Profile: Liz Barrett’s dry-eye Field of Dreams now a realityLiz Barrett is set to open her eighth Dry Eye Solution practice, in Melbourne, just a few years after opening the first in Erina, Central Coast. Images: Dry Eye Solution.Liz Barrett’s bold move to open a standalone dry eye clinic appears to have paid off – she’s set to open No. 8, her first outside NSW. Insight asks how she’s done it and what comes next.Build it and they will come.That’s not usually a winning strategy when considering a business venture in relatively little-known territory.And ignorance is not bliss when the banks are more interested in sound business knowledge and the bottom line.But just as Kevin Costner’s character in the movie Field of Dreams felt compelled to carve a baseball diamond from a corn field, simply because the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson asked him to do it, a businesswoman in Australia has carved out a successful, growing venture from hard work, belief in the cause, and a high-profile mentor who assured her that if she built it, they would come.Dry Eye Solution founder and CEO Ms Liz Barrett is set to open her eighth dry eye clinic, in Melbourne in the coming months. She has plans for No. 9 and 10 as well, in yet-to-be disclosed locations.Number eight will be the first foray beyond her NSW base and a long way from where it all began, almost five years ago, when an idea started forming in her head, followed by a nagging, insistent voice.Barrett, who had a decades-long background in optics and business in Ireland, England and Australia, was helping to prepare the sale of a NSW practice for an optometrist, the late Dr Amanda Ryan.“She was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, and she knew she was dying,” says Barrett. “She asked me to help her get it ready to sell, and I considered buying it.”But Barrett was struggling with her options. The practice was large, in an unusual area, and the numbers were not great.She turned to a former colleague who worked with ophthalmologists for advice.“I said, ‘What do you think? Maybe I could put an eye surgeon in this clinic – I’ve got four rooms that are not being used and it’s a beautiful practice’.“She said, ‘No, I think it’s too saturated. I think what you need is a dry eye clinic.’ And I said, ‘What’s a dry eye clinic?’. And she said, ‘I don’t really know’, but she’d worked in Mudgee, and they were sending patients all the way to the Gold Coast for treatment.”The idea took hold, the inner voice began its relentless rhythm.Liz Barrett’s bold move to open a standalone dry eye clinic appears to have paid off – she’s set to open No. 8, her first outside NSW. Insight asks how she’s done it and what comes next.Build it and they will come.That’s not usually a winning strategy when considering a business venture in relatively little-known territory.And ignorance is not bliss when the banks are more interested in sound business knowledge and the bottom line.But just as Kevin Costner’s character in the movie Field of Dreams felt compelled to carve a baseball diamond from a corn field, simply because the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson asked him to do it, a businesswoman in Australia has carved out a successful, growing venture from hard work, belief in the cause, and a high-profile mentor who assured her that if she built it, they would come.Dry Eye Solution founder and CEO Ms Liz Barrett is set to open her eighth dry eye clinic, in Melbourne in the coming months. She has plans for No. 9 and 10 as well, in yet-to-be disclosed locations.Number eight will be the first foray beyond her NSW base and a long way from where it all began, almost five years ago, when an idea started forming in her head, followed by a nagging, insistent voice.Barrett, who had a decades-long background in optics and business in Ireland, England and Australia, was helping to prepare the sale of a NSW practice for an optometrist, the late Dr Amanda Ryan.“She was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, and she knew she was dying,” says Barrett. “She asked me to help her get it ready to sell, and I considered buying it.”But Barrett was struggling with her options. The practice was large, in an unusual area, and the numbers were not great.She turned to a former colleague who worked with ophthalmologists for advice.“I said, ‘What do you think? Maybe I could put an eye surgeon in this clinic – I’ve got four rooms that are not being used and it’s a beautiful practice’.“She said, ‘No, I think it’s too saturated. I think what you need is a dry eye clinic.’ And I said, ‘What’s a dry eye clinic?’. And she said, ‘I don’t really know’, but she’d worked in Mudgee, and they were sending patients all the way to the Gold Coast for treatment.”The idea took hold, the inner voice began its relentless rhythm.It grew louder, increasingly resistant to scepticism and logic; even the concerns of others in the industry who regarded it as madness: a stand-alone optometry business that focused on one then little-understood ailment? That didn’t sell glasses?