This year I started a video business in Conyers from nothing. The company, the website, the Google listing, a phone that answers when I cannot, and the videos themselves. Everything on this page is something I did for myself before I offered it to anyone.
So when I tell you how long a Google listing takes to verify, or that the texting side of a business phone needs carrier approval before it will send anything, I am not repeating something I read. I am telling you what happened to me, including the parts that went wrong.
You do not need all four of these. Most businesses need one or two and the rest can wait a year. Part of the first conversation is me telling you which ones you can skip.
I come to your place, film what is already happening, put you on camera for a few questions, and cut it into something people will actually watch. No script, no actors, no crew standing around, and no day of staged shots. You keep working the whole time I am there.
You end up on camera because nobody explains your business the way you do. I ask the questions a customer would ask, and you answer them the way you would answer a customer.
Straight with you. This is the thing on this page I have done longest. Sixteen years in film and television, most of it in Los Angeles, on shows for Netflix, FX, Disney and Freeform, and I am in the Motion Picture Editors Guild. My first real video job, sixteen years ago, was driving out to local businesses and doing exactly this.
The colours, the type and the layout come out of your actual place and your actual work. If the design could be lifted onto another business without anyone noticing, I have done it wrong, and I will throw it out and start again rather than hand you that.
Straight with you. The ownership point below is the one I would check with anyone you hire, not just me. If a website person holds your domain in their own account, leaving them is expensive and awkward. With me you can walk away whenever you like and take everything, and you do not have to ask me for permission to do it.
It is what appears when somebody searches your name, or searches for what you sell with the words near me on the end. Getting it created, getting it verified, and filling it out the way Google actually wants it filled out. Category, service areas, hours, services, photos, and the website link pointed at the page that answers what that person came for.
Straight with you. There are several ways to get a listing suspended and a suspended listing is slow and painful to get back. Putting a mailbox address in the location field is one. Stuffing keywords into the business name is another, and competitors report it. I know which ones to stay away from because I read the rules properly before I set up mine.
Most people who call a small business and get voicemail do not leave one. They hang up and call the next name on the list, and you never find out it happened.
So when a call comes in and nobody picks up, the caller gets a text from your business within seconds. They reply to it, that reply lands on your phone, and you answer when you get a minute. It is not a chatbot and nobody is pretending to be you. It is one automatic first text that holds the door open, and after that it is just you texting a customer.
Straight with you. Every US business sending automated texts has to be registered with the phone carriers first, and I do that paperwork. Mine took twelve days and two rejections before it cleared, so plan on a wait rather than a same day start. That wait is the reason this is worth paying someone for.
Which one fits depends on where your business is today. We work it out together on the first call.
I build with AI, working alongside Claude, the same way an editor works with the machine in front of them. I am not a career software developer and I am not going to pretend to be one. What that buys you is speed, and a price a one person shop can actually charge.
What keeps it honest is that none of it counts as finished until it is tested in the real world. My phone system was not done when it was built. It was done when somebody called it, let it ring out, got the text and texted back, and I watched the whole thing happen.
We do not do all four at once either. One at a time, finished and working, then the next.
Tell me what is most broken right now and I will tell you which one of these fixes it, and which ones you can leave alone for a year. If it is not a fit I will say so on that call rather than send you a quote.