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Taking a Dream 100 approach
By Sandi Eveleth, OD
June 18, 2025
One of the best business-growth strategies we employed in our specialty practice had little to do with traditional marketing methods. It was a marketing approach we originally coined our “Professional Referrer Program,” which I later realized was a form of something called the “Dream 100” strategy.
What Exactly is the Dream 100?
The “Dream 100” concept was introduced by sales and marketing author Chet Holmes, who wrote “The Ultimate Sales Machine.”
It involves strategically identifying, cultivating and nurturing relationships with your top 100 influencers, referral partners and ideal clients (or patients in our industry) who embody the most significant potential to enhance your business growth.
In short, it’s about finding and connecting with other local professionals, business owners, organizations and current patients who can refer THEIR patients, clients, customers, members, friends and/or family members to your specialized products and services. They understand that your specialties will enhance the lives of their connections and may even complement the products and services they provide to these same connections.
Implementing the Dream 100 in a Specialty Practice
The first step in implementing this strategy is determining “who exactly would make an ideal Dream 100?”
Given our specialty focus—vision therapy, specialty contact lens fittings and products (multifocals, Ortho-K/corneal molding and scleral lenses), computer vision syndrome and lifestyle-oriented eyewear—my list included some obvious choices such as optometric colleagues that don’t offer these specialties as well as pediatricians.
We then added local schools and tutoring centers, pediatric and neuro-ophthalmologists, neurologists, primary care physicians, occupational therapists, athletic program directors, trainers and coaches, community health leaders, businesses specializing in athletic wear and training and other influential local businesses.
The list grew as our “Professional Referrers/Dream 100s” told others about our specialties. It also grew exponentially with patients who became “rave reviewers” of our specialized programs.
The next step in successfully implementing this strategy is planning your outreach to these “Dream 100s.”
Here are my recommendations for implementing your own Dream 100 concept:
Brainstorm Your Specialties: You may believe you’ve already exhausted this list. I challenge you to spend at least 20-30 minutes writing down your products and services and involve your staff in this exercise. Move beyond the obvious.
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For example, have you considered that fitting complex toric multifocal contact lenses can be thought of as a specialty service? Or that recommending specialty golf glasses with the right tint and seg height may be regarded as specialty eyewear?
Doesn’t this open the possibility of the type of local businesses that might refer to you when their golfers complain about blurry vision while “addressing the ball” or trouble recognizing the contours on the greens?
Craft the Dream 100 List: I carefully listed 100 names of anyone I knew (or knew of) in the above categories that aligned with our target demographics but that we were not in direct competition with—these individuals or entities either directly interfaced with our ideal patients or held significant influence with them in our community.
Give yourself another 20 minutes to perform this exercise. Usually, the last 20 or 30 names become more creative and less likely to refer to your competition!
Prioritize Your List: Acknowledging that meaningful relationships take effort, I prioritized each contact based on influence, accessibility and alignment with our specialty services. You can always re-prioritize the list if any contacts become more or less interested in referring to you.
Personalized, Intentional Outreach: I moved from impersonal marketing to personalized, value-focused interactions. Methods included letters, phone calls, invitations to special events at our practice and face-to-face meetings designed to share how our specialties could positively impact their patients, students, athletes or customers.
For example, we met with local principals and school nurses to discuss our vision therapy program, networked with various community businesses to discuss computer vision syndrome and specialty eyewear products, and informed cornea specialists about our scleral lens specialty.
The Power of Strategic Relationships
One of my favorite success stories involves collaborating with local schools, both public and private, as well as local tutoring centers. Of course, it’s an obvious choice, but we went one step further. We hired local teachers to help us work with our vision therapy patients.
This hiring practice was a natural fit for both the patient and the teacher, and it helped spread the word throughout the local school system about the fantastic success of our program. This collaboration created a consistent referral source for the practice.
The ROI of the Dream 100
Financially, it’s hard to put a price tag on all the Dream 100 initiatives, but the vision therapy practice alone has generated a revenue stream totaling about 15-20% of the overall practice revenues over the years.
According to Chet Holmes, his sales doubled within 12 to 15 months of implementing this method! The real value lies in the sustainable, long-term relationships we cultivated. The practice is now recognized as a vital resource for specialty vision services in the community, leading to ongoing referrals from patients, local schools and businesses.
Keys to Making the Dream 100 Work for You:
- Clarify Your Specialty and Identify Your Ideal Dream 100: Once you can clarify ALL of your specialty products and services, it becomes relatively easy to brainstorm possible Dream 100s in your community.
- Engage Consistently and Authentically: Once you’ve established referrals from various sources, continue to foster those relationships with routine outreach.
- Prioritize Relationships Over Transactions: Authentic relationships ensure consistency, repeat referrals and patient loyalty.
The Dream 100 approach elevates any specialty practice beyond traditional marketing strategies. Your Dream 100 list could be your most significant sales and marketing asset.
Read more articles about marketing strategy in Review of Optometric Business
Sandi Eveleth, OD, is a Certified Master Marketer/Notion Consultant and owner of KISS your Web LLC. Dr. Eveleth exited private practice at the end of 2011. Since that time, she has worked as an employed optometrist in corporate optometry while devoting the balance of her time to her marketing coaching firm and video/film editing services at KISS Your Web, LLC. To contact her: Sandi@drsandieveleth.com
