurturing, and the permission you need to stop apologizing for wanting to do it all, and well.
2. The two false solutions keeping women burned out: hustle-harder masculinity or simplify-everything softness.
3. Planning as practice, not product: Why the process of planning itself, and not the perfect plan, is the strategic advantage that separates women who sustain momentum from those who white-knuckle it through every day.
4. The four-stage planning order of operations (Prime, Plan, Process, Preserve) designed specifically for women whose lives include weather, livestock, broken tractors, and kids who get sick on meeting days.
5. Why high achievers tend to skip the small steps and how that skipping catches up when you hit the end of your capacity (usually around motherhood, though it's not motherhood that breaks you).
6. A case for Thursday as your optimal planning day: How to use recency bias and week-ahead visibility to audit, adjust, and iterate without decision fatigue.
7. Muscle memory for decision-making: How consistent planning trains your brain to pivot quickly when plans inevitably go sideways (because they will).
8. The Mount Everest principle: You don't just show up and climb. You train. And if you want the high-effort life without burning out, the training is non-negotiable.
9. Why women under-resourced and exhausted can't solve the world's problems.
10. Boss Mares grant opportunity: Applications open now for 2026 business funding designed by Western women for Western women entrepreneurs.

1. 00:00 – The undervalued relief of "me too" and why conversation matters more than tactics.

There's a difference between knowing what you're capable of and having the guts to act like you know it. Between cataloging your receipts and speaking your truth without apology. Between being right and being heard. This week, we sit down with Janel Dreisbach (honorary COO of Cowgirls Over Coffee, systems strategist, and resident hermit) to dissect audacity: what it costs us when we lack it, what it demands when we claim it, and why 2026 might be the year to stop asking permission.

Janel operates in the shadows by design. As Thea's sister and the architect behind Cowgirls Over Coffee's operational backbone, she's the person who color-codes the receipts, hosts the office hours, and builds the SOPs that keep Cowgirls Over Coffee on the rails administratively. But beneath the spreadsheets and documentation lives a question she can't stop asking: what would happen if I just had the audacity?

This conversation is an honest excavation of the invisible tax women pay when they over-explain, over-validate, and over-accommodate their way through rooms life and business. Thea and Janel unpack the mechanics of self-trust, the seduction of people-pleasing, the exhaustion of carrying other people's balls across the finish line, and the radical act of letting your work speak louder than your disclaimers.

What emerges is a framework for reclaiming confidence without becoming insufferable, for speaking from authority without needing external validation, and for understanding that audacity isn't recklessness but the refusal to shrink.

1. The TikTok revelation that sparked months of conversation: the audacity gap between those who speak up and those who hesitate.
2. Why having all the receipts doesn't automatically translate to speaking with authority.
3. The difference between audacity and manipulation, and why women are conditioned to conflate the two.
4. How being in the wrong room can erode your confidence faster than failure ever could.
5. The exhausting pattern of teeing people up for success only to watch them drop the ball.
6. Janel's framework for ruthless ownership and why it doesn't pair well with audacity (until it does).
7. The hidden cost of over-explaining: how laying too much foundation causes people to disengage before you make your point.
8. Why cultivating audacity is different from "being brave" and why sustained confidence matters more than moments of courage.
9. The evolution of belief through conversation: how processing out loud changes what you thought you knew.
10. Thea's plan for 2026: tending the garden instead of planting new seeds.

1. 03:00 Meet Janel: The yin to Thea's yang, the systems strategist behind the scenes, and the self-proclaimed hermit stepping into the light.
2. 09:00 The audacity origin story: A TikTok comedian, a simple observation, and the question that won't quit.
3. 11:00 The confidence crisis:...