1973 – Transforming Leadership and Employee Engagement with Tribute’s Andrew Horn

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05With us right now, it's Andrew Horn. Andrew, you are the co-founder and CEO of Tribute, found on the web at tribute.co. And you are also the founder of the Institute for Relational Leadership. I like the sound of that. Andrew, it's great to have you. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, Josh. Excited to be here. Yeah, so tell us about the work you do. I'd love to learn a little bit more about Institute for Relational Leadership. And of course, to our friend that's watching, we've got all of the links so you can follow along. But Andrew, I'd love to hear it from your perspective about the impact you have in the world.

1:40Yeah, thanks so much. You know, I'd say that the through line of all the businesses I've started over the past 15 years since I graduated from college, are really just about meaningful human connection in the world and how do we create that. And so for the last 10 years, I've been the founder and CEO of a company called Tribute. easiest way to explain that is on my 27th birthday, I was given this surprise gift from my partner that essentially was 20 of my closest friends and family members who had all filmed a one minute video telling me why they loved me. I watched this video. I sat in the back of my room crying tears of joy because it was my dad and my best friend and my co-founder and all these other people who were sharing how much they appreciated me and how grateful they were for me.

2:21And it was the most meaningful gift I'd ever received in my entire life. And so when it was done, I looked at my partner and said, this is the best thing I've ever seen. How'd you do this? And she looks back at me without blinking an eye and she says, well, it sucked. And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, well, I had to send hundreds of emails. I had to edit the videos together with Dropbox and Drive. And so that's where I had really the idea that this is the most meaningful gift on earth. It's very hard to create. And so in that moment, Tribute was born. And so since then, we've given more than 7 million tribute videos around the globe.

2:53We were Inc. 500 company. And really, it's all about using technology to help people to get these group video montages as a gift. And to this day, my favorite stat to track is that 82 % of our recipients say they cry TOJ when they watch their video, which stands for Tears of Joy. And so that's where I really cut my teeth as a CEO. And one of the things that I've always been really passionate about is interpersonal dynamics and communication and really how to build thriving teams. And so as Tribute started to really stabilize and become a larger company, I started the Institute for Relational Leadership as really a training and development company that works with entrepreneurs and executives.

3:34And what we've synthesized is this five-step process that helps anyone to basically master difficult conversation and create thriving relationships. And so what I say is that if you're doing meaningful work in the world, conflict is inevitable. You're going to have tension with people. Things are going to get difficult. And so what we've tried to create is a systematic process so that anyone understands how they can authentically and constructively engage that conflict, turn it into collaboration and constructive communication to really create thriving teams. And so that's been the vast majority of my work over the past 10 years and really what I'm passionate about.

4:12Yeah. Well, Andrew, it seems like the impact that you have in the world, and we're going to talk specifically about business use cases here. But to me, it just sounds like we're enabling connection. We're enabling gratitude. And, you know, if there's one thing I think that the world can always use more of is those two things, connection and gratitude. So I'm really interested, and maybe you can kind of talk about how business users are using this platform. And I should point out before you explain this, this is a really accessible, low-cost service that, you know, certainly if individuals want to put this together.

4:56but I am really excited to learn more about the enterprise use cases. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, when we started this, we really started with the intention of using it as a B2C company, something where whether it's a birthday, a wedding, a graduation, people would use the product. But initially within a year, we had big companies, whether it's Susan G. Komen or whether it's Hartford Insurance reaching out and saying, hey, we want to do this for our employees' anniversaries. We want to do it for employees that are being onboarded. And so we said, well, people are beating down the door to pay us to do this for their companies.

5:29We should make it easier for them. And so that's where we started our enterprise program. And so now what Tribute does for companies all over the world is really works with them to systemize their employee appreciation programs. And there's a ton of research that shows how employee connection and feeling recognized is one of the most important metrics for employee engagement. And we think about a thriving team, employee engagement is just people being connected to the people that they're working with and the work that they're contributing towards. And so it's essential for people to feel recognized and appreciated.

6:02Gallup poll in 2017 showed that the number one reason people leave their jobs, it's not because of pay, it's not because of bad managers, because they don't feel appreciated. And so what Tribute does is really works with companies to systemize your employee appreciation. So imagine you've spent five years at a company, 10 years at a company, one year at a company. You get to hear from everyone on the team about what they love about working with you. What do they appreciate about you? And Tribute makes it really easy to build those video montages of appreciation for them. On top of that, we do really high-end video collections.

6:32So anytime a company wants to, say, collect testimonials for their work, obviously a video is going to be much more powerful than text on a page. So Tribute will create these white-labeled testimonial collection pages so that any company can run a collaborative video collection campaign, gather the voices and really dynamic video from their customers, from their users, talking about why they love that company. And so we've got all sorts of use cases and really dialed up these programs to make it easier for companies to really do this dynamic video collection across employee recognition, testimony collection.

