How Claude actually runs my life so I don't spend 9 f✨cking hours of my day behind a computer screen when I live on 75 beautiful acres of land 🐎🥕🛁📖
Yes, Claude helped me write this document. Yes, I read every single word and edited it. I'm always transparent about using AI.
This page is alive. Version 1 · your feedback shapes every update, and you get them all free. Last updated: November 6, 2026 · the first video is LIVE below 🎥
A letter from me 🖤
Hey bestie. Thank you for grabbing this. I don't take $27 lightly, and I'm going to make sure this is worth every penny.
First, you need to know just a little bit about my tech/AI background. I majored in Aerospace Engineering, went on to become a pilot in the Navy, and then in some weird way I started tech consulting for a startup spun out of an MIT lab in the LLM/AI space for travel. We worked with brands like Marriott, American Express, Chase, Mandarin Oriental, Hyatt, and more. I did some wild ass sh✨t there and I learned a TON about software and writing spec documents for software. So if you feel like you're behind, you aren't. You just need to start. Also, if anything in here doesn't make sense just google it!
The other receipts, so you know who's talking: I bought 75 acres in Colorado post-divorce on one W-2, with an off grid cabin bought for $190K under asking, in a town of 495 people. I rescued a cow three weeks after moving in 🤠
And the real reason I started using Claude, in my own words from the first time I wrote it down: "I had a newborn baby. I had a luxury travel company that needed to keep running. I had a ranch with 9 animals that needed feeding at dawn every single day. I didn't need a productivity hack. I needed a second brain. Fast."
This guide is NOT a prompts list. You already got my beginner guide free inside the club, and that one teaches you what Claude is and how to start. This one is different. This is me leaving the office door open so you can watch how it actually runs... the travel company, the brand, the launches, all of it. Real screens. Real conversations. Real schedule.
One more thing, because I will never pretend otherwise: "I am not a guru. I am not a tech influencer. I am figuring this out as I go, in real time, in public." The only difference between me and you reading this is that I started.
Let's get after it!!! Yeeeeehawww 🐎
F✨ck the life you have. Build the one you want.
-🖤 Shelby
@firstclasscowgirl
My actual day ⏰
Hour by hour, the real one. I work about 5 hours a day on good days that aren't psychotic. Axel has childcare Monday through Thursday, and the rest of the day belongs to the land.
| 5-7 AM | Wake UpAnywhere in there, pending on if the baby slept or not. The house is dark and quiet and mine. |
| 7:30-9:00 AM | Barn ChoresFeed the animals, muck, water, hay. The ranch eats before anybody opens a laptop. |
| 9:00-10:30 AM | HorsesRide or exercise the horses, if I'm not doing it in the afternoon. |
| 10:30-11:00 AM | MeBreakfast, shower, maybe a workout. |
| 11:15 AM-4:00 PM | WORK 💻The whole business day, with a 30 minute animal break in the middle. About 5 hours. Claude is open the entire time. Authenteco gets 2 of these hours. First Class Cowgirl gets the rest. |
| 4:00-5:00 PM | The Good StuffHorseback riding or gardening or reading or cleaning (I LOVE TO CLEAN). |
| Evening | FamilyCooking dinner and time with my people. No screens with work on them. |
Count it up: the computer gets 5 hours. The land, the horses, the baby and the life get the rest. That ratio is the whole point of this guide, and Claude is how I hold it 👇
2 hours a day.
The busywork went to a second brain. The hours came back to me 🤖
How Claude runs the travel company ✈️
Authenteco is my luxury travel concierge company. AI workflows handle the research, the drafting and the formatting. I handle the relationships, the curation and the quality assurance checks. Here's the split, job by job:
Client itineraries 🗺️
Every trip lives in its own Claude project with the client's wishlist, confirmations and budget sheet. I ask for a day-by-day draft, then I push back like an editor: swap this hotel, tighten this travel day, this dinner is wrong for them. And here's the big one: all of the manual editing for itineraries that would take us 40 hours to do by hand in Canva, Claude now does for us. And it catches all of our mistakes!
Trip dossiers 📋
My internal command doc per trip: traveler profiles, the confirmed day-by-day, and the part I'd never keep straight alone... a dated "what's still open" list reconciled against my inbox and my task board. I open the dossier, not twelve tabs.
Client emails 💌
Claude drafts them in my voice straight into my inbox as drafts. I read, tweak one line, send. Vendor follow-ups, proposal notes, the "gentle nudge" emails nobody enjoys writing. I never send a word I haven't read, but I almost never start from a blank page anymore.
