Introduction:

Most business conversations only happen in two modes: putting out fires, or talking up a win. Almost nobody talks, out loud at least, about the space in between — the stretch after things have actually settled down, when there's no fire to fight and the real question becomes: what's next?
That's the conversation Sean and Rich have been having privately in their monthly check-ins for months. This time, they put it on record.
If you've ever felt strangely uneasy the moment things finally calmed down — like you should be relieved, but instead you're waiting for the other shoe to drop — you're not imagining it. Comfort has its own gravity, and in a world where AI and automation are reshaping entire industries in real time, staying still for too long isn't neutral. It's a decision, whether you notice yourself making it or not.
Rich knows that tension well. He's the founder of Secret Stache, a software development studio that peaked in 2023, contracted hard when the market did, and spent 2024 and 2025 cutting costs just to survive. Now, in 2026, the business is finally stable — and instead of easing all the way off, Rich has been experimenting with what comes next.
In this article, we'll walk through the shared vocabulary Sean uses to talk about this — five different ways people respond to comfort — and the specific, deliberate move Rich made to keep himself from drifting once the pressure lifted.

Real Story

For most of the past two years, Rich didn't need to manufacture pressure — the market did it for him. By early 2026, the hardest part was finally behind him. The savings account was rebuilding. Revenue was recovering. For the first time in a long while, Rich had room to exhale.
That's exactly when the trouble usually starts. Once the fire is out, it's tempting to let the schedule go soft, because coasting is finally an option again. Rich noticed himself doing it — three months of being, in his own words, more relaxed than he'd been in a long time.
So he made one deliberate change. He decided to move out of the small studio apartment he'd been living in and into a bigger place downtown, one with its own dedicated office and a rent that's “quite a bit more.” There was no new client lined up to justify it, and no guaranteed revenue increase already in motion. Just a simple, honest calculation.
“If I'm paying a little bit more, then I need to earn more, or I can't save as much,” he explained. “So these are all personal decisions that will help motivate me on the business.”
It's a small, specific decision — one apartment, one bigger rent payment — but it's also just one example of a much bigger pattern in how Rich operates. It's the one Sean calls “stake-based”: raising the external cost of coasting on purpose, until coasting stops being an option.

The Truth (why it matters)

The riskiest moment in a business isn't the crisis. It's what happens right after it, when nothing is forcing your next move anymore.
Sean has spent time mapping out how different people respond to that moment, and it tends to fall into five recognizable patterns — not a quiz, just shared vocabulary for a conversation almost nobody has out loud.
● Stake-based. External pressure, engineered on purpose. The mechanism: raise the cost of coasting until coasting stops being an option. This is Rich's default — the bigger apartment, the bigger rent payment.
● Appetite-based. Internal hunger that doesn't need an outside push. The gap itself is the fuel.
● Relational. Accountability to someone outside yourself — a partner, a team, a mastermind group.
● Comparative. Needs a moving reference point — a peer group, or a past version of yourself — so nothing ever feels static.
● Pattern-based. Motivated by watching, not doing. Comfort feels dangerous here because it means you've stopped observing, not because you've stopped producing — the person who's still tracking what AI's next iteration means for their industry, even when business is fine.
Why most people miss this: it's counterintuitive because relaxing feels earned. After a hard stretch, easing off looks like the reward for having survived it. But in a market moving as fast as this one — where, as Rich put it, a competitor doesn't even need to out-hustle you anymore because “the models themselves take, figure it out, and then you don't need that tool” — comfort isn't a resting place. It's a blind spot forming in real time.
Rich described a version of this that's specific to how people work now: engineers and builders who used to hit a roadblock, step away, eat, take a walk — natural pauses built into the work. With AI closing most of those roadblocks instantly, those pauses disappear too. “They started the day with the lights off because it was bright out, and then they come to when it's dark,” he said. “They don't remember the transition.” Removing the friction doesn't just speed up the work — it removes the built-in checkpoints people used to rely on for their own sanity.
The cost of ignoring all of this is quiet but real: drift, blind spots, and burnout that sneaks up because nothing forced a pause. The benefit of catching it is the opposite — you get to choose your next chapter on purpose, instead of waiting for the next fire to choose it for you.

What To Do (One Clear Action)

Name which pattern you actually run on — then use it on purpose.
You don't need to master all five families. You need to notice which one you already default to, and stop leaving it to accident. For Rich, that's stake-based: manufacturing a real, uncomfortable commitment before the business technically requires one.
Here's the simple version:
● Ask yourself: When things last got too comfortable, what actually got you moving again — a bill, a person, a comparison, a habit of watching the landscape? That's your family.
● Make it deliberate. If you're stake-based like Rich, that might mean a real financial commitment tied to a goal. If you're relational, it might mean a standing call you can't cancel without explaining why.
● Make it real, not hypothetical. Rich didn't decide in the abstract to “work harder.” He signed up for a bigger rent payment. Whatever your family is, the version that works is the one that would actually cost you something to walk away from.
This isn't about manufacturing stress for its own sake. It's about making sure that when the fires are out, something is still quietly asking you what's next — so you don't have to wait for the market, or a competitor's next AI tool, to ask for you.

Conclusion

The space after the crisis is real, and it's worth naming. It's not failure, and it isn't the finish line either — it's a choice point. You can let comfort set the pace, or you can decide, on purpose, what the next stretch of pressure looks like.
Rich's version of that choice was a bigger apartment and a bigger rent payment — one clear example of the stake-based pattern. Yours might be relational, comparative, or something else entirely. What matters is knowing which one you're running on.
“The only consistent thing I’ve seen across all the people who I consider to be successful is that they didn’t stop,” Rich said. Not the smartest idea. Not the best year. Just — they didn’t stop.

Call-to-Action

Ready to figure out which comfort-zone pattern you're running on — and where it's quietly costing you momentum?Take Sean's free Lying Spots Audit:
It takes a few minutes and shows you exactly where blind spots are quietly capping your growth — the same kind of pattern Rich had to catch in himself before he could decide what came next.

About the Guest

Rich is the founder of Secret Stache, a software development studio. On-demand web development for creative agencies, institutions, universities, commerce, and municipalities. 
Connect: Instagram | LinkedIn: Rich Staats | General Inquiry

What's Your Next Move

Which of the five families do you run on — and when did you last check?
This article is part of our ongoing series on the patterns entrepreneurs fall into once the pressure lifts. Drop your questions in the comments — we'll address them in upcoming episodes.
Subscribe to The Strategic Thinkers Podcast to catch the rest of the series.

Ready to identify the blind spots blocking your opportunities? Take Sean's free Lying Spots Audit and discover where to focus next.