The Touring Career Workshop is a free annual event created by Chris Lisle and Erik Parker designed to serve and educate their colleagues in the touring music industry. The inaugural TCW was held in November 2011 at Belmont University, and was attended by over fifty industry professionals. In the past several years well over 350 people have attended. TCW is an official IRS 501c3 non profit. Unless you work for one of the major vendors and are blessed to have a great benefits package, you must fend for yourself to provide the tools needed to get by in life: health insurance, retirement plans, and the general skills to run your own business. Make no mistake about it, if you are a freelance technician in the touring business – you ARE your own business. This is where the vision of the Touring Career Workshop comes to life: a simple workshop where a lot of the success tools needed are presented by experts in each of their respective fields. There is NO admission fee to the TCW, and there is NO pressure to purchase any of the services that are presented during the workshop. Attendees will listen to brief overviews on a variety of topics, and at the end will have the opportunity to set up meetings with the vendors if desired. TCW and its Board receive no commission or fees in any way from any of the vendors. We are organizing this to give back to our industry, with the hope that several people can walk away from the workshop motivated with the tools needed to have the best career that they can! The Touring Career Workshop's resources extend beyond the flagship event as well. We host several networking gatherings each year to give a time and place for fellow roadies to have a chance to catch up with old friends and meet some new ones. Our All Access program provides four sessions of counseling with one of our designated providers, giving a chance for touring professionals to discuss their difficult moments and work through challenging moments that arise.