“Unfortunately, when you make big decisions, things don’t always work out, but you have to get up and rebuild”. It is this die-hard attitude that has been a part of Ricardo Maio’s journey as an entrepreneur. Maio is the personable CEO of Infinity Brands, a company that focuses on working with franchisors and implementing their business systems – essentially to manage and run franchises.
Coming from a family business, AC/DC Dynamics (an importer and distributor of electrical products for about 35 years), entrepreneurship may as well be a part of Maio’s DNA. It’s not surprising, then, that Maio has spent most of his life learning and growing in business. “Jumping into the franchise market wasn’t really a choice,” he says. “I’ve always been interested in being an entrepreneur and running businesses, and this opportunity just presented itself and I took it by the scruff of the neck.”
Maio recently expanded his ventures into Sunburst Electrical, a different franchise system, which arose from the need to formalise the electrical contracting sector. “Franchising is a slow progress, but once we got our concept proven, things began to roll out more.”
With AC/DC Express, Sunburst Electrical and Infinity Brands as the umbrella company, Maio admits that juggling multiple ventures is a struggle, but the way they’ve done it is to focus on core principles and keep things standardised through all the franchised systems. “It’s important to understand that every business has those core principles – marketing, operations, finances”, Maio explains. “Infinity Brands has created a template of each of the three principles and each time a brand joins, we use the same resources and infrastructure to roll it out faster and lessen the learning curve.”
On doing business with family, Maio notes that
“it has its rewards and its weaknesses.”
On the one hand, there is a sense of trust that one might not feel with anyone else because the general assumption is that family has your best interests at heart. On the other hand, the lines between work and home life can so easily be blurred, that work conflicts can follow you home and vice versa. “If you’re unable to split the two and move on with life, it would be very difficult to be part of a family business,” Maio says.
Having started his first franchise 10 years ago at the tender age of 24, staying clued up about his field has become an essential part of running his operations.
“I had to make sure that I had enough knowledge,” he says.
He spent a lot of time learning about the franchise industry, its systems and how everything worked. Maio recalls his biggest mistake being implementing a strategy too early – in which he took the decision to roll out an IT plan, but the infrastructure wasn’t at a place where it could allow the plan to flourish.
Company: Infinity Brands
Age - 34
Turnover - 7 million
Startup funding - 6 500