Quantity is Job 1

After taking a bit of a break through Christmas and the start of this year…I’m back. Actually, I have to say I’m back in more than one way. I’ve been back on the road for the past 2 weeks performing throughout Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee + Kansas. Of course, I’m back online writing my random thoughts.

If you’ve seen me perform within the last 7 years, you know that I wear a wireless headset so that I can be heard quite easily during my demos. I always hated sitting in an audience straining to hear what the performer was saying so I decided that I would never create that problem for any audience that I perform for. The beauty of the wireless world is that you’re not held back by cords, the downside is that you need batteries to maintain that freedom. Instead of being held back by distance (how long your mic cord is), you’re held back by time (how long the battery lasts). Last school year I ran across an amazing deal on 9v batteries and bought up the lot. My supply lasted all of last year as well as into this year. Unfortunately, I finally ran out. I started looking around for some batteries and was shocked at how expensive the things are. After many days of muttering under my breath about how I didn’t want to spend that much on a stupid little battery, Alicia came up with the idea of buying them at the dollar store. We swung in and look at that, 2 for $1. We bought a few of them and walked out quite happy with the purchase. That was until I started using them.

I always knew there was a quality difference in cheapo batteries and good ones, but I have to say, I was rather shocked by how much of a difference there is. I found that the dollar store batteries were barely lasting the length of one show. A quick calculation had me spending $.50 per show on batteries. That didn’t seem like too bad, until you factor in the headache of hauling around a vast number of the things as I do 8-15 shows per week and suddenly things weren’t looking so good. After a couple days of this I decided to bite the bullet and buy some of the brand name ones.

I picked up a 6 pack of batteries and tried one out the next day. It lasted both shows…then the next day…then the next day. I think I went through 7-8 shows on one battery before it finally died. I paid close to $2 per battery, but the cost per show had dropped to around $.25-$.30 and I didn’t have to carry nearly as many. As you can probably tell, I really didn’t want to pony up the doe for the expensive batteries, the upfront cost was higher and the cheapo ones looked like they would do the same thing for less. That certainly didn’t turn out to be the case.

Everyone, myself included, likes to think that they can get something for nothing, but the fact is…in most cases you get what you pay for. The majority of things that look to good be true, probably are. If you watch a commercial and it tells you that you can lose 50 pounds by just spending 2 minutes a day with their machine…I would bet there’s something fishy going on with their research and you won’t get the results they seem to promise (as they say – results may vary). If you are serious about wanting to achieve something, be willing to spend the money on it. I highly recommend you do your research, just because something is expensive doesn’t make it great, but 99 percent of the time, something cheap is exactly that. You won’t get hardly anything out of it and it isn’t worth the few dollars you spent on it.

I know money is tight for most people right now, don’t spend foolishly, but if you are in the market to learn something, do something, get in shape, etc. Be willing to spend the money to get the results you want. Don’t waste any to find out that something cheap is worthless, you’ll just end up buying the more expensive thing later and you’ll be out your initial investment.