What He Would Not Paint

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, where two sign writers had the same number of handbills printed in the same cold week of February, and only one of them printed a refusal.

Two sign writers in one town, the same gold leaf and the same steady hand.
Both had four hundred handbills printed in the same week of February.
One wrote that he would letter anything, for anybody, at a price to suit the pocket.
One wrote, in the third line, the three kinds of work he would not take at all.
The first had forty enquiries that month and the second had fourteen.
Why did the man with fourteen finish March with twice the money in his tin?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two sign writers, in a town I have never named. Gold leaf in tissue, lamp black ground in varnish, a mahl stick to steady the wrist, and the long thin brush that draws a line nine feet without swelling in the middle. Both were good. Either could set a word on a fascia in letters three feet high and have it read from the far pavement on a wet afternoon, which is the whole of the trade. February being a thin month, both had four hundred handbills run off to leave at every shop within two miles.

The first man's bill was a fair and honest document. Sign writing of every description. Shop fronts, carts, windows, tickets, temporary boards. Gilding and plain. No work refused. Prices to suit all pockets. He meant every word, and would have told you, with some justice, that a man in a thin month cannot afford to be particular.

The second man's bill began the same way, with what he did. Then came the third line, which said what he did not do. He did not letter a board meant to last a season. He did not work to a design brought in by another hand. He did not take a front that must be finished inside a week, because gold wants a day to be laid and a day to be left alone. And he added, because it was true, that anybody needing a board for a fortnight's sale would be better served at the yard by the canal, where such boards were done for two shillings and done quickly.

Then the enquiries came, as the riddle says. Forty to the first man, and he walked to see all of them, because an enquiry is a compliment and a man answers a compliment. A mile and a half to price a ticket card for a greengrocer. Twice to a tobacconist who wanted a nephew's design copied exactly, which he did, and which the tobacconist then disliked on his wall and said so, and the matter was settled at the sign writer's expense. By the end of March he had done eleven pieces of work averaging seven and sixpence and walked eleven miles to be told no by the rest. He was not idle for a single day of it. He simply had very little to show.

Fourteen enquiries came to the second man. He walked to eleven and booked nine, at between two and three pounds apiece, and every one of those conversations began in a different place from his rival's. Nobody asked whether he could do it cheaper, because the bill had already said what he was. They asked about the colour of the ground, and whether a shaded letter would read better from across the road. One woman with a draper's shop told him it was the third line she had written about. She meant to keep her front twenty years, she had read a great many bills offering to suit her pocket, and here was a man who had told her what he would not do, which inclined her to believe the rest.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

An advertisement that names the work you will not take is believed by the people whose work you want, because a man who throws something away in print has shown what his claim costs him. Everything else in the bill is a promise. The refusal is the only part of it that has already been paid for.

Begin with the reader, who is not weighing your merits but looking for a reason to stop reading, and who is handed one by nine bills in ten because they sound like the eight before. A line that excludes somebody is the one line he has not seen, since it is the last thing a man short of work is expected to write. Then comes belief, which is the part that pays. Anybody may write that his work is the finest in the county, and the writing of it costs nothing, which is precisely why it persuades nobody. The reader cannot inspect your gold leaf from his parlour. What he can see is that your bill has deliberately thrown away a share of its own audience, and from that he draws a conclusion you could never have simply asserted: that you must have enough work to be choosing. The claim is believed for what it visibly cost to make, which is how we come to trust a man who tells us the fault in the horse he is selling.

And there is the sorting, which is the dull commercial heart of it. Somebody must separate the work you want from the work you do not, and if your bill will not do it, you will, one walk at a time, in hours you cannot charge to anybody. Print the line and four hundred readers do the job in the time it takes to read eleven words, and the wrong customer costs a great deal more than the empty hour he fills.

Now the objection, which deserves an answer rather than a brush aside. Fewer enquiries must mean fewer sales. It has the feel of arithmetic, and it is not, because an enquiry is not a sale, it is a cost: a walk, an hour, a price written out, and a wait. Forty enquiries yielding eleven jobs at seven and sixpence is four pounds two and six for a month on the road. Fourteen yielding nine at two pounds ten is better than twenty-two pounds, with the Wednesdays kept. The enquiries the line costs you are mostly ones you would have lost anyway, later, after the walk and the price.

Two cautions. First, exclude the work and never the person. There is a world between saying you do not letter temporary boards and implying that the man who wants one is a cheapskate. The first reads as a trade with standards, the second as a grievance, and a grievance in print follows you about the town for years. Second, draw the line round work you genuinely do not want, not work you are tired of this week. If the boards and the ticket cards pay your rent, the honest move is not to refuse them in February but to narrow what you are known for and let the reputation arrive before the refusal does. And have somewhere to send them, since a refusal with a direction attached earns you a man who speaks well of you without ever having been your customer.

Three questions, and the first wants ten minutes rather than a quiet afternoon:

1. Which three kinds of work would you not miss if they never came again? Go through last month's jobs and mark the ones you were glad to finish for the wrong reason. The pattern is usually plain in three entries, and plain to you already.
2. What did last month's unwanted enquiries cost you? Count the quotes that went nowhere, put an hour and the travel against each, and price those hours at your own rate. That figure is what you pay to be found by the wrong people.
3. Where will you send them? Name the trade or the person today, before you print anything. A line that shuts a door and shows no other is the one version of this that makes enemies.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why did the man with fourteen finish March with twice the money in his tin? Because his handbill did the sorting his rival did on foot. The forty were not opportunities, they were walks, most of them made by people who had read a bill promising to suit every pocket and concluded, sensibly, that such a man would suit theirs. The fourteen had read what he would not do, believed the rest on the strength of it, and arrived asking about letters rather than price.

The verse:

One bill said anything for anyone and set no door ajar,
One bill named the work it would not take and named it in the third,
The first man walked eleven miles to hear eleven noes,
The second kept his Wednesdays and was trusted on his word.

Until next time. Go and write the one line that names the work you do not take, and beside it the name of the person you will send it to.

P.S. The same words do quite different work according to where you put them. Printed, before anybody has rung, the refusal is a standard and it recommends you. Spoken, after a man has described his job and asked your price, the identical sentence is a rejection and will be remembered as one. Put the filter where it is read, not where it is delivered.

Also in the archive: The Sign Nobody Read, Set Aside at Nine in the Evening and There Is One of Me.