Announcer: 0:00

D2, burlington, philadelphia. The following programming is sponsored by Marc J Bernstein. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of this station, its management or Beasley Media Group. Entrepreneur, author and financial consultant, Marc Bernstein helps high-performing entrepreneurial business owners create a vision for the future and follow through on their goals and intentions. And follow through on their goals and intentions. Ang Onorato is a business growth strategist who blends psychology and business together to create conscious leaders and business owners who impact the world. Founders Forum is a radio show podcast sharing the real stories behind entrepreneurship as founders discover more about themselves, while providing valuable lessons and some fun and entertainment for you. Now here's Marc and Ang.

Marc Bernstein: 0:46

Good morning America. How are you? How are you? Arlo, Ang and I were preparing the show this morning as I was walking Arlo, so she got to hear some of our walk, and it's a beautiful day today in Philadelphia, it's September. Last night I was up very late and I think Ang was too, watching the presidential debates. We won't get into the merits of it, but it was entertaining. I will say that. And, Ang, we're just coming back from a break where we weren't doing live shows and we were doing recorded shows, and so we're back today and I know you have a related topic to start out talking about, so let's have it.

Ang Onorato: 1:21

Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, it's good to see your face. I always miss. I miss us when we're not kind of uh, active a little bit. But yeah, you know it's summer holiday I miss your face too I know well good, it's still a little tan.

Ang Onorato: 1:33

I got second summer coming up in september. Um, you know we were chatting offline about holidays and vacation time and what it's like to disconnect or take that time off, and we talked to a lot of entrepreneurs that could kind of make their own schedules. But I wondered if you saw the report that came out at the beginning of the summer about studying 160 different countries and the average vacation time in each country, and the US came in second to last. The only country worse than us was Papua New Guinea. So even third world nations have more of a cultural, you know vacation break time and you know I think it says a lot. There's a lot of different directions we can take that. But curious, Marc, you know how was your vacation? Did you disconnect? Did you spend the time doing what you hope to do? And I'd love to hear Rob weigh in on this a little bit too, because I've got my own thoughts on it Well.

Marc Bernstein: 2:26

So my vacation was. You know it was a family vacation and certain members of my family like to chill on vacation and certain, like me, like to be active, and so I purposely structured I was the engineer of the vacation as part chill and part active, so it was a really nice vacation. It was really nice to be with my family and things like that. I've been thinking a lot about the definition I've been thinking about it for years actually of vacation, because I know people that go on vacation and they spend their mornings on the phone, in the afternoons with their families or loved ones or whatever. I was.

Marc Bernstein: 3:04

You know, I've talked a lot about Dan Sullivan and the strategic coach, which is a program for entrepreneurs, and Dan taught me and I like this concept. I don't always adhere to it. For many years I did, and I'm trying to get back to it actually which is you talk about focus days, free days and buffer days, the entrepreneurial time management system, because we need downtime to rejuvenate, and a free day is defined as 24 hours with no business at all, which is really hard for entrepreneurs to do, but once you get in the habit, it's like it's like a new life. So I would say that I was 90% successful in that on this past vacation, but but I haven't been as much. I've had a lot of trips that are sort of quasi time off and to me that's not really a good thing. So you know, but different people look at it different ways. Rob, how about your thoughts on time off?

Rob Kaimowitz: 4:01

Necessarily for your mental health, it's good to do and it's hard to do. On time off necessarily for your mental health, it's good to do and it's hard to do. Entrepreneurs, as you know, or have their whole heart into what they're doing, so it's hard for them to to tune out and uh, and to tune, to turn it out at any time. But uh, but it's important to do and uh, I agree with you, you gotta take um, I like to go off the grid for, like you said, 24 hours at a time, the times that I like to go do other things and turn off my phone and really has been. We were talking earlier about music and prioritizing time for yourself is the same as going to play music and shut everything else out and focus on something else while you're doing that. So, in effect, I take an hour long vacation every day just to get some mental health back, right, well, dan.

Marc Bernstein: 4:52

Sullivan would say that's a break, but it's not a free day, of course, because you're still working those days. Ang, do you take true free days or do you work on your vacations? I would love to sit here and say I walk the walk and don't do that, no, I'm terrible at it, I'm more in.

