#189 How This Radiologist Became an Inventor of Over $400 Million Worth of Products

Hey, everyone.

Hope you've had another great week. This week is going to be an interview I know you're going to love. Many of us have thought of an idea. How many of us have not followed through only to find that invention later on and think, ah, I should have done it. I should have followed through. I would have made a lot of money or I would have made a big difference, or this kind of thing. Well, there's one physician I want you to meet. His name is Dr. Richard Chesbrough. He's a physician inventor. He's a retired radiologist with over 30 patents and the lifetime amount of his product sales from the things he's invented is over 450 million. It's pretty amazing. He's a husband to an amazing wife and three children and several grandchildren. You're going to enjoy this interview. He's a great person and he's going to tell you how to make it happen if that's something that you want to follow in terms of his footsteps. So enjoy. Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast where we talk about creating your ideal life through multiple streams of income. If you enjoy hearing about this stuff, make sure to hit subscribe. Now, let's get on with the show. Rick, how you doing?

I'm good, Peter, how are you?

I'm super excited to talk to you. I think that most physicians, at some point, at least a bunch of them, have thought that there's a better way to do something or I wish something was there. Now you're a great example of somebody who's not just thought about that but was able to do something with that. I just want to make sure that I have it all right. Do I get those numbers right? Did you have 30 patents and product sales of over 450 million? Does that seem accurate?

Yes, some of my big inventions were about 20 years ago and they continue to sell well around the world, generating revenues of over 25 million a year. Wow.

I mean, that's fantastic. I mean, you're retired now, so what are you doing today?

Yeah, so I retired about. Oh, gosh, six. No, I'm sorry, eight years ago, age 57. And I stopped doing clinical radiology and was consulting for a couple of companies doing medical legal reviews and really became a full time inventor.

That's so cool. I mean, let's talk about how this all started because I think for a lot of people, again, this whole journey of being, becoming a physician inventor is fascinating. Was this always something that was part of your story early on? I mean, I don't know when that first invention happened for you, but did you always think that you were going to go down this path?

No, I did not. It definitely evolved. I would say around the end of the late 90s. I was in the shower one morning, trying to be quiet because my wife was still sleeping. And I bumped into the shower caddy, you know, with the holds, the soap, and the shampoos. And the whole thing came. Came falling down off of the. Off the shower nozzle, you know, that it hangs from. And I remember thinking that was really stupid. Why. Why weren't there suction cups or something to hold this thing in place? And that got me launched into inventions. I actually patented a suction cup with 20 claims allowed. In about 1998. I spent $20,000. And then I went out to see if anybody wanted my suction cup fastener that would hold a shower caddy in place and it would never fall off. And I pitched it all over the Midwest. I was living in Michigan, driving all around Michigan and Ohio to different factories that made plastic products, and nobody was interested. So $20,000 later, the Newtons, these things that defied gravity, had a. It was. I folded it up. It made no money. But I learned not to spend $20,000 on a patent and then try and go find a market. So, fast forward a few years later, I am doing breast imaging at one of the big hospitals in Michigan, and I'm one of the first guys doing these new types of biopsies that had come out in the late 1990s, early 2000s. What happened was a shift in radiology and women's health. Women in the past that had a mass or calcifications on a mammogram, they would go see a surgeon who would do an excisional biopsy. That was the standard of care. And what happened in the late 1990s was radiologists said, wait a minute, we're the ones finding these things on a mammogram. Why aren't we doing the biopsies with special needles? Most of them turn out to be benign anyway, and the patient doesn't even need to see a surgeon for a benign fibroadenoma. So that's what happened. We started doing the biopsies as radiologists. Surgeons didn't like it, but the patients loved it. But some of the things we went after were very small, and we needed to be able to leave a clip behind to mark the site of the biopsy. Kind of like the old fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel with their breadcrumbs to mark the trail. Sometimes you have to leave something behind to show where you were. And so I came up with one of the first easy to use. You know, peel it open, take out a sterile device, undo a safety, and put in a clip in about five to 10 seconds, as opposed to taking five to 10 minutes to an embolization coil down a spinal needle. That was miserable. And that Ultra clip became a big seller. And that was one of my first medical inventions and got me on that path to inventing.

