This week, Thea sits down with Kelly and Audrey for an unscripted conversation about what happens when driven women lose the plot on their health and fitness priorities. This isn't a conversation about macros, meal plans, or ten step routines. It's a conversation for the those of us that know exactly what we should be doing and still can't seem to do it. If you're the entrepreneur who categorizes a one-hour walk as wasted time, the former athlete who can't reconcile who she was with where she is now, the high achiever who will move boulders but won't stack pebbles. We're coming to the table without a tidy answer, and that's precisely the point.

What unfolds is less a prescription and more a negotiation ... with your own expectations, your own timeline, and the version of yourself you keep comparing with the you you are today. Kelly reframes the entire goal-setting conversation by asking what would happen if we stopped chasing outcomes and started chasing the feel good. Audrey shares the raw reality of spending over a year unable to return to the gym routine she once maintained effortlessly. And Thea candidly admits that discipline, not talent, is the piece she's been skipping.

Together, we make the case that optimization means nothing without consistency, and that the most elite performers aren't elite because they transcended the basics. They're elite because they never stopped choosing them.

TL;DR …

1. Why treating your health like a "waste of time" is actually the most expensive belief a high-achieving woman can hold.
2. Kelly's reframe on goals: stop chasing specific outcomes and start building a daily practice around feeling like an absolute weapon for everyone in your life.
3. Audrey's candid account of the eighteen months it took to rebuild a gym habit she once considered effortless.
4. The critical distinction between simple and easy, and why confusing the two is where most driven women lose momentum.
5. How to negotiate with yourself when your identity is built on excellence and the current assignment is embracing the suck.
6. Kelly's two universal, non-negotiable foundations that apply regardless of your goal: sleep and steps.

Where to Go From Here

1. Your turn: what hit home? Tag @thea.does.all.the.things, @audreyetta, and @westernworkouts and tell us the thing you've been skipping that deep down you know needs your attention!
2. Ready to stop white-knuckling your routine? Connect with Kelly at Western Workouts for individualized coaching that meets you exactly where you are with no cookie-cutter plans, ever. Learn more by tapping here.
3. Trade the highlight reel for the real reel: Download the FREE Master Playbook for a sustainable framework that prioritizes consistency over perfection. Just tap here to request yours!
4. You've entered the group chat: Subscribe to the podcast, send this episode to the friend

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:...

There's a difference between running hard enough to stay afloat and actually creating sustainable progress. This week, we sit down with the incomparable Kelly Kline of Western Workouts to talk about the moment you stop outrunning your own life, the practice of active surrender, and why micromanaging your process might be the most liberating thing you'll do this year.

Kelly returns to Cowgirls Over Coffee for a conversation that refuses to stay surface-level. What begins as a besties catching up for the new year quickly transforms into an honest excavation of what happens when striving stops working, when coping mechanisms reach their expiration date, and when you're finally ready to build the bridge instead of just skimming across the water. This conversation is just two women sharing what they've earned through failure, reflection, and the audacity to start again.

The conversation moves through the cost of control, the paradox of surrender that requires action, and the particular kind of exhaustion that comes from trying to manage outcomes instead of mastering process. Kelly notes the concept of active surrender as something that isn't simple passive resignation but a deliberate practice of discernment, energy management, and trust. Meanwhile, Thea unpacks her pivot away from outcome-based goals toward process-obsessed discipline, revealing what it looks like to move from running on fumes to nurturing from the ground up all over again.

But perhaps most importantly, this episode makes the case that conversation itself is leverage. That authentic friendship isn't a nice-to-have luxury but a strategic necessity for anyone in pursuit of a better-than-typical life. This conversation is community executed in real time proving that real connection dissolves comparison and creates space for the kind of growth that can only happen when someone sees you clearly and loves you anyway.

Listen In For...

1. Why authentic friendship functions as a competitive advantage.
2. The distinction between having boundaries and accidentally constructing a life that doesn't require them.
3. What it means to move from coping strategies to sustainable routines.
4. Thea's 2026 shift: abandoning outcome-based goals in favor of process-obsessed discipline.
5. Kelly's framework for active surrender: why letting go requires more action than holding on.
6. The cost of being ten steps ahead at all times, and what opportunities control strangles before they can breathe.
7. How to stop leaking energy into battles that don't serve you.
8. The practice of micromanaging your process instead of your outcomes.
9. Why discernment is the muscle that makes surrender active rather than passive.
10. What happens when you choose to disengage instead of oppose.

TL;DR (Minute by Minute)

1. 00:00 Opening: Conversation as leverage and the January tradition.
2. 01:21 On curating genuine humans and the gift of authentic friendship.

This week, Thea and Meg sit down for a raw, winding conversation about what it means to enter a new year not with optimization in mind, but with intentionality, margin, and the audacity to savor the actual living.

As Cowgirls Over Coffee returns for 2026, Thea Larsen reflects on five years of marination on building, learning, and finally understanding what it means to operate from a place of depth rather than velocity. Joined by her best friend and frequent collaborator Meg, this conversation doesn't traffic in resolutions or productivity hacks. Instead, it examines the quiet revolution that happens when you stop managing your life like a crisis and start treating yourself like a resource worth protecting.

What emerges is a candid meditation on the privilege and paradox of getting older: the stability that allows you to close doors, the self-awareness that clarifies what actually matters, and the hard-won wisdom that your twenties are, in fact, overrated. Thea and Meg discuss the shift from operating at the edge of capacity (always redlining it, always seeing how fast you can go) to choosing to drive at 75 instead of 95. Because you've finally figured out that sustainable speed gets you further.

