A note from Jim Knutsen

Everyone should have a favorite place less than two hours out the back door from their office.

When I need space to think, I take my old Chevy up around the back side of Pikes Peak, and west to the dusty, washboard road that winds through Eleven Mile Canyon.

If you don’t mind the steep climb down to the South Platte River, there’s a fine fishing hole about eight miles up, just past the second tunnel.

Which is where I stood last summer, knee-deep in slow-moving water, wondering what to rename the business I’d started some 12 years earlier.

I don’t much believe in the science of naming. Still I had hopes. I wanted a simple name that might reflect the things we believe and do. I wanted my team to love it. I liked the idea of the name as a call to action.

I wanted something easier to pronounce than Boatz Knutsen.

A fish was rising to late afternoon mayflies about 20 yards up river and across the current. It was a tricky spot and a finicky fish. I would need just the right fly, and to place it into a window about six inches wide 10 feet upstream of the fish – who wasn’t about to move out of his lane for my fly. I would need to drift it perfectly over his nose.

There is a singularity to this. It’s not the careless, fingers-crossed toss of a wide net. One fish. One fly. One precise and artful cast.

It’s how we approach communication. Design the strategy to meet employees exactly where they are, with a carefully chosen and perfectly placed story.

The fish eluded me; the name did not.

Boatz Knutsen is now Cast Communication Design.