Trip magazines 📖
The keepsake every client gets: a print-ready magazine for their trip. Cover, welcome letter, route map, day-by-day, "Where You'll Stay" and "Where You'll Eat" photo pages. Claude builds the whole branded PDF and even runs quality assurance checks on the bookings in it against my confirmation emails. Clients cry over these. Claude laid them out.
Gone. ✂️
The hand-formatting era of this company is over. The curation era is not.
The pattern in all four jobs: Claude does the drafting, the checking and the formatting. I do the relationships, the curation and the final quality assurance check. That division is the entire reason 2 hours is enough 🤝
How Claude runs First Class Cowgirl 🤠
The brand you found me through runs on the same second brain, inside the same work block. Here's where the hours go:
Content 🎬
My content strategy lives in a Claude project: pillars, hooks, voice rules, what worked and what flopped. When I film, I bring my own story and my own words. Claude organizes them into reels, captions and carousels, and it knows my rules... no em dashes, no lesson lists, every line passes the stranger test. I always pick my writing over Claude's. The value is the strategy.
Emails 💌
Every launch email you got from me this week was built with Claude, in Flodesk, from my own sentences. Claude maps the sequence, holds the calendar, drafts in my voice, and I rewrite whatever doesn't sound like f✨cking me.
ManyChat 🤖
When you commented BETH, a flow Claude designed caught you, asked for your email, and put you on the waitlist. I built it tap by tap while Claude wrote every message and told me which button to press next.
Launches 🚀
The launch you just walked through... the runway emails, the 7:17 doors, the sales page, the pricing, the timeline... was planned, written and tracked inside one Claude project. Every decision got its own doc so nothing lived in my head. The night before doors open, I'm not scrambling. I'm reading my own plan back.
Dashboards 📊
Claude built me a Launch HQ: one page with my countdown, my checklist, my numbers. I check it with coffee... fine, matcha... instead of opening six tools. When I want a new tile, I ask for it in plain English and it appears.
My exact setup 🛠️
None of this needs code. It needs structure. Here's mine, piece by piece:
Projects = filing cabinets 🗄️
One project per area of life: each client trip, the FCG strategy, the love story, personal planning. Every project holds its own docs, so I never re-explain myself. In my own words from day one: "It's like giving Claude a filing cabinet instead of making it guess every time."
Memory = it knows me 🧠
Claude remembers my voice rules, my numbers (everything ends in 7, don't ask), my people, my tools. I correct it once and it stays corrected. New chat, zero warm-up.
Skills = my recipes 👩🍳
The repeatable jobs are saved as skills: build a trip magazine, build a dossier, write FCG content, make a chapter PDF. I say "build the dossier" and it follows MY recipe, my brand, my rules, every time.
Connectors = hands 🙌
Claude is connected to my email, calendar, files and task board. So "reconcile the dossier against my inbox" is a real instruction, not a dream. It reads, it drafts, and I stay the only one who hits send.
How I actually talk to it 🗣️
- 💬 Like a brilliant employee on day one: full context first, then the ask. Never "write me a caption." Always "here's the launch, here's the audience, here's my voice doc, now write me a caption."
- 🔁 I push back. Claude's first answer is never the final answer. "That's not my voice." "That's not realistic." "Give me three more." The back and forth is where the gold is.
- ✂️ I bring my own words for anything personal. My story only ever appears in sentences I already wrote. Claude arranges, it does not invent me.
- 📁 I start every work chat inside the right project, so the filing cabinet is already open.
- 🚪 I end big work with "save a handoff doc," so tomorrow's chat picks up exactly where today's stopped.
- 🔒 I never paste passwords, card numbers or a client's private details anywhere they don't belong. Claude drafts, I guard the vault.
How I used to prompt vs. now 🔄
I went digging for the very first real prompt I ever gave Claude. This is it, word for word, from the chat that started the whole $1M experiment:
"Hey Claude, how do I be a stay-at-home mom while operating a business with all of these interests? How do I do all this and how can I make money?"
And here's the one I wrote this week to kick off the exact product you're reading. Word for word, lightly trimmed:
"I need you to build my $27 order bump product for the $1M Beth Bestie Club launch TONIGHT. Doors open Saturday Nov 7 at 7:17 AM MST, and this file has to be uploaded to Stan before then. Read these project docs first: [my master launch doc, my club language doc, my old Claude product, my brand guide, my voice rules]. The angle: how Claude actually runs my life. It's the real behind-the-scenes, not a prompts list. It must NOT overlap with the free beginner bonus. That one is beginner basics; this one is the deep behind-the-scenes."