7:02Yeah. So now, as I understand it, so do you mind maybe just sharing a little bit more tactically about what Tribute, like, what does it look like from a user experience, both the sender or the organizer and the recipient? Yeah, it's quite easy. So there's really three simple steps. So let's just say that, you know, we're on the Up My Influence kind of like podcast here, right? And so you think about you want to collect testimonials about people who've been on your website, people who have you worked with before, kind of like you've supported their business. So essentially what you would do is you would just spend literally less than 60 seconds to start your tribute.

7:41So you'd go to tribute.co, you'd hit start. You'd say, OK, here's the name of my tribute. Here's when I want the videos do by. And here's my photo that I want to use as my cover image. You do that, and now you have a URL that's customized for Josh. It's tribute.co forward slash upmyinfluence. And then you can send that to anyone in your email contact list. You can send it out via TikTok, Instagram, wherever you want. And then anyone that you send that link out to will easily be able to see a page that says, hey, we're collecting videos. Here are the two questions that we want you to answer in your submission.

8:14They can record from a phone, from a desktop computer, from an iPad. that video is going to be collected and ingested, formatted, collected in high resolution. It goes into your backend. You have the option to either edit that together yourself using our handy dandy video compiler, or you can actually pay someone on our team who's going to edit the entire thing together for you for a hundred bucks. And so from there, so you've created your page, you've sent that out, you've invited people to submit a video, you get to edit your video, compile it, and now you've got this high resolution video montage of all these people who've submitted videos talking about why UpMyInfluence is amazing and someone that you should hire and work with.

8:51Why is this more powerful, particularly for business use cases, than a set of steak knives? Yeah, well, I mean... I tried to ask that with a straight face. Yeah, totally. I mean, so when you think about, we call tribute the most meaningful gift on earth. And when I say that, it's kind of a tongue-in-cheek statement, but I actually believe that. And I think that, you know, we've had the opportunity to work with some real pioneers in the gifting space, like Jimmy Cannon from 1-800-Flowers and Cameo Founders and Steve Galanis and fun people. And, you know, you think about like what a meaningful gift is.

9:28It's really just an opportunity to be thoughtful. And when you think about meaningful connection, feeling appreciated is just foundational to meaningful relationship. And so when you think about what makes a meaningful gift, tribute is gratitude in a video that you can just kind of hold on to really kind of like just captures for people in a way that's undeniable that they matter to people, that they're appreciated. And if you can help someone to feel like they matter, like they're appreciated, like they're respected, and you can give someone that experience, they are never going to forget it.

10:04And they're going to think very highly of whoever gave them that gift. I promise you that. So that's why I would say that if you're considering steak knives or a tribute, something to keep in mind. Yeah. Tell me about your work with the Institute for Relational Leadership. And do you have a separate website for that? Yeah. So it's the IRL.co for the Institute for Relational Leadership. And essentially what we have tried to codify here, again, it's, you know, with so much automation happening in the world, we really think that one of the last bastions where people are really going to have value and an ability to contribute is in the realm of the interpersonal, is how are we leading, managing, and optimizing performance of people.

10:46And so much of that comes down to communication and how much time do we as teams spend in unproductive cycles of drama, of arguing, of tension between employees. And so what the IRL has done is really codified this very practical five-step framework. It's CICAN, C-I-C-A-N. It stands for Context, Intentionality, Curiosity, Authenticity with Objectivity. now for presence. And anytime an employee or you as a leader is experiencing reactivity, reactivity we think of as tension, anxiety, resistance, which is naturally going to happen in the workplace, rather than reacting to that, we show leaders how they can respond.

11:34And a response means that we're being conscious, intentional, and constructive about how we frame our communication. We're taking full responsibility for moving things forward. And what we do is we provide a team with a common language so that if something gets hard, both people are really taking responsibility for responding consciously, communicating objectively, not layering in their subjective stories or beliefs or judgments about other people. And really what it does is it just eliminates trauma in the workplace. It helps everyone to be much more specific about what they need to move forward.

12:04And it just is a practical process that streamlines people's ability to navigate conflict, to foster an environment of collaboration and innovation, and really just connect more deeply in the workplace so that they can do their best work. And so that's what we've really codified. And we do all sorts of online trainings right now, right after this, I'll be doing one for the World Economic Forum. And so we'll do online trainings. We'll come in and run off sites and train teams in this, but it's really what we'd like to say. It's like, it's this one thing. If you want to unify your team with a common language to navigate conflict, to have difficult conversations constructively, and to build a thriving team.

12:42This is a practical and accessible way for anyone to do that. Yeah. Andrew, talking about people-centric leadership, are there any, like if there was one thing that to our listener that's, they're in a leadership position with their company, either the founder or senior leader within their group, but if you were to advocate for one practice, one principle, or one exercise, something that they could do immediately or kind of focus their attention to and exercise? What would be maybe something that comes to mind that you'd recommend? Yeah, I love that you asked for one thing. And so I will give you one word that every leader needs to follow if they want to be effective.

