What’s an ebook worth when anyone can ask ChatGPT the same question? Stephanie Telibasa found out the hard way. The owner of House of Physical Therapy in New York City launched her coaching business for other physical therapists with a $42 ebook on how to open a practice. She told Daniel Hill on the Unscripted Small Business Podcast exactly how that went: “one person bought it.”
Well, the truth is that her explanation of why it flopped is one of the clearest descriptions you’ll hear of what generic content can’t do anymore, and what you should be selling (and publishing) instead.
Generic answers are free now
Here’s how Stephanie diagnosed her own failed offer:
“What can you get out of reading my experience and reading do this? Anyone can Google it. You can use ChatGPT right now. How do I open physical therapy practice?”
If you publish content for a living, read that twice. The “how do I open a practice” level of answer is a commodity. A search engine or a chatbot will hand it to anyone in seconds. Packaging it into a PDF and charging $42 for it doesn’t add anything the reader can’t get for free.
The value is in the specifics
What the free answer won’t give you, Stephanie said, is advice about your situation. Her examples are telling, because two of the three are SEO and conversion advice:
“They’re not going to tell you in this specific situation, you should change your name so that your SEO pops up better and you have keywords here or they’re not going to review your website with you and say, Hey, that button is in the wrong place.”
That’s the human connection, in her words. Her one buyer got three pages in and started emailing questions, so Stephanie got on a call. Those questions became the real product. Today The Planning PT runs on modules, recorded videos, worksheets and calls, and each step gets customized to the practice, because a pediatric clinic needs something different from a sports practice.
“A book is nice, but it’s not custom.”
What this means for your content
You can apply Stephanie’s lesson straight to a content plan:
- Don’t compete on the generic answer. If your page says what every other page says, an AI summary will say it first.
- Publish the specifics only you have. Your own numbers, your mistakes, the questions your customers actually ask after page three.
- Use your first buyers as research. Every question Stephanie’s one customer emailed her was a gap in the offer, and a topic.
Findable beats fancy
The same thinking shows up in how she built her first website. After a $10,000 quote in 2017, she built it herself from YouTube tutorials. It had one job: “a place for people to send their contact information.” People found her on Google, filled out an inquiry form, and she called them to book.
“It didn’t matter that I didn’t have the most professional website. It mattered that people could find me.”
For a local service business, being found starts with the basics: your business name and services matching how people search, a page that answers what you actually do, and a clear way to reach you. If you’re an owner rather than a marketer, this owner’s guide to local SEO for service businesses covers that ground without the jargon. And if your practice has several practitioners (House of PT has a page for each therapist), it’s worth setting up independent practitioner profiles the right way.
So before you write the next ebook, guide or blog post, ask Stephanie’s question. Could someone get this from ChatGPT right now? And if they could, what do you know about their situation that it doesn’t?
This is a conversation about running a small business. Nothing in it is medical advice. Recorded June 2025.
Listen to the full episode on Castos or read the full recap on Unscripted Small Business.