My 2026 take on Chet Holmes’ Dream 100 strategy, using Prospeo, QuickProsp, LinkedHelper 2, HighLevel, AI and good old-fashioned direct mail.
This is Mark 1.
I’m calling it that deliberately.
What follows isn’t the definitive way to implement Chet Holmes’ famous Dream 100 strategy using today’s technology.
It’s my 2026 take on how I would build it.
And I fully expect it to change.
I’ll run it. I’ll test it. I’ll find things that work brilliantly and probably discover other things that don’t work as well as I expected. New technology will appear. I’ll change the process.
And when I’ve learned enough, there will be a Mark 2.
But before we get anywhere near the technology, we need to understand what we’re actually trying to achieve.
We’re looking for Dream Clients.
Not leads.
Not names to put into an email campaign.
Not 10,000 people who happen to match a database search.
Businesses that we would genuinely love to have as clients.
Depending on your business, winning just one of these Dream Clients could be worth £20,000, £100,000, £250,000 or potentially considerably more over the lifetime of the relationship.
And that completely changes the economics of prospecting.
Dream 100 Is Not About Doing Things as Cheaply as Possible
If you’re buying a database containing 20,000 prospects for a conventional cold email campaign, you naturally start thinking about cost per prospect.
Dream 100 requires a different mindset.
If you’ve identified a business that could potentially be worth £250,000 to you, spending several hours researching the company and the people within it isn’t expensive.
It’s an investment.
Likewise, suppose you come up with a brilliant direct mail idea involving a £50 gadget that you know would appeal specifically to the Managing Director.
If it costs £100 by the time you’ve bought it, created the accompanying material, packaged it and had it delivered, is that extravagant?
Not necessarily.
If that business could become a £250,000 client, spending £100 to get noticed could be an extremely sensible investment.
Dream 100 is about spending disproportionately more time, thought and money pursuing disproportionately more valuable clients.
That’s one of Chet Holmes’ original principles I want to preserve in my Mark 1 system.
A Quick Recap. What Is Chet Holmes’ Dream 100?
The Dream 100 concept comes from the late Chet Holmes, author of The Ultimate Sales Machine.
Holmes recognised that a relatively small number of companies represented a disproportionately large share of the potential business available to him.
Instead of spreading his sales effort equally across the entire market, he concentrated enormous effort on the relatively small group of companies he really wanted as clients.
The exact number isn’t really the point.
The principle is:
Who are the businesses that could make the biggest difference to your company if you managed to win them?
Holmes then pursued those businesses persistently using multiple forms of communication, education, direct mail and follow-up.
This wasn’t a seven-email automation followed by “prospect didn’t respond” and moving on.
It was long-term, determined pursuit of companies worth pursuing.
I’ve written separately about the history and principles behind the concept in my article The Dream 100 Strategy: A Modern Look at Chet Holmes’ Classic Client Acquisition Concept.
What I want to explore here is a different question.
What Would Chet Holmes’ Dream 100 Look Like If We Built It Today?
Chet didn’t have LinkedIn.
He didn’t have modern B2B databases.
He didn’t have AI.
He didn’t have modern marketing automation.
He didn’t have a CRM capable of coordinating email, telephone calls, pipelines, appointments, workflows, websites, forms, events and ticketing.
We do.
That gives us an opportunity to take the principles behind Dream 100 and build something Chet simply couldn’t have built at the time.
But there’s a danger too.
Technology makes it incredibly easy to turn a great strategy into another mass prospecting system.
That’s precisely what I don’t want to do.
The objective isn’t to use AI to turn the Dream 100 into the Dream 100,000.
It’s to use technology to give more carefully selected businesses the individual attention previously possible with only a very small number of accounts.
And that starts with human judgement.
Stage 1. Finding Potential Dream Clients
The first technology in my Mark 1 stack is Prospeo.
And this is where the Dream Client Conveyor Belt starts.
The objective isn’t simply to build a list of companies that happen to match a few database filters.
We want to identify potential Dream Clients.
Businesses that, if we won them, could become significantly more valuable than the average client.
A useful starting point is to look at the clients you already love working with.
