• Create tax equity for self employed on health insurance
• Increase tax deductions for start-up expenses
• Increase loan amounts to small business owners
• Promote small business lending programs

If you’re a small business owner or self-employed, this bill could be critical for your financial livelihood. The Freelancer’s Union has made it easy for you to email your Senator and show your support of the Small Business Jobs Bill. Email your Senator.

Want to learn more before taking a position?

• Overview of the Small Business Jobs Act in The New York Times
• The United States Senate Committee on Finance documentation regarding the Small Business Jobs Act
• Analysis from Forbes

The futurethinktank blog is brought to you by futurethink, an innovation research and training firm that helps companies put the principles of innovation into practice on a daily basis.

futurethink has also been a partner and client of mine for more than five years now. I highly recommend their innovation research and tools (many are free).

If you’re thinking about declaring your independence from Corporate America, check out my new interview with Devesh Dwivedi over at Breaking the 9 to 5 Jail for some advice and inspiration. Devesh is a man very passionate about helping entrepreneurs find the resources and information that they need and his site features lots of great interviews with entrepreneurs and experts.

Today, I’m working from the air-conditioned comfort of my home office. However, I spent my July 4th fighting my way through angry, overheated crowds of New Yorkers to view the spectacular Macy’s fireworks from the Circle Line pier. It was totally worth the struggle. Check out our photos.

Cynthia Warner was the head of global refining for British Petroleum and a 28-year oil industry veteran. She left BP in 2008 to become president of Sapphire Energy, a company working  to produce renewable “green crude” from algae grown in open pools in the New Mexico desert.

Read Cynthia Warner’s career change story.

Get a Life, Not a Job: Do What You Love and Let Your Talents Work For You is an interesting new book about how to design a career that truly aligns with your life values and priorities.

My personal career mission is to help people find more fulfilling work (whether that means escaping from Corporate America or finding a great job in the corporate world) and author Paula Caligiuri is a woman on a similar mission. As a work psychologist and Professor of Human Resources Management at Rutgers University, Caligiuri knows a thing or two about job satisfaction and how it has changed over the years.

Get a Life, Not a Job provides advice on discovering what motivates you and building a more inspiring career. For me, the most interesting aspect of the book  is the focus on structuring a career with multiple revenue streams so you will always be layoff-proof. This idea of a portfolio career composed of multiple part-time income-generating activities is appealing to many, but how do you go about constructing one?

This is a very relevant topic in today’s work world. Speaking as someone who has been able to create a very fulfilling portfolio career that incorporates running a business, teaching, consulting, coaching and writing, I know the financial and psychological benefits of this lifestyle (along with the challenges of juggling multiple careers). I work with many of my career coaching clients to address the question of how to create and balance revenue streams that may include a salary job, part-time consulting work, and a small side business (among other possibilities).

Caligiuri’s book provides some useful exercises and resources for those ready to redesign their careers to be both more fulfilling and more financially stable. She also includes tips on how to identify and develop different “career acts” (her term for simultaneous profitable activities) that will allow you to achieve more balance and financial freedom.

Get a Life, Get a Job is worth a look for anyone seeking support in developing a rewarding portfolio career.

For career changers and frustrated creative types, the story behind City LAX is also pretty compelling. I spoke with filmmaker Tor Myhren about his experience making a feature-length documentary in his spare time while keeping his high-pressure day job in New York. You don’t necessarily have to quit your day job to make your creative dream come true.

Tor was inspired to make the film by his brother Eric, the public school teacher who started the City LAX program in Denver (City LAX started in New York as the brainchild of Mat Levine) . Tor is an advertising executive and had frequently visited his brother’s inner city classroom to talk to the kids about advertising.  When he heard about Eric’s lacrosse idea, he knew it would make a great film.

Unfortunately, the timing was really bad. Tor had just accepted a big new job as the Chief Creative Officer for the legendary Grey Advertising in New York. That’s a pretty demanding day job. Tor is the man behind the E*Trade talking baby and the Oprah car giveaway.

He knew it probably wasn’t going to be feasible to make a documentary in his spare time, but he couldn’t let go of the idea of telling this story with his best friend from college, Gabriela Cowperthwaite, a documentary filmmaker.

The timing was really bad for Gabriela too. She had recently given birth to twin sons and the City LAX project would require her to move her family to Denver (from LA) for six moths ASAP to start shooting.

“There were a million reasons not to do it,” Tor remembers. Most of us would have given up on this dream as being totally unrealistic. Not Tor and Gabriela. They decided to go for it. Tor financed the film himself, Gabriela moved to Denver with her twin babies in tow, and they got to work.

