Pulling Out of a Revenue Nosedive with Chris Ferdinandi

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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TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - 00:20

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.

00:25 - 00:38

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.

00:38 - 00:42

Chris Ferdinandi: Rochelle, thank you so much for having me. It's really great to be here.

00:42 - 01:25

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

01:25 - 01:27

Rochelle Moulton: in rural Massachusetts. Chris, welcome.

01:27 - 01:34

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.

01:36 - 01:42

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

01:42 - 01:44

Chris Ferdinandi: on you. I know that's your personal hell, but yeah.

01:45 - 02:10

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.

02:10 - 02:12

Chris Ferdinandi: Awesome, yeah, I happy to be here.

02:12 - 02:22

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?

02:22 - 02:53

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

02:53 - 03:23

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

03:23 - 03:55

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.

03:55 - 04:08

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.

04:08 - 04:38

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.

04:39 - 04:58

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?

04:59 - 05:36

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 build websites and write code and built up a, like an email list

05:36 - 05:39

Chris Ferdinandi: of about 14, 000 folks that got me to that point.

05:39 - 06:00

Rochelle Moulton: And I don't want to gloss over this because this is actually big because it would be easy to say, oh, it took 6 or 7 years. Well, it took 6 to 7 years as a side hustle selling products. And we all know that unless you've got products with a huge price tag, you need a big list to be able to get that. And it takes time to develop that list.

06:00 - 06:31

Chris Ferdinandi: Yeah. So I started with like I had an old newsletter that had like 38 people on it that I sent out like maybe once a month. I don't know if you've ever heard of Jonathan Stark. He used to be on this really great podcast. He was a business coach of mine for a little while, but he was on me all the time about publishing daily and I really resisted. And I attribute that more than literally anything else to the success of my business. I know it's not for everybody, but the daily writing, I saw an instant

06:31 - 07:01

Chris Ferdinandi: growth in my business. I went from that stagnated 38 subscribers to 100, 400, 500. I hit a thousand in like 3 or 4 months and then it just kept growing from there. And it was the weirdest thing I really thought for sure no 1 is going to want to read that much from me. I'm never going to have that much to write about, but I've been doing a daily newsletter on code for 6 years now, maybe more, and I thought I would have quit long ago. I have no idea how I've kept it up for as

07:01 - 07:01

Chris Ferdinandi: long as

07:01 - 07:29

Rochelle Moulton: I have. Yeah, well, whether it's daily or something else, but a regular habit and consistent output of publishing your writing, it makes you think. And it forces us, you know, after the first, what, 10, 20 things that you write? Like, you've got to dig a little deeper, right? Most of us can write 10 or 20 things without thinking too much. But when you do more than that, you really have to start to think deep and start to develop your point of view.

07:30 - 08:03

Chris Ferdinandi: Yeah, there's this really nice flywheel effect that starts to happen where the more you publish, the more people start to respond back to you with questions, comments, ideas, which a lot of times, like I would, 1 of Jonathan's other students used to call it turning sawdust into furniture. We're like, I would write a response, take it, and then publish it as an article. So, like, the more you do it, the point now where my list of articles is longer than I could ever possibly write in my lifetime. The ideas just keep coming in, and the toughest

08:03 - 08:11

Chris Ferdinandi: part is figuring out which of them I want to write that day It gets bigger every year, which is the exact opposite problem of what I thought was gonna happen for me

08:11 - 08:22

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, well and I think that you also in that scenario You're getting feedback Like you feel like you're not sending this out to the ether, but to real people who have real responses.

08:23 - 08:47

Chris Ferdinandi: And regardless of your cadence, whether it's daily, weekly, whatever, like the most important part is the feedback. I'm refining my thinking. I'm not just writing a whole course or a whole book in isolation. Most of my courses actually started off as articles that then interacted with real people, got real-time feedback, and got cleaned up in some form and eventually became courses.

08:47 - 08:58

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, this is a success story by any definition, especially because you were able to do this as a side hustle and with relatively low risk. But then came the reckoning.

