When I began my marketing career with the business my wife’s started, Rachel’s Brownies, we were described as a “one-trick pony.” I always thought it was a compliment and wore it like a badge of honor. Maybe it was prescient that our second customer was a little ice cream parlor called The Rocking Horse, so the “one-trick pony” never upset me.
A company that only does one thing, is often called “a one-trick pony.” It can be derogative term as if the business can only do one thing.
Businesspeople and journalists missed that my wife and I believed that we wanted to be the best at one thing – brownies. We simply focused on making the absolute world’s best and most delicious chocolate brownies.
Avoiding distractions, we were guided by the principle that there are a lot of places we could sell brownies like gourmet shops, specialty food stores, airlines, supermarkets, and mail-order catalogs – to name a few. And being a brownie specialist also seemed both fun and fulfilling for two highly educated college graduates. We used to kid that we hate friends who were in law school, or becoming doctors – and we were brownie bakers.
The idea of being an expert in something had a strong appeal to us. And every day we would find ways to continuously improve our process. We wanted to create homemade imperfection, perfectly. It reminds me of the Zen phrase wabi-sabi.
Wabi sabi is an ancient aesthetic philosophy rooted in Zen Buddhism, particularly the tea ceremony, a ritual of purity and simplicity in which masters prized bowls that were handmade and irregularly shaped, with uneven glaze, cracks, and a perverse beauty in their deliberate imperfection
Beautiful Constraints of a One-Trick Pony
Making one product was a beautiful constraint. We were happy to be known for doing something so spectacular that we spent as much time on TV or being interviewed as we spent mixing chocolate chips in the rich batter we blended.
We understood that line extensions and new products would come later in our journey. For the first decade, we had to keep focused on our vision of keeping things both simple and spectacular.
It is more than thirty years since we baked brownies, yet every month, someone finds me online and tells me a story about how much she loved our sweet treats. It is satisfying to hear that the memory of a brownie can live on decades after it is consumed.
Four Reason to Focus on Your One-Trick Pony
- You can break through with your message when you can communicate you are an expert in a narrow field. For example, a company that is an expert at stakeholder interviews or excels at making socks for runners can provide great value for those who need an expert interviewer or sock makers.
- Creativity often comes from constraints. You find new channels and markets for products and services. We stumbled upon selling brownies on United Airlines and People Express Airlines. They wanted to upgrade their meals served on board, and buyers from both companies serendipitously found our little brownies. Although we were a small company, we had a BIG reputation.
- Customers want to buy from people who are the best at something or are deeply knowledgeable. Who wants to go to a general practitioner if your child needs orthopedic surgery? A juvenile orthopedic surgeon focuses all her time on kid’s broken bones. This video tells this story about buying a mountain bike from experts.
- A simple focus helps align your employees toward the same goal. It keeps the mission crisp and everyone moving in alignment.
Is it time to saddle up your one-trick pony and stay focused on the path you are galloping?
You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Watch a short video about working with me.
Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash
