[00:00:27] Jay: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast. My name is Jay Aigner. Today, I'm lucky enough to be joined by the founder and CEO of Two Rivers. Barbara Spitzer, not Spritzer. I got it right. Could you believe that? How are you Barbara?
[00:00:39] Barbara: I'm doing great, Jay. Thanks.
[00:00:42] Jay: you were going scuba diving tomorrow.
That sounds pretty fun. in a place that I think a lot of people would like to be.
How long are you going?
[00:00:50] Barbara: I'll be gone for 16 nights.
[00:00:53] Jay: Ooh.
[00:00:54] Barbara: nights on a boat with no internet whatsoever. Disconnected completely.
[00:00:58] Jay: Wow.
[00:00:59] Barbara: Yeah. Yeah.
Well, let's figure out how you got to the point where you could do something like that. where did you grow up and did that have an impact on you being an entrepreneur later in life? Yes. I'm an army brat, born in El Paso, Texas. my mom and dad were born and raised in San Antonio and we were the first ones in our whole family to leave Texas. And so, we traveled all over the world until I was about 12 years old when my dad retired at the Pentagon. And so I grew up in Northern Virginia, mostly.
and I went to grad school in New York, fell in love with the city. after grad school I got a job in D. C. where I was living. And met my ex husband, who was a New Yorker. So my first employer, Ernst Young, transferred me to New York in 1992. So, I just passed my 30 year anniversary of being a New Yorker.
[00:01:50] Jay: Wow.
[00:01:51] Barbara: yeah.
[00:01:52] Jay: Do you feel like a New Yorker? Do you feel like a,
like you fit in now? yeah,
[00:01:56] Barbara: more of a New Yorker than a Texan. nothing wrong with Texas, but, I'm absolutely a New Yorker. Through and through. Through and through. Yeah, but you know, growing up as a military brat, there were four of us, my brother and sister and I were all born one year apart and then my younger brother came three years later.
My parents were quite young, and you know, their army back then moved the whole family every six months to one year. My dad was in Vietnam and then my dad went to Korea after the war. And so he's gone a lot. So every time my dad went somewhere, they would send the family back to San Antonio. So we'd be near the parents.
So I think, that lifestyle gave me two things. resilience, which made me really cut out to be a consultant. And it gave me anxiety, you know, resilient. I can walk into any new school, you know, any new client environment and be fine. But the anxiety is all internal. You know, you walk into a new school, the kids write differently.
They think your accent sounds funny, you know, and that's hard on a kid. So, so I think it really, it's shaped, I'm not saying that it is why I chose consulting as a profession, I think I fell into that, but, I think it made me good at it because the anxiety has, a lot of positive attributes as well as some of the more well known negative ones.
[00:03:22] Jay: Yeah, it's just an interesting, dichotomy there between feeling comfortable and feeling uncomfortable. How does feeling comfortable, how do you get that part of you to win and come out and not turtle up and be the, you know, poster child for somebody with anxiety?
[00:03:37] Barbara: Yeah, right, yeah. Well, actually, the anxiety thing, I was diagnosed a couple of years ago, actually, at my, you know, I, took a leave of absence after my mother died and I decided, you know, go to therapy and just kind of get my head together because I exhausted myself in that journey of taking care of her and it was like, Oh, that explains so much, you know, explains a lot about like, Oh yeah, I remember I did that, you know, I probably shouldn't have said that, but I know where that was coming from, you know, so, so the positive side of all of that is, you know, I think I realized maybe 10 years ago, like I, every, everyone worries.
It's about a presentation. Everyone worries about a client meeting. If they say they don't worry, they're not telling the truth. I don't care how accomplished you are as a speaker or with your clients. The nerve set in, you know, so I kind of adopted a mantra of it's going to be over soon, you know, it isn't going to last forever and feeling the way I'm feeling, the nervousness is just a temporary thing.