Which existing customers are:
- particularly profitable?
- easy to work with?
- growing?
- buying several services?
- staying with you for a long time?
- introducing you to other clients?
- exactly the sort of business you would like more of?
Those existing clients can help us define what a Dream Client actually looks like.
Prospeo can then help us search for other businesses and people with similar characteristics.
Its search tools allow us to narrow down potential targets using company and individual characteristics such as industry, location, seniority, role, size, revenue and other business criteria.
It can also use AI Lookalikes to help identify companies or people resembling examples we’ve already identified as a good fit.
That changes the starting question.
Instead of:
“Find me 10,000 businesses in this industry.”
we’re trying to get closer to:
“These are the sorts of companies we genuinely want as clients. Help us find more businesses that look like them.”
Prospeo can then help us identify the relevant people inside those businesses and obtain useful information such as:
- name
- job title
- verified work email
- mobile number
- LinkedIn profile
- company information
- company address information
That gives us much more than an email list.
It gives us much of the raw information required to approach a potential Dream Client through several different channels.
AI Finds Candidates. Humans Decide Who Gets In.
This may be one of the most important principles in the whole Mark 1 system.
Technology can identify possible Dream Clients.
AI can help us analyse them.
But a human should still decide whether a business actually deserves Dream Client treatment.
Someone should look at the company properly.
Visit its website.
Look at its LinkedIn presence.
Understand what it does.
Research the people running it.
Look at its size and structure.
Look for growth, change or other useful signals.
Think about what the business could realistically be worth as a client.
And ask:
If we could choose our clients, would we genuinely choose this company?
If the answer is yes, it earns its place in the Dream Client system.
If not, it doesn’t.
We’re using technology to find the needles in the haystack, then applying human judgement before deciding which companies justify the extra time, creativity and investment that Dream 100 deserves.
Stage 2. From a Dream 100 List to a Dream Client Conveyor Belt
This is probably the biggest departure in my 2026 interpretation of Chet Holmes’ original methodology.
Traditionally, we think about creating the Dream 100 list.
You identify your ideal clients and systematically pursue them.
But modern technology means I don’t think the list needs to be static.
Instead, I think we can build a Dream Client Conveyor Belt.
Imagine our initial searches identify 100 businesses each month that appear to match our Dream Client criteria.
Those 100 don’t automatically enter the programme.
They’re researched and qualified.
Perhaps only 20 or 25 make the cut.
Those companies enter our Dream Client programme.
Next month another 20 or 25 enter.
And another group the following month.
Meanwhile, companies already in the system are progressing at different speeds.
Some engage with an email.
Some connect on LinkedIn.
Some speak to us on the telephone.
Some receive direct mail.
Some attend a workshop.
Some request a meeting.
Some become active sales opportunities.
Some aren’t ready and remain in long-term nurture.
Some are disqualified.
And some eventually become clients.
As businesses move through the system, carefully selected new Dream Clients continually enter at the top.
That’s why I call it a conveyor belt.
At 25 new companies per month, after a year we could have introduced 300 carefully selected businesses into our Dream Client programme.
That’s very different from putting 300 businesses into an automated sales sequence.
We’re scaling Chet Holmes’ methodology, not turning it into mass marketing.
The Dream 100 B2B Prospecting System. Mark 1
FIND POTENTIAL DREAM CLIENTS
Prospeo + AI
Companies • people • email • mobile • LinkedIn • company information
↓
HUMAN RESEARCH & QUALIFICATION
Would we genuinely choose them as a client?
Value • fit • opportunity • people • timing
↓
APPROVED DREAM CLIENT
Enter the Dream Client Conveyor Belt
↓
HIGHLEVEL: THE OPERATING SYSTEM BEHIND IT ALL
Cold Email via QuickProsp + AI
↓
LinkedIn via LinkedHelper 2 / human activity
↓
Telephone managed through HighLevel
↓
Direct Mail automated or deliberately handmade
↓
Education through workshops, events and useful content
AI supports research, personalisation, signals, analysis and next-best actions across the entire system.
↓
ENGAGE → NURTURE → OPPORTUNITY → DREAM CLIENT
While new researched and approved Dream Clients continue entering at the top.