“I felt like the idea was pulling me along, and I just was the willing participant that went along with it.”It would be another two years before the will would meet the way and, buoyed by the results of a Japanese study that linked dry eye disease with happiness, and the realisation of a significant gap in the Australian ophthalmic sector, Barrett founded Dry Eye Solution and opened her first clinic in Erina, on NSW’s Central Coast, in February 2022.Ignorance remained, both with Barrett and the industry. But her collaboration with American dry eye expert Dr Rolando Toyos, who convinced the world that intense pulsed light (IPL) had applications in eyecare, helped Barrett fill the gaps, confirm her beliefs, and push on with the business.“I had been following him on YouTube for quite a while, and I was a huge fan,” she says.She got in touch after seeing Dr Toyos at a dry eye summit in Sydney.“I wrote him a text message and said, ‘I’ve just opened Australia’s first independent dry eye clinic; I’m one of your biggest fans’. I told him I knew his protocols were the best in the world and I wanted to offer the best service in the world to Australian patients,” she recalls.“What have I got to lose? So I press send, and I put my phone down, and straight away, it beeped and he says ‘Sure, set up a zoom call’, and it went from there.”Dr Toyos is heavily involved in the business, helping to upskill the 10 optometrists she employs across the company.“He comes out two or three times a year,” says Barrett. “He trains our whole team and will spend a whole week supervising appointments in clinic.“Every Tuesday morning, we have a group call with him, our clinical team, and we will present cases to him that we’ve never seen before. The knowledge is then shared throughout the group.”It was Dr Toyos’ advice, early in their connection, to “build it and they will come”. That helped her believe that she was on the right path, despite some early headwinds.“I thought, oh everyone’s going to want to refer their dry eye patients, and the eye surgeons will, and the optometrists will.”But that didn’t happen.“I realised, oh my gosh, there’s such a lack of knowledge and awareness and understanding with so many eyecare professionals about dry eye, and they didn’t refer.”That has changed over the years, as awareness has grown, along with Barrett’s own knowledge and business.She has continued to build, and the patients have continued to come. There are now seven practices in NSW, including Burwood, Chatswood, and Parramatta. She offers a telehealth service as well.“The demand is there – we have patients reaching out to us asking us, when are you opening up? Which is a beautiful place to be.”But ignorance remains within the industry. As well as caution towards Barrett.“This is very controversial,” she says. “They (eyecare professionals) don’t want to be seen as not understanding dry eye. And many do not know how to diagnose dry eye disease, which blows my mind.”In that sense, ignorance is bliss for business – Barrett has been able to carve out a healthy niche for both her patients and her business.Those customers are offered a 45-minute, partially subsidised consultation that determines the level of any dry eye and a tailored treatment plan.If it’s needed, people can book a block of four IPL treatments. Dry Eye Solution also offers treatments for rosacea, which is often associated with DED, as well as other skin issues. But dry eye remains the primary focus, says Barrett.But it’s not just about IPL, she says.As part of Dr Toyos’ more holistic view of dry eye and its causes, Barrett and her colleagues look beyond the patient’s eyes to understand what is causing their dry eye.“I say to patients, we can do IPL on you for the rest of your life, but we don’t want to do that, because you’re just treating the inflammation in the eye.“It’s like whack-a-mole; it’s inflammation and then you whack it down, and then it’ll show up somewhere else.“We have to address their lifestyle, their skincare regime – what shampoos are they using? Have they got any allergies? What medications are they on? What about their gut health?”She believes that with Dr Toyos’ help – “without him we would be flailing about in the dark” – her clinics are now about 25 years ahead of the industry in their knowledge of dry eye.But like the American specialist, she is doing her bit to help bridge that gap.“We created a dry eye academy for our interior team... and this year we will be launching that academy out to regular optometrists.“It’s not going to have all our secret herbs and spices, but it will be very much around how to diagnose dry eye disease. Patients deserve it.”That will give parts of the industry, those with a gap in their dry eye knowledge, a chance to catch up.Until that happens Barrett will continue to build, and DED sufferers will continue to come.
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