And so with that, plus I prepare for everything. I am a great preparer and I believe in preparing. I'm a good way I can wing it, but those are never my best meetings or my best presentation. So over preparing or just being prepared and knowing that the feeling of anxiety is just a temporary thing.
It's going to pass.
[00:05:01] Jay: It's so funny you say that. I still get nervous.with client meetings that I've had people that have been clients for years, every time. especially if it's been good, right? You're like, is this
the time that it goes bad? I think you just can't get in your own head like that. And it's going to be over soon is a great way to put it.
I did notice, and it is interesting. I knew a couple, I grew up in Virginia,near
Williamsburg. But so a lot of my friends went to JMU.
yeah, I saw that, industrial and organizational psychology. What the hell is that?
[00:05:30] Barbara: yeah. Well, I wanted to be a clinical psychologist. I wanted to go to grad school and become a therapist. And, When I got out of undergrad, my mom said, you know, it's over. I'm not helping you pay for grad school. You got to go get an apartment. I just moved into a two, a one bedroom or two bedroom.
I don't have a bedroom for you. So I like, I thought I was going to go work at the NIH and do some research on some rats for a while and then go to grad school. I kind of had to get my act together and get a job. So I got a job and, it was a recession and I, was a receptionist at a law firm and then I got a job at a.
Believe it or not, a technology company that was building a software program, but it was, Apple computers were just coming out. I know I'm aging myself, but, so I said, okay, I love business. So I wanted to marry my love of psychology with business. So I went, I got into Columbia university. Got a degree in industrial or psychology.
What is it? It's psychology for business. businesses are made, businesses largest cost item are its people. You know, it's all about the knowledge work. And, you know, manufacturers obviously have a lot of heavy assets as do oil and gas companies and other types of industries, but they can't run.
Without their people. So IO psychology is about the people, labor relations, human resources, org design, culture, change management, talent management, everything. So I spent my entire career working at the intersection of people and strategy. Yeah,
[00:07:00] Jay: it sounds like two rivers, came together at the right, place. So, you worked at Accenture, you worked at a bunch of big places and did a bunch of things. Tell me, where did two rivers come from?
[00:07:12] Barbara: yeah. So I founded Two Rivers in 2015 and I was leaving Capgemini. I was a vice, a senior vice president there. I need a mental break. And this is where we're going to get to my first customer. So I founded it in 2015. My initials are BS. So I wasn't going to be BS consulting, even though I think that makes me
[00:07:32] Jay: That's a great, that's a great name, by the way. I love that. That's awesome.
[00:07:36] Barbara: Yeah, it allows me to, you know, kind of work my way through difficult problems where I may not know exactly what I'm talking about. But no, I wanted to name it something. I want to do deep dive consulting because I'm a total scuba diver. But everyone's like, that's stupid. That's consultant jargon. Okay.
So I was walking, I live in downtown New York. I was walking along the Hudson River, got to the New York Harbor where the East River and the Hudson Rivers come together. And I was thinking like, Look how powerful this harbor is. New York Harbor. It is the seat of global business. it's where So much of this country started with the Statue of Liberty.
So my, my, my thing is that people plus business equals performance. You can have all the best business assets, the best technology in the world, the best brand, but if you don't have the best people, you are not going to be uniquely differentiated. And so I said, Oh, two rivers. So two rivers partners, it's the confluence of the two rivers makes New York Harbor and the confluence of people in business.
Make for performance, and that's where it came from.
[00:08:39] Jay: I love that. So who was your first customer?
[00:08:43] Barbara: Yeah, so, when I left Capgemini, I, it was in 2014, I was, as I said, a little bit burned out. I was the only woman on the leadership team for almost six of the eight years I was there. And, it was a tough culture, to be honest. And so, I decided to go out on my own, and I don't know how I found this organization, but the National Organization on Disability.
was my first customer, N. O. D. N. O. D. Was founded by a gosh, I'm forgetting his name. He was a Dartmouth student, and he became a quadriplegic when he was swinging on a rope at his family lake house and became a quadriplegic. And he started this organization. That is all about helping people with disabilities get employed.
