Scott Ginsberg’s new release advertises itself as “2 Books In 1”. The hook is that the you read the first 129 pages — titled Stick Yourself Out There — and then flip the book upside down to read the “second book”, Get Them to Come to You.

It’s a silly gimmick, just a way to make a 251-page book look different. To make it even sillier, there’s a short section in the middle that’s printed sideways.

It worked on me exactly the way Ginsberg wanted it to.

The day it arrived at my office, I found myself going out of my way to show it to several co-workers. Would I have done that if the book had just gone straignt from Page 1-251, all rightside-up?

Nope. Which illustrates one of the book’s underlying principles: Normal, says Ginsberg, is boring.

Stick Yourself Out There/Get Them to Come to You is a quick, breezy read, written in an informal style. Parts of it seem padded — the sections with wide spaces between paragraphs, and occasional pages written in a huge font, feel like attempts to get the page-count up.

But you’ll also find some very useful tips within the pages. Here are a few that resonated with me:

• I’ve scheduled a recurring event on my calendar: the question “What two people do I know who should meet each other?” now shows up every Monday.
• Ginsberg asks, “Is your [business] card SO good that people immediately show it to their friends?” My answer: nope. So I’m looking for a way to make my business card more memorable.
• I’m compiling a Client List — every client I’ve worked with in the past five years. When it’s done, it’ll have its own page on this blog.

You may not want to go as far as Ginsberg does — he’s known as The Nametag Guy because he wears a nametag 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But if you’re looking for ways to set yourself apart from the competition, you’ll find much to chew on in Stick Yourself Out There/Get Them to Come to You.

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