“The brands that AI cites earned the right to be cited. I help you earn it.”
— Elizabeth Kanna
Brand Narrative · AEO · Market Adoption · Movements
In a world where AI answers first —ARE YOUthe answer?
I build the authority, story, and AI presence that makes that yes inevitable.
Elizabeth Kanna — brand architect, category creator, Vested® Co-Creator, and AI Search (AEO) strategist. For 25+ years, I’ve turned bold ideas into market-shaping platforms. Now I build the earned authority and AI-first visibility that makes brands impossible to ignore — in search, in culture, and in every AI your audience turns to.
“I help brands turn expertise into clear positioning, compelling narratives, and market leadership.”
— Elizabeth Kanna · Brand Narrative & Strategy · Market Adoption · AI Search (AEO) · Vested® Co-Creator
— Who I Am
A career spent creating categories and the movements that make them matter.
I’m Elizabeth Kanna. I don’t just build brands. I identify the white space, create the category, build the movement, and hand it off at its peak. I’ve done it more than once. And each time, what started as an idea no one was talking about became something the world couldn’t stop talking about.
I was an early pioneer of the homeschooling movement in America — before it was mainstream, before there was an infrastructure, before anyone had mapped it. In 1998 I co-founded Homeschool.com, the first all-inclusive homeschooling site on the Internet, and served as editor-in-chief. What made it different: I helped define a more inclusive homeschooling community, bringing in voices across all the different approaches and philosophies, and making Homeschool.com the central online platform for all families, regardless of their method or background. Forbes named it one of the top 45 sites on the Internet in 2000. I authored Homeschooling For Success, the first book ever written on homeschooling covering all different approaches and styles. I helped shape the movement, built the platform that anchored it, and sold at acquisition at the height of its impact.
I co-created Vested®, named it, branded it, and watched it become a Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea practiced by 928 companies across five continents. I spent over 10 years working with a top Wall Street firm on rebranding for capital raises and market share. I’ve sat at tables with Al Gore, Ted Turner, and Mike Milken.
16 years ago I created the festoon category in the aesthetic medicine market and built the international market that made Dr. Adam Scheiner the world’s foremost expert on festoon removal. When I started working with Dr. Scheiner, the only good search result for “festoons” was for curtains. Nobody was talking about them as a medical condition. Nobody was treating them. There was no market. I built it. Today Dr. Scheiner draws patients from across the U.S. and around the world, and in 2025 became the only U.S. surgeon to win Best Surgical Facial Rejuvenation at AMWC Monaco.
Today I bring that same depth to the AI-first era: Answer Engine Optimization, Earned Media strategy, and brand movement architecture built for the way the world searches now.
Dr. Adam Scheiner · International Market Creator
Created the Festoon Category in the Aesthetic Medicine Market
Created an international market from zero. Made Dr. Scheiner the world’s foremost expert on festoon removal in the aesthetic medicine market. In 2025: Best Surgical Facial Rejuvenation · AMWC Monaco the only U.S. surgeon honored by 77 international experts.
Vested® · Co-Creator
Named, Branded & Launched a Global Methodology
Coined the word “Vested.” Built the brand and adoption strategy. Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea of 2025. 928 companies. 13,000+ people trained.
Homeschool.com · Co-Founder → Editor-in-Chief → Acquired
Defined the Inclusive Homeschooling Community Online
Co-founded the first all-inclusive homeschooling site on the Internet in 1998. Brought together voices across all approaches and philosophies, making Homeschool.com the central online platform for all families. Forbes Top 45 Sites, 2000. Authored the first-ever book on homeschooling. Built the movement. Sold at acquisition.
Wall Street · 10+ Years
Capital Raising & Market Share Branding
Worked with a top Wall Street firm on rebranding projects for raising capital and building market share for over a decade.
Pearson Education · Advisor
Market Adoption Strategist
Helped the world’s largest education publisher understand and connect with the homeschooling culture and market.
Worked With
Ken Burns
✦
Sally Ride
✦
Dr. Bob Ballard · Discovered the Titanic
✦
The Milken Institute
✦
The Grammy Foundation
✦
JetBlue
✦
Robert Kiyosaki · Rich Dad
✦
Sherry Lansing · Former Paramount CEO
Poor Dad
✦
Susan Estrich
✦
Dub Hay · World Renowned Coffee Expert
✦
Bradley Whitford
✦
Jane Kaczmarek
— Three Core Disciplines
The trinity of modern brand power.
Every engagement is built on these three interlocking disciplines because none of them work as well alone as they do together.