13:30Objectivity. Objectivity is when we are sharing our perspectives with people, when we are giving people tasks, when we are asking for what we need, making requests of people, the one word we need to consider is objectivity. Is what I am saying objective or is it subjective? Because if we are communicating subjective perspectives, if we are communicating tasks and requests of people that are subjective, we are going to be so much less effective at getting what we want back from people and helping other people to hear what it is that we're saying. So the exercise that we look at here is just looking at how we are communicating and what we are assigning to people.

14:11And objective is just saying, what is subjective? It means that there's room for interpretation versus objective, which is that this is a fact. And the more that we embrace objectivity, one of the easiest ways that we can do that is through a communication framework called nonviolent communication, which basically encourages us to really speak to, especially when we're in conflict, what's an observable thing that happened? This happened. Then you lead in with a feeling. It made me feel the emotion that's present. So we become empathizable to people around us. Then we talk about our needs. What did I need in that moment that I did not get?

14:46So we're talking about what we needed that we didn't get, taking ownership of what we need from the other person and a clear and objective request. what do I need moving forward so that my needs are met in this relationship and so what we do is we come out of subjective judgment we come out of the victim mindset that we can't control things we come out of the villain mindset of blaming other people for doing something wrong and we just speak really clearly so here's what happened here's how it made me feel here's what I needed and next time here's objectively what I need to make sure that my needs are met when we start to communicate that way, we transform our ability to be empathized with, and we transform our efficacy and ability to move our relationships and our companies forward.

15:29You've worked through the Relational Institute for Relational Leadership. You've worked with quite some notables, founder and CEO of Hinge, or at least within the organizations for Hinge, Change.org, Mindbloom, uh cleveland clinic and and many others similarly i should point out too uh tributes big i mean you have i mean i think what did i see over six million uh wait you had some statistics they may even be updated uh in terms of like impact in the world but andrew i just want to say congratulations and thank you thank you for helping to make the world a better place And I think in a culture, I can speak for the United States, where I think that there's a lot of voices of dissension that, you know, cause us to differentiate ourselves from one another.

16:26There is so much opportunity. I believe that people are craving connection and commonality and, you know, kind of getting back to this, you know, well, listen, I'm not happy fighting everybody. I'm happy getting along with that. It's nice to see humanity exercised and, you know, just seeing the work that you do through both Tribute and Institute for Relational Leadership. I just, again, this is just something that the world needs more of. So to our friend that's listening, to the leaders that are listening, I'd encourage you to take a look at this. And Andrew, I'm hoping maybe you can kind of share what next steps might look like and who should be reaching out regarding the Institute of Relational Leadership.

17:10And we'll talk about Tribute after you kind of close up IRL. Yeah. So, you know, what's fun about IRL is that we have open training. So it's something that if you are, let's say, like a solopreneur or a consultant and you want to learn this for yourself, but you don't have a team that you're really kind of like ready to bring in there. We have open trainings that we run several times a year. And so you can just go to the website and you'll see those when they're available. And then on top of that, if you are running, you know, anywhere from a small business to full enterprise with hundreds of employees and you say, hey, my team is spending way too much time in endless conflict that's not getting us anywhere.

17:45We're not being clear. or we're not cohesive the way that I'd like to be, reach out. It's that one of the simplest things you can do is say, hey, here's a common language that when we get into challenging conversations, everyone's going to hold themselves accountable for practicing these five practical steps. And what it's going to do, it's going to help people to connect, communicate clearly about what they need to move forward, and it's going to make everyone happier and more engaged in whatever it is that you're doing. So if you want to create that common language for your team, I'd encourage you to reach out.

18:16So Tribute starts at$29. And I see that you now have something called Tribute Greetings. So again, to our friend that's listening, you just go to tribute.co. You can click on Tribute Greetings, and you can actually send a free virtual greeting card today. And it's kind of formatted in that Instagram stories, the vertical video. Very, very smart. Andrew, maybe you can just kind of share what's next for folks that really need to plug in and start sending more tributes and start connecting. Absolutely. Yeah, assembling these amazing experiences for their friends and loved ones. Well, you know what we'll do is we're actually going to do a special offer for all of you Up My Influence listeners, which means that for anyone listening, you can enter the code UPMYINFLUENCE at checkout, and you will get$29 off so that your first DIY tribute will be free of charge to you.

19:17And so what I would say is that for any of you who have a milestone, birthday, graduation, anniversary coming up, and someone that you love, whether it's a partner, a spouse, a child, a parent, a coworker who you've been with for years, help them to feel loved and reach out and use a tribute. You've got no excuse now because your first one's on the house. And so, you know, hopefully you can include that in the show notes there, Josh. But next time you have one of our milestone events, look no further. We've got you covered and we'd love to see you on the site. And you said that promo code was upmyinfluence, all one word?

19:55upmyinfluence, one word, correct. Awesome. And so just in case to our friends, if you want to click on the show notes, you'll see exactly where that is, how to spell it, copy and paste. And you can use that and get your first tribute for free. Well, that's very generous of you. Andrew Horne, founder, a co-founder of Tribute and also the Institute for Relational Leadership. Thank you so much, Andrew, for joining us. Thanks for having me, Josh.

20:23Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders, asking them where their best business comes from.

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