Of all the mistakes I’ve made, this one I should have known better, because there were too many signals ahead of time about what was to come.

Last weekend, Anne and I went out to dinner. We hadn’t been to this place before so we figured we’d give it a try. It’s a local steakhouse and it’s been in town for a long time, plus, the parking lot is always packed so we thought it would be “safe.”

Bad thinking on our part.

For starters, when we were seated, they put us into a room that felt like a cultural time-warp “reality show.” Most of the men there had big giant bellies, covered up by overalls or some other kind of sans-a-belt pants — all of them with worn polyester suspenders tucked over their shoulders holding them up.

Long untrimmed beards and wispy threaded pony tails coming through the backs of baseball caps were definitely “in” in that room. Polyester collared shirts (mostly yellow and grey) were all the rage that night as well.

A few of the hillbilly’s were “dressed up.” They had on polyester shorts or “Dickies” with sneakers and black socks pulled up high — just underneath their knee caps.

The women looked very similar to the men actually. They were dressed like women but sort of “gender repellant” if you want to call it that. Hair up in buns, all screaming at their kids (none of whom listened), usually they talked and yelled a lot while they were chewing their food, so this wasn’t too seductive.

The gals too, had the hillbilly theme going as well. No suspenders — but the same kinds of polyester shirts, mostly with horizontal stripes though, no solids. I guess that’s a gender differentiation, if you want to call it that, stripes versus solids.

The hillbilly room frankly didn’t matter much, but it was a leading indicator of what was to come, just like new home sales is a leading indicator for how well the economy’s doing.

Where the mud really started sliding down the side of the mountain was when our drinks came out. I ordered a Margarita and it was God-awful. How can you screw that up?

Anne ordered a Vodka drink — like Vodka with OJ or something like that — and still again, bad bad bad. If you can’t mix two liquids together, or if what you’re mixing tastes that bad, it’s time to go.

But we were tired and didn’t feel like going anywhere else. We wanted the easy way out.

Bad thinking on our part again.

Leading indicator number 3 was the fact that the prices on the menu were CHEAP.

W-A-A-Y too cheap for me to be sitting there eating. “Cheap steak” means “bad steak.” It’s like when you see a sign for “cheap lakefront property.” It means there’s a swamp for sale and you can plop your crappy trailer on it and fit in just fine.

The final blow was that even the appetizers were awful.

By that time, we were just in it too deep to bounce out of there. We were too vested in our stay, time-wise, and of course when we left (a very short 20 minutes later, with our plates still filled with food sitting in front of us), we were both frustrated at ourselves for sticking around so long.

The price we paid to eat — about $50 bucks, was nothing compared to the price we paid wasting our time by not being decisive and by taking the easy way out.

Look, the bottom line is that there really is no fre.e lunch, and you really DO get what you pay for.

Like success, the price you pay to stay in your comfort zone and take the easy way out, may SEEM “cheap”, but it is always FAR greater than the price you’re going to pay to ultimately get what you want and go where you want to go.

The old adage of “you get what you pay for” is true, and equally true is that you also DON’T get what you DON’T pay for as well.

You most definitely DO get what you pay for though, when you subscribe to my Seductive Selling Offline Newsletter. For example, this month I’ll tell you why at $97K, you’re getting one HELL of a bargain, to hang out with me and watch me belch. I kid you not! Just check out page 4 — and if you act now, you can actually test-drive your subscription for fre.e, AND get $1,361 Dollars worth of bonus gifts, right here: http://kingofcopy.com/ssnl
Now go sell something, Craig Garber

P.S. Listen to my Seductive Selling Radio Show, premiering January 11th on WorldTalkRadio.com