On October 5, 2026, I’ll hit 10,000 recorded one-to-one conversations — the number that gave birth to Connect, Serve, and Ask® and ChampionOS™, the relationship methodology now running through everything H7 Network does.
Where It Started
In the spring of 2014, my life was changing fast. I’d gone from single father to newly engaged, and that summer my wife Angel and I decided to move in together with her three children and build a new life as a blended family to be married.
H7 Network existed by then, but it wasn’t large. I needed to bring in more revenue for a bigger household, and I had a decision to make: get another job to support H7, or expand it. Angel, the Lord, and I talked it through for weeks. In July 2014, we agreed. I was going to expand H7.
The question was how. I decided to start meeting with anybody willing to sit down with me — not H7 members, just local professionals in Cincinnati and Dayton. I didn’t have a script. I just planned to listen and figure out how I could be useful.
On August 1, 2014, I had my first one-to-one and started recording them. I had no idea where they’d lead. I definitely didn’t know that twelve years (and two months) and 10,000 conversations later, I’d still be doing it.
The Framework That Started It All
My early one-to-ones followed five questions: Where are you from? What’s your personal story? What do you do professionally? Tell me about your family. What are your hobbies? I developed them through trial and error, one conversation at a time.
After roughly 1,000 one-to-ones, I noticed a pattern. The conversations that went somewhere all had one thing in common: we’d found real common ground before we talked business. I started calling that step “find commonality,” and it became the seed of what I’d later call Connect.
I also tracked my time at networking events with what I called the 10-5-3 rule: connect with 10 people, get 5 to agree to a one-to-one, have 3 actually show up. It worked well in Cincinnati and Dayton. It didn’t hold the same way once I opened Columbus and Indianapolis, which taught me early that a method that works in one market doesn’t automatically transfer to another.
Here’s something most people don’t guess about me: I’m an introvert. I gain energy from being alone, not from the room. Everything you’re about to read was built by someone who had to learn this skill on purpose — it didn’t come naturally but I was called to do it anyways.
The Conversation That Changed Everything
By December 2016, I’d done nearly 1,800 one-to-ones. I was in Columbus at the time, working to open that market, and I only knew one professional there when I started.
One of those meetings was with John Altieri, a financial advisor I’d met at a social event. We were 30 minutes into a 60-minute one-to-one when he stopped and asked me something no one had asked before: “How can I help you?”
I gave him a specific ask — the industries and roles I wanted to meet. He came back with 11 introductions. Eleven. From one conversation.
I drove home turning that moment over in my head. Why had he asked midway through, instead of waiting until the end like everyone else? What if I did the same thing — asked how I could help someone else halfway through the meeting, instead of saving it for a closing line?
I started testing it the very next day. What I’d been calling “add value to others” became something more deliberate. I now call it Serve. My wife Angel and I built a workshop around it called Infinite Relationships, teaching two things: find commonality and add value. Somewhere in there I landed on a phrase that’s stuck with me since: Connect + Serve = Influence.
It took about 900 more one-to-ones — roughly 2,500 total — before I nailed down a consistent set of Serve questions: How can I help you? Who would you like to meet? Who is your ideal client, industry, or type of person? How is your business going? How can my expertise help? By 2017, I was running this in four markets at once: Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Indianapolis.
The Blind Spot: Why I Wasn’t Getting Referrals
By 2017, H7 was expanding fast. I’d done nearly 2,500 one-to-ones, and I’d introduced hundreds of people to each other. But something wasn’t adding up.
I wasn’t getting introductions myself.
Every time someone asked how they could help me, I redirected it — I’d ask them to take care of the person I’d just introduced them to. I never asked for myself. I told myself this was generosity. Really, it was sabotage. I was so focused on serving others that I’d forgotten I was allowed to need anything back.
The realization landed in January 2018. Not asking for help doesn’t just cost you a referral — it takes away the other person’s chance to earn your trust in return. Asking is vulnerable, and that vulnerability is part of how trust actually gets built between two people. It’s the same idea behind the phrase “ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, keep knocking.”
Once I understood that, the practical side got simple. If you’re a B2B professional, ask specifically for industries or companies. If you’re B2C, ask specifically for types of people. Vague asks get vague results. Specific asks get introductions.
August 2018: Connect, Serve, and Ask Gets a Name
I hit 3,000 one-to-ones in August 2018. I stopped. On purpose.
For a month or two, I didn’t do a single one-to-one. I went back through my paperwork, my worksheets, four years of notes, trying to understand what I’d actually built. That’s when I saw it clearly: this wasn’t a collection of habits. It was a methodology. I named it Connect, Serve, and Ask® — born after four straight years of one-to-ones with people outside H7, starting August 1, 2014 and formalized that August.
A vision came with it: to be a catalyst for transformation and growth, fostering collaboration, mentorship, and strategic opportunities that empower entrepreneurs. And I wrote down the values I’d been living without naming: Be Transparent, Be Respectful, Self-Accountability, Be Trustworthy, Self-Leadership, Serve, and Win-Win.
One more distinction mattered to me. Business networking is opportunity — you show up and see what happens. Word of Mouth Marketing is intentional — you build toward it on purpose. WOMM is more predictable than typical networking, and Referral Partners are less predictable than Champions. That distinction is why the framework needed a name in the first place.
From Methodology to Movement
Once Connect, Serve, and Ask® had a name, I started noticing something else: not every relationship was headed toward the same place. Some people became Connections. Some became Referral Partners. And every once in a while, two people became Champions for each other — fully invested in each other’s success. That distinction is where ChampionOS™ began to take shape, and it’s still the framework H7 runs on today.
Across 10,000 conversations, a handful of lessons kept repeating no matter who I was talking to:
- Focus on the relationship, not the outcome, and the outcomes get more predictable.
- Connection requires curiosity — you have to actually want to know the other person.
- Serving someone before you expect anything back changes the entire relationship.
- The most important ask isn’t always for business. Sometimes it’s just asking for help in general.
- Vulnerability works both ways. When I opened up about my own uncertainty, people opened up too, and that’s where trust actually gets built.
I don’t think of the 10,000 as one long classroom. I think of them as 10,000 teachers — people from different industries, cultures, countries, and stages of business, each of them handing me a small piece of what became Connect, Serve, and Ask®, and eventually ChampionOS™.
The Next Chapter
Reaching 10,000 doesn’t feel like a finish line to me. It feels like a responsibility.
Those conversations built more than a personal habit — they became FUEL Orientation, Activate H7, Develop Your Champions, the Champion Team, Become a Champion, TRACS, Town Square, the Connect, Serve, and Ask® Course, ChampionOS™ inside H7 and CRMs now, and the culture running through H7 Network today. Now I want to teach it forward. My mission is to bring Connect, Serve, and Ask to one million people — to help business owners stop collecting contacts and start developing Champions.
An owner with support grows faster. That’s the whole idea, and it’s why H7 exists.
If this is the first time you’re hearing the story, start here: find a group near you, walk through the CSA Course, or join us at the next Become a Champion Workshop. If you’re already inside H7, this is the story behind everything you’re already practicing.
Clay Hicks
Founder & CEO, H7 Network
After 10,000 recorded one-to-one conversations, I built Connect, Serve, and Ask® — the relationship methodology behind ChampionOS™. My purpose is simple: lift others up, unite them, and take no credit for their success.
👉 Find a group near you and see it in action.