"Screenshots: before writing, give me a numbered SHOT LIST that says exactly what to capture for each section, and what to blur or crop (client names, emails, money, addresses). I'll take them and attach them, and you place each one in the PDF with a caption. If I'm missing one, leave a branded placeholder box and keep going."
what changed
The first prompt was a question. The second is a spec: the deliverable and the deadline, the exact documents to read first, the rules (no overlap with the free guide), the privacy lines nobody gets to cross, and even what to do when something's missing... leave a placeholder and keep going. That last line is the real skill: I don't just tell Claude what to build, I tell it how to handle the unknown so the work never stalls. And notice what didn't change: both prompts are honest and in my real voice. Claude doesn't need you polished. It needs you specific.
Your first prompt will look like my first prompt. That's exactly right. Start there.
Claude grew up since my first guide 📈
When I wrote my first Claude guide, the big decision was "Opus or Sonnet." Since then the tool turned into a whole workshop. Here's what's new, in plain English:
The models: Fable vs. Sonnet 🧠
Sonnet is the everyday workhorse: fast, light on your usage limits, perfect for captions, emails and checklists. Opus is the deep thinker above it. And Fable is the newest top-tier model, a step above Opus: it's what I use for big builds like this guide, launch strategy and anything with a lot of moving parts. The catch: Fable burns through your plan's usage faster, and heavy use can switch over to paid usage credits. My rule: Fable for the big builds, Sonnet for the daily desk. The lineup changes fast, so check claude.ai for what's current.
Memory 🧠
Claude now remembers you between chats: your voice, your rules, your people. Correct it once and it stays corrected.
Skills 👩🍳
Saved recipes for repeatable jobs. Mine build trip magazines and dossiers on command, following my brand every time.
Connectors 🙌
Claude plugs into Gmail, Drive, Calendar and more, so it can read and draft inside your real tools instead of you copy-pasting everything.
Cowork + live pages 💻
In my first guide I wrote that there was a desktop app "I haven't installed yet." Bestie. It's how this entire product got made: Claude working with real files, building real PDFs, publishing live pages like the one you're reading right now. The thing I was waiting on became my favorite thing.
The no-jargon dictionary 📖
Every word you'll run into, explained like a normal person. Tap a word to jump to it:
- AI
- Software that can read, write and reason in plain English. Pattern recognition at a wild scale, not magic.↑ top
- Claude
- Anthropic's AI. Like iPhone is Apple's phone, Claude is Anthropic's AI.↑ top
- Model
- A version of Claude's brain. Sonnet, Opus, Fable. Different depth, different speed, different usage cost.↑ top
- Prompt
- Whatever you type. Not a magic spell. Just instructions, and the more context, the better the result.↑ top
- Chat / conversation
- One thread with Claude. It remembers everything inside the thread.↑ top
- Context
- Everything Claude knows while answering you: your words, your files, your project docs. More context = better answers.↑ top
- Context window
- How much a single chat can hold before it gets forgetful. Long jobs go in projects with docs, not one endless chat.↑ top
- Token
- The unit AI reads and writes in, roughly a syllable. Usage limits count these. You never need to count them yourself.↑ top
- Project
- A folder in Claude that holds instructions and documents. The filing cabinet. If you only do one thing from this guide, do this one.↑ top
- Memory
- What Claude keeps about you across chats: your voice rules, your people, your preferences.↑ top
- Skill
- A saved recipe for a repeatable job. "Build the dossier" and it follows your steps every time.↑ top
- Connector
- A plug between Claude and a real tool: Gmail, Drive, Calendar. This is how it gets hands 🙌↑ top
- Artifact
- A thing Claude builds that lives on its own page: a dashboard, a tracker, this very page you're reading.↑ top
- Agent / agentic
- AI that does multi-step work on its own: reads, decides, acts, reports back. Cowork is Claude being agentic.↑ top
- Hallucination
- When AI confidently makes something up. Why I read every word before anything ships. You should too.↑ top
- Usage / credits
- Your plan's allowance of Claude-work. Heavier models spend it faster. Extra credits keep you going.↑ top
AI & ethics, from a land conservationist 🌍
Much like the internet boom, AI is happening whether we like it or not. Do I like data centers? F✨ck no. I like land. However, I've learned in my many many years as a land conservationist and environmentalist that I'm not going to save the planet by personally giving up single use plastic for the rest of my life. In fact, that will just make me a miserable mofo.
