At Stamped Robin – my all time favorite bar in Kalamazoo – you can order a YOLO. 

Yes, it stands for You Only Live Once.

So, what is a YOLO?

It’s an $8 (yes, correct, no typo just eight bucks) glass of wine filled all the way to the very tip top of the glass. We’re talking an Instagrammable moment of surface tension.

The bartenders are talented – Unlike the drama in this photo, I’ve never seen a spilled drop.

The hitch is that you can only pick the category: white, red, rose, or bubbles. 

Now you can trust that this won’t be a glass of dirt. It IS Stamped Robin, after all.

But YOLOs certainly attract people who are up for anything. Or at least have a tiny budget. 

YOLO has real appeal for the right customer. 

But what’s the benefit for Stamped Robin?

YOLO gives the bar a way to dispense of the about-to-go-stale bottles. The ones they’ve discontinued on the main menu. Those times when they took a chance on a new variety but didn’t love it enough to order more. Their castaways. 

Where most bars would toss the bottle (ok, let the staff drink and then toss the bottle) and write it off as an expense, Stamped Robin makes a bit of cash and delights entire tables when everyone whips out their phones to record the easy-to-please friend who ordered the YOLO. It makes Stamped Robin more memorable. It becomes a part of their brand. 

Did you catch that? They took what could have been trash and turned it into their brand.

Freakin genius.

Ok, so, what can you YOLO?

What thing did you create that didn’t end up getting much mileage – that you could now give a second life?

That quick video you recorded for a client. Can it now become a demo on your website?

That proposal that got rejected. Could it resurrect as a blog post?

The free talk you did because a friend asked – make it a mini workshop?

I bet if you review your experiences and opportunities over the past two years, you’ll identify a bunch of material that still has life left, perhaps in another format. Use it. You’ve already done the hard work to create it in the first place. Now it’s just a matter of repackaging.

You can also use a YOLO mindset when you’re staring down a part of a project that you KNOW isn’t going to get a wide audience. Personally, it’s super hard to get motivated to develop that content.

But if I have a plan to double dip and recycle the content elsewhere, I pat myself on the back for being a maximizer and get to work. 

Are you getting any ideas? Run your YOLO plan by me and let’s make this happen.