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Happy new year! It’s that magical time when we review the recent past, set new goals, and plan ahead.

But if you’re serious about goals, growth, and plans, I suggest adding something counterintuitive: boundaries. To reach beyond your current status, you may need to deliberately establish meaningful limits of your own design.

Reality checks

Sure, we want more. More revenue. Greater profits. Better leads. Higher conversion rates. Setting goals provides purpose. But setting unrealistic goals not only leads to disappointment – it can waste time and money pursuing the impossible while neglecting the honestly achievable.

Or, as a buddy of mine puts it, “You can’t make chicken salad out of chickens, no matter how much mayo you have.”

Leverage realism to your advantage by accepting its boundaries and reframing your ambitions with a new question: What can you do with the staff and technology you have now?

By setting a boundary on wishful thinking, you can apply your creativity to real possibilities, allowing you to build toward realistic goals.

Steps forward, not leaps

If you were to assess your health and decide you needed less weight and more exercise, you wouldn’t build your plan around a seven-day fast and a marathon run.

Instead, you would adjust your diet, meal by meal, and add in regularly scheduled hours for reasonable exercise.

In a similar way, successful ambitions are bounded by incremental, consistent processes and procedures. Every “dream” is reached, not be a giant leap into the sky, but through the disciplined pursuit of effective smaller steps.

You and your boundaries

Yeah, I’m talking to you. You have legitimate limits that must be honored. There are only so many hours to a day, so many days to a week. What’s really the best application of your time? What’s the most effective use of your talents?

For every objective you might like to pursue, consider its personal impact on time, resources, relationships (business and otherwise), money, and more. Then ask if the sacrifices are genuinely worth it.

Sometimes, the answer is yes; there are times when we need to sacrifice some sleep and comfort for things that are important. BUT, if your plans effectively sacrifice important things, the potential rewards may not be worth the trouble. And frankly, you’re the only person who can make that distinction – consider it the privilege of being in control.

Limits can be good

This year, I wish the best for you, your business, your family. I certainly don’t want you to compromise your dreams. But I do hope you appreciate that setting limits is NOT a compromise, but a realistic way of making real, measurable achievements.

Cheers to you in 2026!

It’s November, and as the new year peeks its head out from behind the curtains we call, “the holiday season,” it’s time for reflection, time for review, and time to plan ahead.

For me, it’s the time when my clients, particularly my AI clients, ask me, “What now? What’s next? How do I plan for next year?”

Frankly, I hear more anxiety than hope in these questions, and I suspect that today’s uncertainties inspire a widespread desire to crawl into bed and pull the blankets over our heads.

But you know what? Asking the right questions may be our best hope for a better year to come. These are the questions that help you clear the rubble of distraction and find meaningful, productive, actionable focus. Let’s break them into two categories: 1) questions that help us understand the year behind us, and 2) questions that help us prepare for 2026.

Questions for 2025

You can’t think wisely about 2026 unless you’re brutally honest with yourself about 2025. The following queries can help you benchmark this year to determine what you want from 2026.

• In 2025, what initiatives didn’t meet expectations and why? These are the bets, plans, and new ideas that just didn’t fulfill their promises. Which things are worth keeping, which are worth fixing? And which should be jettisoned altogether?
• Alternatively, what’s worth repeating in 2026? And if something did work, are there ways to make it work better or more efficiently?
• How have your client relationships changed over the year? There are clients I used to talk to at least once a week that I can hardly reach once a month. What happened? What’s going on with your clients that may require a response from you?
• In general, what’s different now from Q1 a year ago? What’s changed in the world, the markets, your business, and yes, even you and your role? How might these differences affect how you think about 2026?

Questions for 2026

Before you commit to any one plan or direction, position yourself for flexibility by asking questions that help you uncover new possibilities and/or options.