So instead I focus my energy on making money so that I can buy 40 acres of land across from my ranch to keep it from development, so that the antelope herd that grazes over there can stay there. I've found that the largest impact you can make on the environment comes in two forms:
1. The Law
2. Money
I didn't want to go back to school, so I picked money. And I had $50K just randomly chilling in an account for the down payment for the land across from my ranch when I saw a bulldozer pull up to it one day. Because I had money, I was able to take massive action.
People are going to hate you for using AI. They are going to say you hate the world and marginalized communities. I don't view it that way. AI NEEDS to get into the hands of women and marginalized communities to give us the leg up we didn't already have. Also, in case you didn't know, META is AI. The algorithm on your Instagram is powered by data centers. So you can't be anti AI and be on this f✨cking app.
My favorite AI creators for you to learn from 💗
@akscatgpt · @upgradingkatie · @itsmegkilgore
I actually run.
Copy-paste ready. These are not beginner starters... those are in your free guide. These are the operator conversations that run the machine 🔥
The Monday CEO check-in ☕
Open my [business] project and read the latest handoff doc. It's Monday. Tell me: 1) what's still open from last week, 2) the 3 things that matter most this week and why, 3) anything with a deadline in the next 7 days, 4) one thing I should NOT touch this week. Then build my work block for today.
why it works
It makes Claude the keeper of the list so my brain doesn't have to be. The "one thing I should NOT touch" line is the secret... it kills the fake-urgent task before it eats a block.
The open-items reconcile 📋
Compare [the plan / the dossier / the launch doc] against my inbox and my task list from the last two weeks. Build me a dated "what's still open" list: what's confirmed, what's waiting on someone else, what's waiting on ME, and what has quietly slipped. Flag anything that contradicts the plan.
why it works
This is the Authenteco dossier move, and it works for any business. The "quietly slipped" ask is the one that catches the thing that would have blown up Thursday.
The voice pass ✍️
Here's my rough draft: [paste it]. Keep MY sentences wherever they work. Tighten the rest. Rules: short punchy lines, no em dashes, nothing that sounds like a blog. If a line doesn't sound like something I'd say out loud on a porch, cut it or flag it. Show me what you changed and why.
why it works
"Keep my sentences" flips the default. Most people ask AI to write, then sand off the robot. I ask it to protect my voice and only fix what's broken. The "show me what you changed" line keeps me the editor in chief.
The backwards launch calendar 🗓️
I'm launching [thing] on [date]. Work backwards from that date and build the full runway: every email, every post, every build task, with its own date and owner (me or you). Then tell me what's unrealistic and what to cut. Save the result as a doc in this project so it becomes our single source of truth.
why it works
The runway you just lived through was built exactly like this. "Save it as a doc" is the line that turns a chat into a system... every later conversation points back at one plan instead of my memory.
The sequence map 💌
Read the launch doc in this project. Map the full email sequence: how many emails, what each one's single job is, send day and time, and the one line each email exists to deliver. THEN draft email #1 only, in my voice, using my own story sentences from the doc. We'll do them one at a time.
why it works
Map first, draft second. Asking for all the emails at once gets you seven mushy ones. One at a time, against a map, gets you a sequence where every email has a job.
The dashboard ask 📊
Build me a one-page dashboard for [launch / month / project]: countdown to [date], my open to-dos pulled from the plan, the numbers I'm tracking, and a "today's one thing" box at the top. Make it something I can open every morning. When I give you new numbers, update it.
why it works
My Launch HQ started as exactly this sentence. You don't need to know what a dashboard is made of. You need to describe the morning you want, and let Claude build toward it.
The part nobody shows you: the directing 🎬
Here's what "using AI" actually looks like at my kitchen table. Not a magic prompt. An assignment, with standards, from a woman who knows what she wants:
Your first week with Claude like this 📆
Not a 30-day plan. Seven days, one move a day, each about 20 minutes. By Sunday you'll have a baby version of my whole system.