01/03
Answer Engine
Optimization (AEO)
The New Frontier of Search
People have stopped typing keywords. They’re asking full, layered questions and expecting complete answers back. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini answer those questions by citing one authoritative source. AEO makes your brand that source.
- AI citation & entity strategy
- Google AI Overview positioning
- Topical authority mapping
- Schema & knowledge graph
- Perplexity & ChatGPT visibility
02/03
Earned Media Strategy
The authority you can’t buy
Earned media is the press mention, the cited study, the organic link that compounds for years. It’s also what feeds AEO. AI systems cite the brands that earned the right to be cited.
- Digital PR & media outreach
- Original research campaigns
- Thought leadership placement
- Link acquisition strategy
- Brand citation building
03/03
Brand Movement Architecture
Products are bought. Movements are joined.
A movement is what happens when a brand stands for something people want to be part of. I’ve spent 25+ years building the narratives and community systems that make that happen at scale.
- Category creation strategy
- Mission & movement narrative
- Brand positioning & voice
- Community architecture
- Market adoption systems
— Why AEO now?
AI answers first.
Are you the answer?
Your audience has stopped typing keywords. They’re asking full, layered questions and expecting a complete answer back, not ten links to figure out themselves. That shift from Search Engine to Answer Engine is the most meaningful change in how people find information in a generation.
The numbers are real: 70% of Google searches now end with zero clicks. AI Overviews alone have reduced click-through rates by 35%. Traditional search volume is projected to decline 25% by 2026. Brands relying only on SEO stand to lose 30% of organic traffic, and a significant portion isn’t coming back.
Most brands focus on ranking. AEO gets you cited. I build the content depth, entity authority, and structured knowledge that positions your brand as the source AI recommends — not just a result it scrolls past. This is early-mover territory. The brands building AEO authority right now will own it for years.
Where your brand needs to be cited
Google AI Overviews
92%
ChatGPT / OpenAI
87%
Perplexity AI
78%
Google Gemini
85%
Claude / Anthropic
71%
Bing Copilot
62%
Traditional search volume projected to decline 25% by 2026 (Gartner). 70% of searches are already zero-click. AI Overviews have cut click-through rates by 35%. The brands building AEO authority now will own it when everyone else catches up.
Elizabeth’s own earned media. Because she doesn’t just sell it, she lives it.
Vogue
·
Harvard Business Review
·
CNN
·
The Doctors
·
Bloomberg
·
Los Angeles Times
·
The New York Times
·
The Wall Street Journal
·
Forbes
— Earned Media
The press that
compounds.
And feeds your AEO
Paid visibility lasts as long as your budget. Earned visibility compounds. A Vogue mention, an HBR byline, a CNN feature. These don’t just build credibility with humans. They build the kind of authority that AI systems trust and cite.
Here’s what most brands haven’t connected yet: AI systems now draw heavily from third-party sources across the web, not just your owned site. Your influence via earned, third-party coverage has increased exponentially in the AEO era. The more authoritative outlets reference you, the more AI learns to cite you as the answer. Earned media and AEO are not separate strategies. They are the same strategy.
Good content on your own site matters. But the brands AI recommends are the ones who also show up in media, research, thought leadership, and industry conversations across the web. I build both.
| Paid Media | Earned Media |
|---|---|
| Stops when budget stops | Compounds indefinitely |
| Zero AEO benefit | Directly feeds AI citations |
| Audience knows it’s an ad | Trusted third-party authority |
| No backlink value | Earns organic backlinks |
| Forgotten after impression | Referenced for years |
The Insight Most Brands Miss
“AI systems now pull from third-party coverage across the web far more than your owned content. Your earned media isn’t just building credibility with humans — it’s training AI to cite you as the authority.”
The Earned Media Truth
“The brands that AI cites are the brands that earned the right to be cited through content, authority, and trust built over time.”
Digital PR
Strategic outreach to journalists, with angles they actually want to cover, in outlets AI already trusts.
Original Research
Data and studies that become the source everyone cites for years, including AI.
Thought Leadership
Your byline in Vogue, HBR, CNN, and the outlets that signal authority to AI and audiences alike.
Link Acquisition
Earning backlinks through content that genuinely deserves them, the signal AI systems weight most.
— The MEthod
How a brand becomes a movement.
A repeatable system built from 25 years of creating categories and turning ideas into cultural forces. Now wired for the AI-first era.
1
Create the Category
Find the white space your brand can own. Define it, name it, and position yourself as the only logical leader of it.
2
Architect the Story
Build the narrative system: voice, positioning, and message architecture that makes your brand unmistakable and repeatable.
3
Earn the Authority
Earned media campaigns and digital PR build the external signals that make your brand the go-to, for people and AI alike.
