Clay is an American inventor and serial entrepreneur who holds more than 250 patents worldwide and is the Founder & Chairman of Ember, a global consumer electronics and life sciences brand best known for the Ember Mug, Ember Baby Bottle, and Ember Cube, all three of which independently have been named TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions of the year. Ember was also recently named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Companies in the world.

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Guest Resources

Clay’s Instagram – Follow Clay on Instagram.

Clay’s Facebook – Follow Clay on Facebook.

Clay’s LinkedIn – Connect with Clay on LinkedIn.

Ember Life Sciences – Groundbreaking Technology Protecting Groundbreaking Medicines.

Ember – Check out Clay’s patented technology temperature control mugs and other products.

3 Value Bombs

1) Founder’s gut can be a very powerful thing.

2) The team is the No. 1 factor. Putting together an incredible powerhouse team is key.

3) Inch by inch life’s a cinch. Buy the yard, life’s hard. Take one bite at a time and keep chugging it forward.

Show Notes

**Click the time stamp to jump directly to that point in the episode.

Today’s Audio MASTERCLASS: Clay Alexander: Founder & Chairman of Ember (a global consumer electronics and life sciences brand)

[1:37] – Clay shares something that he believes about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

As a founder, when you are building something new, you just want to use your gut. Before the ember mug, he had this idea to create the perfect coffee drinking experience where you can take every single sip with the temperature you desire and he just knew that people would love it and coffee was on the rise when he created that invention. He had hundreds of people surrounding him and telling him if he is out of his mind when he wanted to sell a $100 per coffee cup which only costs $4.99. He had to use his founder instinct because there was no market research that will show how an electronically embeded mug will do. Founder’s gut can be a very powerful thing. A lot of times you have to build the prototype to test it to make sure your idea or what you’ve imagine is a good experience and once he did that it was game on.
Fast forward today, they’ve sold over 4 Million Ember mugs worldwide in 27 countries.

[4:37] – Clay, your story with Ember is quite unique, I heard it has something to do with ScrambledEggs? Share your build up to and the actual moment of your AH HA moment

He was eating scrambled eggs with his wife and his eggs get cold on his plate and he thought they are in the 21^st century and his dinner plate can’t keep his eggs in a decent eating temperature. So as an inventor , he started strapping remote controlled car batteries and temperature control circuitry to the diiner plate to his kitchen and created the world’s first self-warming dinner plate.
He remembered looking into his kitchen and thinking coffee mugs, soup bowls, schaffing dishes all the things that can benefit from embedding temperature control and that was his AH HA moment. He didn’t brought it to the market until he had patent protection.

[7:01] – Clay shares his philosophy of the balance of innovation and practical consideration.

When they create new products, like the mug, they started with the design, what is the feel, the contour, the ergonomics and he like to factor in the human factor the fact how humans will interact with the product.
Once they have the product design, they work really hard to miniaturized the electronics and get the electronics to fit in the form factor.

[8:55] – No. 1 lesson about bringing disruptive products to the market.

The team is the No. 1 factor. Putting together an incredible powerhouse team is key.
Creating a multi-million dollar or billion dollar business needs to have a great team. He has gotten good at team building over the years.
To get a job at Ember you got to go to 5 interviews, they are picky and hire people who are passionate, optimistic, driven, self-motivated and they not do micro-managing at Ember.
He gave an example. When he knew that he need to miniaturized electronics to fit into a household coffee mug drinking experience and he thought of those electronics engineers who can miniaturized electronics and he thought of the cellphone industry so he hired from Nokia, Apple, Motorolla, Nokia, Microsoft and they did a good job.
If you get the team write and the culture write ad you get that right early on its game over, you are going to succeed.

[11:52] – A timeout to thank our sponsors.

The Speaker Lab: Want to learn how to get booked and paid to speak? Go to EOFire.com/speaker to grab your spot for our LIVE training on May 28th, and learn how to get booked and paid to speak!
ThriveTime Show: Become the next success story, schedule a free consultation and request tickets to join Football Star, Tim Tebow & President Trump’s Son, Eric Trump at Clay Clark’s next business conference today at: ThrivetimeShow.com/eofire!

[14:28] – Clay talks about where is Ember in the next 5 years.

Last year they launched the first self-warming baby bottle, warming milk or formula directly to body temperature within 4 ½ minutes. That took them 4-5 years to develop for infant safety. From there they thought of using their temperature technology to help save lives in the healthcare industry. They had the CEO from Mayo Clinic on the board and meet with doctors and scientists to unearth what are the pain points around temperature control in the health industry and lo and behold there is always medicine. There is this uncertainty of how we move medicine around using cardboards, styrofoam and icepacks.
They thought of creating a reusable temperature controlled medicine shipping box where you can load your vaccine and life saving medicines to keep it in a perfectly right temperature all the way through the delivery to the patient and provide a digital certificate. They have created the world’s first self-refrigerated, cloud based shipping box called the Ember Cube.
It’s a remarkable invention because it get rid of the issue of hundred of pounds of waste in the healthcare industry due to temperature sensitive medicines due to spoilage related to temperature excursion. They created the Star Trek shipping box of the future – Ember Cube.

[19:19] – Clay gives his advice to listeners who have a bold ideas but are unsure of how to take that first step.

If you are creating something wholly new , the first thing you should do is market research.
Build your prototype.
If you are creating an invention, get it patented and file it.
Inch by inch life’s a cinch. Buy the yard, life’s hard. Take one bite at a time and keep chugging it forward.
Be resilient, get a ton of grit and be passionate at what you are doing and never ever give up.

[22:22] – Call to action.

Clay’s Instagram – Follow Clay on Instagram.
Clay’s Facebook – Follow Clay on Facebook.
Clay’s LinkedIn – Connect with Clay on LinkedIn.
Ember Life Sciences – Groundbreaking Technology Protecting Groundbreaking Medicines.
Ember – Check out Clay’s patented technology temperature control mugs and other products.

[23:54] – Thank you to our Sponsors!

The Speaker Lab: Want to learn how to get booked and paid to speak? Go to EOFire.com/speaker to grab your spot for our LIVE training on May 28th, and learn how to get booked and paid to speak!
ThriveTime Show: Become the next success story, schedule a free consultation and request tickets to join Football Star, Tim Tebow & President Trump’s Son, Eric Trump at Clay Clark’s next business conference today at: ThrivetimeShow.com/eofire!

Killer Resources!

1) The Common Path to Uncommon Success: JLD’s 1st traditionally published book! Over 3000 interviews with the world’s most successful Entrepreneurs compiled into a 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment!

2) Free Podcast Course: Learn from JLD how to create and launch your podcast!

3) Podcasters’ Paradise: The #1 podcasting community in the world!