• To what extent will you apply technology (including, but not limited to AI) versus people for various tasks and roles? There’s nuance here: you may find competitive advantage in either direction (by automating routine chores with tech, or by elevating other tasks to dedicated human judgement) depending on context. The important thing is to think of this choice as a conscious decision, rather than blithely assuming that better tech is always the better answer.
• Speaking of people, do you have the right combination of talent for next year’s objectives? Do you have roles you need to fill before commencing new plans?
• A tough one: where do you have the largest gaps (in resources, tech, talent, etc.) that could inhibit next year’s growth? An honest assessment now may save lots of grief later.
• And finally, what will you do differently from last year and why? By addressing all of the previous questions, you can identify targets for change while rooting them in sound business reasons for doing so.

A good starting point

There’s so much to think about as we face another year. But by taking the time to pause, ask questions, and reflect on potential answers, we put ourselves at the best starting point possible: a frank assessment of reality that puts you in a position of strength. Good luck!

Let me take you back a few years. I was in a strategy meeting, and someone pulled up a dashboard showing our organic traffic climbing. We all nodded like proud parents. “SEO’s working,” someone said, and we moved on. That was the game. Rank high, get clicks, celebrate.

But now? That same dashboard feels… incomplete.

Why AEO Matters in 2025

Because the way people search has changed. They’re not typing keywords anymore. They’re asking full questions. And they’re not scrolling through ten blue links, they’re getting one answer, often from an AI tool like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot.

So here’s the kicker: if your content isn’t clear, structured, and trustworthy, it’s not just buried, it’s invisible.

This is where Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO, comes in. It’s not just a buzzword. It’s a shift in how we think about discoverability. SEO was about being seen. AEO is about being chosen.

Let’s break it down. Back in the day, someone would Google “best CRM for manufacturing.” You’d hope your landing page ranked high enough to get a click. Now, someone asks an AI, “What’s the best CRM for aligning marketing and sales in manufacturing?” And the AI gives them one answer. If your content doesn’t help answer that question directly, you’re out of the running.

It’s like going from being on the guest list to being the keynote speaker. You don’t just want to be included, you want to be the one they quote.

If you’re in marketing, demand gen, or RevOps, this matters. A lot. AI tools are looking for content that’s not just optimized, but credible. That means your blog posts, case studies, and even your CRM data need to work together to tell a consistent, trustworthy story.

I’ll be honest, when I first heard about AEO, I thought, “Great, another acronym.” But then I saw how AI tools were pulling answers from sources I’d never heard of, while our carefully crafted content sat untouched. That’s when it clicked. We weren’t speaking the AI’s language.

How to Optimize for Answer Engines

So how do you fix that? Start with clarity. Think of your content like a helpful coworker. If someone asked them a question, would they give a clear, confident answer, or ramble for five minutes before getting to the point? Organize your content around real questions your audience asks. Use FAQs and schema markup to help AI understand your pages. Lead with the answer, not a long intro. Treat your content like you’re training an intern, make it easy to learn from.

And please, keep it real. AI loves content that feels human. Share real stories and outcomes. Publish case studies with actual results. Write like you talk. Seriously. You’re not trying to beat the algorithm. You’re trying to be helpful.

Here’s a quick story. A prospect asked, “What’s the best CRM for aligning marketing and sales?” Our site had a generic landing page with buzzwords. No dice. But when we published a guide comparing HubSpot and Salesforce, shared real results, and used schema markup, we started showing up in AI-generated answers. We weren’t just visible. We were selected.

Getting Started With AEO

If you’re wondering where to start, here’s a simple roadmap. First, audit your content. Ask, “Does this page answer a real question clearly?” If not, rework it to lead with the answer. Then add schema and FAQs. Use structured data to help AI understand your content. Connect your stack. Make sure HubSpot, Salesforce, and analytics tools are sharing data. Update your KPIs. Start tracking AI visibility and citations, not just rankings. And train your teams. Help your content and RevOps folks think in terms of questions and answers, not just keywords.

Here’s the bottom line. Search is changing. Fast. It’s not about being first anymore, it’s about being trusted. As AI tools become the go-to for answers, the brands that focus on clarity, credibility, and usefulness will be the ones that get discovered and cited.

Tomorrow’s buyers aren’t just searching. They’re asking. And the only question that matters is: will your brand be the one with the answer?