For artists, so much depends on your ability to promote yourself; showcase your work; create resumes and other materials that fit industry specifications and look good; build relationships; and proficiently use social media platforms, YouTube, and Microsoft Word. Even though the sites were helping individual artists surmount many of those challenges, I didn't have the bandwidth to create websites for all the artists in the world — and even if I did, I still wouldn't be solving the bigger problem, which was artists' lack of agency over their own careers and a need to distribute those sites within their network. I felt like there had to be something more powerful and connected than individual portfolio websites for us while the rest of the world was thriving on Linkedin. That’s when I had the idea for Stagetime. On Stagetime, artists could take charge of their careers. They could build out their personal brand, what makes them unique, and easily share with other artists and with arts employers. Building out a network would be drastically simplified; no longer would they need to share professional updates on personal social media accounts to keep their connections informed. There would be no need to pay to make a portfolio website and ensure that it would be beautiful, functional, and memorable. And artists could more actively share their work with relevant audiences, rather than crossing their fingers that the right person would stumble upon their website and offer them a job. Eight months later, in summer 2020, we launched the platform to begin making this better experience a reality. Of course, 2020 was also notable for...other things. And for artists, those other things underscored the true necessity of career-building resources, especially in an industry where relationships are critical. Never has it been more crucial for artists to have the tools they need to tell their network what they’re doing and make connections. As the performing arts begin to come back to some version of “normal,” artists need something better than “normal” — they need the power of a tool that gives them true agency over their careers. A tool like Stagetime.