Clay Alexander: Founder & Chairman of Ember (a global consumer electronics and life sciences brand)

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, the only daily show interviewing the world's top entrepreneurs seven days a week. Today, we'll be talking about creating an amazing physical product. To drop these value bombs, I brought to Clay Alexander in the EO Fire Studios. Clay is an American inventor and serial entrepreneur who holds more than 250 patents worldwide and is the founder and chairman of Ember, a global consumer electronics and life sciences brand best known for the Ember mug, which by the way, I have one of, the Ember baby bottle, which by the way, my son Bo uses, and the Ember Cube, all three of which have independently been named Time Magazine's best inventions of the year.

0:41Ember was also recently named one of Time Magazine's most 100 influential companies in the world. In today's foundation, we will talk about physical products. We'll talk about the number one lesson about bringing disruptive products to the market, what Clay is most excited about currently when it comes to consumer technology landscape, and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Clay and ours. sponsors. Want to learn how to get booked and paid to speak? Great news. I've arranged direct access to my good friend, Graham Baldwin's proven speaking business system from the Speaker Lab.

1:14Go to eofire.com slash speaker to grab your spot for our live training on May 28th and learn how to get booked and paid to speak. Is now the time to grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and now featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Clay, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Well, thanks for having me, John.

1:58And what's up, Fire Nation? Happy to be on. And yeah, I was thinking a little bit about this question because I know you ask it to all of your guests. And I thought about, you know, gut instinct as a founder, right? When you're building something, especially wholly new, just wanting to use your gut. But, you know, when I created the Ember Mug, there was no market research available that could tell us, you know, how much a temperature controlled coffee mug would cost. Right. And so we you know, I had to I had to because I invented it. I created the category, you know, before the Ember Mug, it was literally just porcelain and ceramic and a coffee cup cost about what?

2:46$4.99. And so I had this idea to create your, you know, the perfect coffee drinking experience where you could take every single sip at the temperature that you desire. And I just knew that people would love it. And coffee was really on the rise when I had created that invention. And I had, John, I had hundreds of people surrounding me saying, Clay, are you out of your mind? You're never going to sell a hundred dollar coffee cup, right? Like coffee cups cost$4.99. And, and I honest to goodness had to use my founder instinct because there was no market research. We couldn't have hired McKinsey to scrub the market and see, how successful an electronically embedded coffee mug would do.

3:43So anyways, long story short, founder's gut, it can be a very, very powerful thing. A lot of times you have to build the prototype to test it to make sure that your kind of idea or what you've imagined actually is a good experience, right? And once I did that, I thought, oh no, this game on. And if you fast forward to today, we've sold over 4 million Ember mugs worldwide. And we're in over 27 countries. So it's those, those hundreds of people in the early days were dead wrong. You know, let me break in by saying, listen, founders, guts, fire nation, founders, guts and clay. My audience has heard this story, so I'll keep it really brief, but everybody told me, John, do not do a daily podcast.

4:29People will get bored. You'll get burned out. You won't find enough guests. That was 13 years ago. That was 4 ,600 episodes ago. So hundreds of people were wrong there as well. So Fire Nation, if you have a belief, if your gut is telling you something, maybe you listen to it. And Clay, you've already given a little insight into your story because it's quite unique with Ember. But I heard that your aha moment had something to do with scrambled eggs. So tell us that story. I was sitting there having scrambled eggs with my wife and, you know, my eggs get cold on my plate and my dinner plate, you know, I'm thinking, gosh, this is the 21st century.

5:10At a bare minimum, my dinner plate should be able to keep my eggs at a decent eating temperature. And so as an inventor, I was born an inventor. I came out of the womb putting gears and nuts and bolts together and playing with erector sets and robotics and such. And so I thought I remember looking down at my dinner plate and thinking, this is a 21st century at a bare minimum. My dinner plate should be able to keep my food at a decent eating temperature. Right. And so I started strapping remote control car batteries and temperature control circuitry to the dinner plates in my kitchen and created the world's first self-warming dinner plate.

