On September 9, Hamza Warsame and Rhonda Tate met for coffee in Hilliard, logged it, and became Surge's 1,000th one-to-one. Each of them got 10 points. Rhonda also got a round of applause when it came up on the overlay at the next Plain City meeting.
A thousand meetings is enough data to stop guessing. Here is the network as of that day:
| Since September 2025 | Total |
|---|---|
| One-to-ones logged | 1,000 |
| Referrals passed | 1,690 |
| Referrals marked won | 471 |
| Closed business reported | about $1.6 million |
| Median days from referral to won | 19 |
The dollar figure is a floor. Recording revenue is optional, and plenty of members mark a referral won without entering an amount.
Here is what the numbers say.
1. Referrals follow one-to-ones
Seventy percent of won referrals were passed between two members who had logged a one-to-one with each other in the previous 90 days. Only about a third of all member pairs had met in that window.
People send clients to people they know, and a one-to-one is how you get known. The effect also fades. After 90 days without a meeting, referrals between a pair drop by more than half.
2. The second one-to-one matters more than the first
Pairs who met once passed an average of 0.8 referrals to each other over the next six months. Pairs who met twice passed 2.7. After the third meeting the curve flattens.
The first meeting is mostly introductions. The second is where people ask the questions that produce referrals: who was your last great client, and what happened right before they called you? Keisha Monroe wrote a whole playbook on running those meetings, and the data backs her up.
3. Steady beats busy
We compared members who logged a similar number of one-to-ones over the year, between 15 and 25. The ones who spread them out, with at least one a week for a month or more at a time, received 2.1 times as many referrals as the ones who logged theirs in bursts.
Our explanation is simple. If people see you every week, you stay on their minds when a client mentions a leaky roof. We built the streak counter as a game mechanic, and it turns out to measure something real.
4. Temperature works when people are honest about it
| Temperature | Share of referrals | Marked won |
|---|---|---|
| Hot | 27% | 51% |
| Warm | 46% | 26% |
| Cool | 27% | 8% |
The interesting part is at the member level. Members who use "cool" regularly see their hot referrals close at 60% or better. Members who mark nearly everything hot see their hot referrals close about a third of the time. If every referral is hot, none of them are, and the people receiving them learn to adjust.
5. Cross-chapter meetings punch above their weight
Only 9% of one-to-ones were between members of different chapters. Those pairs produced 7% of referrals but 14% of closed business, because cross-chapter referrals lean toward big projects: land, custom homes, commercial insurance and remodeling. A Polaris realtor whose client wants ten acres has nobody in Polaris to send them to. Luke Brandt in Plain City does.
6. The first 60 days predict a lot
Fifty-seven people have joined Surge since September 2025, and nine have left. Every one of the nine logged fewer than three one-to-ones in their first 60 days. Of the members who logged five or more in that window, all but one are still here.
That's a small sample, and we aren't calling it a law. It is the clearest pattern in the data, though, and it's cheap to act on.
7. Patience depends on the trade
The median referral closes in 19 days, but the spread is wide. HVAC, plumbing, pest control and auto repair referrals close in about a week. Real estate, custom building and estate planning take two to four months. If you're a builder judging your referral partners by last month's wins, you're using the wrong clock.
What we're changing
- Every new member gets a 60-day plan. At their first meeting, chapter leaders will pair them with five members for one-to-ones, including one from another chapter.
- Second meetings get booked on purpose. We're asking every member to set up a second one-to-one with anyone they last met more than two months ago. Chapter leaders will ask about it at the weekly meeting.
- Temperature gets defined out loud. Hot means the prospect is expecting your call. Warm means they're interested and know your name is coming. Cool means you have a good reason to think they need you. We'll repeat that until people are tired of hearing it.
The next milestone is 2,000. At the current pace we'll get there sometime next spring, and we'll publish what we learn.