Ang Onorato: 5:12

I'm saying it's one flaw in my own coaching business that I advise people in that one area I struggle with but I do do. What Rob mentioned is I do try to give myself like two hours in the morning before the sun comes up to just sort of it's really more morning routine, but I think it's a way to kind of get out of the mindset of the work and do you know other focused things just to kind of do that. But no, definitely, definitely an area of development. And, as that study says, on average I think we have like 14 days when the rest of the world, even third world nations, have like 27 to 30 days average holidays. So maybe we should all take a mental note.

Marc Bernstein: 5:47

Mental note Yep, yep. Thank you for that Good conversation. Let's get to the meat of our show today and introduce our guest, Rob. And is it Rob Kaimowitz, do you say, or Kaimowitz Kaimowitz? Either one is fine, Kaimowitz.

Marc Bernstein: 6:02

Okay, I may have mentioned to you I have a friend I grew up with who's also a musician. Rob's a musician, a drummer. I'm a bass player we could almost have a band, because I have a friend, Rob Heimowitz, who is a keyboard player, and it's your same name with an H, so that's why I wasn't sure. Anyway, Rob Heimowitz is the founder of Nexteon Technologies, which brought optimization, route optimization services to commercial airlines. Think of it and he explained it to me as Waze for airplanes, and I'm a big fan of Waze. For lots of reasons we could talk about another time.

Marc Bernstein: 6:36

Prior to founding Nextion, Rob has a 20-year Wall Street career, first as the number one analyst in commercial space and satellites, then as a hedge fund manager and founder of Bullpath Capital Management. His Wall Street career ended when he was diagnosed with chronic untreated Lyme disease and I'm sure we will talk about that as part of his story. So welcome Rob. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Let's start at the beginning, you live in Connecticut. Is that where you grew up and where are you where? Where are you originally from?

Rob Kaimowitz: 7:09

I'm originally from scotch plains, new jersey, which is exit 135 on the parkway and we know well, yeah, and the jersey girl, all about one exit and exactly and I was in the marching band in high school, which was terrific and really it was a nice upbringing in New Jersey. But I left New Jersey when I went to college in New York at Syracuse, and really haven't been back since.

Marc Bernstein: 7:42

To be honest, I've been living in New York for by the way we didn't talk about about that, but I was marching band two trombone player at before bass guitar trombone.

Rob Kaimowitz: 7:51

So anyway, continue yeah, bass and trombone are basically the same baseline. Uh, yep, I, I started next to y'all about living in connecticut. Uh, you mentioned earlier that I, uh I gave up my Wall Street career.

Rob Kaimowitz: 8:07

Throughout the time I was on Wall Street, we lived in Manhattan and then when I got sick and we couldn't afford to live in Manhattan any longer and we moved to Philadelphia and it was in Philadelphia that I started Nexteon on and then, after six or seven years of that I moved to, I moved, had some home problems through COVID and that which we could talk about We'll talk about Lyme disease in a few minutes and I moved to West the Westchester Connecticut area to be close to a friend and and this is where I live now. So I take staycations.

Marc Bernstein: 8:48

Gotcha, I knew you had Philly connections. I didn't realize that's how the Philly connection came about. So let's talk briefly about your career on Wall Street and what led you to doing what you're doing today.

Rob Kaimowitz: 9:01

So after I graduated college I struggled to find a career that really worked for me, and I was always an entrepreneur and I wanted to be on Wall Street. I found myself working for a guy named Ron Barron, barron Capital, which now has $50, $60 billion under management, a big mutual fund. When I went there, they only had $40 million under management and I was doing marketing for them, and when I left, by the way, two years later, they had 300 million under management. So I think that was a. That was a good first start, but I, while working about I wanted to learn how to be an analyst and I stumbled upon um and I begged him to do work on a company called american mobile satellite corporation and I did. I I did wrote up, which is now bankrupt. But I wrote up my first research report on american mobile satellite and just wrote it on my own, shopped it around, got a job as an analyst and a couple years later I found myself as the number one, ranked ii analyst in satellite and communications and I was beating guys at, you know the big brokerage firms like Merrill Lynch and so forth. So I knew I was onto something from there. I I sort of peeked out on let's call the sell side. As an analyst and banker, I did probably 20, 20 or 30 billions of dollars of investment banking deals. If you use serious this is on serious satellite in the car series exam. If you use Sirius, this is on Sirius satellite in the car, sirius XM or if you use Dish Network or use any of those satellite based technologies, I probably had something to do with it at the time and then I decided to take that to the next level and started a hedge fund.