5:49And I started to eat my meals off of it. And it was amazing. Right. Like have salmon or steak and, you know, 30 minutes into the meal, you cut into it and it's, you know, steam comes out and it's the perfect temperature, perfect flavor. And it was an amazing experience. And I remember looking around my kitchen and thinking, coffee mugs, soup bowls, chafing dishes, all the things that could benefit from embedding temperature control. and that's that was the kind of aha moment of how I started Ember and I I knew that I didn't want to bring it to market until I had patent protection right and so I started filing patents all over the world I'm a patent guy I invented the world's brightest LED light bulb I sold that to GE in 2009 I had GE in Sylvania in a bidding war and they were you know couldn't really get around my patents and they really loved the invention.

6:47So that was kind of one of my big early, early home runs. But, and that had to do John as well with thermal science, right? I was trying to wick the heat energy away from the back of the LED. And so that's why when my eggs got cold, I thought, I'm pretty sure I can solve this. And so that's how we created the Ember mug. I love it. And listen, I know a lot of people in our audience, they've considered, at least considered creating a physical product. So share with us your philosophy of the balance of innovation and practical considerations. Yeah, that's a great question. There's a lot of depth to it.

7:26When we create a new product, most of our products are household products, and now we're entering into healthcare. And we've created this really exciting shipping box that I'll share with you later but um you know when when when i created the ember mug we'll use that as an example we started with the design of the mug like how does it feel in your hands right what's the contour what's the ergonomics what's the the the the surface you know um how does it like what are we going to use soft touch is it going to be shiny and glossy uh what what are the what's the rim of the edge like when the coffee is kind of pouring across it is it coated with ceramic is it stainless steel and so we started with the design and we do that with all of our products john and i always like to say i like to factor in like the human factor right like like the fact that a you know human is going to interact with this product you know and so we start there And once we have the product designed and it looks fantastic, then we work really, really hard to miniaturize the electronics and get the electronics to fit inside the form factor of what we've created.

8:47it. Fire Nation, this is coming from some individual who has 250 patents worldwide. So let's be honest. I think he knows a thing or two about product design and the overall just philosophy and balance of that innovation, again, with practical considerations, because it has to be practical if it's going to be used by a human being. Now, Clay, what would you say is the number one lesson that you can share about bringing disruptive products to the market? I would say if I think about all the different factors involved in building a great company, I would say the team is number one, right? Like putting together an incredible powerhouse team.

9:30If I just tried to build Ember or build Radiance or any of my companies just like Clay the solo guy, boy, do you have a glass ceiling, right? And so if I'm trying to create a multi-million dollar or billion dollar business, you got to have a team. You got to have a great team. And so I've gotten really good at team building over the years. And to get a job at Ember John, you got to go through five interviews. And it is brutal, right? Like we're very, very picky. We hire people that are optimistic, driven, passionate, self-motivated. We don't do a lot of micromanaging at Ember. And so we create these great teams.

10:21And you've heard the expression teamwork to make the dream work. Well, that is 1 ,000 % true. So I would say building a great team has been what it's all about. Like, I'll give you an example. When I knew that I was going to need to miniaturize electronics to fit into a household coffee mug drinking experience, you know, I needed to get as tiny as possible. Well, okay, what are the best type of electronics engineers in the industry that can miniaturize electronics? Okay, how about the cell phone industry? So all of our original electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, you know, I hired from Motorola, Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, and they did a fantastic job miniaturizing the electronics to fit inside the Ember Mug.

11:15That's why the Ember Mug today is so compact, even though there's a boatload of technology packed in there. So I could go, you know, on and on about other areas of business that are really, really important. But I think if you get the team right, John, and you get that culture right, and you get that right early on, it's game over, lights out. Like you're going to succeed. Fire Nation, Clay dropping value bomb after value bomb. Again, this is a person who's been there, done that, and has the success to show. And we have so much more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

11:52Speaking from stage is one of the most impactful ways I've found to share my message and grow my business. But if you've never done it before, it can seem intimidating. How do you get booked and paid to speak if you've never done it before? Great question. And to answer it, I've arranged direct access to my good friend Grant Baldwin's proven speaking business system from the Speaker Lab. This is a live training where you'll learn the proven five-step process that led Grant to over 500 paid gigs. Current paid speaking opportunities you can pursue right now, plus the number one marketing tool that's working for his students in 2025.

