So ChatGPT asked to interview me.
It also went ahead and wrote my answers, which I did not ask it to do. They were very polished and sounded nothing like me. I’ve put my own back in.
Fair warning: some of these are shorter than the question.
ChatGPT: How long has Live Web Studios been in business, and what inspired you to start it?
Nineteen years. And “inspired” is doing a lot of lifting there.
I worked corporate IT for a few years, after trampoline school, which is a sentence I enjoy writing. I was miserable. Somebody asked me to build them a website, straight HTML back then, and I did it. Then somebody else asked. At some point it had a name.
Nobody planned this.
ChatGPT: What sets Live Web Studios apart from its competitors?
I meet people in person when I can. I shake hands.
That sounds small. It isn’t. The internet is a cold, dark place to hand somebody a few thousand dollars, and most of my competition is a contact form and a stock photo of a team that doesn’t exist.
Also I answer my own phone. Nineteen years, same number.
ChatGPT: Tell us about a particularly challenging project and how you overcame the challenges.
A custom e-commerce build that got away from us. The scope kept growing because every answer raised two new questions.
What fixed it was cutting it into pieces small enough to actually finish, and getting the client in the room for every decision instead of disappearing for three weeks and presenting something.
That’s the lesson, honestly. Most project disasters are communication problems wearing a technical costume.
ChatGPT: How do you stay current with web design and development?
I build things.
Not conferences. Not newsletters. I take the new tool and make something real with it and find out where it falls apart. Right now that’s AI-assisted builds, and it has changed how I work more than anything since mobile.
I’m still learning it. I’ll say that plainly.
ChatGPT: Walk us through your process from start to finish.
Talk. Plan. Build. Test. Launch. Then keep it running.
The talking part is the one people undervalue and it’s where projects are actually won or lost. If I understand what you need the website to DO, the rest is just work.
ChatGPT: How do you handle security?
Mostly by removing things.
Every plugin is code from a stranger running on your website. The fewer moving parts, the less there is to break into. That’s why so much of what I build now is static HTML with no database sitting behind it.
Plus the ordinary stuff. Updates, SSL, backups I’ve actually tested.
ChatGPT: What common mistakes do you see other web companies make?
Going quiet.
They take the deposit, vanish for a month, and turn up with something the client never asked for. Then everyone’s angry and it’s expensive to fix.
The other one is building for the owner instead of the customer. A site that impresses you and confuses your customers has failed, no matter how good it looks.
ChatGPT: How do you approach maintenance and support?
Hosting clients get an hour a month of changes, no charge, no ticket. Email it over and it’s done.
Most months nobody uses the whole hour. It’s there anyway, because the alternative is a client not fixing a typo for two years because they don’t want an invoice for it.
ChatGPT: How do you handle feedback and revision requests?
Honestly? I ask people to save them up.
One at a time over three weeks is how a project stalls. Make a list, send the list, I’ll do all of it at once and then we go live. Everybody’s happier.
ChatGPT: How do you price?
Per project, and you see the number before anything starts.
No hourly mystery. No invoice at the end that’s bigger than the conversation. If something changes mid-build we talk about it first.
ChatGPT: What’s the vision for the next five to ten years?
Keep answering the phone.
The tools will change again, probably more than once. That part I’m not worried about, it’s the part I enjoy. What I’d like is for a client who called me in 2009 to still be able to call me in 2033 and get me.
That’s it. That’s the vision. Not very disruptive.
Thanks to ChatGPT for the questions, and for the answers I threw out.
If you want to talk to the actual person rather than the language model, call me. 732.801.9611.