Rob Kaimowitz: 10:47

After 9-11, I started that hedge fund and that grew to about a billion dollars in assets under management and really provided a nice lifestyle for us. As you can imagine, it was a really good performing hedge fund. So I'll give you a couple of technical terms. Our beta was low 0.5, which is half the market but our alpha was great, which is your performance above the market. So we had annualized alpha of north of 6% or 7%. So those are big numbers on a billion dollars in assets.

Rob Kaimowitz: 11:20

And then I got sick and had to wrap it up and five years on the beach of being sick with Lyme disease, I came up with this idea for Nexteon and the way that came about was when I started getting better from Lyme disease, I reached out to the CEO of a company called Viasat, who I did investment banking work and called Viasat who I did investment banking work and satellite coverage for when I was on Wall Street, and I spent a couple of days at their headquarters in Carlsbad, california, and met with the entire senior management team.

Rob Kaimowitz: 12:00

And Viasat provides the broadband internet capability to all the major commercial airlines. And from going through that whole experience with Biosat, I came up with the idea for Nexteon and started Nexteon, you know, then in late 2017. And we got it financed. We've raised $13 or $14 million in seed capital since then as a team and we are now the number one um Waze like product in the commercial, uh, airline industry and, um, it's a, we built it out of nothing, and so we're really excited and proud of what we've done and, uh, I hope that answers your question and I hope that answers your question.

Marc Bernstein: 12:50

Does that answer your question? Absolutely? It absolutely helps us get there. Ang, I think you had a question right.

Ang Onorato: 12:55

Yeah, no, I was just kind of curious about you know you talked about kind of being on the beach there for those five years and in some ways you know that's not something that we would ever want to see in our lives or our entrepreneurial journey. But I'm kind of curious for you. What, what do you think? Do you think being still let's say right recovering Do you think that allowed in some way your creativity to be sparked when you were physically not as mobile and doing all the things that you used to?

Rob Kaimowitz: 13:25

Well, you know, that's an interesting question. The I would say it had a different effect. It's depressing. It's not like I wanted to be on the beach, it's not like I wanted to be on the couch and sick and and really sick and depressed it was. If I could have done something else, I could have done something else, I would have done something else, but that wasn't the case and instead it was a different type of self-reflection than creativity. It was more trying to understand who I am, what I'm good at, what I'm not good at, and being comfortable with that. And I think that it was a learning experience. From that perspective, I think I came out of it as a nicer person. I can't explain, but you know, when you're number one analyst on Wall Street and then they have a big hedge fund, people treat you differently than they treat you when you had no money. And that got to my head and I would say now that I'm a different person from that perspective, from going through that experience.

Rob Kaimowitz: 14:40

And then the creativity was always there. I always had a good strategic mind. I had no idea what I wanted to do when I grew up again and I just this idea popped into my head, you know, and it was you know. Just to add a little bit to the question you asked, when you're an analyst you rely on spreadsheets and calculations and doing a lot of math for your livelihood, and I couldn't even open a spreadsheet for six years without getting vertigo from looking at the spreadsheet.

Rob Kaimowitz: 15:17

And then the very first spreadsheet I was ever able to do in six years was the night that I went out to visit Viasat and came up with this idea, and that night I wrote the biggest spreadsheet I had ever written, and I gathered in one night all the information about jet fuel consumption globally for the past 20 years, built a giant table, wanted to do the math on what 1% savings look like, 2% savings, math on what one percent savings looked like, two percent savings looked like five percent savings looked like, and that became the end game for nextion that night. And so I hope that answers your question. But it wasn't creativity, it was more self-reflection that you go through when you can't do anything but feel sorry for yourself on the couch listen, believe it or not, it's break time because we have.

Marc Bernstein: 16:06

You know, time flies when you're having fun. I do want to mention, because rob mentioned, his experience with lime, and it wasn't pleasant and it was a very difficult time in his life. As a result, he's become an ambassador for the global lime alliance, which we'll get to talk about a little bit after the break, as well as hearing more about nextion and and his um and his business is entrepreneur and his newest project. So with that, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.

