Outside work, I paint. By hand when I have the time, on Procreate when I don’t. My favourite style is the one-line drawing: a whole figure in one continuous stroke, without lifting the pen.
The wandering line on my website comes from one of those paintings.
It’s harder than it looks. You can’t go back. You can’t add a second line to fix the first. Every curve has to earn its place, because there’s only one line and it has to carry the whole picture.
Somewhere along the way I realised it’s the same discipline as writing a good sales email.
One line, one idea
Most bad emails are trying to draw five pictures at once. A product update, a price change, a meeting request, a case study and a “by the way” at the bottom.
The customer reads the first line, maybe the second, and decides whether the rest is worth it. Usually it isn’t.
So before I write anything that matters, I ask the one-line question. What’s the single thing I want them to do or know? If I can’t say it in a sentence, I’m not ready to write the email.
Don’t lift the pen
In a one-line drawing the line has to flow from one part of the figure to the next. If it jumps, the drawing falls apart.
Emails are the same. Each sentence should lead to the next. Why I’m writing, why it matters to you, what happens now. No detours.
Leave space
The best one-line pieces have a lot of empty paper. The space is what lets the line breathe.
Short emails with room around them get read. Walls of text get archived.
Make it look like them
Sam McKenna’s approach to selling comes down to showing the other person you actually know them: their world, their problems, not your pitch. A portrait only works if it looks like the person. An email only works if it sounds like it was written for them.
I’m not a professional artist and I’m not a professional writer. But I’ve noticed that the days I paint tend to be the days my emails are shortest.
Say one thing. Say it well. Stop.