Listen In For…

1. Why the arbitrary nature of the New Year doesn't make it meaningless, and how collective energy shifts the game.
2. The brutal honesty of a come back and what it means to rebuild baseline capacity.
3. The evolution from psychological safety concerns to higher-order needs as you stabilize your life.
4. What it means to manage yourself as a resource instead of constantly operating at just above empty.
5. The difference between slower, softer, and deeper.
6. Why efficiency optimization can become its own trap, and what happens when you shift from external factors to internal anchors.
7. The power of iteration in conversation, and why the membership side of Cowgirls Over Coffee has changed everything.
8. What "savoring" looks like when applied to fitness, prayer practice, and life in general.
9. The case for operating with a half-full tank instead of running on fumes in the name of productivity.

TL;DR (Minute by Minute)

1. 00:00 Why this year feels different.
2. 05:00 Meg's massage therapist drops wisdom about your twenties being overrated.
3. 09:30 Stability, self-awareness, and the gift of caring less.
4. 13:45 Fitness, injury recovery, and the cost of falling off baseline.
5. 18:20 The shift from optimization to savoring.
6. 20:20 Managing energy and priorities from an anchored place.
7. 21:00 The gas tank metaphor: operating at half full vs. running on empty.
8. 22:00 What it means to go...

There's the version of yourself you've been told to be and then there's the one who shows up when the recording keeps going because the conversation is too good to stop. This week, Thea, Audrey, and Lana couldn't stop yapping, and what unfolds is a raw examination of the work that doesn't show up in your business plans: discernment, friendship dynamics, and the discipline of knowing which race you're actually running.

This conversation is what happened when we realized we weren't done processing, and hit record again. Audrey shares her journey of being labeled "too much" and why she's finally done apologizing for taking up space. Lana dissects the difference between friends who project their bench onto your Olympic aspirations. And Thea reminds us that agility (not rigid planning!) is the only framework that serves the most demanding lives.

What emerges a conversation about frameworks: how to schedule your life first, how to recognize when advice is actually projection, and why the most important work you'll do in 2026 will very likely be the discernment no one sees.

1. The "too much" narrative women inherit and why reclaiming it is an act of sovereignty.
2. Audrey's "green broke" revelation: what happens when structure collapses and you have to rebuild from authenticity instead of achievement.
3. The Olympic team metaphor: understanding friendship dynamics when some people want to jog around the track and others are training for gold.
4. Why verbal processing is simply how some of us think.
5. The projection problem: how to recognize when you're giving advice to yourself instead of trying on someone else's limitations.
6. Agility as the antidote to rigid planning and why asking "what do I really want right now?" is the most strategic question you can ask in the new year.
7. The work that moves the needle: discernment, rest, and friendship.
8. Why scheduling your life first is the litmus test for whether you're creating the life of your dreams or just checking boxes.
9. Eldest daughter energy, second child chaos, and birth order baggage we're all still unpacking.
10. The courage to protect your time and energy without apology (because it's okay to let people find their own team).

1. 00:00 The episode that wasn't supposed to happen: why conversation deserves more than a hard stop.
2. 02:30 The open seat invitation: this is a group chat, not a lecture series.
3. 03:50 "Green broke" and barely broke: Audrey's sweatshirt and the second child who learned to boss herself around.
4. 04:30 When structure collapses: the bro energy that got her far, and the authenticity that got her further.
5. 07:00 "You're too much": unpacking the narrative women are handed...

There's a particular exhaustion that comes from living half-invested in your own life, when you're saying yes to everyone else's timeline while your own dreams accumulate dust. This week, we're pulling up a chair to the table we've been setting for five years, laying out every strategic detail, hard-won insight, and unfiltered observation about what it actually takes to build a life that doesn't require you to choose between future goals and presence, checking boxes and your nervous system, momentum and moments.

Thea, Meg, Audrey, and Lana convene to kick off 2026 with the kind of conversation that feels less like a podcast episode and more like the group chat you've been craving. No disclaimers. No hedging. No apologizing for wanting it all. Just four women who've spent half a decade living the methodology for sustainable achievement, discussing every single strategy, planning framework, and operational principle they've tested alongside 1,300+ women.

Please note: this isn't a teaser for what's inside the membership. This is the full playbook with nearly 50 pages of distilled wisdom, and the core methodology that's transformed businesses, marriages, and the daily operations of women who refuse to settle for good enough. Because if five years has taught us anything, it's this: the answer isn't hustling harder or culling your dreams. You need better infrastructure, and you definitely need a village. We start again here.

1. Why five years of experimentation has led to giving away the entire methodology for free and what that signals about the conversation we're ready to have in 2026.
2. The antidote to "you can have everything, but not at the same time": compounding instead of choosing, cultivating practices instead of burning out.
3. What actually changes when you stop treating your ambition like something to apologize for and start treating it like the data it is.
4. Why isolation and withdrawal are the default response to exhaustion, and how intentional connection becomes the counterintuitive path forward.
5. Why we're done with the shame narratives and ready for nuanced conversations that honor complexity when it comes to entrepreneurship, motherhood, family, and ambition.
6. The art of finding your people, developing friendships that feel like infrastructure, and surrounding yourself with women who elevate rather than diminish.
7. Why overcomplication is a defense mechanism and how embracing practices creates the ease that allows you to do more with less friction.
8. The shift from performative planning to operational excellence.
9. How to quit overthinking and start iterating: taking imperfect action to generate the information you need to refine your approach.
10. What "nutrient-dense life" actually means: high quality, deeply satisfying, strategically designed to nourish.

1. 00:00 Five years of Cowgirls Over Coffee and 1,300+ women later, here's what we've learned.
2. 04:45 The full methodology drop: 40 pages of our methodology free.