#336 Three Things I Learned From PIMDCON 2026 ft. Peter Kim, MD
In this episode, Peter shares the three biggest things he personally walked away with after PIMDCON 2026, despite being the one who put the whole event together. He covers why physician branding matters more than ever, how treating AI like an employee instead of a search engine changes everything, and three specific tax strategies physicians still aren’t using enough before year end.
If you weren’t able to make it to Dallas this year, this episode is as close as it gets to being in the room. Tune in!
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Episode Highlights
Now, let’s look at what we discussed in this episode:
- A Notes App Full of Takeaways
- Takeaway One: Physician Branding Isn’t Optional Anymore
- Takeaway Two: Treating AI Like an Employee, Not a Search Engine
- Takeaway Three: Three Tax Strategies Worth Implementing Before Year End
- The Real Value Was in the Room
Here’s a breakdown of how this episode unfolds.
Episode Breakdown
A Notes App Full of Takeaways
Peter opens with a snapshot of Saturday night in Dallas, right after PIMDCon 2026 wrapped. Back in his hotel room with his shoes off, he pulls up his phone’s notes app, the place he jots things down all week so he doesn’t lose them before he can actually process everything. Scrolling through it, he finds a mix of people to follow up with, new ideas he hadn’t considered, and a few things he needs to fix in his own business.
Even though he’s the one who puts the conference on every year, he realized he’d walked away having learned just as much as anyone else in the room, which became the reason for this episode. He frames it simply as sharing his own notes with listeners, whether they were there in Dallas or not.
Before diving in, Peter gives some context on the event itself, close to 250 physicians together in one room for three days, spanning everyone from people who’d never made an investment outside their 401k to people who’ve built and sold businesses for large sums. He points out that in most settings, the experienced folks cluster together while newer people hang back, but that’s not what happened here. Everyone recognized they had something to teach and something to learn from each other, no matter their experience level.
Takeaway One: Physician Branding Isn’t Optional Anymore
The first big takeaway Peter shares is around physician branding, something he admits he’s personally resisted for a long time. He associates the term personal brand with ring lights and dancing on social media, an image that doesn’t exactly appeal to most physicians, himself included. But running a business built entirely on the internet forced him to figure out what actually mattered for getting his message heard and helping people find their community.
He talked with physicians who built personal brands around their own specialty or what they were personally learning, simply to serve and connect with other people. Once they built even a small following, sometimes just a few hundred people, opportunities started showing up, speaking invitations, consulting work, advisory roles, and outreach from digital health companies and startups looking for a physician’s perspective.
Peter frames the core idea simply, every physician already has a brand, whether it’s how patients see them at the hospital or what shows up about them on review sites. The only real question is whether you’re actively shaping that brand or just letting it happen passively. He shares that he’s personally committing to building more intentionally on platforms he’s previously avoided, doing it in a way that stays authentic to him.
Takeaway Two: Treating AI Like an Employee, Not a Search Engine
Peter’s second takeaway centers on AI, something he’s already used heavily over the past year or two across his businesses, investing, writing, and personal tasks like managing his schedule and email. What struck him at the conference was realizing how far behind he still is compared to some physicians who’ve fully integrated agents into their workflows, automating far more than he currently does.
He mentions hearing physicians compare notes on tools like Grokbot, Muse by Meta, Instinct, and ChatGPT’s newly rolled out feature called DOTS. For anyone unfamiliar with these names, he says that’s exactly why he plans to cover AI more on the podcast and inside PIMD’s communities going forward, so physicians stay current on what’s actually available.
The bigger mindset shift he walks away with is thinking of AI less as something you prompt like a search engine and more like an employee you actually teach, one that can add value on its own without being told every single step. He talks with other physicians running businesses where employees are now paired with agents underneath them, multiplying what those employees can actually get done, and it left him motivated to build out more automation in both his business and personal life.
Takeaway Three: Three Tax Strategies Worth Implementing Before Year End
Peter’s third takeaway comes from the tax sessions, which he jokes he walks into every year thinking he already knows everything, and every year he’s wrong. This time three specific strategies stood out. The first is a defined benefit plan, something he already knew about but hadn’t fully appreciated how much room it gives high earning physicians to shelter income, especially later in a career, potentially more than a typical 401k allows.
The second is the short-term rental loophole, a strategy he’s discussed before but still finds many physicians don’t realize applies to them, using a rental property to generate losses that offset W-2 income. The third is the self-directed IRA, which lets retirement money go into real estate and private deals instead of being limited to whatever a standard brokerage offers.
Across all three strategies, the recurring theme physicians kept raising was the difference between a tax preparer and a tax strategist. A preparer just files your taxes once a year, while a strategist meets with you multiple times a year to actively optimize what you’re paying. Peter says the complaint he heard most often all weekend was physicians feeling like they pay too much in taxes, and his takeaway is that having an actual strategist in your corner is what actually moves that needle.
The Real Value Was in the Room
Peter closes by circling back to something he’d already touched on in Friday’s newsletter, that AI can give physicians back their time, but it can’t replicate what happens when people are physically in a room together. He shares a specific moment, two physicians who’d never met before sitting down after a session and still talking two and a half hours later, swapping experiences and lessons learned.
He thanks everyone who showed up in person this year, calling out the speakers, the networking sessions, and the mastermind sessions as standouts, especially given how much uncertainty exists in the world right now. He mentions holding up a magic 8-ball during the event, half jokingly asking people whether it was a good time to invest, and notes that most people decided to take action anyway rather than wait for certainty that might never come.
He wraps up by inviting listeners to share what they’ve learned recently too, reinforcing that these three takeaways were just a few of many, and that the value of getting together as a community, sharing mistakes and wins alike, is what actually helps everyone move forward faster together.
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