Pulling Out of a Revenue Nosedive with Chris Ferdinandi
Description
Categories: Growing Revnue + Wealth, Niching
Link: https://rochellemoulton.com/soloist_podcast/pulling-out-of-a-revenue-nosedive-with-chris-ferdinandi/?utm_source=subscriber
What do you do when your consistently growing revenue suddenly takes a nosedive—and your peers are feeling it too? Soloist Chris Ferdinandi walks us through the experience and the experiments he conducted to start lifting himself out of it.
Why he built his business as a side hustle and didn’t go solo until he matched his corporate salary.
The financial and emotional hit of a 50% revenue drop—and how to experiment without morphing to panic.
What to do when you’re “too feral” to go back into Corporate: the experiments that failed and those that gave hope.
How selling to a 640-person email list outsold the results from a 14,000 list—by over 3X (hint: the new sale was in his genius zone).
Two moves to make when your revenue is tanking—and one surprising upside.
LINKS
Chris Ferdinandi ADHD Tips | Mastadon
Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram
BIO
Chris helps people build a simpler, faster, more resilient web.
Early in his career, he felt like he couldn’t get anything done. Since then, he’s discovered a bunch of systems and strategies that let him turn his ADHD into a superpower. His ADHD tips newsletter is read by hundreds of developers each weekday.
He creates courses and workshops, publishes several daily newsletters, speaks at events, and has advised and written code for organizations like NASA, Apple, Harvard Business School, Chobani, and Adidas.
Chris loves pirates, puppies, and Pixar movies, and lives near horse farms in rural Massachusetts.
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RESOURCES FOR SOLOISTS
Join the Soloist email list: helping thousands of Soloist Consultants smash through their revenue plateau.
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The Authority Code: How to Position, Monetize and Sell Your Expertise: equal parts bible, blueprint and bushido. How to think like, become—and remain—an authority.
TRANSCRIPT
Chris Ferdinandi: I also feel very positive about my ADHD. Much in the same way on your episode, the phrase like ruthless self-acceptance or there was something along those lines kept coming up. Yes. And I believe that with my whole being, right? That I am great the way I am and that a lot of my challenges are just being neurodiverse in a neurotypical world. Yeah.
Rochelle Moulton: Hello, hello. Welcome to the Soloist Life podcast, where we're all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I'm Rchelle Moulton, and today I'm so happy to welcome soloist Chris Ferdinandi to the show.
Chris Ferdinandi: Rochelle, thank you so much for having me. It's really great to be here.
Rochelle Moulton: Well, I'm excited about this, Chris. So Chris helps people build a simpler, faster, more resilient web. Early in his career, he felt like he couldn't get anything done. Since then, he's discovered a bunch of systems and strategies that let him turn his ADHD into a superpower. His ADHD tips newsletter is read by hundreds of developers each weekday. He creates courses and workshops, publishes several daily newsletters, speaks at events, and has advised and written code for organizations like NASA, Apple, Harvard Business School, Chobani, and Adidas. Chris loves pirates, puppies, and Pixar movies, and lives near horse farms
Rochelle Moulton: in rural Massachusetts. Chris, welcome.
Chris Ferdinandi: Rochelle, thank you so much for having me. And can you tell that I'm a big fan of Jonathan Stark given the multiple daily newsletters.
Rochelle Moulton: I stopped for a second. Just the thought of doing multiple dailies just kind of makes me break out in a hive. But good
Chris Ferdinandi: on you. I know that's your personal hell, but yeah.
Rochelle Moulton: Good on you. So I love how this interview happened. I mean, you responded to my just checking in email I send to newish subscribers and you had a lot to say. So many of your recent experiences were 100% relatable for soloists. So I had to ask you to come on the show and dish because I just know that your story will inspire a few people who are struggling.
Chris Ferdinandi: Awesome, yeah, I happy to be here.
Rochelle Moulton: So let's start with how you got into your business initially. So you started as a side hustle, teaching developers to code about 10 years ago, is that right?
Chris Ferdinandi: Yeah, so I am actually have a whole previous life as an HR pro taught myself to code became a developer. And a couple of years into that journey, realized that I at some point wanted to have my own my own business. I wanted to work for myself. And I know this came up in a recent episode you did on people with ADHD. So, and how they often tend to work for themselves because they have very low tolerance for the nonsense of corporate life. So I always knew that was something I wanted for myself, but I also
Chris Ferdinandi: didn't want to just jump out there without any safety net. So I started by very slowly kind of building this side hustle, teaching people how to code. It was 1 of these things where it started off as like, you know, like beer or movie night money, and then turned into like, oh, I can get an extra nice Christmas gift this year, which then morphed into, oh, I can go on a vacation with this, which eventually became like, oh, wow, like we could, we could remodel something in our house or like buy like a little something like
Chris Ferdinandi: fancy. And then at some point, I want to say about 3, maybe 4 years ago, it hit the point where it was basically on par with my day job, just as a side hustle. And because I had all this money coming in and the day job, we had built up a really nice savings cushion. And despite being surprisingly risk averse for someone with ADHD, I decided to, as you describe it, hang up my shingle and try the soloist thing for a bit. So that's kind of how I got to a roundish where I am now.
Rochelle Moulton: And 1 of the things that's interesting, everybody has a different approach to this, is that you built up your savings first. And for you, it sounds like that crossover point was when you could make as much in your side hustle as you did in your day job.
Chris Ferdinandi: Yes, it's 1 of those things where like given the house that we lived in and kind of the lifestyle we were used to, I absolutely could have done it sooner if we were willing to make some changes or some sacrifices, but I didn't want to ask that of my family just because I didn't want to work for the man anymore. So no judgment on people who do it differently or don't, but like I love my Disney vacations. I did not want to give those up. That's serious. I'm not just being sarcastic. I'm a Disney addict. So.
Rochelle Moulton: Got it. So I think what's part of what's interesting about that is that everybody has this different definition of risk and comfort level. And there's no 1 right answer. I think it's different for everybody. And it sounds like you figured out what would work for you and your family. Absolutely. So how long did it take you to hit your first $100, 000?
Chris Ferdinandi: So because the ADHD, I'm not great at record keeping, so I'm just ballparking here, it took about 6 or 7 years to hit that $100, 000 mark. And just for context here, my business model is entirely products. So this is not a service based business where I'm building websites for people and doing like advisory consulting and the kind of stuff that a lot of folks on your show often do. For me, this was nearly a hundred percent. I'm putting out courses on how to
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