Before you invest in your business, what do you actually know?

How looking at a decision through multiple lenses can help you see what you know, what you are assuming and what you may have missed

Decision Consulting | September 2026

At a glance:

• As a business grows, the decisions do not necessarily get easier. There are simply more of them, and more riding on each one.

• Good decisions are rarely based on one perspective alone. Finance matters, but so do other views, such as customer and people implications.

• A simple structure can help separate what you know from what you are assuming, and highlight what still needs to be tested.

• The aim is not to remove uncertainty. It is to make the decision with greater clarity before committing time, money and resources.

When I started Decision Consulting, one of the first questions I had to answer was pretty obvious.

How do I get in front of the right people?

So I started researching different ways to market the business. And safe to say, I went down a rabbit hole. AEO. SEO. LinkedIn. Paid ads. Content. Lead generation. Funnels. Agencies. Coaches. AI tools. I mean, at one point I was sitting there explaining to people the difference between AEO and SEO. And I had no clue.

And, on cue, the algorithm worked out exactly what I was doing. Suddenly my feed was full of people telling me they had the answer.

I could feel myself getting overwhelmed.

And I could also feel myself getting ready to throw caution to the wind and spend the meagre marketing budget I had set aside.

But then years of reviewing business cases and investment proposals kicked in. Yes, the amount I was considering spending was minuscule compared with the funding asks I had reviewed in corporate life. But the principle was the same.

Did I actually have enough clarity to decide whether this was a sensible investment?

What would success look like?

What return was I expecting?

What assumptions was I making?

What would have to be true for this to work?

What could I test before committing more money?

I was back in my element.

I started putting down the things I needed to think through before making the decision. With the help of my trusty sidekick “Uncle Claude”, I built a simple marketing spend decision tool. It was not sophisticated in any way. It was really just a structured set of questions designed to force me to think properly.

But that turned out to be exactly what I needed. It helped me separate what I actually knew from what I was assuming. And, just as importantly, it showed me what I did not know.

And then my brain went into overdrive.

Finance was only one lens.

A good decision to invest in your business needs more than one lens

It happened to be the lens I knew best and felt most comfortable with. But when significant investment decisions are made in larger organisations, Finance is rarely the only perspective involved. I mean, we are loud, true, but never the only voice. Other questions come into play.

• What does the customer actually need?

• Can the business deliver this effectively?

• Do we have the right people, skills and bandwidth?

• What happens if our assumptions are wrong?

Larger organisations often have different specialists around the table bringing those perspectives and challenging the assumptions.

For a small business owner, the reality can be very different.

Most of those decisions sit with you. You make them using what you know, what you can find out, and often whatever time you have available between everything else you are already doing.

And as the business grows, the decisions do not necessarily get easier. There are just more of them, and more riding on each one.

That was the thinking behind Better Decisions, Stronger Growth.

I reached out to Brianna Ragel from CurateClarity and Natalie Forbes from CulturePath HR to see whether the three of us could bring together our different perspectives and create some practical anchor points for business owners making these decisions.

Customer. People. Finance.

Brianna will bring the Customer lens, looking at the decision from the perspective of the people the business ultimately exists to serve.

Natalie will bring the People lens, looking at what the decision means for the people, skills and bandwidth needed to make it work. And that includes you, even if you are currently the only employee in the business.

And I will take you through the fun times, the Finance lens. What does the investment really cost? What return are you expecting? What happens in the low case? What does it mean for cash?

We will use “Should we invest in AI?” as the worked example because, let’s face it, it is one of those questions that seems to be everywhere at the moment. But here's the thing. AI is just the example. The framework is designed to apply much more broadly.

Hiring.

Technology.

Automation.

Expansion.

New services.

Any decision where you are committing meaningful time, money or resources.

So, will looking at a decision through Customer, People and Finance guarantee you make the right call?

Of course not.

But it might help you better understand what you actually know, what you are assuming, and what you should find out before the money, time and people have already been committed.

And if you are the owner or leader of a growing service business, we would love you to join us. If someone comes to mind who is currently wrestling with one of these decisions, please pass it on as well.

Come for the nibbles, stay to meet some new people, and hopefully go away with another way of thinking about all those decisions that come with growing a business.

Register here: Better Decisions, Stronger Growth

Thursday 29 October 2026

10am to 12pm

Galaxy Event Centre, Artarmon NSW 2064

About the author

Anushka is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Decision Consulting, a boutique finance advisory practice working with founder-led small and medium service businesses across Australia. With over 18 years of senior finance experience managing large, complex cost portfolios, Anushka helps business owners understand where their profit is really coming from, why cash feels tight, and what their numbers are actually telling them. She is CPA (Australia) and CIMA (UK) qualified.

Enquiries: hello@decisionconsultingau.com