Hickory, NC — the Catawba Valley to Lake Norman
Websites, local search, reviews, social, and a front desk that answers every call — one local shop runs it all for you. Flat monthly. Month-to-month. Built by a guy who built it for his own business first.
Flat pricing · Month-to-month · No contracts
What we do
Not a faceless platform add-on. Not an out-of-state call center. Not an agency that locks you in for a year. One local builder, the full stack of things that get a local business chosen — get found, get booked, get reviewed, grow.
A front desk that never sleeps. It answers every call in your company's name — nights, weekends, when you're under a house — books the job, and texts you the lead with a recording. From $297/mo, flat. No per-minute meter.
Hand-built, fast, and made to win local searches — not a template with your logo swapped in.
The structured details search engines reward, plus a dialed-in profile — so you show up when your town searches for what you do.
Review requests after every job, replies handled, and your rating built the honest way — one happy customer at a time.
Answer fast, win the job: replying within about 5 minutes drives ~78% of lead conversions. Every inquiry gets an instant response and lands in one place.
Weeks of posts scheduled ahead across Facebook, Instagram, and Nextdoor — so you stay visible without touching an app.
The paperwork you hate — follow-ups, reminders, summaries, the weekly grind — built into systems that run themselves. If it's repetitive, it can be forged.
Start with the free audit — it shows you, in dollars, where to start.
Get the free audit →About 27% of calls to home-service businesses go unanswered. About 85% of callers who hit voicemail never call back — and ~62% just call a competitor. At roughly $1,200 lost per missed call, the math gets ugly fast.†
A late-night call, the way your callers would hear it — simulated here, real on your demo number.
You're leaking about
$17,396
every month to missed calls
† Deliberately conservative, sourced math: ~27% of calls unanswered and ~$1,200 average lost revenue per missed call — Invoca. ~85% of voicemail callers never call back and ~62% hire a competitor instead — BrightLocal and 2025–26 missed-call studies. Speed-to-lead: answering within ~5 minutes drives ~78% of conversions — MIT/Oldroyd. The counter ignores repeat business and referrals from every saved job.
Proof
My own porch-pumpkin styling business. Brand new, seasonal, zero budget — the proving ground for everything Catawba Forge sells.
See the build live: ggpumpkins.com
Case study #2 — a towing company in Lincoln County — is on the anvil now.
How it works
A working demo of your receptionist on a real number, plus a one-page audit: the calls you're missing and how you show up online vs. the guy down the road.
Pick what you need — the phone, the website, the whole engine. Flat quote up front, built in days, set up on your number and your name. You don't learn a thing.
It works around the clock; you get the leads as they happen and one plain-English monthly report: calls caught, jobs booked, where you rank.
Plain pricing
A human receptionist runs $3,000–$4,000 a month. This doesn't.
30-day money-back guarantee. Month-to-month after that, no contracts — if it doesn't earn its keep, you don't keep paying for it. Exact scope of each package is set in your flat quote, up front.
Who's behind this
Forged in Hickory, NC
I'm Sam Lasiter. I didn't grow up in the Catawba Valley — I chose it. Six years ago my wife and I planted our family here, and we're raising four boys between the foothills and Lake Norman. When you pick a place on purpose, you pay attention to it.
"I built all of this for my own business first. Once I saw how well it worked, I figured every local business around here deserved the same shot."
That business is Gorgeous Gourds — the build is live for anyone to check. I'm not a call center in another state, and I'm not a dashboard you have to figure out. I build your system myself, I run it myself, and when you call about it, you get me — by name.
Real work. Built to last. By a local guy.
Fair questions
Don't let the word AI throw you. I'm a local guy doing honest work with good tools — same as you using a better wrench. It talks like a person, in your business's name. The best answer is to call the demo and try to trip it up. Then you tell me if it sounds robotic.
It can hand off to you or take a message any time a caller asks for a person. And honestly — somebody calling a plumber at 8pm with water on the floor is mostly relieved somebody picked up.
The receptionist starts at $297 a month, flat — no per-minute meter. Packages for the wider work start at $249 a month, month-to-month. For scale: a human receptionist or answering service runs $3,000–$4,000 a month. One recovered job a month more than pays for it.
No. Month-to-month, and there's a 30-day money-back guarantee on top. You also hear it answering your own phone — free — before any money changes hands.
Nothing. I build it, I run it, you don't learn a thing. It's set up on your number, trained on your business — services, hours, service area, prices — and it's live in days. You just get the jobs.
Free demo + audit
I'll build a working demo of your front desk — trained on your services, your area, your prices — and send you a number to call. With it comes the audit: what you're missing on the phone and how you show up online.
Call it, hand the phone to your wife, your lead tech, your most skeptical buddy.
How many calls you're likely missing, what that costs, and how you rank against the competition in your town.
No card, no contract, no pitch until you've heard it work. We lead with the audit, not the sale.