4
Optimize for AI
AEO strategy ensures your brand is cited and surfaced by every answer engine your audience uses: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and beyond.
5
Build the Movement
Movements need members. Community systems and advocacy programs turn audience into champions who spread the category for you.
— Full Services
What we build together.
| SERVICE | WHAT IT INCLUDES |
|---|---|
| AEO Strategy & Optimization | Entity optimization, structured data, topical authority mapping, AI citation strategy for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews. The future of search, built today. |
| Earned Media Campaigns | Original research, digital PR, journalist outreach, thought leadership placement, link acquisition. Authority that compounds and feeds AEO. |
| Brand Movement Architecture | Category creation, mission framing, movement narrative, brand positioning, voice & messaging system. The foundation everything else is built on. |
| AI Search + Content Authority | Long-form content strategy, topical clusters, entity-based content architecture, editorial calendar. Content built to get cited by AI and dominate answer engines. |
| Thought Leadership & PR | Personal brand strategy, ghostwriting, byline placement, podcast booking, speaking positioning. Making you the name in your category. |
| Market Adoption Strategy | The right vernacular, messaging, and relationship-building to connect with new markets, influencers, and communities. Turn unfamiliar into adopted. |
| GHL Certified Agency | Full GoHighLevel build-outs: funnels, automations, CRM, pipelines, and client portals. The complete tech stack, set up and run by a certified GHL agency. |
| Custom AI Workspace | The most critical move of 2026? Operationalizing your company’s shared knowledge. We build a private AI knowledge and execution system for your business. One reliable source of truth for your messaging, content, workflows, and brand knowledge. Your team generates better work faster, with more consistency and less reinvention. Not a prompt library. Not a chatbot. A custom AI trained on how your business actually works. |
| Paid Media | Full-funnel paid strategy across Google, Meta, YouTube, and more. Every dollar accountable. Every campaign built around real business outcomes. Not vanity metrics. Real ROI. |
| Lead Acquisition | Client, Patient & Customer Acquisition Through Social We create short-form video content that drives new inquiries, not vanity metrics. No guessing. No follower counts. Just measurable acquisition you can track week over week. |
| Email Marketing | Strategy, segmentation, automated nurture sequences, and 1:1 personalization that turns your list into your most valuable asset. The channel that owns the relationship. |
| Conversion Rate Optimization | Landing page audits, funnel optimization, A/B testing, and UX improvements that turn existing traffic into revenue. More from what you already have. |
— The AI Workspace
Not a chatbot.
Not a prompt library.
A custom AI system built
around how your business works.
Most businesses are using AI the wrong way — general tools with no knowledge of their business, their workflows, or their data. The AI Workspace is different. It’s a proprietary system, built on its own dedicated platform and customized for your organization, that puts the intelligence of large language models to work on your actual business.
At its core is a customized knowledge layer built around your internal documents, business intelligence, offers, messaging, and workflows — organized into one smarter, evolving source of truth. Financial reporting, data analysis, proposal development, marketing assets, internal communications — the system handles the work that currently lives across people, platforms, and files, and brings it into one place that gets more valuable over time.
The AI Workspace is not locked to a single model. It’s built to work with Claude, ChatGPT, and the best available tools for each task — giving your organization the flexibility to use the right model for the right job, and to adapt as the AI landscape evolves. That model-agnostic architecture is a real competitive advantage. Your knowledge and intelligence live in your system, not inside any one provider. No competitor can replicate that overnight.
01
◈
Custom Build
We build a proprietary AI workspace on its own dedicated platform, customized entirely around your business — your documents, your workflows, your data, your voice. Not a generic tool. Not a template. Yours.
02
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Knowledge Layer
A centralized, evolving intelligence layer built from your internal documents, business knowledge, messaging standards, offers, and workflows. One source of truth that gets smarter the longer you use it.
03
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High-Value Workflows
Financial reporting, data analysis, tailored proposals, marketing assets, internal SOPs. We identify the workflows where AI creates the most value for your team and build them first — then expand from there.
04
◬
Training & Adoption
We build it, train your team on it, and embed it into real workflows — so it actually gets used. Adoption is part of the engagement, not an afterthought. We track usage and refine the system as your team works inside it.
05
○
Ongoing Monthly Service
The build is one-time. The value compounds monthly. We maintain and evolve the system as your business and the AI landscape change — refining workflows, strengthening outputs, and keeping your workspace ahead of the curve.
— Start Here
Ready to own the answer?
“Every engagement starts with a real conversation. Tell me where you are and where you want to go.”
Whether you need an AEO audit, an earned media strategy, a brand movement build, or a category-creation engagement — it begins with a real conversation about your bold idea.