And so he amassed this group of Dartmouth colleagues, like the former emeritus, Chairman Emeritus of J. P. Morgan, Chairman Emeritus of Ogilvie, and So, it was a not for profit and I taught, I interviewed with them about coming in and helping them build a professional services capability so they can serve employers and help employers change their policies, their programs, their practices, their culture to be more disability inclusive because people with disabilities, they get screened out before they even get the interview because of AI systems.
I didn't want to go work for a not for profit. I was not ready for that, but they hired me as a consultant. So I worked for NOD for almost three years, 50 percent of my time. I was on a retainer. I worked for the president and the board and I helped them generate a revenue stream. from employers and that leads to my, the second reincarnation of two rivers.
But I, it did that. I had other clients. I, Levi's was one of my clients, Health First was a client and that was pretty much it over three years. I had three clients and, had people on my team and it was really fun until, Accenture came in and recruited me to come and run a project, a practice for them.
And I decided to go back in for a while.
[00:10:45] Jay: They ducked your head back in to the corporate world.
[00:10:49] Barbara: my best instincts, but I did.
[00:10:52] Jay: yeah, I, I did the same thing.
I had my own business and then, one of my clients was like, Hey, you should come be a chief executive officer for us or chief product development officer for us. And I left and now looking back, I was like, why did I mean, it's great.
It was a great time. Money was great. Everything's good. But, you know, that window of time could have been spent growing the business. So what did you learn coming? I'm assuming this story ends with you coming back into two rivers and you
leaving Accenture. So how did that happen? Do
[00:11:22] Barbara: to Accenture to run a large practice of the, we called it Talents and Organizations, all the people stuff for the resources industry sector, which is oil and gas, utilities, chemicals, and natural resources. So when I did that practice, and we reorganized, unfortunately, sadly, the CEO passed away in my first two weeks.
So a new CEO was named and she completely reorganized. So my job went away. So I took a global role, right? I ran a global HR transformation for several years. And then my last stint was to help build a board and CEO advisory practice, which is not anything Accenture had before. So I ran that practice for the Northeast, which is a 10 billion business.
well. It was a startup inside a 65 billion company and the economy, as you know, took a bit of a turn and Accenture in May announced 19, 000 layoffs, 800 managing directors.the building a startup, building a market, you know, you can imagine as a managing director, didn't have a lot of sales. So, you know, I figured I was going to be one of the ones that would be leaving.
And I was, and I. my hand. I was going to leave in February of 2024 when I vested in all my stock. And, I said, Hey, make me whole and I'll go. And that happened. And, in May I left Accenture happily. it was a, Accenture is a great company. I adore the company. It's got a great culture. It's going through tremendous change right now.
But I really, I wasn't sure about going back in because of My Capgemini experience, but I really wanted to do the job. I'm so happy I have Accenture on my resume, and that I got to do the things that I did there and I made many great friends. So I left Accenture. I immediately relaunched my business.
and I've been so busy. I haven't sent out one email. It's all word of mouth. These opportunities have come to me. And here's the thing, Jay, I'm doing purpose driven work. I'm. serving nonprofits, which I'm going to now change my website because I decided that's what I want to do. I don't want to help companies yet make more profit, implement more systems.
I want to help purpose driven organizations be better. And so I'm helping to do a board assessment for a global nonprofit. I'm doing a growth strategy for a U S nonprofit that deals in healthcare. So, yeah, I've kind of found my. I found my thing.
[00:13:56] Jay: you think it's always been your thing or do you think something along the way? Do you think being more financially? We'll just call it stable if we want to be, you know, you know, generic about it. But do you think, what changed, right? I mean, you wanted to, you want to build orgs and reorg and, you know, kind of make these changes in these big companies, but now it's turned a little bit towards more altruism and kind of like being somebody who helps deliver change.
what, or did something change or were you just not able to do that before?