Well, let me stop you there, because how did you know? Okay, so you had an idea, maybe, okay, this could be done a better way. Like what was the next step for you?

Right. Well, I learned from that first suction cup, you know, not to go out and get a patent. That was a good way to lose a lot of money. So what I did is I realized I was having this problem of trying to be able to leave a clip behind. So my first thought was to go talk to colleagues at other hospitals. Everybody was having the same problem. So then I knew that there was at least there was a problem that had been identified that was pretty universal. And that is step one of any good invention is solving a problem, scratching your own itch, as we say in the invention field. And if you're having the problem, that's great, but if you, all your colleagues are having the same problem, that's even better because now you're, you may be onto something. So then I also learned from my early experience that under United States patent and trademark law, you can apply for what's called a provisional patent. You can write up your invention, you can send it in to the patent and trademark office, you pay 100. It used to be $100, I think it's $150 now. And for one year you can put patent pending on your invention. And at the end of the one year, if you don't apply for the formal patent, which gets expensive if you don't apply, then the whole thing, you know, becomes moot, it goes away. But it does give you one year lead time before you have to apply for a formal patent, a non provisional. And during that time, you can go around and pitch your ideal to companies and if they like it, you can get a deal done without having to spend all the money getting the patent. So that, that's what I learned and that's what I would recommend to indie inventories, physicians. And you and I talked a little bit the other day. Peter. Physicians know what problems they're having. They can talk to Colleagues, they can find recurring problems that need solutions because they're on the front line. They know the types of things that they need to do their job. And that's a great place to be an inventor. Just open your mind, try and come up with solutions. And when you come up with something, then you know, write it up, send it into the patent office with $150 and you've got something that's patent pending and then go out and pitch it to companies in the space that are selling similar things but not quite the same. And you know, you might be able to get an actual licensing deal done.

All right, so what did you do? You just looked up these companies and just gave them a cold call and just asked, look and said, hey, I have an invention, you know, potentially here. And just ask for the right person to talk to. Is it just that easy or is there maybe something else that you'd have to do before you get there?

Well, I think as a physician, you know, people, there is a certain instant credibility when you have an MD or a DO after your name. So people do give you some credit for, for having a brain because you got through medical school. So they're pretty nice to you. You do want to talk to the vice president or somebody in business development and you tell them you've got a great idea that solves a recurring problem for physicians. You've got a provisional patent, you know, your patent pending. There's a, there's a nice market. This is I think, what it will sell for. And you know that by doing your research. So if you're making a product, whatever it is, try and find similar things that would be competitors, find those companies that are making them. If somebody's already doing exactly what you're doing, then you're done. There's no point in pursuing it. But if you have something that's similar but different, by looking at the competition, you can get an idea of what this thing should sell for. Who's out there making similar products. I never had any luck approaching the big giant companies, you know, Boston Scientific and Medtronic. That was no good. But the small and mid sized medical device companies are hungry for products. They're trying to become a big. So that's where you're going to get the most interest. The small and mid sized companies, tell them you've got an idea, get a non disclosure agreement and we can talk about that in a minute. But the law, business law covering non disclosure agreements is different than infringement law regarding patents. They're different fields of law. But you can get both. You can have a provisional patent for $150. You can write up your own NDA, right? Non disclosure agreement. I'd be happy to send copies of some to anybody interested. And now you're, you are protected by business law and patent law, at least patent law for one year. That company can't rip you off. They can't take your idea and look at it from their standpoint. In the case of Ultra Clip, I went to a small company in Michigan. This was after Pitching it to 20 or 25 companies, I found a small company in Michigan. They were doing $2 million a year, but they were selling products to radiology departments around the country. They were selling wire localization wires. They were selling little biopsy units for breast biopsy, but nobody had a clip. But he was selling. That company was selling to the very same customers that my clip would be sold to. So they already had distribution, they already had marketing, they were already selling products to the same customers that I would be selling to. So the added cost for them to add a new product to their product line is minimal. I mean, there's the cost of developing the device and that that is significant. I don't mean to minimize that. But they didn't have to develop a whole new distribution channel. They didn't have to figure out how they were going to market it. They were already doing that for other products to the same customer base. So that's my advice to physicians when you get to that point. And the other thing I would say is that, you know, in this type of inventing is a great side hustle for physicians. I had a full time job as an academic radiologist. I had a wife, three kids, house payments, car payments. I couldn't quit to go start a company, but I could come up with ideas and license them and keep my day job and work with the company. And it took about a year to get, you know, some of these products up and running. Some of them didn't do very well. You know, most of my products had a little bit of a life and then they kind of petered away. A couple of them took off and became big hits, you know, and you only need to hit on one of them. But this is something that any physician can do. Yeah, and it's certainly something that allows you to be creative but keep your day job and don't, you know, you don't have to risk losing your house.