Stage 3. QuickProsp. AI-Personalised Cold Email
Yes, we are cold emailing our Dream Clients.
For Mark 1, I’m using QuickProsp to do this.
But there’s an important difference between what I’m describing here and taking a database of 20,000 people and sending everybody essentially the same cold email.
By this point in the Dream Client Conveyor Belt, we already know quite a lot.
We know who the company is.
We know why it fits our Dream Client profile.
We’ve researched the business.
We’ve identified the appropriate people within it.
And we have information about both the company and the person we’re approaching.
QuickProsp can use AI to research the individual prospect and their company, look at information such as the company website and relevant signals, and then adjust the email around something genuinely relevant to that recipient.
That allows us to create a much more personal first approach.
This is where I think AI is especially useful.
We’re not using AI simply so that we can send more emails.
We’re using it to help us write a better cold email to a prospect who matters.
If somebody is one of 20,000 prospects in a database, there’s an obvious temptation to optimise for volume.
If the company has been specifically selected because it could potentially become a £100,000 or £250,000 client, I want the recipient to feel that we’ve actually taken an interest in them and their business.
AI helps us scale that personalisation.
And because this is Dream 100, email is only one part of the strategy.
QuickProsp gives us one route into the business.
LinkedIn gives us another.
Telephone gives us another.
Direct mail gives us another.
Workshops and events give us yet another.
The objective isn’t to make email do all the work.
It’s to make each channel contribute to one coordinated Dream Client relationship.
Stage 4. LinkedHelper 2. Building the LinkedIn Relationship
I’ve been interested in combining Dream 100 with LinkedIn for years.
In fact, I’ve previously written about using LinkedHelper 2 as part of a LinkedIn Dream 100 strategy.
LinkedIn gives us another route into the companies we’ve deliberately selected.
We can identify relevant people.
Connect.
Follow their activity.
See what they’re talking about.
Engage where appropriate.
Share useful material.
And gradually build familiarity.
Again, I don’t see this as an excuse to automate hundreds of generic LinkedIn messages.
The whole point is that these people matter more to us than an ordinary prospect.
QuickProsp and LinkedIn therefore aren’t two separate prospecting campaigns.
They’re two channels within one coordinated Dream Client strategy.
A Note on LinkedIn Automation
LinkedHelper 2 can automate a number of LinkedIn activities, but LinkedIn’s rules prohibit unauthorised third-party software that automates actions on the platform.
If you choose to use tools of this type, you should understand the potential account risk and review LinkedIn’s current rules before deciding how you use them.
That doesn’t undermine the multi-channel strategy.
It simply means each business needs to decide how much of its LinkedIn activity should be automated and how much should remain manual.
Stage 5. Telephone. HighLevel Helps Us Manage the Calling
Another channel available to us is the telephone.
And sometimes the best thing to do with a telephone number is surprisingly simple.
Call it.
A well-researched human telephone call may be far more effective than another automated message.
Because we’ve already researched the business, the call doesn’t have to begin:
“Hi, can I speak to the person responsible for…”
We should already have a pretty good idea who we’re trying to reach, what their role is and why we want to speak with them.
And this is where HighLevel can help us organise, make, record and manage the calling process.
HighLevel can help us:
- organise who needs calling
- create tasks and reminders
- make and record calls
- capture notes and outcomes
- trigger follow-up activity
- update opportunities and pipeline stages
- schedule future callbacks
- use AI to assist with conversation summaries and next actions
If somebody says:
“Interesting, but call me again in September.”
that’s valuable information.
The system should make sure somebody actually calls them in September.
If we speak with another person inside the same Dream Client company, that information should become part of our wider understanding of the account.
If the call creates a genuine opportunity, that should feed directly into the sales process.
Use HighLevel and AI to manage the process so the human can concentrate on having a better conversation.
Stage 6. Direct Mail. Don’t Automate Everything
This is one of my favourite parts of Chet Holmes’ original Dream 100 methodology.
Direct mail.
I started in direct response marketing in the 1990s, so perhaps I have a natural bias towards it.
But I actually think physical mail may have become more interesting because digital communication has become so easy.
