Is there a buiilt-in way to avoid GetComponent?

[Disastercake]

I want to try to avoid GetComponent as much as possible in my code.  What is the best way to grab something like a UILabel component to change it's text when it's created at runtime?

[JRoch]

Create a local (private) variable of the type of the Component and only GetComponent<type> once for Awake() or Start().  From that point on you may reference the variable rather than having to look up the Component all the time.

I'm unsure whether GetComponent has a performance hit like Find does.

[ArenMook]

GetComponent isn't very expensive, but it's still better to cache the result.