The Leftover Game
Turn idle business assets into savings, content, offers, or revenue
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 99%
The Leftover Game treats waste as an inventory of overlooked opportunities. A business systematically identifies unused materials, deadstock, unrepurposed content, neglected testimonials, old projects, and underutilized software, then asks how each asset could be reused, transformed, bundled, sold, or eliminated. Teams brainstorm several applications instead of accepting the asset's original purpose as fixed. The strongest option is assigned and tested, while subscriptions or assets with no defensible use are removed. The mechanism converts sunk time, money, and energy into cost savings, marketing material, product bonuses, templates, or new revenue. Repeating the exercise regularly also creates a culture in which people naturally ask how something can be reused before buying more or throwing value away.
Origin
Jasmine Star names this strategy after turning food leftovers into a new meal and illustrates it with restaurants' rubber spatulas, content repurposing, deadstock, software audits, and Henry Ford's wood scraps.
Core principles
- 01Treat unused assets as recoverable value
- 02Search for reuse before buying or discarding
- 03Combine fragments into useful new outputs
- 04Reduce waste through regular review
- 05Make resource reuse part of the operating culture
How to run it
- 1
Find the leftovers
Inventory assets that are unused, underused, unfinished, overstocked, or routinely discarded. Include physical materials, inventory, content, testimonials, project files, software features, and subscriptions.
Pro tip Ask every department what it pays for, stores, or throws away without extracting full value.
Watch out Do not limit the inventory to physical waste.
- 2
Measure trapped value
Estimate the money, time, energy, or opportunity represented by each leftover. Prioritize assets with high recurring cost or strong reuse potential.
Pro tip Annualize small recurring losses to make their significance visible.
Watch out Past spending alone does not justify investing more effort in a poor asset.
- 3
Generate new uses
Brainstorm ways to reuse, combine, transform, bundle, discount, gift, or resell each asset. Challenge the original format or purpose rather than merely repeating it.
Pro tip Use a five-idea minimum to move beyond the first obvious reuse.
Watch out Confirm that the new use respects permissions, customer expectations, and quality standards.
- 4
Create a new output
Select the most valuable feasible use and convert the leftover into a defined product, campaign, template, bonus, workflow, or saving. Assign ownership and a delivery date.
Pro tip Combine several small content fragments into one coherent long-form asset when their themes align.
Watch out Randomly combining leftovers can produce an incoherent or low-value result.
- 5
Eliminate irrecoverable waste
Cancel subscriptions, reduce seats, dispose of unusable stock responsibly, or stop processes that cannot create sufficient value. Reuse is one option, not an excuse to retain everything.
Pro tip Review per-seat software against actual activity rather than job title alone.
Watch out Do not preserve an expense merely because it might become useful someday.
- 6
Repeat the game
Run the review monthly or quarterly and track savings, reused assets, and resulting revenue. Reinforce the question of reuse before new purchasing decisions.
Pro tip Celebrate measurable small wins to normalize resource-conscious behavior.
Watch out A one-time cleanup will not prevent leftovers from accumulating again.
In the wild
Jasmine describes gathering five-minute and ten-minute recordings from Zoom videos, Instagram Lives, coaching sessions, and course mindset moments. By grouping clips around similar themes and combining their audio, she can turn scattered material into one long-form podcast or audio resource.
→ Previously isolated content fragments become a coherent new asset without recording everything from scratch.
A product business can bundle or discount deadstock, turn scraps into samples, or transform old product photos into GIFs. A service business can reuse testimonials, case studies, presentations, and copy in reels, websites, sales conversations, or templates.
→ Idle assets support marketing and sales while reducing the waste of prior production effort.
Jasmine's team reviews subscriptions every four to six months. Active designers retain individual Figma seats, while occasional reviewers can use a shared access approach rather than every team member generating another recurring seat charge.
→ The company reduces software costs while preserving the access required for active work and review.
Common mistakes
Looking only for physical leftovers
Content, software features, subscriptions, testimonials, and old project files can trap as much value as inventory or material scraps.
Keeping assets without a use
Resourcefulness also means canceling or removing assets that cannot justify their cost. Indefinite storage is not repurposing.
Repurposing without coherence
Combining content or products only works when the new result has a clear theme and customer value. Avoid creating clutter from clutter.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for businesses with accumulated content, deadstock, underused subscriptions, leftover materials, or neglected sales assets.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when reusing an asset would create safety issues, mislead customers, violate rights, or cost more than replacing it.
From the transcript
“I want you to challenge yourself. Or if you have a team, challenge your team to brainstorm creative ways to repurpose or utilize these leftovers.”
“The goal is to have a little leftover waste at the end of the month.”
“What am I doing? I'm using the spatula for my content.”
From the episode
You CAN Develop Resourcefulness in Business (Here’s How!)