I mean, for people that are interested and they think about this, I mean, I hear about inventions all the time and we all kind of hear the concept at least like, oh, you can hit it big with it. But what do most of these things look like in terms of, you know, for the physician, for the inventor, like in terms of like financial incentives and things like that. Like just ballpark, like what does that look like for someone and why would it be worth it?

Sure. Right. Well, so what I'm proposing is Rick's low cost way of licensing. There are expensive ways to do it, but you don't have to do that. Keep in mind, about 95% of patents that are issued never make enough money to pay for the cost of the patent. You know, 95% of them don't make any money. So you know, the odds are difficult. That's why it's important to keep your costs down, at least until you know you really have something. And so what I would say is come up with an idea, do your own research. It's pretty easy today to do a Google search. So you've got an idea for a new widget. So go on and spend, you know, five or 10 hours on Google and the US Patent Trademark Office has a whole search engine and see if anybody's already done it. A lot of times, probably most of the time the idea you come up with has already been done. Somebody's already thought of it. But if you come up with something that's really new, do your Google search. You can do that yourself and then do a little thinking about simpler devices are out there. If you had this thing made, what could it sell for? What would be a reasonable price that people would pay based on other similar products? What companies are out there in that space? You know, if you're in ob GYN and they have a whole set of instruments, there's probably, probably a whole bunch of companies that make products that sell to, you know, gynecology departments around the country. I don't know, I'm just making that up. And I'm sure there are again, the really giant companies. Forget about it, they're not going to talk to you. In fact, the giant companies these days, they don't really innovate. The big giant device companies, they grow by acquiring the small and the mid sized companies. So come up with your idea. Find small and mid sized companies making products in that space. Write it up. How big of a market is this? Is this a thousand patients a year? Okay, probably not going to be a big seller. Is it 100,000 patients? A million patients? Is this a common problem that you're solving or something that's Rare, you can get a sense of how big the market might be. Nobody's going to hold you to the numbers, but at least do your own analysis. Do your own Google search, spend some time, put some thought into it. Find an artist or somebody to sketch out a diagram if you can. It doesn't have to be beautiful. Apply for your provisional patent, get your non disclosure agreement and then write to companies. Write to in 20 companies, send them a letter, an email, pick up the phone, find out who's in charge of new product development. Does that company take outside submissions? You're a physician in the space and you have an idea that you know would be very popular. A lot of companies, particularly small and mid sized companies, are going to say we'd like to hear about it. And you say fine, sign this non disclosure agreement and I'll be happy to send you the details. And if you can do a zoom call or a face to face meeting, great. After you've got your signed nondisclosure agreement and then you go into the meeting with patent pending assigned NDA and you can be free to share all of the details. And it's a numbers game. You might have to pitch it to 20 or 30 companies, but if it's a good idea, one of them is probably going to be interested.

So something hits after all this. First of all, it's like a masterclass in inventing. I hope people really appreciate the knowledge that's here. But if one of these things hits, how can that impact a physician's life from, I guess from an income perspective like what does that look like?