We can certainly automate direct mail today.
HighLevel could trigger an integration with a digital print and mailing service such as Stannp.
There are plenty of situations where that makes perfect sense.
But for our most valuable Dream Clients, I think there’s a strong argument for deliberately not automating it.
Someone in your office could actually handwrite the envelope.
Put the contents inside.
Add a handwritten note.
Include something unusual.
A book.
A relevant report.
A small gift.
A physical object connected to the message.
The sort of lumpy, memorable direct mail that Chet Holmes enthusiastically taught.
You Cannot Automate Memorable
When your prospect receives hundreds of emails, another email is easy to ignore.
When they receive endless digital messages, another one is easy to ignore.
A handwritten package containing something interesting is different.
And we come back to the economics.
If this company could potentially become a £250,000 client, does spending £100 creating and delivering something memorable really sound expensive?
I don’t think it does.
Technology should help us decide who deserves the expensive human attention. It doesn’t mean technology has to deliver every interaction.
Stage 7. Stop Asking for Meetings. Give Them Something Valuable
Another aspect of Chet Holmes’ thinking that I believe fits beautifully into a modern Dream Client system is education.
Rather than repeatedly asking prospects:
“Would you like a 30-minute call?”
give them a reason to engage.
Teach them something.
Invite them to something genuinely useful.
That could be:
- an online workshop
- an in-person workshop
- a webinar
- a breakfast briefing
- a roundtable
- a seminar
- a demonstration
- an expert Q&A
- a small invitation-only event
I’ve taken this idea considerably further and built my own Workshop Marketing System using HighLevel.
It uses regular workshops as an ongoing way to educate prospects, demonstrate expertise and build relationships rather than constantly asking people to book a sales call.
I’ve even created a free Workshop Marketing with HighLevel blueprint and Snapshot showing how the system works.
For Dream 100, I think this becomes particularly powerful.
We’re not inviting 10,000 random people to another generic webinar.
We can create genuinely useful events around the interests, challenges and opportunities faced by the businesses we most want to work with.
And HighLevel’s Events functionality makes this even more interesting because registrations, attendee information, reminders, follow-up and the CRM can increasingly sit within the same ecosystem.
Think what that does to our Dream Client Conveyor Belt.
Instead of:
Cold email → Sales meeting
we might have:
Research → Personalised email → LinkedIn → Direct mail → Telephone → Workshop invitation → Workshop attendance → Follow-up → Sales conversation
That’s a very different experience for the prospect.
And importantly, the workshop shouldn’t simply be a disguised sales pitch.
It should be genuinely useful.
We’re demonstrating expertise before asking the Dream Client to buy anything.
Stage 8. HighLevel. The Operating System Behind It All
You may have noticed that I’ve already mentioned HighLevel several times before we’ve even reached the section specifically about HighLevel.
That’s deliberate.
HighLevel isn’t simply another channel alongside QuickProsp, LinkedIn, telephone and direct mail.
It’s the operating system sitting behind the whole Dream Client Conveyor Belt.
Prospeo helps us find and enrich potential Dream Clients.
Humans and AI help us research and qualify them.
QuickProsp helps us initiate personalised cold email conversations.
LinkedIn gives us another relationship-building channel.
HighLevel can help us manage telephone activity.
Direct-mail actions can be recorded and, where appropriate, triggered from the system.
Our workshops and events can run through HighLevel.
Appointments can be booked through HighLevel.
Opportunities can be managed through HighLevel.
Follow-up and longer-term nurture can be managed through HighLevel.
So although HighLevel keeps appearing throughout this article, this is the point where its role becomes clear.
HighLevel is where we orchestrate the whole system.
This also ties into something I’ve written about elsewhere. I increasingly see HighLevel as an AI Operating System for your marketing and business.
Individual AI tools can be enormously useful, but the really interesting part is what happens when the tools, data, communication and customer journey all connect into one underlying system.
A Dedicated Dream Client Pipeline
I’d create a dedicated Dream Client pipeline.
The exact stages will undoubtedly evolve as Mark 1 is tested, but initially they might look something like:
Potential Dream Client
↓
Research & Qualification
↓
Approved Dream Client
↓
Initial Outreach
↓
Engaging
↓
Education / Workshop
↓
Conversation
↓
Active Opportunity
↓
Client
But the pipeline is only the visible part.
Behind it, HighLevel can help manage:
- contacts and companies
- opportunities
- pipeline stages
- tasks
- telephone activity
- appointments
- notes
- emails
- workflows
- forms and surveys
- events and ticketing
- reminders
- long-term nurture
And that’s what makes the conveyor-belt model practical.
Once the system has been running for a while, we may have hundreds of carefully selected Dream Clients at different points in the relationship.
Some may be brand new.
Some may have attended three workshops.
Some may have spoken to us six months ago.
Some may be active opportunities.
Some may have told us to come back next year.
Nobody can reliably keep all of that in their head.
The technology can.
HighLevel’s job is to give us the structure, memory and automation needed to scale Chet Holmes’ persistence without losing the individual relationships that made the Dream 100 strategy powerful in the first place.
Stage 9. AI Becomes the Intelligence Layer
So where does AI fit?
Everywhere.
But I don’t want AI to become the headline act.
The strategy is still Dream 100.
AI makes the system smarter.
It can help us:
- research potential Dream Clients
- summarise websites
- understand what companies do
- research individual decision makers
- identify recent developments
- analyse news and business signals
- personalise communication
- suggest direct-mail ideas
- prepare telephone calls
- summarise conversations
- recommend next actions
- identify disengaged accounts
- help prepare workshop content
- analyse which approaches are working
We can go further still.
I’ve also been experimenting with tools such as Browse AI.
I’ve written about combining Browse AI and HighLevel for lead generation research and business intelligence.
For a Dream Client strategy, this opens up the possibility of continuously monitoring our most valuable target companies.
Imagine watching the websites of your Dream Clients.
A new director appears.
A new office opens.
A new service launches.
A recruitment page suddenly has 20 vacancies.
A major announcement appears.
That information could feed into our system and create a task:
Something has changed at Dream Client X. Take a look.
Now AI isn’t simply helping us write emails.
It’s helping us know when there is a good reason for a human to make contact.
I think that’s much more powerful.
Stage 10. The Complete Mark 1 Dream Client Conveyor Belt
Put everything together and my initial system looks like this:
DEFINE
What does a genuinely valuable Dream Client look like?
↓
FIND
Use Prospeo, search criteria and AI Lookalikes to identify potential companies and relevant people.
↓
RESEARCH
Use humans supported by AI to investigate each potential Dream Client.
↓
QUALIFY
Would we genuinely choose this company as a client?
↓
ENRICH
Build the contact picture. Email, mobile, company information, LinkedIn and relevant decision makers.
↓
ENTER HIGHLEVEL
Create the company, contacts and Dream Client opportunity.
↓
EMAIL
Use AI-personalised cold outreach through QuickProsp.
↓
LINKEDIN
Build familiarity and relationships through LinkedIn.
↓
TELEPHONE
Create opportunities for genuine human conversations, managed through HighLevel.
↓
DIRECT MAIL
Use automated mail where appropriate, but deliberately use handwritten and lumpy mail where the potential value justifies it.
↓
EDUCATE
Invite Dream Clients to genuinely valuable workshops, webinars, roundtables and events.
↓
ENGAGE
Track interactions, conversations, attendance and buying signals.
↓
NURTURE
Stay useful and visible even when the timing isn’t right.
↓
OPPORTUNITY
When a genuine requirement emerges, move into the appropriate sales process.
↓
DREAM CLIENT
And all the time, new potential Dream Clients are being identified, researched and qualified at the top.
That’s the conveyor belt.
What Would You Spend to Win a £250,000 Client?
I keep coming back to this because I think it’s the question that keeps the entire system honest.
If a prospect could genuinely be worth £250,000 to your business, what would you sensibly invest to win them?
£10?
£100?
£1,000?
Several days of somebody’s time spread over two years?
There’s no universal answer.
But it almost certainly isn’t:
“As little as humanly possible.”
And that’s why I don’t want this system to become another automated prospecting machine.
Automation should remove unnecessary administration.
