Featured on Strategic Thinkers Podcast™

Strategic Insight

"What happens to your mental state when all roadblocks are removed from a digital environment?"

What We Learned

Rich intentionally creates discomfort rather than avoiding it — he raised his own rent by moving to a bigger apartment with no guaranteed revenue to match, specifically to force forward motion. AI is quietly removing the natural pauses people used to rely on for a mental reset, so staying sharp increasingly means creating friction on purpose instead of eliminating it. Consistency, not the strength of any single idea, is what separates the founders who eventually succeed.

Notable Observation

Rich narrowed Secret Stache to partner exclusively with creative agencies rather than growing into a full-service marketing shop — a specialization that shows up repeatedly across his public interviews and points to a broader philosophy of focus over expansion for its own sake.

Why We Invited

I invited Rich Staats because he treats comfort itself as a risk, not just crisis — and applies that thinking directly to how AI is reshaping competitive advantage: staying useful means continuing to ask better questions, not coasting on what already worked.

Featured Conversation

Comfortable Isn't The Goal
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Rich Staats is the founder of Secret Stache, a Denver-based web development and digital strategy company founded in 2006. Rather than growing into a full-service marketing agency, he intentionally narrowed the business to partner exclusively with creative agencies — a focus that shows up throughout his public conversations. Over nearly two decades, his work has centered less on growth tactics and more on the operating systems behind a company: culture, process, leadership, and building something that doesn’t depend entirely on the founder.

Founder, Secret Stache