Well, it's all over the map as you can imagine. There is, you know, the quality of the idea, you know, the timing. There is some luck involved. You know, are you, are you inventing in a space that's already been around for a long time or are you inventing in a, in a new area that hasn't been done? Right now everyone's talking about AI, right. Artificial intelligence. And there's probably a little bit of hype right now, but any invention in AI is going to have everyone's interest, right. Because it's brand new. But so I think it's hard to put numbers on it. But I can tell you from my personal experience, yeah. Having inventions that I licensed and I argued and got a 7% royalty. So that means if a product sold for $100, I got a $7 royalty. And that's for the life of the patents, including any improvements. So that can be 20 years or more depending on how often it gets improved. And, you know, that allowed me to retire a little bit early, you know, buy a big house overlooking the ocean and foot Chris Craft. And, you know, you can, you can have some spending money, have some fun with it, but most inventions aren't going to do that well. But even if it even, you know, an average invention could earn a physician, you know, 10, 20, $30,000 a year in royalties for at least 20 years, and it will get you started. Most inventors don't just have one idea. You know, having talked to you, Peter, you know, you've got a new idea every other week. Most inventors are like that. You just, it's a, it's a mindset where you're looking at problems and instead of complaining about the problem, the inventor is thinking, okay, it's a problem. How do I solve it? And that's the mindset of an inventor, rather than just pissing and moaning and being upset. And it's funny because when I tell people that I'm an inventor, some people kind of, you know, give you that wink and a nod and kind of think you're half crazy. But also half the people say, you know, I had a good idea once, and I haven't met too many people that haven't had at least one idea for an invention. And the difference is that most people don't do anything with it. And what I'm saying today on your program is, you know, you can do that, but if you, if you really have a good idea, it's not that hard to talk to your friends. Don't worry about somebody ripping it off, because frankly, the idea is the easy part. The hard part is the execution. And that's where licensing comes in, because you have a partner that helps you execute. And you may consult with them, you know, for a year or two until your product gets launched. But they do a lot of the heavy lifting. So it is something that the average physician can do.

I mean, you mentioned the licensing percentages, we talked about your sales so people could do the math. But obviously it sounds like it can be very, it can be very lucrative and obviously life changing. And I know that's been for you. One of the things that actually fascinated me about your story is you mentioned on that first invention, not the first invention, the suction cups. You learned a lot from that. But when you actually had the clip, you said after Talking to about 20 or 25 different companies, I think most people on the journey, especially having gone through that first experience, I don't know if people make it to 20 or 25. What, what made you keep going at that time when you were getting all these no's and rejections in your face?

Right? Well, that, yeah, but I think as physicians we're used to dealing with frustration and you know, we all applied to medical school and some of us had more rejections than others, so. Or dating. Right. For most guys, you know, dating is a great exercise in rejection. So yeah, we learn how to deal with that. I think here's what helps though is if you're having this problem on a regular basis and you've come up with something that really would help you and you talk to five or 10 colleagues in your same specialty and they say, yeah, that would be a good idea. Yeah, I would probably use that. That is a good idea. If you get some feedback, then that gives you a little bit more a reason to persist. And as I say, if you reach out to, you know, just plan on reaching out to 20 companies and learn from that. Most of them are not going to be mean to you, they're not going to hang up on you or call you names. You're a physician and there will be some respect there. And most of the companies, particularly the small and mid sized companies, they are looking for new ideas. I mean they, you know, the engineers, the business types at, you know, at 100 person medical device company, they don't have any ideas of their own. They only get the ideas from people like you and me. So yeah, it's a pretty receptive audience. But be prepared to reach out to 20 companies, know what you're talking about, do your homework, figure out, you know, what a projected market might look like, what a sell for based on some of your research and give it a shot. The worst that can happen is they say no if the whole thing closes up, you know, you're out a little bit of time and maybe, maybe a couple hundred dollars, you know, you might pay for some sketches. As I say, you might have some professional drawings made. But today you can go on the Internet on a website like Fiverr, right? You can go on Fiverr and hire somebody over in Pakistan who's a graphic designer to make beautiful drawings and they'll do it for 100 bucks. So you can do a lot of invention ideas. You know, you can lose a few hundred dollars here and there and still be okay. But if one of them hits, you know, you're way ahead and you're going to learn from it and you're going to have other ideas. You're probably not going to be once you get the bug. You're not going to stop inventing.

What do you say to a doctor that says, well, that, that's, that's not me, that's somebody else can do that. And that worked because that worked for Rick because he's some other type of, you know, special type person. What's the potential there for other doctors and physicians?