Announcer: 16:32

It started with joint pain and muscle spasms, and then the migraines that you never had before leave you crumpled up, moaning in a fetal position. Fatigue, vomiting become a daily grinding routine that leaves you bedridden. Rainfog, leaves you unable to think about anything but your pain. Anxiety, depression, isolation are now your only companions. Countless doctors tests, pills later, nothing has changed. They're dumbfounded. You're still sick. Maybe it's all in your head, they tell you. Well, it's not, it's chronic. In your head, they tell you Well, it's not, it's chronic Lyme disease. Lyme disease infects half a million Americans every year, and once it's chronic, there is no cure. We're the Global Lyme Alliance. We have answers, we have hope, we have help. Go to GLA. org to find out how you can help yourself and your family welcome.

Marc Bernstein: 17:39

Arlo is my dog, so we're coming back from the break we're just talking about today. It's interesting because we we're doing this all remote today, which we don't always do, and so there's a little confusion. We're in the middle of the show. Of course, lots of people are having this. You know, work-life balance. We're talking about vacations and things like that. So my wife happened to leave towards the beginning of the show and the HVAC guys that were supposed to be here yesterday to replace our units happened to come in the middle of our show. So, you know, we're just being transparent. That's why conversation is going on.

Marc Bernstein: 18:12

Anyway, rob, so obviously you've had to overcome diversity and had challenges in building Nexteon technologies, and obviously obvious to me, too, is that you have strengths that you've used to overcome those. Do you want to talk a little bit about? You know, the two biggest challenges, I think, were obviously the Lyme disease and then also COVID, because you started the business in 2018. So do you want to address any of those challenges and how you, what you, what you use, what's within you that helped you overcome those challenges? Well, thank you.

Rob Kaimowitz: 18:44

I would say to separate what you just asked me to sort of two parts lime affected me personally. Covid affected our business, so they were a little different in how they affected us. So let me do the second one first, because I'd like to get into the line discussion a little bit afterward. Covid we started next year on a 2018. And then we got.

Rob Kaimowitz: 19:11

Covid wasn't the only problem we had. We had a government shutdown, if you recall, around 2019 or something, and that was the exact time that we had our application into NASA for some of the core technology. That set us back another nine, 10, 12 months. It took us a year and a half to get a simple license from NASA. That bureaucracy and that was the first difficult period that Nexion had to make it through. A year and a half with nothing waiting around for a startup is a death sentence for most startups, but we were able to continue to go in and that's a credit to our team. And then COVID hit and that set us back another. I mean the airline industry just dissolved, so airlines were more worried about whether they're going to stay in business than saving 1% on jet fuel while they're in the air, and so that set us back another couple of years where we were able to continue to push strategy forward and, quite frankly, a lot of the strategy that I worked on during that time period is not something that we're able to use at Nextion. So that's what I'm hoping to do in my next act, which we could talk about.

Rob Kaimowitz: 20:33

But I wanted to circle back to the question about Lyme, if that's okay now. Sure, so the biggest challenge in my life was dealing with the Lyme disease and the thing about Lyme disease that people don't really understand, and for me it wasn't like I just got a tick bite and all of a sudden I had Lyme disease. I was diagnosed later in life with having untreated chronic Lyme disease. So something along the lines of me getting a tick bite when I was at camp as a child, which I don't remember. You don't always get the bullseye target, you don't always have that. It might've happened when I was at camp. I never even knew about it, but I had symptoms going back to elementary school. And then, with the big market crash and everything that happened, and then, with the big market crash and everything that happened, those types of anxieties helped to make things worse. In your body, lyme disease breaks the blood-brain barrier and causes brain inflammation. A study was done by Columbia University in 2021 that compared suicide rates of people with Lyme versus people without Lyme at twice the level. Suicide rates for Lyme patients are twice the level and the biggest reason for suicide rates and for people not getting better in their Lyme disease is because of ignorance, stigmas and misconceptions.

Rob Kaimowitz: 22:05

I was accused of being lazy when I was sick. I was told about I was. This is gaslighting. It's medical gaslighting, and the most difficult period I went through was the period of being medically gaslighted by the people around me who didn't know better, and I only started really getting better and thriving when I left that environment and moved to you know, the Westchester, connecticut area, out of that environment and was able to heal and get better. Now I'm thriving, and so Lyme disease is insipid.

