Dream Clients. Fantasy or Focus?

In a session last week a client shared a win with the group that brought me genuine joy.

She had written down a list of her dream clients. It wasn’t part of some cringe-worthy cold-calling exercise. It was just for herself. Making firm decisions about the kinds of businesses she actually wanted to work with, and what makes them ideal.

And a week later?

One of those dream clients reached out. Unprompted. No pitch, no nudge. Just… arrived in the inbox.

Was it luck? The algorithm doing its thing? Maybe. But I think it’s something more reliable than that.

She got specific. And that tends to change everything (in my humble opinion).

Dream clients rarely arrive by accident. They appear when you get clear enough to know exactly who you’re looking for, brave enough to look them right in the eye, and intentional enough to be noticed back.

There’s a quote I like from E.L. Doctorow (that I will happily butcher for the sake of a good simile).

Running a business is like driving a car at night. You can’t see the whole road, just the few metres in front of you, but you can still make the journey that way.

However (here's the butchering part) before you get in the car, what do you absolutely need? Car keys, petrol, working headlights, seat belts?

You need a destination.

And it's an area in business where so many of us fail to focus.

We deliver well. We fire up the instagram machine. Do the work. But underneath it all there is an empty map with an unclear destination.

Most of us get more comfortable getting faster, more polished, more exhausted… while going nowhere in particular.

That’s why so much of the early work we do isn’t tactical. It’s directional.

Progress feels a hell of a lot better when you’re actually heading somewhere you want to go, and you see the sign posts along the way.

This is why I believe in the Dream Client list. It is powerful.

When you write it down, those companies, brands, the people you’d love to work with, they clarify your own world. You start quietly recalibrating your business around those names, and their ideals. Your positioning sharpens. You simply have more intent.

The best part? You send a message to your subconscious:
This is what we’re building toward.

Now here’s the fun part.

The people who take this seriously? Who write down those bold, slightly-too-big, sick-to-your-stomach aspirational names?

They tend to share one trait: a useful delusion.

They believe they can punch above their weight. They behave like their work deserves a seat at the table, well before they’ve been invited. They don’t wait to be chosen. They start acting like someone worth choosing.

It's not naive. It’s momentum.

Belief, paired with clear direction, is what turns dream clients into ordinary milestones.

I’ve seen it happen again and again with real clients:

“I'm going to open a second office (near a beach)”

“I want to a buy-out offer from one of the big players”

“I want a magical General Manager to run everything, so I can colour-in forever.”

At first, these sound like big, ambitious leaps.

Twelve months later?
They’re just Tuesday.

So, I don't mind if you’re deeply woo-woo, semi-woo, or anti-woo.

Write the list.
Name names. Go big. You don’t have to post it anywhere.
You just have to believe it enough to put pen to paper.

And if you do? Remember this when your chatting with them in a few months time (and send me a DM with a 🙌 — I'll know what it means).

Because "The Manifest" wasn't just a snazzy play on words with "The Crew". Clever though I thought it was.

It’s the whole game-plan.