Trust your gut.

A few months ago I was all lined up to go to the Ottawa Animation Festival. I was nervous, I wanted to go, it's been a long time since I have and I used to go every year. The thing was, I really didn't feel confident in the person I was sending. Me.

I felt that if I was going to go, that I would be doing the same old dog and pony show that I used to do. That I really haven't changed that much in my approach in going to these things. So I decided to step up my game and take a couple of opportunities to host some panels. (My buddy Dave couldn't make it to the festival and offered me his gigs, thank you Dave Skwarczek!).

With everything set and about 2 weeks before the trip I had more gut feelings that I just shouldn't go. I felt I wasn't prepared enough, that there wasn't anything there that I couldn't do from here and most of all that it wasn't a place that I was going to find work for my little studio. So I cancelled the whole thing.

About a week later I ended up getting a call from a friend in Manitoba who I was working on some series development with, his project got greenlit and he gave me an opportunity to win an animated series project if I could get an animated sample of how we would handle the project -  done in 10 days (or something like that). The days I took off for the Ottawa trip, I instead spent on that test. With the help of Jon Lambe, we rocked it, won the project and have now started the 13x22 episode production on Canot Cocasse with Chuck and Punch Clement of Manito Media. We've hired more staff, recruited more talented artists in our community and are on track to have a banner year in business at Loogaroo.

All because I had a gut feeling and trusted it.

What gut feelings are you not listening to?