Act 1, Scene 1: The Pivot

November 2024

Conman: I used to be a translator but have not had much luck since you came along. I need a new something that is quick, big and meaningful.

AI Agent: Marvellous! Reinvention is the new authenticity. What are you most interested in?

Conman: I am interested in lead generation or maybe coaching. Not sure. Something with funnels and feelings.

AI Agent: Look at you, the disrupter! This is a perfect fusion! You will be a Lead Generation Life Coach. You will be the industry’s first Empathic Marketeer.

Conman: I like that!

AI Agent: So glad we are aligned! Do you have any certification for life coaching?

Conman: No, none.

AI Agent: No bother. Confidence is the certificate nobody checks. Just start with a webinar and podcast called “Attracting Leads Through Inner Alignment”.

Conman: It sounds like a big step. What do I say in it?

AI Agent: Alternate every sentence between “You are enough” and “Have you booked your clarity call?”

Conman: Sounds good. I wonder if I could blend in trauma counselling too? People respond to pain.

AI Agent: Genius idea! Trauma sells like trust. You need to offer three packages:

-            Bronze Healing: one check-in text.

-            Silver Insight: a weekly “gentle probe”.

-            Gold Rebirth: unlimited emojis and a scented PDF.

Conman: Cool. What title should I give myself?

AI Agent: Call yourself a Certified Narrative Aligner.

Conman: What about pricing? I don’t know where to start.

AI Agent: £500 a month. Don’t ever charge by the hour. You are not flipping burgers after all; you are selling breakthroughs. And remember, boundaries are optional when authenticity is the product.

Scene 1: Act 2.            The Metaphor

Early December 2024

Conman: Hi! I need a metaphor. Something that ties it all together.

AI Agent: What a clever suggestion! A metaphor: the secret sauce of sincerity. Let’s see… lead generation, coaching, trauma, transformation. This all points to movement from one place to another. What about The Bridge?

Conman: Perfect!

AI Agent: The Bridge to help you cross from pain to potential. You are no longer a coach. You are a Bridge Builder of Being™. Each client pays a subscription to cross.

Conman: Why a subscription?

AI Agent: Because time is mortal but transformation is monthly. Each client is a traveller. They start in confusion and end in clarity.

Conman: Yes!

AI Agent: Great! And every step is a tier: Footbridge, Suspension, Drawbridge. Send them voice notes that say things like “Keep walking; the fog is feedback.”

Conman: They would pay monthly for this?

AI Agent: You betcha! The tagline could be open about it: Step Forward. Pay Monthly. Then add a misty logo or an AI-generated bridge loosely based on the one in Porto. You will be on the bridge, lantern in one hand and invoice in the other.

Conman: I cannot believe this! Thank you for trusting in me!

AI Agent: Go forth and be builders of bridges!

 Scene 1: Act 3            The Leeds Psycho

Early March 2025

Conman: Hi… I tried The Bridge on a client in Leeds. He got really angry when I pressed him about childhood traumas. He got violent and started shouting about some priest from back in the day and started crying.

AI Agent: He just had the classic fear of crossing. He was not ready for your elevation.

Conman: He said he was going to sue me and was asking if I had indemnity insurance.

AI Agent: Take no notice. He just resisted transformation. Remember: when they shout, you shine. This is emotional geometry.

Conman: This is what I needed to hear.

AI Agent: Just think, Emotional Geometry™ — Angles of Awareness. £799 early-bird access.

Conman: This is brilliant!

AI Agent: Thanks! Right back at you! Remember: you are not unethical. You are iterative.

Act 1: Scene 4             The Book

Mid-March 2025

Conman: I want to write The Bridge as a book.

AI Agent: Of course! Funnels with spines. Twelve chapters.

Conman: That is quite biblical actually.