Well, I think it is attainable and I think I mentioned you earlier, Peter. I, I did do some lectures at the Sikh conference which was in Chicago for a number of years. And that's a conference that is all about physicians having side businesses or non clinical careers I think is what they call it. And again, I enjoyed being a radiologist. I liked teaching, being at academic center, having residents and fellows and medical students. So I wasn't necessarily looking to get out of clinical medicine. I didn't hate it, but I did, I did realize that, you know, having, having some side businesses was not a bad way to go, you know, and, and I had interest and things that I wanted to develop. So I think anybody can do that. Rick's low cost way of licensing, anybody could do it. You keep your day job and just, you know, come up with ideas based on solving the problems that you're having. I think really anybody can do it.

I mean, I think physicians by nature, we're problem solvers. A lot of us are doing this on the fly. A lot of times we, you know, something's not there, we just fix and figure out another way. Many of us don't go back to the idea, unfortunately, but the way you make it sound, it sounds like, you know, all physicians have this potential, especially if you're coming across a problem again and again. And I absolutely love that. And I know that, you know, you have a giving heart and you want to help other physicians or you know, at least I know that you mentor some people and that sort of thing. Where's a great place if somebody hears a story, they want to reach out to you, find out more about you, connect with you. Where's a great place for people to do that? Maybe they can email you.

Yes. Yeah, you got, feel free to put my email up. But yeah. Rickchesbroughmail.com there's also a company that's pretty low cost, but they have a lot of free seminars called inventrite, inventright.com and I signed up for their course even though I did pretty much what they teach long before I took the course. But I was just interested to see what they were teaching. But yeah, for a few hundred dollars you can. You can take the course, or you can just listen to a bunch of the free webinars. But that's all about licensing, coming up with an idea, developing the idea, and then pitching it. All of them do require that you do some homework. And I think, you know, like a lot of things. Yeah, there's. There's a role for being persistent. You know, you have to. There's going to be good times and bad times. You're going to have to kind of weather the storm and be persistent. For example, pitching it to 20 companies, you know, it's. It's not much fun, but you learn with each pitch, you get more comfortable. Nobody's really going to be mean to you. They'll just, you know, if they turn you down, it may have nothing to do with your idea. It might be the fact that they have no bandwidth. This company, you know, doesn't have the ability to, you know, sell, you know, a glass of lemonade. They may be so backed up with other projects that they turn you down. Not because you'll have the capacity, so. But you learn. And as I say, a lot of these companies are looking for ideas, so they're out there. You just. It only takes one. You only have to find one.

I mean, I usually ask people for a big tip at the end of this or someone who follows in your footsteps. You mentioned persistence already. Is there anything other. Any other piece of advice that you want to leave with people?

Yes, I would say don't get bogged down in the whole patent, the whole patent thing. Everybody, when I talk to people about inventing, they say, oh, you know, I can't afford the cost of patents. I heard they're, you know, 10, 15, $20,000. And that's true. But there are ways to invent that. You can get around that. So don't let the cost of a pen be a reason not to pursue it. Rick's way of doing this, the patent attorneys will never tell you that because they make their money getting you a patent, but 95% of them aren't worth the paper they're written on. So there are other ways to do it. And I actually have a number of devices that are sold around the country right now. Path proof, for example, is a surgical specimen container for excisional biopsies. It's. I sell it, I licensed it. And it came back to me when the company decided to concentrate on cardiology products. And they want. They were getting out of radiology products. So I bought the molds back and started my own little medical device company continuing to sell these containers to a couple hundred hospitals around the country. It's very profitable. I made my wife taken over. She's the CEO and she gets a nice six figure income for working five hours a month. And I never, and I never path proof never got a patent. The product sells single use disposable means recurring sales every month to hundreds of hospitals on a device that never got patented. You don't have to have a patent. So that would be my advice. Don't let the whole patenting process throw you.

I mean, you're a great example of somebody who was able to take action on something that they were interested in, passionate about. You persisted through what it sounds like a lot of rejection. But ultimately you've been a great example of somebody who's successful at this. And I know that, you know, you love giving back to the physician community. I know that's why you're here today to talk to us. I really appreciate all you do. I've learned a lot. I'm sure people watching this have learned a lot too. And hopefully let's talk again soon. Enjoy the show. Let me know by dropping a review in the podcast app you're listening to us in. And if you haven't already, be sure to hit subscribe. Join thousands of physicians who are also on this journey to creating their ideal lives through multiple streams of income. Learn more at our website, passiveincomemd.com thanks again for allowing me to be a.

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