08:58 - 09:33

Chris Ferdinandi: Yes, and that's why we're here. So the first year was awesome after I went fully solo. And then I hit kind of that dreaded $100, 000 plateau. So like I hit the $100, 000 mark, quit my day job. And I was just really enjoying being able to do just the tech education stuff full time and not not have to deal with all the corporate stuff. But then despite it had grown like 50%, 25% year over year, every year since I started, but then things started to like suddenly it wasn't growing quite as much. That first year

09:33 - 10:05

Chris Ferdinandi: didn't grow with the similar, I want to say exponential, but like that similar kind of hockey stick-ish growth that I had been experiencing. Still grew a little, not as much as I had hoped, but this was with me working on it full time. I'm like, wow, how is this possibly doing better as a side hustle in a full time? That doesn't make sense. And then the following year, my sales started to decline rapidly, like not just not grow, but trend very strongly in the wrong direction. And this was like the panic moment for me, because now

10:05 - 10:39

Chris Ferdinandi: I'm, this is my only job. I don't have, it's not a side hustle anymore. And I went from having a second full-time income to now like my sales are 2 thirds, half of what they had been the year before, I reached out to a bunch of my other tech educator friends to try to figure out like, is it something I did or are other people seeing this? And nearly universally, I was hearing similar things from everybody else I know in this space, regardless of the programming language they focused on or who their specific audience was. Anybody

10:39 - 11:14

Chris Ferdinandi: who sold courses on learning code was seeing the same thing. And so there's been a lot of speculation amongst my fellow tech educators about whether it was the economy, you know, kind of all the layoffs that were happening in tech more generally. So people have less disposable income, corporations aren't spending money on like education for their employees anymore. If it was more people leaning on AI instead of courses, I know that's been kind of a frequent topic on this show. If it was something else, like there's so much great content on places like YouTube and in

11:14 - 11:24

Chris Ferdinandi: blog articles for free now, like do people not feel like they needed courses anymore? My speculation is it's probably some combination of all 3 of those things. But nonetheless, my business was in a freefall.

11:24 - 11:26

Rochelle Moulton: What year was this, Chris?

11:26 - 11:53

Chris Ferdinandi: It started not this year, last year. So this would have been around like February 2023 is when okay, panic for me started to really sink in. Where like, hey, I had this great savings account and it's getting smaller instead of getting bigger, which is what I'd wanted to have. I knew we had some like I had to ramp up some more growth to stop that from happening. But now it's starting to like, not just take a little bit out here and there, but like starting to go in the wrong direction. That was my panic moment. That

11:53 - 11:55

Chris Ferdinandi: was like, all right, I need to, I need to reassess.

11:56 - 12:08

Rochelle Moulton: And you, you stated you're risk averse or, or at least you're, you're not the most risky guy. So having money come out of the bank account without seeing more come in has got to be that deer in the headlights moment.

12:09 - 12:42

Chris Ferdinandi: Yeah, I did not love that. And my other thing that I was really like kind of cognizant of was Running a business and feeling desperate is kind of a bad place to be because it causes you to make dumb decisions, right? You make drastic decisions. ADHD folks in general have kind of this, let me just blow it all up and start over kind of impulse that you have to fight on a regular basis to begin with. And like doing that with a business that is your primary income because you're panicked about how it's going can be

12:42 - 13:02

Chris Ferdinandi: catastrophic. So I was really, really aware that I shouldn't try to do too much too fast. And so I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out how I could salvage the business I already had. We can talk about some things I tried if you want. None of them worked. So it's totally up to you, which Which kind of avenue we go down here?

13:02 - 13:13

Rochelle Moulton: Well, I'm just curious about something. I mean, like, did you immediately figure, well, I've got this valuable skill coding, I might as well sell that work again, you know, to like corporate audiences. Like, did you go there?

13:14 - 13:42

Chris Ferdinandi: Not eventually, because I didn't want to do that. I had done that before I started my course business. I started off doing a little bit of freelancing and I did not have a great experience with it. It's 1 of those like, this came up on the ADHD episode that you did, but like the kind of like know yourself and how you work best. Like for me, that kind of work is not my genius zone. It's my excellent zone, but it's not my genius zone. And I know that's a really dangerous trap. Like I didn't want to

13:42 - 14:01

Chris Ferdinandi: fall into, oh, I could do this really, really well, but it's not where I thrive. That eventually became what I did because I need to pay a mortgage, I need to put food on the table, and that does pay the bills, but I view it as a temporary transition into the next thing.

14:05 - 14:07

Rochelle Moulton: Well, I love when in a private note you sent me, you said that you're too feral to go back to...