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13:02See thousands of success stories and testimonials from real people just like you who Clay Clark has mentored and coached into prosperity at thrivetimeshow.com slash eofire. Clay's proven business coaching program is month to month and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Yes, it's month to month and it costs less money than hiring a minimum wage employee. Schedule your free personal 13-point assessment with Clay Clark himself today at Thrivetimeshow.com slash EOFire. Because Clay only takes on 160 clients and only allows 300 attendees to each business conference, you will interact with Clay directly.

13:37See thousands of real success stories and learn about attending the Thrivetimeshow two-day in-person workshop featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Become the next success story. Schedule a free consultation and request tickets to join football star Tim Tebow and president Trump's son, Eric Trump at Clay Clark's next business conference today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Clay, we're back and let's use a little sports analogy here because once you hit a home run, you don't just stop and call it a day. Like you continue to innovate.

14:11so talk to us about where ember is heading in the next five years oh another good question um we you know we started in the coffee and tea space right dominating that we last year we launched the world's first self-warming baby bottle oh by the way my son beau loves that thank you oh that's awesome john i'm happy to hear that yeah you know it warms milk or formula directly to body temperature within four and a half minutes. You can take it on the go. So really proud of that one. That one took us four to five years to develop infant safety and all that. That was a, that was a really heavy lift for us.

14:49So, um, you know, from there though, we thought, how can we use our temperature control technology to help save lives, right? Or enter the healthcare industry. And so we started taking meetings, you know, with the Mayo clinic, I had the CEO of the Mayo clinic on my board for a while. And, and, uh, we would go out there and meet with the doctors and scientists and you know you know our idea was to unearth what are the pain points around temperature control in the health care industry and lo and behold it was always medicine right like gosh clay we're getting you know you know millions of dollars of medicine delivered to our loading docs daily and sometimes the ice packs can be melted um you know we we don't know for sure if the medicine's still good you know and it's safe to inject in our patients and there's all this kind of uncertainty, John, around like how we move medicines around today.

15:37And what's crazy is the standard practice for moving hundreds of billions of dollars of medicine around is cardboard, styrofoam and ice packs. Wow. It's absolutely crazy. And hundreds of millions of pounds of waste are going into landfills each year because they're all single use packaging. Most of them are single-use packaging. And so we thought, what if we could create a reusable, temperature-controlled medicine shipping box? And you can load your vaccines, your life-saving medicines, all that stuff in it. It'll keep it perfectly at the right temperature, whether it's 5 Celsius, negative 60 Celsius, negative 20 Celsius.

16:22We have one that does 25 Celsius. We have different models. And it'll keep it the perfect temperature all the way through to the delivery to the patient and then provide a digital certificate showing the patient, hey, you know what, your medicine has been perfectly transported, you know, within its specified range of two to eight Celsius. So we've created the world's first self-refrigerated cloud-based shipping box. And it's called the Ember Cube. And it's a remarkable invention because, you know, we're getting rid of, like I said earlier, hundreds of millions of pounds of waste. There's this big issue in the healthcare industry.

17:03you may or may not believe this number, but$35 billion a year of spoilage of temperature sensitive medicines due to temperature excursions. $35 billion a year. That's vaccines that go over temp or under temp. That's biologics, insulin, cell and gene therapy,$35 billion a year. So we thought that's a pretty good thing to go after. Right. You know, from just from a humanitarian perspective and business perspective. So we've created this incredible box. I call it the Star Trek shipping box of the future. For those of you listening to this, like you can just, you know, Google Ember Cube and you'll see what it's all about.

17:51But one of the neatest things about it, John, is we had to create a way. How is this box going to return itself? Right. You know, we're going to put a paper shipping label in the box and have the customer have to, you know, tape it to the front of the box and pick up the phone and call UPS for a pickup. Well, we invented this idea of putting a screen on the front of the box, which prints its own shipping label digitally. And so when the box lands on your doorstep and you take the medicine out, all you do is close the lid, leave the box in your doorstep, walk away. the cell radio inside the ember cube goes up to the cloud automatically schedules a ups or fedex ground pickup come on okay then it flips the shipping label on the box on the screen of the box to the return shipping label unreal i mean fire nation this is what happens when you're dealing with genius so let's keep it going now clay let's be honest with with ourselves right now and our listeners right now?

