Boris Becker

Boris and the world’s saddest lamp

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Boris raised the famous golden trophy over his head, and the crowd erupted in cheers and applause.

​​They had never seen anything like this before.

Boris had become the youngest man ever to win the most prestigious tournament in tennis, Wimbledon.

For 17-year-old Boris, the acclaim was nice. The $169,000 prize winnings — equivalent to $446,000 in today’s money — didn’t hurt either.

Throughout the rest of his tennis career, Boris Becker won 48 more tournaments, including 2 more Wimbledon titles.

​​When he retired from tennis, in 1999, his entire career winnings totaled over $25 million. Combined with various endorsements and sinecures, his total earnings came to over $50 million.

But it’s not hard to squander a fortune. And over the years, Becker has worked hard to squander his.

Luxury apartments around the world… expensive divorces… a child begotten in the broom closet of a Nobu in London… by the mid 2010s, Becker’s resources were strained. And his debts were mounting.

Finally, it became too much. In 2017, Boris Becker filed for bankruptcy.

The tennis world, and the world at large, shrugged. It’s hardly a new story — a talented star makes millions in his youth, then squanders it all in middle age. Besides, bankruptcy is not the end of the world. People routinely recover from it.

But then just this past week, things got a lot worse for Becker.

It turns out he has been under criminal investigation for failing to report some of his assets during the bankruptcy hearings.

So now, not only will those assets be seized, but there’s a very real possibility that on Apr 29, Becker will be sentenced to jail time for his bankruptcy jiggery-pokery.

​​He might have to spend the next 7 years in prison… pushing the library cart around, fighting off advances in the shower, and trying to get used to the gruel — no Nobu behind bars!

Yesterday, I told you about the first canonical story type, rags-to-riches, which can be represented by /.

Today is about the second canonical story type, riches-to-rags, \. There are plenty of illustrations of this format. But I had been reading about Becker only a few days ago, and so he popped into mind.

And here’s an extra tip if you are massaging a story, whether riches-to-rags or any other type:

It matters big time where you start your story. Not just for sucking the reader in and getting his attention. But for the total effect.

For example, I could have started today by talking about the struggles Becker experienced only weeks before his first Wimbledon. Or I could have talked about the sacrifices he made as a kid.

Those might be valid places to start — if I were after a different effect.

​​But if the point of my story is to get you depressed and scared about losing everything you’ve got — after all, if it can happen to somebody as talented and blessed as Becker, why not you — then the best place to start is the highest, most pure moment of his career and life.

“Yeah about that,” I hear you saying, “this riches-to-rags structure is kind of depressing. It’s also kind of preachy. Who wants to read this kind of thing? I feel like you’ll just turn people off.”

Fair concern. But the fact is, some of the most influential and powerful stories in human history basically follow this basic riches-to-rags structure.

Adam and Eve had it really good in the Garden of Eden and then—

King Lear had three fair daughters who loved him and then—

And an Ikea lamp had a happy home and—

​Well, maybe you don’t know the most famous Ikea commercial ever.

​​It was directed by Spike Jonze. And people still talk about it today, 20 years after it came out.

​​You can find it below. And if you watch it, you will find a second crucial thing you need to do to make your riches-to-rags story work well.

​​In fact, it’s something I screwed up with my story of Boris Becker above.

​​It’s too late for me and my story in this email. But it’s not too late for you. Watch below and learn. Oh, and sign up for my email newsletter — I will write more about story types tomorrow.

“It’s like he reads my mind!”: The discipline to not lose your secret marketing edge

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“Could it be real?” Agassi asked himself in wonder. He slowed the tape down. “No… it can’t be true!”

The first three times that Andre Agassi faced Boris Becker, he lost.

The time was the late 1980s. Both Agassi and Becker were rising tennis stars — both future number ones.

But those first three meetings, it was all Becker. Three tight competitive matches. And each time Agassi fell short.

The trouble was Becker’s booming serve. The damn thing was unreadable and unreturnable.

The defeats stung Agassi. So he locked himself away and looked at hours and hours of footage of Becker serving, and winning, and winning.

And then Agassi noticed something. At first, he couldn’t believe it.

So he looked at more video tapes. And then more. On each one. Every damn time.

Becker had a tell.

Right before he served his unreturnable serve, he did this thing with his tongue.

If he stuck his tongue out to the left, it meant he would serve wide.

If he stuck his tongue straight out, it meant he would serve down the middle.

From then on, until the end of their careers, Andre Agassi beat Boris Becker 10 times out of 11. Becker kept telling his wife in disbelief, “It’s like he reads my mind!”

I’m telling you this story for two reasons:

One is to show you how people give away a lot with their physical gestures. And not just in poker or in tennis. Real life, too, or even Zoom. You just gotta pay attention. People can literally give away secrets they think are hidden inside their skulls.

But there’s a second thing. Like Agassi said:

“The hardest part wasn’t returning his serve. The hardest part was not letting him know that I knew this. So I had to resist the temptation of reading his serve for the majority of the match and choose the moments when I was gonna use that information to break the match open.”

So my second thing is to advise you to apply this same restraint to marketing and copywriting.

​​Once you figure out how to read your prospect’s mind, have discipline. And only use that information in those crucial, break-point, match-over opportunities.

​​Otherwise, your prospect will wise up. He will stick his tongue back inside his mouth. And then it’s back to the video room, for hundreds of hours of more research.

For example, I’ve figured out a magic phrase to get people to sign up to my email newsletter. But I can’t use it all the time, or it will lose its magic. I have to save it for special moments.

So for now, if you’d like to get on my email newsletter, so you can learn more about persuasion and marketing and copywriting, let me just say, here’s where you can sign up.