The Entrepreneurial MD's Podcast this week is on an intriguing and obscure topic - previously unknown to me, and to many physicians I suspect. However, it involves tax savings!

Are you an owner or even part-owner of a commercial medical office building?
Or thinking of becoming one? 
Or other commercial real estate?
If so, it's time to sit up and pay attention as this information could make you smile, while Uncle Sam frowns.

In a podcast interview with Cherie Brown of Cost Segregation Services Inc (CSSI), I learned that there are relatively new accounting regulations that permit a commercial business owner paying income taxes to accelerate the depreciation on the building, thereby freeing up lots more available cash flow each month.

From their website:

"Cost segregation is the IRS approved method of re-classifying components and improvements of your commercial building from real property to personal property. This process allows the assets to be depreciated on a 5, 7, or 15-year schedule instead of the traditional 27.5 or 39-year depreciation schedule of real property. Thus your current taxable income will be greatly reduced and your cash flow will increase."

Although this may sound like dry "accounting-ese", I hope that the idea of saving beacoup bucks is catching your attention!

In order to qualify for cost segregation, you need an engineer's report that details all the specifics of your building - carpeting, cabinetry, wall attachments, walls, floors, ceilings etc! That is where CSSI comes in - they are the engineering company that generates the report for your CPA.

The good news is that Cherie is a capable translator, who manages to make an arcane topic understandable.

Questions, anyone?? :-)

In response to demand, and hot on the heels of our popular May teleclass on Internet Marketing 101 for Physician Entrepreneurs (how to create an effective website!), I interviewed Shama Hyder of AfterTheLaunch for this week's podcast.

Internet Marketing expert Shama has mastered the skill of making tough technical ideas seem easy to understand!

In the podcast, I explore with Shama just what SEO (search engine optimization) is, and why it matters to any medical or physician website owner who wants to be found on the Web through the search engines by potential patients or clients.

Shama generously shares the simpler optimization tips that even non-techies can implement (such as using your best key words and phrases in your content and in your article or blog post titles).

Listen here to the The Entrepreneurial MD's Insights from the Professionals Podcast (it runs about 28 minutes) and then please come on back to this blog and add your comment or ask a question. Shama or I will get back to you!

One of the pleasures of a conference is catching up with some of the "names' in your industry. For several years, I've been a devotee of The Blog Squad -- Denise Wakeman and Pasy Krakoff. So it was exciting to meet them in person at the InfoProfit Intensive weekend put on by my coach, Adam Urbanski.

Their presentation reiterated all the benefits I have come to appreciate of having a blog to promote and reinforce my brand and my business.

Let me remind you of the key opportunities having a blog represents:

• getting found quickly by the search engines - blogs are search engine magnets!
• being found by the media - the vast major of media writers turn to the blogosphere to find the experts to interview and quote
• your content is organized by category and available to be found on the Internet forever
• you have the opportunity to create a real conversation with your audience and learn from them

Their secrets to a winning blog -- Pay attention to 4 things:

• Content - make sure you use this platform to position yourself as an Expert, and provide education and resources to the prospective audience you want to reach
• Outreach - engage others with a conversational dialog-encouraging style -- this is not the place to pontificate. Also work on creating relationships with other bloggers who are likely to reciprocate by sending traffic in your direction
• Design - not hugely important, but don't forget that this is yet another way to create perception in the minds of or audience. Look professional; you're not an amateur.
• Action - Get your audience to take action as a result of reading your blog. Decide on your strategic purpose for the blog and then make it happen!

And here is a brief interview with the Blogging Stars themselves (one of the advantages of having my nifty Flip Video on hand)

I am a big proponent of finding a well-defined niche to build your business around. Rosalie Hamilton of Expert Communications has been shrewd enough to accomplish that in spades, by providing business development education and coaching to physicians (that is a niche in and of itself) on the topic of how to succeed in a medical expert witness business. A niche within a niche!

I interviewed Rosalie today to learn more about the business of becoming an expert witness and how to generate a steady flow of clients requiring your services -- clients such as attorneys and insurance companies. This conversation is not about doctors being asked to review the odd case for an attorney -- we all know someone who has done that. Instead it focuses on physicians whose intent it is to build a business as a medical expert witness.

By the way, take note of how Rosalie exemplifies good marketing -- she has a niche and a distinct target market, and she promotes her services by writing articles for publications, making public presentations, and writing a book that positions her as the expert in her field, The Expert Witness Marketing Book: How to Promote Your Forensic Practice in a Professional and Cost-Effective Manner.

Get insights from this consummate professional consultant and author guest by listening to this week's Entrepreneurial MD Podcast.

In January's free monthly Business Development series teleclass held last week, I had the privilege of interviewing savvy patent attorney David Gornish of Caesar, Rivise, Bernstein, Cohen & Pokotilow, Ltd. (they are specialists in Intellectual Property, Computer and Information Technology Law).

It occurred to me that what David had to share with the audience was so valuable and informative that I ought to summarize the 10 key points and bring them to your attention.

1. The four types of intellectual property in the USA are

a. patents - these are grants by the US government giving the owner the right to stop others from making, using or selling your invention
b. copyrights - these protect original works of authorship (websites, music, design, articles etc)
c. trademarks - these protect commercial identifiers such as logos, graphics, that distinguish goods and services
d. trade secrets - these protect any commercially valuable information that is not known to anyone other than the owner, such as chemical formulae, recipes, customer lists etc. 

2. The two major considerations in creating and claiming ownership of intellectual property are:
a. to create value, by recognizing the intellectual property assets
b. to avoid liability by infringing on the intellectual property rights of others.

3. Patents are only granted (after a lengthy and usually somewhat expensive application process) for inventions that are (i) useful (ii) novel and (iii) non-obvious. You have to prove these in your claims, in the application process.

4. If you work for an employer such as a large medical group or an academic medical center, you may not be the owner of your invention's patent. Check your employment agreement for the terms of patent/invention ownership -- it may be that the organization owns the patent! If you have a useful novel and non-obvious invention that would benefit the organization you work for, perhaps they will pay for the patent application. And look to see if they have policies in place to reward inventors with royalties.  This has the potential to create a win-win result for both of you.

5. It is smart, and in the long run less costly, to engage the services of an attorney who specializes in intellectual property and patents. He or she will begin with a detailed "infringement search" to ensure that you are not creating liability for yourself. This applies to patents, registered trademarks (those trademarks that you have formally registered and for which you can legitimately use the R in a circle ® - registered trademark symbol) and, to a lesser extent, copyrights.

6. Keep records in a notebook or a "paper trail" of any email communications you might have about your invention. In the USA, the patent is usually awarded to the first person to document their invention (not the first person to file for a patent, as in many other countries).

7. When you develop your website, make sure you have a written agreement with your web developer and graphic designer that states that you own the copyrights for your design and website. Otherwise it is assumed that the web developer/graphic designer owns the copyright to the code and design used to create your website.

8. Don't copy anything without permission. Be original.

9. Simply adding the C in a circle (©) plus a year appears to be sufficient to lay claim to your content as copyrighted. For example - "Copyrighted © 2005-2008"

10. You can search the USPTO databases for other patents and trademarks to avoid infringement liability - this is a tedious but necessary step. And you can get useful information and the necessary forms for filing to protect your intellectual property at the USPTO site, as well as at the US Copyright Office.

I came away from the class with an imperative to act quickly to claim my website domains and protect all the content that I am generating, along with the awareness that I cannot do this on my own. I'm calling David's office!