| Day 1 🗄️ | Make your filing cabinet. Create one project for your main business or dream. Upload anything Claude should know: notes, a plan, your about page, your voice. |
| Day 2 ✍️ | Teach it your voice. Paste 3 to 5 things you wrote that sound like YOU. Ask Claude to write your voice rules doc. Correct it until it's right. Save it to the project. |
| Day 3 ☕ | Run the CEO check-in (Conversation 01). Let it build your first focus block. Do the block. |
| Day 4 📋 | Run the reconcile (Conversation 02) on whatever project is most behind. Enjoy the horror. Fix the top item only. |
| Day 5 💌 | Draft with it, don't delegate to it. Take one real email or post through the voice pass (Conversation 03). Send the result. |
| Day 6 🗓️ | Pick one date. A launch, an offer, a decision. Run the backwards calendar (Conversation 04) and save the doc. |
| Day 7 🛁 | Close the laptop early. That's the system working. The whole point of a second brain is getting yours back. Bath. Romantasy. Porch. |
Then repeat the week. The system compounds. Mine took months to look like this, and it started with Day 1 🤠
Claude AI practice workbook 📝
A workbook you can then apply towards our live sessions. Claude is an absolutely amazing tool that you can also use to solve complex problems. Here are three prompts I want you to try with Claude (your PDF has printable worksheet pages for each one):
Braindump first, proposal second
Tell Claude what you currently do. What you hate and love about how you earn money. Then tell Claude what your dream day would look and feel like. Tell Claude about all the things you love doing, and all the things you're good at that your friends and family come to you for. Once you've braindumped everything, ask Claude to write you a proposal for other revenue streams, including passive income, using everything you just told it.
I want you to help me figure out how to make more money. Here's what I currently do: [your job]. What I hate about how I earn money: [...]. What I love: [...]. My dream day would look and feel like: [...]. Things I love doing, and things I'm good at that friends and family come to me for: [...]. Using everything I just told you, write me a proposal for other revenue streams, including passive income, that fit who I actually am.
The income differential
Tell Claude all about your finances. This might seem crazy, but you can even screenshot your credit card spending, bank spending, etc. You can even open Google Chrome, log into your bank and credit card accounts yourself, and then tell Claude to go into Chrome and look at your spending habits, only with your permission, in that one session. Then tell Claude everything about your dream life. Where is it? What do you do in it? Do you have horses and land like me? Or do you want to buy an RV and travel the United States? Tell him every bucket list thing you've ever f✨cking wanted to do.
🔒 My vault rule, bestie: you do the logging in, always. Never hand Claude a password, and cover full account numbers in screenshots. Claude reads the spending, you guard the vault.
I'm going to show you my real finances and my dream life, and I want you to run the numbers. My income: [...]. My spending: [paste or screenshot your statements, or let Claude look in Chrome with your permission]. My dream life: [where it is, what I do in it, every bucket list thing]. Evaluate my current spending habits and the life I can afford today. Then estimate what my dream life would cost, and tell me the income differential I need to make up. Show your math.
Window shopping with a second brain
Most of you are here because you want to make money so that you can go buy land and live on a dream property. Use Claude to find some of those properties. Tell Claude everything your dream property would have and look like. Then open Zillow in Google Chrome and ask Claude to go find those properties. Screenshot them or save them, and play with the data: how much they cost, how long they've been on the market, etc.
Here's everything my dream property would have and look like: [acres, state or region, water, trees, barn, cabin, off grid or not, your budget guess]. Open Zillow in Chrome and find properties like this. For each one, save the price, the acreage, and how long it's been on the market. Then show me the data: what do these actually cost, and what does time-on-market tell us about negotiating?
Bring all three to the live sessions. We build on these together 💗
The videos 🎥
This page is the living version of your guide: when a video is ready, it appears right here. Same link. Nothing to re-download. And bestie, watch them at 1.25x or 1.5x speed. I yap. You know this.
▶️ Video 1 is live, bestie
Watch me run the system on screen, in real time. Bump the speed to 1.25x in the player. Trust me.
Player acting up? Watch it on Loom instead.
The CEO check-in, live
Watch a real Monday morning: open the project, run Conversation 01, get my work block.
The voice pass, live
My rough draft goes in, my voice comes back out. The pushback, uncut.
What happens next 🔮
This is version 1 of my Claude guide, and I shipped it on purpose. Here's the deal we're making: you read it, you use it, and you tell me what was helpful and what wasn't. Once I receive feedback from you, the women who actually bought it, I will continue to update and edit the guide. And every updated version appears right here, free, automatically. Buy once, get every update 🖤
And you already know what's on the other side of the club doors: three live days with me, November 13 to 15, where we take everything in here, plus your workbook, and point it at YOUR money and YOUR land.
The $1M Beth Bestie Club · Phase One starts Nov 13 🤠
Your club access link is in your purchase email.
One last thing, and then I'll see you inside. Claude never replaced my brain. It multiplied it. The curation, the grit, the story, the 75 acres... that was always going to have to be you. The hours you thought you didn't have? Those, you just bought back.
Women only. Always. Women pulling women up the whole damn way 💗