[00:14:26] Barbara: Well, you know, I did not plan my career. I have a younger brother who would write on his calendar every day what outfit he was going to wear for the next, for the coming month. I did not plan my career. It just happened. You know, it flowed. And the exposure to NOD in my first round of Two Rivers, I really got the bug for nonprofit.
And then when I was in the board advisory service, I sort of pulled my head out of my client's operations and learned about governance. So I just recently received my NACD, National Association of Corporate Directors, boards, director certification, very hard test. and I decided that I wanted to do board service.
So. So, I went out and got myself on two non profits, which I joined in January. One of them is National Alliance on Mental Illness, NAMI, New York City. They give free mental health services. The other one is Rescue Me Leftover Cuisine. They're national, and they go, they pick up food, you know, go to a meeting, there's tons of food left over.
Guess what they do? They throw it in the garbage. So, Rescue Me Leftover Cuisine, RLC, goes and picks up the food and delivers it to a homeless shelter. Whoever needs food. So I'm on two boards. I'm gonna I'm probably going to say yes to another. I'm going to be the board chair for this thing called Restless Development.
It's a global entity. They train youth in leadership how to lead against the biggest problems that the young people are facing. So I'm likely going to be the chairman of the board in the U. S. For that nonprofit. So to answer your question, I have a Venn diagram of my life. I'm in Chapter three of my career.
Chapter one was starting. Chapter two was Building wealth, becoming a partner. Chapter three is this, my advisory work. I want to make enough money so I can go on exotic scuba diving trips, Indonesia and Cuba next year. So that's one, two is my philanthropy, my board work, my nonprofit. And three is I want, I'm looking for my first corporate or private board seat.
I want to ascend to the level of corporate governance. I believe all of my 35 years of consulting will allow me to really contribute. In a very positive way to board governance. So, three, three things in my Venn diagram. Two are true. The third is going to happen next year. And I have never been happier.
[00:16:53] Jay: How do you still run Two Rivers if you're the board and all these other things? I mean, I know it sounds like you're obviously very busy, but how do you make time for
[00:17:02] Barbara: lights on the main business?
yeah. So, I'm a very productive person. I can get a lot done in a little bit of time. But, I'm working on three clients right now with former Accenture colleagues who, Departed when I departed. So I've got some senior people, some junior people, so I have leverage, right? So for example, we just sold a gig and, I gave it, I am having two people do the work.
I took a small founder's fee for myself, but also my EA is helping them. So I don't have to have all, I don't have to do all the work myself, you know? And so I've amassed a group of people who. with me and you know, it's so funny. I'm not driven by the money. So for example, I've decided I'm going to take the purpose driven angle working for not for profits.
They're not going to pay zero tech, won't pay the Accenture rate, but they will probably won't even pay my independent solo rate. And that's okay. I just want enough money to put in the bank so that I can go travel. I have enough money to retire now if I want to. So it isn't about the money. It's about the work.
It's about. It's about building two rivers. I, it's about being busy and doing meaningful things. I think I have a lot to contribute to, non profits. And by the way, these are large non profits. They have a lot of assets, revenue,
and they run like businesses. So, you know, if I can help them be better, one is sustainability, one is health care, then So anyway, I have a leverage model.
I've got people working with me.
[00:18:37] Jay: Excellent. if you had to start Twin Rivers over again tomorrow,
[00:18:41] Barbara: Two rivers.
everyone says, no, you're not the only one.
[00:18:45] Jay: okay, alright, I don't know why, It was Spritzer and Twin Rivers, so I'll have to, try to remember, So Two Rivers, which by the way is a great name, I do love that,
I do love that name, what would you do? What would be step one?
If, you know, somebody's going out to start a, And it's tough because yours is based on your experience and based on
all these things that you've done, but you know, if you, if everything came crashing out, all your clients disappeared, you know, overnight, you had to restart. What would be step one to start over?
