Corporate veteran and Better Business Summit keynote speaker, Maxine Horne, has revealed that one overlooked asset can set brokers up for continued success.
When self-made multimillionaire and Shark Tank judge Maxine Horne reflected on building a telecommunications empire from a single Gold Coast phone shop, her message to small-business owners was simple: stop chasing price and start obsessing over customer service.
Horne – who co-founded mobile retailer Fone Zone in 1995 and later led ASX-listed Vita Group to more than 160 stores, 1,600 staff, and revenues north of $700 million – said many entrepreneurs still underestimated the value of service and culture.
Speaking to The Adviser ahead of her keynote speech at the Better Business Summit 2026, Horne drew on her years of experience talking to business owners to outline a playbook for brokers that could set them up for ongoing success.
‘Price is a slippery slide’
According to Horne, there are cross-over challenges and opportunities in nearly all industries.
Recalling the early 2000s mobile phone boom, Horne said the sector quickly filled with operators hoping to cash in fast.
“It attracted a lot of people that thought that they could make money quickly, and what happened is that they went down the path of price,” she said.
“I was really adamant, there is no way we are going down the price path, because it’s a slippery slide.”
Instead, she became fixated on how to keep prices up by creating value, and for her, this meant redesigning the experience around the customer, not the product.
“I became obsessed about how I create value and keep my price point up. And for me, it was about customer service. How do I make this transaction as easy as possible for my customer?” she said, noting that brokers who chase the lowest rate may also be unintentionally devaluing their service.
Building a service program from the shop floor
Horne’s answer was to build a formal customer service program from the ground up, with staff in the driver’s seat.
She gathered around 50 employees at a company conference and gave them an open brief.
“I said: I want you to think about this within this monetary budget for your store,” she told The Adviser.
“What happened was we came up with about 10 items whereby we created our own customer service program, but all of them were about showing the customer how much we cared, not how much money we had.
“At the time, when you bought a mobile phone, you paid thousands of dollars for it, but you couldn’t use it for three days because you had to charge it up.”
Her team then decided to remove that friction entirely.
“What we did is, for each store we charged five or six phones at a same time, we would do that three-day process for our phones,” she said.
“At the point of sale, the question was, once they decided what phone they were going to have, would you like a pre-charged one that you can use now, or would you want a sealed one?”
Horne said the effect on customers was immediate.
Her team also went a step further, programming contacts directly into handsets on the customer’s behalf.
“Now, when you think about it, that cost us very little money, what it did cost us was time and effort,” Horne explained.
That distinction of ‘effort over expenditure’ would become a defining theme of her leadership.
Vita Group’s growth in the years that followed, including its evolution into Telstra’s only Master Licensee, underscored the commercial impact of the approach.
Effort over money – and why competitors can’t copy
For Horne, these kinds of gestures debunk the assumption that world-class service requires a substantial marketing budget. She said that, instead, effort-based initiatives could have greater staying power inside an organisation and were harder for rivals to replicate.
“The ones where you make effort – they install discipline within your organisation, and they have a much greater impact on your clients,” she said.
“Thirdly, it makes it so hard for your competitors to copy because it becomes part of your culture.”
To hardwire that culture, Horne wrapped structure and incentives around the program.
Customer surveys were sent out randomly, asking clients to rate the service elements with staff remuneration, then tied to the results.
“Based on that, our salespeople got an extra percentage on their commissions,” Horne said.
She said that over time, this changed not just what employees did, but how they did it.
Small gestures, lasting impact
Horne told The Adviser that the same philosophy applied to any relationship-driven industry where repeat business and referrals could make or break revenue – including broking.
“Little things, when you collect the person’s settlement – they get a beautiful congratulations text message that says ‘well done on your first home,” she explained.
“It’s nothing big, it takes effort. But for that person, if they’ve just gone through all this, and they’ve finally got this home, and then they get this text message from somebody that helped them months ago. They think: ‘How cool.’ It goes a long way. Even if you’re a small-business operator, and it’s just you, it’s not strenuous.”
As such, Horne advised brokers to constantly step outside their own process and see the journey from their clients’ perspective.
“You need to put yourself into your clients’ shoes and think: How could I make this a better experience? Then to make it stick, you measure, monitor and reward,” she said.
Horne says culture is ‘omni-important’
Yet Horne stressed that if service was the outward expression of a business, then culture was what shaped it from within.
“The culture is omni-important, and the reality is, you will have a culture in your workplace, the difference is, will it be the one that you want?” she said.
In her view, the priorities of a small business are usually an extension of the founder’s own values – whether owners recognise it or not.
“Things like, we are going to focus on customer service, it is not going to be sales for sales’ sake, we will look after our people; we will do the right thing. All of those things become the values, and then your culture comes from that value set,” she said.
She also said that people remained at or exited organisations due to its culture.
“I’m a real big believer that people don’t just work for money, they work for purpose, autonomy and mastery,” Horne said.
“Once you’ve skilled up people, let them do their job, don’t micromanage them.”
She said this approach also had bottom-line implications and that having a supportive workplace made it harder for competitors to lure staff away with pay rises alone.
“If you look after your people, you create a great environment, you’re very respectful – that is hard for your competitors in the employment space to match,” Horne said.
‘The fish rots from the head’
Despite emphasising the importance of systems and culture, Horne was blunt about where responsibility ultimately sat when things went wrong.
“As the owner, you have got to really take that on board, it is your response, the buck stops with you. If you’ve got a poor culture, you’ve really got to look within because the fish rots from the head,” she said.
“Whenever there’s an issue in any of my businesses, the first thing I do is look at the leader.
“It could be that they don’t know that they’re doing something wrong, it could be they don’t know how to do the right thing, or it could be that they’re disengaged.”
You can hear more top business advice from Maxine Horne at the Better Business Summit 2026.
The Better Business Summit will return in March and April 2026 with the backing of principal partner NAB, bringing a five-state roadshow designed to help brokers sharpen strategy, lift performance, and stay ahead as competition intensifies across residential, commercial, and specialist finance.
Running across Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Sydney, and Melbourne, the 2026 summit will feature a full-day agenda led by senior industry figures, elite performance leaders, and digital and AI specialists, with each event capped at 500 attendees.
Click here to book your tickets and don’t miss out! Did you know The Adviser Premium Members go for free? Become a Premium Member here.
For more information, including agenda and speakers, click here.
[Related: Better Business Summit 2026 launches]
