Reuse, resurrect or reposition something people threw away

My wife used to work for a prominent vertical farm.

They built an aeroponic technology known as a closed loop system, where recycled water and nutrients grew leafy greens with virtually zero waste.

It was an immaculate operation, to say the least. One of her tasks as sales director was to leverage plant stems and roots that littered the factory floor. For example, developing additional applications in added value food products and composing opportunities.

Turns out, those stems and roots, which were originally going to be thrown in the trash, could be sold as healthy, affordable ingredients for companies that sold pesto, juice, rope, paper and cloth.

Can you imagine the potential revenue, partnership and growth potential of those assets?

Most restaurant consultants use a similar filter. Their first order of business is typically scouring the trash. Because it’s almost guaranteed to be a sanctuary of defective, unwanted, overlooked and undervalued things that can be leveraged into meaningful assets.

Personally, this resonates with me on a deep level. My entire career was born out of a trashcan full of ripped up, used nametags. That was my moment of leverage, and it changed the vector of my life for better and for always.

Had the nametags not been in the trash in that moment, the trajectory of my life would have been vastly different.

How can you reuse, resurrect or reposition something people threw away or quit on?

Remember, everything is fair game. There is nothing that’s unusable. It all depends on what you see when you see things.

One of the tools that’s become a central part of my thinking is called an opportunity agenda. This is a form of second order imagination. It’s the inherent enterprise to notice creative opportunities, apply force and propel them into interesting directions.

It’s based on the idea of perceptual democracy, which is where leverage comes from. When you’re exposed to virgin territories, unoccupied channels, unincorporated land, terra incognita, you think to yourself, wow, imagine what kinds of things could grow here.

This principle goes for devastated ground as well. When life is coming apart at the seams, and you start to believe that it’s utterly foolish to try to stop the descent into chaos, look to the ashes. Treat it as salted earth from which new life will blossom.

Push on the scale of opportunity by resurrecting the dead back to life. Fall in love with that which the rest of the world has given up on.

Hell, go buy other people’s mistakes and remarket them as opportunities, as my dad used to say in the closeout business.

The suppliers will be relieved, the customers will be thrilled, and you will be profitable.

What trash could you rescue?