One-trick pony

 

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Word of the Day: One-trick pony

A one-trick pony is a person or company that can only do one thing.


Now, this one thing could be a specialty, and as long as that specialty is needed, then being a one-trick pony is not bad.

Things change, however, when the specialty or the one trick you can do is no longer in demand.

Imagine a company that manufactures only TVs, but they are the best TVs in the world.

This is a great thing; the company makes lots of money, profits are enormous, and everyone is happy.

Then, the market changes.

Everybody has a TV.

Now, it’s challenging to sell TVs, and because the company took for granted that people would always buy TVs, they cannot manufacture anything else.

In this case, being a one-trick pony is not such a good thing.

The moral of the story is that doing one thing well for a short period can be good, but eventually, being a one-trick pony can be awful.


This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).

On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 67.

The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.



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