[00:19:11] Barbara: Yeah. Great question. By the way, I listened to your podcast and some of the people on there, they build things. Right. And, like, I don't know if I have the brain to start a technology company. You know, I feel in my mind that's harder. Cause you're right. I'm a professional service. It's knowledge work. It is my relationships.
So when I started Two Rivers, my brother has been a successful entrepreneur now for his whole career, practically. I went to visit him and I pulled out my notebook. I said, okay, Rob, tell me everything you did. So go to someone who you admire and is successful and have them do a data dump. You need a website.
You need a marketing plan. You need a brand. You need to know who you know and start calling them. You need to know what you're selling, what's your portfolio. He didn't say go do a market study. He didn't say write a business plan. You know, he said just do it. Get going, get moving and start calling everyone you knew.
So I hired someone to build my brand, my logo. I hired someone to build my website. This website now is the second iteration of that. And I was very fortunate, this NOD opportunity. The president loved me and said, Barbara, okay, I need half your time. And so I said, great. So I have 50 percent of my time.
So it's about relationship. And never be afraid to make the call. Tell people what you're doing. Tell them what you can do for them. And ask them for the work. If they don't have something for you now, they're going to have something for you later. So, you know, those are very simple things.
But like I say, I'm not building something that doesn't exist. I'm Barbara Spitzer. I'm selling. My relate, the relationship that I built over 35 years.
[00:20:59] Jay: Yeah, no, but I think that's a, it's a, they are the builders and the creators and I don't think I'm one of them. I feel like I want to be, but, I am similarly. Relationships and professional services or, you know, technical services, whatever you want to
call it. and I think the world needs both of those.
So I think, you know, they're lucky to have you. So, all right, well, I have one more question. And, you know, I'm going to take 2 things off the table here because,
non business related and non scuba diving related. If you do anything in the world you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be?
[00:21:35] Barbara: If I could do anything that I knew I wouldn't fail.
Wow. God. I have to think about that. I, I, That's such a hard question. Just because, You know, I, okay. I want to raise a lot of money for the causes that I care about. You know, I want to go talk to Bloomberg, Bill and Melinda Gates, Ford Foundation, wealthy people. And I want them to give me a lot of money so that we can train young people to be leaders.
Cause boy oh boy, I, my generation is leaving these individuals with a real. A lot of mess to clean up, you know, my grandparents didn't necessarily do it to me. So in the same way, but,I want to be really successful in raising money for great causes, like a lot of money. I want people to give organizations that I care about a lot of money.
I don't know if that's what you were going
[00:22:42] Jay: No, I like that. That's
[00:22:43] Barbara: but yeah, it terrifies me.
[00:22:46] Jay: very well Then that's a perfect answer because it's probably terrifying because of failure, right? So
[00:22:51] Barbara: Yeah,
[00:22:52] Jay: No, I think that's a I think that's a great answer and I rarely Disqualify them. So I mean, I think that's it's yours. It's your answer for what you would do if you knew you couldn't fail So I love
that Alright people want to find you Barbara, how do they do that?
[00:23:08] Barbara: Well, LinkedIn, Barbara dot Spitzer. I am very active on LinkedIn. I write articles, I make posts. My company is Two Rivers Partners spelled out.com. They can find me there. My email's on there. but yeah, follow me on LinkedIn.
I love to interact on LinkedIn. I think it's a great platform.
[00:23:30] Jay: It is a great platform. It's a great platform to, for perspective, partnerships and relationships that people should take more advantage of. I think, but,
all right, well, I thank you so much for your time. I hope you are, have a safe trip. I hope you take some really cool pictures. I hope you
find some buried treasure or whatever it is you're searching for in the bottom of the ocean. And, I hope you have a good rest of your week. All right. Thanks for
being on Barbara.
[00:23:52] Barbara: Thank you. Jay.
[00:23:54] Jay: See ya.