Taxing tax questions for the physician business owner

I have taxes on my mind at present, as I suspect many of you do.

So I appreciated coming across this article from the Wall Street Journal Small Biz section today on how to handle those not-so-easy-to-classify expenses.

Great rule of thumb, from the article!:

"If court rulings and IRS pronouncements don't offer much guidance, then it's time for what tax pros refer to as the "laugh test." Can you write off an expense without snickering about pulling one over on the IRS? "If there is a concern in the taxpayer's mind, that probably means it's not deductible," says Keith Hall, national tax advisor in Dallas for the National Association of the Self-Employed."

One gem I unearthed in the article was a reference to the National Association of Self Employed (NASE) -- an organization providing a litany of resources (education, member-benefit discounts and group rates) for micro-businesses. And then there is NASE Women in Business which offers an array of links to resources specifically for women entrepreneurs. Whether it is access to health care insurance at group rates, discounts for sending holiday bouquets to valued clients or expert advice from CPAs and attorneys, the member benefit list is long.

I'll be checking this out!

11 business errors to avoid as an entrepeneurial physician

Sometimes I discover that two of my favorite people have crossed paths and are making a little music together.

This time it's my own business coach, Adam Urbanski of Marketing Mentors, Inc. and Denise Wakeman of The Blog Squad. In a blog post from Biz Tips Blog of a couple of days ago , titled "11 Internet Business Mistakes to Avoid", Adam describes eleven errors commonly made by business owners.

They are:

Mistake #1 - Not Treating What You Do as a Business.

Mistake #2 - Being Distracted by Too Many Good Ideas.

Mistake #3 - Not Selecting a Specific Niche.

Mistake #4 - Falling in Love With the Wrong Product Idea.

Mistake #5 - Falling for the Get Rich Quick Scheme!

Mistake #6 - Going Into It, Instead of Growing Into It.

Mistake #7 - Being a Copy-Cat!

Mistake #8 - Wasting Time and Money on Developing Pretty but Useless Websites.

Mistake #9 - Not Building Relationship with Clients.

Mistake #10 - Calling It QUITS Too Soon!

Mistake #11 - Being too cheap!

Read the article details here.

While his focus is on Internet Business, I believe that these are mistakes for ANY physician business owner to be aware of.

And if any of you have known me for a while, or attended my recent teleclass on "5 'Dirty Secrets" to Sleaze-Free Marketing", much of this will sound familiar. It's nice to have someone else do the nagging instead!

PS: If you want to avoid making these errors as you set up your new business or practice, or upgrade it, then consider registering for the 4-week The Entrepreneurial MD Marketing Mastery Program -- an affordable and very practical teleseminar created in response to the needs expressed to me by physicians who are struggling to attract "ideal" prospective clients or patients to grow their business, AND revenues!

Entrepreneurial physicians should offer DICEE services and products

There is a wealth of terrific education available for free on the Internet, and much of it is generated by venerable teachers. One of my favorite entrepreneur educators is venture capitalist and former Apple product manager, Guy Kawasaki, also well known as the author of the book "The Art of The Start".

Pithy, provocative and punchy, Kawasaki is generous with his teaching insights - and he does tend to enjoy his acronyms!

Since much of my coaching work with clients involves developing services and products, I thought it useful to share this short 3- and-a-half-minute video of Guy in action, talking about what makes a service or product noteworthy. I figured he should know -- after all, his job is to decide where and how to invest millions of venture capital!

Just so that you know what DICEE is:

• D = Deep
• I = Intelligent
• C = Complete
• E = Elegant
• E = Emotive

I'll move over to let you hear him speak!

Now, stop for a moment, please, and ask yourself:

1. How "deep" do your services or products, such as information products, go?

2. How cleverly do they address the needs of your target market?

3. How completely do they provide the desired solution?

4. How elegantly are your solutions presented and implemented? And finally ...

5. What emotions do your products and services inspire in your intended market?

Entrepreneur.com's start-up guide for physician business owners

You too can open for business in 30 days!

Now it seems like a bit of a stretch to me, but Entrepreneur.com (the online version of one of my favorite magazines) has a handy 6-page article making such a claim -- in "Up and Running" -- and I thought it would at least serve as a handy guide to some of the key decisions and steps that you have to consider when starting your new business.

I was also intrigued by the smart page-turning presentation - click on the bottom right corner of the right page and you will flip it over to the next.

Let me know what you think!

PS: You may have to register, for free, to get access to the article -- as I am signed up it comes up automatically for me. When I click on the article link above, I'm taken to an Instructions page. To access the article, click on Content on the top line and then the article on page 50.

"Benefits" marketing clues for physician business owners

In keeping with the theme of tomorrow's (Wednesday February 20th) free teleclass in our Business Development series -- "5 'Dirty' Secrets to Sleaze-Free Marketing", I was interested to read Brian Clark's Copyblogger post from a few days ago on "Why Our Brains Crave Beneficial Copy".

Since I will be harping on promoting your services and products using the language of "benefits" and not "features", it's handy to have a research-based neurological rationale to support my nagging.

In essence, our brains yearn for and respond to the promise of a reward. And the more tangible the reward appears, the more likely we are to drool for it and take the steps to manifest it.

"…we made some headway at understanding broadly the underpinnings of why certain messages might gain behavioral power. They come to act like rewards, and the rest of the brain adapts itself to predict and acquire them. Events that foreshadow these potent messages also accrue value because our brains are designed to transfer value to events that predict reward. Just like, “A friend of my friend is also my friend,” the brain has its own version, “A predictor of a predictor is also a predictor,” where the predictors predict future reward. This is exactly why even complex verbal descriptions like the “…salad of perfectly grilled woodsy-flavored calamari…” can set off reward seeking circuits. It’s a proxy for the reward to come." (emphasis mine)

From Read Montague's book: "Why Choose This Book?: How We Make Decisions"

When you describe your offering in terms of what it can do for your intended audience, graphically, emotionally and/or visually in terms of basic human needs -- more money, more time, more prestige, more ease, more comfort, more speed, more convenience, more safety, more self-confidence, more health, more energy (I think you get it now) -- your audience's brains are programmed to begin justifying why they should open their wallets and buy!

So next time you are writing copy for your website or brochure, remember to seduce those brains into action by spelling out What's In It For Them!