Today I wanted to share with you the concepts of “perception is reality” and “driving the market”.  Meaning, what people perceive does become their reality and driving the market as in the Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams, where he kept hearing/saying “if you build it they will come”. While you’re probably thinking I’m crazy in stating the markets can be driven, I’ll share with you a story from my past.

A little while ago, OK…a long time ago, I had the privilege of working at a very high-end and exclusive establishment with a fine dining restaurant that only open for dinner from Wednesday through Saturday.  A small place with only 70-80 covers, and while Fridays and Saturdays were doing OK, Wednesdays and Thursdays were a different story!  Quite embarrassing actually, fine dining place with 80 covers doing only 10-15 covers a night,and uncomfortable for the patrons being the only ones in the large room.

So what did we do? Close the restaurant for those days? No! Quite the opposite!  For a period of two months, every time someone called for reservations for a Wednesday or Thursday evening they were informed that the restaurant was full with no availability, With the only open spots two weeks away.  Little by little, we built this mystique that something special was going on Wednesdays and Thursdays evenings and that people had to call weeks in advance to be able to get a table. Now, as those evenings booked up, we did add special things such as live jazz band and such, and before you know it the little restaurant “that could” became a sold-out success on all evenings that it was open.

Perception is a reality and the market can be driven!

As I always say: there are two things you can do, either you do it or you don’t!

At Your Service,
Aurelian A.