I got duped by an AI psychic

Aloha PLB Ohana,

In my last newsletter, I told you I've been building agentic businesses. Businesses where AI agents do most of the doing, with me orchestrating.

I’m currently setting up my new Mac Studio so that I can have always-on agents doing stuff. It’s what I’m most excited about right now.

So this is vulnerable for me to admit… I recently got tricked by one of these agentic businesses… that sold me a psychic reading.

You see, I got served Facebook ads for a psychic named Zara, and though I’m not usually a sucker for psychic readings, I was this day.

The offer was timely and intriguing for me, the reviews all seemed very very real, and it fell right into my impulse-purchase sweet spot.

And after reading the sales page that the readings would not be AI-generated, I naively believed Zara.

But here’s the tricky part:

The reading was amazing. I was moved and transformed.

And my experience left me with a ton of internal conflict.

I wrote the full story on Facebook if you want the play-by-play.

Here's what I've been sitting with (rather uncomfortably) since. The model behind Zara is not that different from what I'm building. And from what I'm advocating others build as well.

So where exactly is the line?

Key Insight: The Disclosure Test#

Most of us carry a quiet assumption about AI in our businesses. Something like: the less of it my clients can see, the better.

Keep it behind the curtain. Let people assume it's all you. Nobody needs to know.

But why, exactly?

Does admitting a machine helped make you less valuable? Less smart? That argument feels silly to me. It's like wanting your accountant to do your books without a calculator.

And…I get where it comes from. We spent years being told our value is our personal touch.

But Zara showed me what's sitting underneath that assumption.

Let me be clear about one thing. If Zara's sales page had said "AI-generated reading," I never would have bought it. Not because AI readings are bad. Mine clearly wasn't. But because I can open ChatGPT and ask for one myself, for free, in thirty seconds.

(It's the same rule I give clients about SaaS. Don't build an offer AI can already do.)

So what was I paying for?

A person. The belief that someone had read my answers and seen me.

And this is where it gets weird. The AI did the human part well. The reading was warm, specific, and it made me cry. The easy line we all like to draw ("let the robots do robot work and keep the humanity with the humans") falls apart when the robot does the humanity part pretty well.

So the line isn't between tasks and feelings. AI can produce the words of being seen. What it can't do is be someone who saw you. Someone who remembers you next month, who has something at stake, who's accountable when they get it wrong.

That's what Zara faked. Not the reading. The someone.

Which gives us a useful test for our own businesses.

If your clients knew exactly how AI shows up in your work, would your offer still be worth what they pay?

If yes, AI is your calculator. Tell people. It makes you look smart, not smaller.

If no… hiding the AI won't fix it. What you're selling is already in AI's lane, and the only thing holding up the price is the illusion of you.

That's what the urge to hide it is trying to tell you.

You see, the agentic business isn't the villain here. When I built my Hawai'i food truck directory, AI agents scouted roughly 300 trucks across the islands. I'm telling you that right now, and the directory is worth exactly as much as it was a sentence ago. It passes the test.

Zara doesn't. Take away the fake person and there's nothing left to buy.

This is the part that matters most for businesses like ours. Your clients are about to start asking the question I asked. "Wait, was that you?" About your emails. Your content. Your intake. Your follow-ups.

And how you answer will matter more than what the answer is.

"Yes, my AI drafted that, and here's how I use it" builds trust.

"Um…" ends it.

Reflection: If you disclosed exactly how AI shows up in your work tomorrow, which part of your offer would still be worth paying for?

AI Tip: Buy Your Own Offer From AI#

Tonight, try something that will feel a little uncomfortable.

Open a brand new chat. Don't tell it who you are. Become your ideal client instead. Type out their problem the way they'd describe it at 11pm when they can't sleep. Messy, specific, a little embarrassed. (You know exactly what that sounds like. You've heard it on a hundred discovery calls.)

Then ask for help. Push back. Ask the follow-up questions a real client would ask.

Give it twenty minutes.

That conversation is your real competition. Not the coach down the street. Not the agency with the bigger ad budget. A free chat window that's awake at 11pm and never runs out of patience.

Now paste in your sales page and ask one more question:

"Given everything you just gave this person for free, what in this offer is still worth paying for? Be specific, and don't be nice."

Read the answer slowly.

Some of what you sell will hold up. Some of it won't. The frameworks, the templates, the advice you give on a first call... if that chat window just handed it all over for free, that part of your offer is on borrowed time.

And notice something. That's the exact part you'd feel pressure to hide the AI in. Because if your client knew AI made it, they'd realize they could have made it themselves.

That's what Zara was selling. Something I could have gotten on my own, dressed up as a person.

The part that holds up is almost never the information. It's the someone. A person who remembers them. A person with a stake in how it turns out. A person who says "no, not that" right before they make an expensive mistake.

AI can't tell you what that part is worth. That's your call. But it will show you, fast and without flattery, how much of your price is standing on it.

Most people won't run this. It's easier not to know.

Quick Win: Find Your "No, Not That" Moments#

If the AI Tip left you a little rattled, good. Now let's find the part of your work that holds up.

Grab a notebook (not a chat window, for once) and write down the last three times a client needed you. Not your information. You.

The time you remembered something they'd said months ago and it changed the whole conversation. The time you told them "no, not that" and saved them from an expensive mistake. The time they could tell you cared how it turned out.

Ten minutes. Three moments.

Then pull up your sales page and read the first few lines.

Odds are it leads with the information. The framework, the modules, the deliverables. The part the chat window gives away for free.

Those three moments are what people pay you for. Put one of them where the information used to be.

One edit. That's the whole win.

I made this edit on my own site this week. Our AI-Native Business page opened straight into four deliverables and five phases. All information. (Physician, heal thyself.)

Now the first thing you read is something a client said to me on a call in August:

"The best metric of whether it was the right move to bring on a partner is: could we have done this ourselves? Never in a million years could we have done this ourselves."

That's Leah Neaderthal of Smart Gets Paid. And notice what she's describing. It's the Zara test, answered from the other side.

So here's where I've landed, for now.

AI running the business isn't the scary part. I'm going to keep building agentic businesses, and I hope you do too. The scary part is how easy it's become to fake the human part. Reviews, testimonials, a warm reply from someone who doesn't exist.

Which means the someone just got a lot more valuable. Not less.

Zara taught me that for the price of a bad dinner out. You got it for free. (Which, after everything above, should make you at least a little suspicious of me.)

The Partnerships Program#

Everything in this post comes back to one thing that can't be faked: a real person putting their name next to yours.

That's what our Partnerships Program runs on. When someone who knows our work introduces us to a founder who needs it, and that founder becomes a client, the partner earns 10% of the first engagement. No bots. No manufactured reviews. People vouching for people.

You probably already know someone who's been quietly wondering whether the ground is shifting under their business. The kind of founder who, a few months from now, might say what Leah said: never in a million years could we have done this ourselves.

If you'd like to be the one who makes that introduction, email hello@perfectlittlebusiness.com with PARTNER in the subject line, or read the details at perfectlittlebusiness.com/partnerships.

Mahalo for being here.

Cindy