From hero sales to zero sales – and back again

When serial entrepreneur Simon Leslie wrote his first book There’s no F in Sales in 2019, he could never have imagined that six months later his company would have no… sales. In a twisted turn of irony no-one could have foreseen, Covid struck, the aviation industry came to a halt and Leslie’s travel media company Ink Global, which publishes magazines for airlines worldwide, watched its revenues nosedive from $150 million to zero.

So how has Leslie, whose clients include Virgin Atlantic and easyJet, managed to transform the business, which is on target to have its best year yet? He kept calm and carried on – the bedrock of his latest book, Equanimity (more on this later).

Leslie says: “I’d had two ‘business heart attacks’ before Covid – 9/11 and the Great Recession when Deloitte tried to shut us down in 2014 – but the pandemic was worse than everything else put together,” says Leslie, who has been at the helm of Ink Global for nearly three decades. “We had just had our best year but then Covid came along and chopped our legs down – everything just stopped.” Ink Global took no revenue for six months.

But father-of-four Leslie adjusted the business, “clinging on to the little bits of the business” he could and took the opportunity to pen his third book,

Equanimity: The Diary of a CEO in Crisis is a story of belief against the odds and resilience in the face of failure. “I wanted to write the book as a playbook to give anyone with challenges, difficult times or just growth opportunity, the tools to deal with anything business throws at them. It answers many questions entrepreneurs ask themselves on a daily basis.” The book is based on interviews Leslie has had with people throughout his career. “It doesn’t matter if you are doing well or badly, the stories in there are about how to improve performance. If you are doing well, it’s about enhancing, and if doing badly, it’s got all the answers for how you can do well.”

So how exactly did Leslie, whose Ink Global is back on target to have its best year yet, manage to build his company back better? At the time Ink was providing inflight magazines to close to some of the world’s biggest airlines including United Airlines, easyJet, Malaysia Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Eurowings and Singapore Airlines. “Initially I spent a lot of time fighting off complaints from people upset because their advert hadn’t run but I was just preoccupied keeping my staff safe and then we adjusted – instead of putting our magazines on the planes, we sent them straight to customers. We had little bits to cling on. We then bought a technology company that targeted customers based on their travel habits and convinced airlines to take it.” A game changer came when Ink acquired news channel CNN’s airport television channel, to become the biggest network operating in airports. Today, Ink is continuing to expand its tech business, producing airport television and digital content for major brands such as Reach TV and Booking.com.

Asked if he was ever close to throwing in the towel, Leslie says: “There were so many times where I thought this is too much and we can’t do it, but it never got to the point where I thought we are going bust. We were part of a big US organisation and still had a business that was operating in the States.”

Leslie is optimistic about the future of the travel industry. “Travel is already starting to get back to where it was in 2019 in the US, and it will for the UK – once they sort out all their challenges – the demand is there. There’s no way you can switch travel off – we just had to keep holding out.”

Leslie has a long-standing passion for business. He is a mentor and serial investor to multiple young entrepreneurs. A big believer in giving back. Leslie donated all the profits from his book ‘No F in Sales’ to Jewish entrepreneur Alex Stephany’s social enterprise startup Beam, the world’s first crowdfunding platform for homeless people, and he is an investor in the app Urbaniser, founded by Israeli entrepreneur Dr Orit Gal. He is also an expert in handwriting, hypnosis, understanding micro expressions and body language.

What’s the best piece of advice he would give an entrepreneur? “Focus on what you’re good at and don’t worry about what you’re not good at – just keep getting better at what you’re good at – you have to keep enhancing it or someone will come along and do it cheaper and better.” He adds: “Know what your costs are and make sure you’ve got cash, as businesses fail most of the time because they run out of cash.”

A member of Radlett Synagogue, Leslie is a supporter of Jewish Care and UJIA. He has completed a double marathon across the Sahara, the New York and Singapore marathons and a half Ironman in Phuket, Thailand, and has climbed Kilimanjaro with members of his team.

Equanimity: The Diary of a CEO in Crisis is self-published