Eight years ago today I left a good job, built a membership platform from scratch in two weeks, and hit publish on a one-minute launch video.

This one is a look back — the first digital products and the moment on a roller coaster that rewired how I thought about work. It's also the parts that don't make the highlight reel including wondering if it's still worth all this.

Then I get into where the company actually is now. What it means to run all of this as one person, why every support ticket is becoming an agent instead of a reply, and a walk through the Pliris features I haven't shown publicly anywhere — including the one that took a month to build and is still the hardest thing I've shipped.

Our first-ever Certified Playback Engineer bootcamp starts next week. Five spots, and one is already gone.

Certification bootcamp — fromstudiotostage.com/bootcamp
Listener-only 14-day Pliris trial — fromstudiotostage.com/pliris/friend

Eight years of thanks to the partners who backed this from day one: Oyen Digital, Alclair, Digital Audio Labs, iConnectivity and Ableton.

Last week I revisited the most controversial video I've ever made and said what I should have said the first time: it isn't can you run everything on one computer — it's should you. This week pays that off. This is the most practical episode we've ever done.

Two listeners asked the same question from opposite ends of it. Jonny said the idea left him feeling "sort of doomed, stuck with my setup." Logan's maxed-out MacBook Pro currently runs the entire show — tracks, vocal tuning, keys, guitar patch changes — and he wants to know whether a powerful computer makes division of labor unnecessary. It doesn't, because the question was never if that computer crashes.

So we walk the diagrams: what actually stops working when one machine does everything and goes down, where to start when the budget is real, which splits cost nothing, and the one question that decides what deserves a backup at all.

Last week's episode: The in-ears video I got wrong — and the one I should have made

Listener-exclusive: a 14-day free trial of a full paid Pliris account — fromstudiotostage.com/pliris/friend. It isn't linked or advertised anywhere on the site; it's for people who listen.

Chapters

0:00 Where we left off last week
1:34 "I run everything on one computer"
2:44 So what happens when it goes down?
3:17 Division of labor, in one diagram
4:10 Redundancy — and what it buys you
5:17 "I feel sort of doomed and stuck"
5:52 Logan's email
7:03 How do you apply this without endless budget?
11:39 "Just play your damn instruments, kids"
12:35 What if you lose autotune?
14:22 Be honest about what your show needs
16:35 What you can split for free
17:26 Split as far as budget allows
18:37 Step one — division of labor
20:46 Step two — redundancy for playback
21:49 It used to be expensive. It isn't now.
24:10 Step three — redundancy for what's crucial
27:24 "What must stay on for the show to go on"
28:25 Zero budget? Start anyway
30:16 Free trial + the annual commitment
31:07 Only you are in charge of your destiny