Why Ambivalence Is The Enemy Right Now

When Lorne Michaels was casting the premier season of Saturday Night Live, he’d already hired Chevy Chase, Gilda Ratner and Bill Murray from the National Lampoon.

But Michaels sat on hiring their buddy John Belushi, even though his audition blew everyone away. As he tells it: “The enemy was ambivalence”.

Belushi wanted to play it cool and make the show pursue him—but with every other audition chasing him down for the opportunity, Michaels was none too keen on casting the poster boy for ambivalence.

Eventually, Belushi got hired (it’s kinda fun to watch Michaels grumble about it in the documentary Belushi).

But his (and Lorne’s) ambivalence is probably why it took him a year—even with his crazily outsized talent—to find his footing on the show, while Chevy Chase became the first breakout star.

Lorne was right: ambivalence is the enemy. Ratchet that up by a factor of 10 in this current moment: milquetoasts are not getting attention or closing deals.

That’s because when so much is in flux, you need to be either VERY in or definitely out in the minds of your ideal audience. There is no in-between position where your clients and buyers continue to choose you.

Do you want to consult on issue X or problem Y? With Fortune 500 clients or start-ups? Do you want to serve clients directly or build communities for them?

While monetizing your expertise is always an ongoing experiment, you must make a deliberate choice of how to position yourself at any given moment in time—so your people know where you stand.

Right now especially, that means you ignore anything less than a resounding yes and kick every single hell-no to the curb.