We recently connected with Jordan Hirsch and have shared our conversation below.

Jordan, appreciate you joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

My company is named FishTree. Weird, right? My wife Amanda actually came up with it. For my first year running my leadership coaching, facilitation, and training business, I was simply Jordan Hirsch coaching. I’d been thinking about changing names, and I knew I could do better, but I had no idea where to go next. So I wrote about the experience on LinkedIn. I talked in a post about how I know I’m really good at certain things, like coaching people to feel more confidence and joy, leading groups through meaningful experiences, and making it fun, safe, and possible for people to do hard things at work. But at the same time, when I’m thinking about branding, naming, marketing, and some more of the “business” parts of running a business, I think about that (totally apocryphal) Einstein quote: “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” And I end up feeling like a fish trying to climb a tree.

Amanda read that and told me “You always talk about how your clients are brilliant people, who end up feeling challenged because they’re growing and stretching and doing new strange things outside their comfort zones, just like you. You should call your company FishTree.”

I almost immediately discounted the idea, because I hated that name. But over the next few days, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So I went with it, and today I am the proud owner of FishTree: https://fishtree.co/

Jordan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I got into coaching after a long career in the tech industry, starting as a web developer and eventually moving over to the consulting side of things. My favorite part of the work was always managing and growing people, and my other favorite part was designing and facilitating workshops that helped people get aligned, get real, and get talking to each other. I always leaned on my background as an improv performer, teacher, and coach to infuse my work with play. Eventually I hit a point where I realized I needed to be out on my own, only doing work I love. And here I am, running my company, FishTree.

At FishTree, we make it fun, safe, and possible to do hard things at work. Hard things can include: navigating difficult conversations, stepping into leadership, becoming a better manager, delivering great presentations with confidence, and more. Through 1:1 and group coaching experiences, we help people have breakthroughs at work, ascend to new heights, get promoted, find jobs that really fit them, and become powerful agents of change in their organizations. Sometimes the work looks like individual coaching conversations for leaders. Other times it might be workshops using applied improvisation to help teams communicate and collaborate together more effectively and joyfully. No matter what it is, we go after big goals, and we bring a toolbox full of deep reflection, safe experiments, and play.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I don’t have a cofounder, but I often work with a friend of mine named Sarah Filman. She’s also a leadership coach and facilitator with a background in the tech industry, as well as being a fellow improviser. I met Sarah a couple years ago when I was considering changing careers but was still working as the Director of Training and Facilitation for a digital agency. I signed up for a class of hers called “Playful Techniques for Meeting Facilitators” – more to check out how someone else did that kind of work than to learn. I ended up not only learning from Sarah, but becoming intrigued enough by her style and energy that I checked out her website. My first thought was “wow, I love how this person talks about their work!” Then I saw she had a “collaborate” button on her site. In the past I never would have clicked on something like that, but I’d been working with a coach myself, and was learning that if I wanted new results in my life, I would have to start experimenting with some new ways of showing up in the world. So I clicked it, and sent her an email about how we do similar work, and maybe we should chat some time to see where it might lead. Well, we hit it off so well at that first chat that we’ve now run a series of impactful improv-based leadership and team-building experiences together, and we also run a free monthly improv workshop where anyone can come get a joyful taste of play, collaboration, and confidence.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I never had to list “resilience” as part of my job description until I decided to build my own business. Now it’s something I have to summon every day. Most of my job now is running experiments in public, getting vulnerable, talking about why my work has value — in short, marketing and selling. I have to be resilient enough to get back out there the next day even after a day of not hearing back, canceled calls, “sorry, maybe we’ll call you in a few months,” and more. My improv training has helped me out here a lot — I’m no stranger to trying and failing in public — but I’m still learning every day how to bounce back, keep my chin up, and try something new. Working with a coach myself has helped (I don’t know how anyone runs a business without one and holds onto their mental health); I’m now able to pull myself out of a tailspin a lot faster than I used to be. And sometimes I can skip that part entirely and just move on to trying the next thing. While it requires resilience, working for myself is also the most fun I’ve ever had on the job, and that helps me keep going when the going gets tough.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://fishtree.co/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanhirsch/
• Other: Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/fishtree.co