The Entity Declaration

There’s a moment in Moana that I think about every time I work on entity optimization with a client.

Moana has been on a quest the entire film: she found Maui, survived the Kakamorastole back the fish hook, learned wayfinding. Then, at the crucial moment, Maui’s hook cracks. He transforms into a hawk and flies away, leaving her alone on the ocean.

And Moana gives up.

She returns the heart to the ocean, begging  it to choose someone else for the quest. And then her grandmother’s spirit appears, and asks a really important question.

“Moana, do you know who you are?”

Take three minutes to watch it, I promise it’s worth it.

I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Okay, honestly? I tear up every time I watch this — from the moment she sings, “I am everything I’ve learned and more” until she leaps into the water to reclaim the quest → waterworks.

Because that’s the moment that Moana’s whole self-perception changes.

Up until this moment, her quest has been in the language given to her by her grandma: “You will my boat, will sail across the sea and restore the heart of Te Fiti.”

But from that moment on — the moment when she affirms who she is, the moment she declares “I am Moana” and claims her role — the language changes.

“Aboard my boat, I will sail across the sea and restore the heart of Te Fiti.”

Do you see the change? She starts in second person, demanding from Maui: “You will board my boat.” Then she shifts to first person: “I will sail across the sea.”

That’s what I call the Moana Moment, when she stops centering the question Maui’s willingness to carry the mission. Nope, she’s claiming her agency and doing the damn thing herself. 

It’s a shift that I try to help my clients make in their own copy to help them be more discoverable in search … but it’s really hard to step into that Moana moment, because copywriting has told us to stay in second person.

Copywriting advice has made us invisible to AI systems

StoryBrand, the dominant copywriting framework of the last decade, taught us to make our clients the hero and ourselves the guide. Donald Miller built an empire on it: your client is Luke Skywalker, you are Obi-Wan Kenobi. Your client is Moana, you are Maui.

“Center their transformation. Speak to their pain. Make them the protagonist of every story you tell.”

It produced beautiful, empathetic copy that converts well… and systematically removed us from our own work.

Because being the guide sucks.

Maui gets stage fright and nopes out of the quest. Obi-Wan Kenobi sacrifices himself t become one with the Force. Gandalf falls off a cliff with the best parting line ever (“Fly, you fools”) then  disappears for an entire book. Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother hands over a pumpkin carriage then bibbity-boppity-boops right out of there.

The guide role is meant to be extracted–once they share the knowledge that the protagonist needs, they leave them high and dry to figure it out themselves.

Good for storytelling. Terrible for discoverability, because AI isn’t looking for your client’s transformation journey.

AI is building a knowledge graph of experts, which it affirms through an understanding of your body of work, your methodology, and why you created everything — but only if they said so explicitly.

Read my full argument for how AI-era search requires a different approach to copywriting.

What Is the Entity Declaration And Who  Is It For?

The Entity Declaration is a four-step methodology that helps coaches, consultants, and service providers declare who they are across their website in a way that AI systems can read, map, and attribute — turning a scattered digital presence into a coherent, connected entity constellation.

It would be helpful for you if:

• Your referral partners send you clients but struggle to describe exactly what you do or being able to name your methodology.
• You have a unique framework or way of thinking that you’re afraid someone else will take credit for, because it’s never been formally claimed anywhere.
• You have a book, podcast, program, or offer that doesn’t show up when you search for yourself in AI — even though you’ve been building it for years.
• AI describes you as a generic category (“a business coach,” “an SEO consultant”) when you have a specific, named, developed approach that makes you distinctly different from everyone else in that category.

The Entity Declaration is the four step process for defining who you are and what you’ve created. These four steps turn the implicit into explicit — your identity, your relationships, your work, and your credentials, stated clearly enough for AI to map and attribute.

Do I Really Have to Say My Name That Many Times?”

I worked recently with a client who had a PhD and 40 years of expertise. She wasn’t just an expert in her field, she was the literal creator of it. The discipline she’d spent her career building exists now because of her work.

As I was marking up her website copy with entity signal statements, she left a comment in the doc:

“Do I really have to say my name this many times? This is embarrassing!”

I felt that question in my bones, I really did.

For many of us — especially those of us socialized as women, raised to be modest, trained by decades of copywriting conventions to center everyone else — claiming credit for our body of work can feel g uncomfortable. The kind of udiscomfort that sits in your chest and whispers, ‘Who do you think you are?’ (And that inner critic uses a much bitcher tone that Moana’s grandma asking, ‘Do you know who ou are?’)

The Entity Declaration asks you to face down your imposter syndrome by doing what it specifically ates: saying your name, claiming your work, and repeating it until AI can’t possibly miss the connection.

I gave my client the most reassuring answer I could… and this pep talk might help you, too:

Claiming Your Moana Moment

Somewhere in the Unmistakable Authority Method (usually either in the Entity Declaration process or the Findable Framework Method), my clients often experience a moment when they realize how much they’ve built without ever claiming it explicitly. It’s humbling and surprising, how much they’ve created that exist in the public record — without the strings that connect back to them.

And they have a moment similar to Moana on the realizing, “I am everything I’ve learned and more.” (Told you that’s the line that always gets me.)

If you’re reading this, chances are that you’ve  already done the work, but you haven’t claimed it in a way that it can be unmistakably attirbuted back to you.

The Entity Declaration is the process to stake your claim:

I am [your name] of [your company]. I created [your framework]. I built [your program]. I host [your podcast]. I serve [your audience].

Go ahead. Board the boat.