Both put in a lot of late hours to finish the project. Because they had a very limited budget, Tor relied on the kindness of his friends and colleagues in the advertising and creative fields. Many of them donated their time after work — during all-nighters and weekends  — to edit, finalize the soundtrack, design the movie posters and graphics, and complete all of the details that make a film great.

Without his day job connections, Tor would never have been able to recruit this world-class talent from the advertising world for free. Bennett McCarroll, the head of production at Grey and another very busy guy, edited the film during his off hours — usually between midnight and 4AM.

It took them a year to edit and complete post-production during these stolen “spare time” hours.  “If you are passionate about something, you can make time for it — no matter how busy you are,” Tor says. “When you love what you’re doing, it doesn’t feel like a hardship.”

Tor actually loves his day job too, unlike many artists who grudgingly work from 9 to 5 to finance their dreams. However, he felt an irresistible pull to tell the story of his brother and those amazing City LAX players.

He says he never really fancied himself as a documentary filmmaker, but this story pushed him to take on the title. “Documentary filmmaking is not exactly a money making enterprise,” he admits. “People make documentaries because they strongly believe that a story has to be told to the rest of the world. They then go on a mission to tell that story in the most honest and compelling way they know how.”

Tor and Gabriela succeeded in that mission with City LAX. I urge you to check it out on ESPN this weekend to see why this story so motivated these two to give up sleep for so long.

You may also want to remember their story the next time you tell yourself that you don’t have time to work on that book or business idea or painting. You don’t always have to quit your day job to follow your dream.

That’s why a recent article by CNN Money contributor Josh Hyatt caught my eye last week. The piece is about Gary Buslik, who left his successful alarm company to go back to school at age 50 to become a literature professor.

Today, Buslik makes just $13,500 per year as a part-time teacher and author, but says, “I’ve never regretted my decision.”  The man loves literature more than loot.

How can you follow a similar path to pursue your passion? Well, it helps if you can build and sell a multimillion dollar company before switching to that lower-paying job. Buslik also offers some other tips to career changers — he recommends conservative investments and frugal living.

So, yeah, Buslik obviously had some advantages. Most of us don’t have a seven-figure safety net when we switch careers. However, Buslik took risks just the same. He risked leaving his comfort zone as a 50-year-old company CEO and long-time rich guy to become a student again in a classroom full of 23-year-olds.  And I’m sure all of the other big alarm biz players made jokes about ol’ Gary not being able to hack the high-pressure life.

You often hear wealthy people pontificate about how money isn’t important. But you don’t see many of them selling their companies to live on less than $15K/year for love of Shakespeare.

For this, Gary Buslik, I salute you.

Employaid founder Barbara Poole and I will present information and resources to help you seize control over the next phase of your career — whether you’re an employee, a job searcher, or an entrepreneur. We will also be conducting one-on-one mini career coaching sessions — so bring your questions.

Employaid is a great online resource for career advice and support. I first met Barbara Poole a few years ago when she had just launched the site and I was working on Escape from Corporate America. We found that we had a lot in common — both of us are incredibly passionate about helping people find more fulfilling work.

Find out more about the free Employaid event tonight in Chelsea. Hope to see you there!

Are you a creative soul trapped in a cubicle job? Check out this article from Metro: Let Your Office Creativity Fly Free.

I shared some tips with Metro columnist Drew Hinshaw for the article. Creativity at work is one of my favorite topics and is also the focus of my upcoming New York University course: How to Think Like an Entrepreneur at Work.

I strongly believe that knowing how to tap into your creativity and use it in a business setting is essential to superstar success in any field (and especially for entrepreneurs). More to come on that…

I know my posts have been sporadic and short lately. That’s because my business is booming and my time for blogging here is limited. Check out the blog I write for About.com if you miss me. : )  Hope to be back and posting more soon.

That doesn’t mean all of my clients are running their own businesses — many are very happy and successful in Corporate America or working for others. However, they all know that it’s important to run their careers like they would run a business.

An entrepreneurial mindset is key to success in any career path these days – whether you’re starting your own company, climbing the corporate ladder, or managing a career transition.

That’s why I’m excited about teaching a new class at New York University called How to Think Like an Entrepreneur at Work: Improve Your Results in Any Job

In three weekly evening sessions (February 10, 17, 24), students will learn the techniques and strategies that successful entrepreneurs use to identify opportunities, generate brilliant ideas,  develop and sell their “products” (including their expertise and talents), create action plans, persevere in the face of rejection and obstacles, and more. Learn more and sign up to join us.

P.S. I  am also gearing up to teach a new NYU semester  of Coaching Clients Through Professional and Personal Transitions, which provides instruction on essential transition coaching skills for managers, HR specialists, and professional coaches. It’s a valuable class for anyone working with clients or employees in transition.