AI should improve our intelligence.
Data should help us find the right businesses.
The CRM should make sure nothing falls through the cracks.
But those efficiencies allow us to invest more human thought, creativity and attention where it matters most.
That’s the paradox at the heart of my 2026 Dream 100 system.
I’m using AI and automation so that I can afford to be more human, not less.
Mark 1. Not the Finished System
This is Mark 1.
There will almost certainly be things I change.
Maybe 25 new Dream Clients a month is too many.
Perhaps it’s too few.
Maybe certain combinations of email, LinkedIn, telephone and direct mail work better than others.
Perhaps workshops turn out to be the most effective component.
Perhaps AI monitoring identifies opportunities I haven’t considered yet.
Maybe I’ll replace one of the tools.
That’s precisely why I’m calling this Mark 1.
I want to build it, use it, measure it and learn from it.
And then I’ll build Mark 2.
But one thing I don’t expect to change is the underlying principle Chet Holmes taught.
Some potential clients are dramatically more valuable to your business than others.
Identify them.
Understand them.
Invest in them.
Educate them.
Stay visible.
Be persistent.
And give yourself enough time to be there when the opportunity eventually appears.
Chet Holmes gave us the Dream 100.
My Mark 1 experiment is to find out just how far we can take it with the technology available to us in 2026.
Resources & Tools Mentioned in This Article
Here are the main tools and resources I’ve referenced in building my Mark 1 Dream 100 B2B Prospecting System.
- HighLevel via MarketerM8
The CRM and marketing automation platform I use as the operating system behind the Dream Client Conveyor Belt. MarketerM8 is our HighLevel agency, where we provide HighLevel alongside implementation, consultancy, training and support.
Visit MarketerM8 - Prospeo
B2B prospecting and enrichment software for finding potential companies and decision makers, including verified contact and company information.
Visit Prospeo - QuickProsp
The cold email platform I’m currently using for AI-personalised prospecting. Its AI can research individual prospects and companies and help make outreach more relevant to each recipient.
Visit QuickProsp - LinkedHelper 2
LinkedIn automation software that can assist with prospect identification, connection campaigns and LinkedIn messaging. Remember that LinkedIn restricts unauthorised third-party automation, so understand the current platform rules before deciding how you use it.
Visit LinkedHelper 2 - Browse AI
A no-code web scraping and monitoring platform. I see particular potential for using it within Dream 100 to monitor target companies for website changes, new staff, services, vacancies, announcements and other useful signals.
Visit Browse AI - Stannp
A direct mail platform that can print and send letters, postcards and other physical mail. Useful when we want to automate part of the direct-mail element of the Dream Client system.
Visit Stannp
Further Reading from Julian Mills
- The Dream 100 Strategy
My broader look at Chet Holmes’ original Dream 100 client acquisition concept. - The LinkedIn Dream 100 Strategy
An earlier article looking specifically at combining Dream 100 with LinkedIn. - Workshop Marketing with HighLevel
My system for using workshops to educate prospects, demonstrate expertise and build relationships using HighLevel. - Browse AI and HighLevel
How Browse AI can be combined with HighLevel for prospect research, monitoring and business intelligence. - HighLevel as an AI Operating System
Why I increasingly see HighLevel as the underlying operating system connecting AI, marketing, sales and customer activity.
Would You Like to Build Your Own Dream Client System?
If you’d like help working out how HighLevel, AI, automation and a Dream 100-style approach could work inside your business, let’s have a conversation.
We can look at how you currently find, nurture and follow up your most valuable potential clients and where HighLevel could sit behind the process.
About the Author
Julian Mills
HighLevel Consultant & Marketing Automation Strategist
Julian Mills helps business owners automate lead generation, sales follow-up, customer communication and business processes using HighLevel and MarketerM8. Since 2009 he has helped businesses implement CRM, marketing automation and AI-powered systems that save time, improve customer experience and generate more sales.
About Julian
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If you’re already using HighLevel for your CRM, email marketing and marketing automation, you might reasonably ask:
If you connect all your communication channels to HighLevel, there is an inevitable consequence.
Time fo writing: 20 August 2026