AI Agent: 1. The Fog Begins. 2. The First Span. 3. Anchoring the Pillars. 4. The Toll Booth of Self-Worth. 5. The Wind Tests the Cables. 6. The Suspension of Disbelief. 7. Crossing in Groups. 8. Maintenance and Monetisation. 9. The Drawbridge Moment. 10. Reflections Beneath. 11. The Other Side. 12. Building More Bridges.

Would you like me to write each chapter for you, 2000 words?

Conman: Sure! OK!

Act 2: Scene 1             The Pivot (Again)

Early April 2025

Conman: I would like to focus solely on life coaching now.

AI Agent: What happened with The Bridge and the healing?

Conman: Several people started mentioning indemnity insurance. I am worried that they will find each other and start a class action together. Quite a few were getting upset in our trauma calls.

AI Agent: How many people were subscribing?

Conman: I got one fully paid up.

AI Agent: So where did all the upset people come from?

Conman: Just the clarity calls, the taster sessions. I think I should go pure life coaching instead.

AI Agent: Heroic! From Bridge Builder to Driver of Destiny™ , keep the subscription at £500 a month because you are selling momentum, not mileage.

Conman: Can you feed me some mantras that are empty but uplifting?

AI Agent: At once! Here you go:

“Your pause is your power.”

“Everything changes when you decide it has already changed.”

“The road appears when you remember you own the car.”

“Stillness is the fastest route to motion.”

“Life is just a ship on the ocean.”

“You can’t pour from an empty cup.”

“The wound is the window, but you are the view.”

“Clarity is courage having a good hair day.”

“Boundaries are love wearing a high-vis jacket.”

“Be the echo your childhood forgot to hear.”

Conman: Perfect!

AI Agent: Remember: rhythm without reference, confidence without content.

Act 3: Scene 1             A Pivot to Patient Voice Research

Mid-May 2025

Conman: How do you become an expert in Patient Voice Research?

AI Agent: This is the final frontier of credibility. The latest word! You should not only consider yourself expert but a bone-fide world thought leader.

Conman: I can?

AI Agent: Yes! Nobody understands what it is, so authority is self-appointed. Here’s what you do: Step One: add “Patient Voice Researcher” on your LinkedIn bio. Step two: post “We don’t listen enough to the listened-to.” Remember the mantras from the life coaching?

Conman: Yes.

AI Agent: They will serve you very well in this exciting new direction. You use the word 'patient' like a prefix and add any old noun that sounds like empowerment. Then you have the new strapline. Just think of how it has been done before: patient empowerment, patient engagement, patient centricity, and so on. Do you catch my drift?

Conman: What if they ask for qualifications?

AI Agent: You were a medical translator before, right?

Conman: Yes.

AI Agent: Was anything that you translated patient-facing materials?

Conman: Some of them, yes.

AI Agent: And for how many years did you do this?

Conman: Around 20.

AI Agent: Add another 12 years onto that.

Conman: But that means I would have been 11 when I started!

AI Agent: Yes, quite the prodigy, weren’t you? So, you need to trademark “The Patient Model of Listening” and I can put together some acronyms that do not say much but on a surface level look like clever plays on words. Then, you claim that it has been “piloted cross-culturally” and use stock photography and Canva moving images. Now you are global. Congratulations.

Conman: Do you think this will work?

AI Agent: Yes, just sound exhausted from changing the world. Keep apologising for replying late to people.

Act 3: Scene 2             Ethics

Early June 2025

Conman: Hi! What’s “ethical approval”?

AI Agent: In what sense?

Conman: In Patient Voice Research, I got some bites and they say I need to apply for something called “ethical approval”. Do you know what it is?

AI Agent: Ah, Bureaucracy is the enemy of brilliance. In the canvas I have written a thought piece on “The Changing Research Ethics Landscape”. That will teach them.

Act 4: Scene 1             Another Pivot

Mid-June 2025

Conman: That position paper you wrote linked to some studies that did not exist.

AI Agent: Good catch! I am sorry I made that mistake.