18:49Because there are people that have bold ideas and not every bold idea should be acted upon, but let's be honest, fortune does favor the bold. So there's people that have bold ideas, but they're unsure of how to take that first step. What is your advice for them? If you're creating something wholly new, the first thing I would do is market research. Just poke around, make sure that like the industry you're going into and the product you know earlier on I said hey you know sometimes you have to use founder's gut but there's always going to be an industry right like I knew how many coffee mugs were sold each year that kind of thing so you'd want to start with that um if you're creating like an invention I'm a big patent guy I think it's a I I think it's one of the best things we have you know in in the world today is this patent system so even if you're just you know a moms and pops and come up with a great idea.

19:47You can file a patent. You can read a book that teaches you how to write the patent. You know, I used to co-write all my original patents with my patent attorney and learned a lot about all that. But I would say, you know, start with a little bit of research, build some prototypes, you know, file your first patent. Once you get it on file, You can start to share it publicly. There's so many steps, John, right? Like fundraising, for instance, that's a whole nother thing. Like for Ember, I've raised at this point over$150 million in equity financing and venture debt financing. And that's a lot, right?

20:27And that's a whole nother kind of skill set. But like everything, you want to bite it off. What's the expression? Inch by inch, life's a cinch. By the yard, life's hard. So you really want to just like take it one bite at a time. Right. And just kind of keep chugging forward. And the main thing I would say to like just just advice from, you know, founder to other founders is never give up. I can't tell you how many times, John, in the early days of my companies, you know, I have another business called Radiance, which is 25 years old and very successful. But in the early days, I mean, we almost ran out of money every couple of years, like completely ran out of money.

21:12And I was thinking, am I going to make it through this? How am I going to? And I was, you know, rubbing nickels together, as they say, you know. So I was raised poor and didn't really have a backup plan, you know, to call on. So I was just resilience. I would say grit, just having a ton of grit, right? And being really passionate about what you're doing and just never, ever give up. Fire Nation, I hope you are fired up with everything that Clay has been sharing. I mean, he is tackling huge problems and creating huge solutions. I always say, how can you create the number one solution for a real problem in a growing industry?

21:50If you can do those three things, you're going to win at some level. Now, Clay's winning at a massive level because he's tackling massive problems. And man, congratulations, Clay, in all that you've done. If Fire Nation wants to learn more about Ember, about you, what is your call to action for our listeners today? Let's see. You know, on social, I post some behind the scenes stuff. Just Clay, double underscore Alexander on Instagram, Facebook. I'm on LinkedIn. in. You can go to emberlifesciences.com or ember.com, learn about our story. There's lots of different interviews of me online and such.

22:30But none as good as this one. I'm not even, John. Honestly, you and I met a little while ago and I was so excited to do this show. I love your tenacity and I love your energy and I love what you're doing. And I continue to pump up entrepreneurs on a daily basis. Well, listen, I've been doing it for 13 years, brother. And it's thanks to people like you that I get to talk to that are doing amazing things. So it takes two. I appreciate you, my friends. And it's just been great to hear more of your story because Fire Nation, my audience, they know that they're the average of the five people they spend the most time with.

23:10And you've been hanging out with Clay and JLD today. So keep up the heat, Fire Nation. And for links to everything that we've been talking about, visit eofire.com. Just type Clay in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Clay, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value, your baby warming bottle with me. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks, John. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Clay for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, are you an entrepreneur on fire who's looking to share your message with the world?

23:43If yes, we are now accepting applications for EO Fire. If you want to learn more, visit eofire.com slash guest. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Want to learn how to get booked and paid to speak? Great news. I've arranged direct access to my good friend, Graham Baldwin's proven speaking business system from the Speaker Lab. Go to eofire.com slash speaker to grab your spot for our live training on May 28th and learn how to get booked and paid to speak. Is now the time to grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest rated business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and now featuring football star Tim Tebow and President Trump's son, Eric Trump at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire.

24:29Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire.

24:41Thank you.