Rob Kaimowitz: 22:41

It's terrible, and the biggest problem with Lyme disease that people don't recognize is the mental health strain that it causes because, because of what it does. So I had to use alternative medicines to to get better, and I'm one of the few people that were able to get better and that's why I decided to become an ambassador for the global line alliance and, quite frankly, I really want to thank you for this opportunity, because this is my first time publicly, publicly speaking as a global uh ambassador, as an ambassador for global lime alliance, so uh and I coordinated this with, as you can see from the email chain, so I'm really, really happy for this opportunity and we will continue to do that.

Marc Bernstein: 23:30

Well, we appreciate you sharing that and, by the way, I'm sure I'm gonna be calling you because I know many people affected by Lyme and who have struggled with all kinds of therapies and all that kind of thing. So it would be great to have that resource. So people should check that. If you know anybody that has Lyme, look for the Global Lyme Alliance as a resource. And especially, it sounds like dealing with the side effects, if you will, of Lyme, which should be. You know the mental, emotional and psychological effects of it as well.

Rob Kaimowitz: 24:00

If I could just say one more thing then we can move on to the next topic Is that, like I was saying before, the biggest hurdle for people with Lyme disease to overcome is the misconception around them. People think that it's a controversial diagnosis for some reason, that you could just get over it with a course of antibiotics, and none of that is true. I was accused of faking my symptoms, literally. One of my family members said to me it's just a course of antibiotics, you're effectively faking it and I didn't. Terrible. And so I would say to anybody that's affected if you can hear this, we're going to distribute the podcast on the Global Lyme Alliance. It's going to distribute the podcast for us too, so we get a broader exposure. But if you suffer from Lyme disease and you have people around you that don't believe in you, that don't support you, go to Global Lyme Alliance, educate them. Call me, I'll help you. I'm not even kidding. So if you suffer like this, if you've had this problem it's devastating. You got to get.

Marc Bernstein: 25:14

You got to get educated or get out, and that's what I would say we believe it or not, we have three minutes left and we're live on the radio, so we have a time schedule. I want to ask you a couple quick questions and if we have time, we'll talk about the future afterwards. We may not Rob. A question that you wanted to be asked is if you could speak to your younger self, what advice would you give you? You've learned a lot. What are your thoughts?

Rob Kaimowitz: 25:42

Well, you know entrepreneurs, a lot of entrepreneurs, but, speaking for myself, I've been an entrepreneur my whole life, but I would say a lot of what, talking about the psychology, a lot of what drove my ambition was my own insecurities, and I really prioritized my business and making it more than I prioritize my personal relationships. And one of the and now, at my age, I'm really trying to focus on my personal relationships because it does bring more happiness than money, and so that's the, that's the would be the message that your personal relationships bring more happiness to you than money does.

Marc Bernstein: 26:25

That would be the message that personal relationships bring more happiness to you than money does. That's a great message for everybody and for our listeners especially. I have another quick one and we'll see if we have time for anything else after that, but what is your favorite song?

Rob Kaimowitz: 26:37

It's an interesting one, as we were talking before the show drummer and Ringo Starr was a hero of mine from early on, so it don't come easy. You got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues, and I paid my dues.

Marc Bernstein: 26:55

And I sang the blues, so it has a lot of meaning in your life as well.

Rob Kaimowitz: 27:00

Yes, during that time where I was sick and trying to get better, this is one of the songs that I played. It every day, picked up my drumsticks and played along with it. Uh and um, and that really helped me get better. And uh and it the words about your troubles, putting your troubles behind you and focusing on the future, and is uh really meant something to me at the time so we maybe have a half a minute your three-year vision and as few words as you can say it.

Rob Kaimowitz: 27:32

Well, uh, I think there's an opportunity, a continued opportunity in uh space technology to improve life here on earth, uh, particularly as the weather changes and there's becoming more and more events like that, and this is one of the things when, in aviation, of course, you need to know what's going on with the weather. But I think there's a great opportunity to do something with space technology in the future to improve life on Earth.

Marc Bernstein: 28:10

Excellent, we got to run. Thanks so much for being here, rob. Great story. We've covered a lot of ground today and maybe one future to cover more ground in the future. And thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week on Founders Forum.