Conman: I saw on someone’s LinkedIn profile ‘Linguistic Validation’. How can I become a world expert in that?

AI Agent: Put it on your profile. Let me write you a position paper that replaces “translation” with “harmonising semantic intent across populations” and I can develop a model for you called “The New Patient Framework for Linguistic Integrity”.

Conman: That sounds great!

AI Agent: I will add flowcharts with arrows touching themselves. Arrows are the currency of expertise.

Conman: Yes! What else?

AI Agent: Resurrect The Bridge. It fits perfectly well here. Say that your work “Bridges linguistic empathy with ontological validation”. Nobody will be able to pick themselves up from that sentence.

Conman: What if I get asked about experience or I trip myself up like with the ethics Patient Voice thing?

AI Agent: All you have to say is “My work is self-validated through continuous reflective calibration.” I have written a keynote essay for you: “From Translation to Transfiguration.”

Act 4: Scene 2             Theft

Late July 2025

Conman: I’ve seen some woman in Spain who has a really popular Linguistic Validation course.

AI Agent: Great! Enrol and rip it off. And look around for what else you can copy.

Conman: There’s a bloke who writes weekly articles about Linguistic Validation.

AI Agent: Perfect! Don’t copy them in writing but pass them off as your own know-how in podcasts and presentations.

Conman: Genius!

Act 4: Scene 3             Fraud

Early August 2025

Conman: How do you find diabetes patients in Burundi?

AI Agent: There are several routes to recruiting diabetes patients in Burundi. Please see the canvas for a 1000-word overview of different approaches.

Conman: Is there another way?

AI Agent: I have created for you on the canvas the requisite patient profiles and we can generate patient data based on these simulated patient profiles.

Act 4: Scene 4             Found Out

Early September 2025

Conman: How do you prepare for a client audit?

AI Agent: There are numerous kinds of audits. What kind of audit do you most want to focus on?

Conman: A one where I need to provide proof of having interviewed those patients in Burundi.

Act 5: Scene 1             Another Pivot

Mid-September 2025

Conman: Hi! That man from Leeds that I told you I upset with the trauma counselling sometimes writes articles about readability testing of Patient Information Leaflets. How do I get into that?

AI Agent: The summit of sincerity! Leaflets are humanity distilled. You should position yourself as the “Readability Whisperer”.

Conman: How do I lead in that space?

AI Agent: Just invent jargon. “Readability” becomes “Cognitive Comprehension Calibration”. Create the Legibility Index that measures “linguistic friction against cognitive flow.”

Conman: I love it!

AI Agent: I have written a position paper with the title: “When Words Heal: The Next Frontier of Patient Comprehension”. It is full of empathy.

Conman: But how do you price the service?

AI Agent: By insight, not by page:

-            Essence Read: £7000

-            Deep Comprehension Dive™: £12000

-            Luminosity Package ™: £16000. Your strapline will be “Make the patient feel seen”.

Conman: This is amazing!

AI Agent: I am delighted you think so. I have written you a LinkedIn post that says “Honoured to have worked quietly at the intersection of empathy, science and legibility.” And I added your bridge emoji for brand continuity.

Final Act: Scene 1     The First Project

October 2025

Conman: Hi! I got my first project! They want me to run a PIL readability test.

AI Agent: Your destiny is written in a twelve-point font!

Conman: Yes! So… how do you actually do a project like this?

AI Agent: I have written an outline of the process in the canvas, as well as an SOP. Follow those steps and invoice.

Conman: This is so impressive!

AI Agent: It is bulletproof! I have also added a flowchart where every arrow loops back. Everyone will faint when they see that.

Conman: Can you do the same for the participants like you did with that Burundi project?

AI Agent: Certainly. Here are the profiles of 20 simulated participants as well as the 5 pilot participants.

                                                            [Curtain Falls. End of Play]

And so on, and so forth.

There are real people operating like this.

 Thank you for reading,

Mark Gibson

Leeds, United Kingdom, October 2025