Gen 120 years ago
You hired an agency.
One firm owned the whole relationship. They ran the campaigns, held the logins, and reported on themselves. When you left, the work left with them — nothing stayed in the business.
AGENCY OF RECORD
Built DirectBusiness Systems
DIAGNOSTIC DEPTH 00.0%Built with ♥ in Kansas City
Packaged systems now on Turnaround Biz →
Findthe constraint.Buildthe system.
Hipcraft diagnoses what's actually holding a business back, builds the system that removes it, and stays on to keep it running. Operator-led since 2016.
[ no_campaigns ]Systems we build
RevenueLead capture, CRM, routing, follow-up sequences and the measurement that proves whether any of it worked.EcommerceMerchandising, conversion path, subscription and lifecycle flows, and the integrations between store, ESP and fulfillment.Customer acquisitionSearch, paid, content and email built to run as one system with shared tracking — instead of four channels arguing over credit.Automation + AIThe repetitive work a person is doing by hand, moved into a workflow that runs whether or not anyone remembers to run it.IntelligenceReporting, dashboards and customer research, so decisions stop depending on whoever exported the spreadsheet last.
How this work has changed
Gen 210 years ago
Work got split across specialists.
An SEO firm, a paid contractor, an email tool, a web guy. Each optimized their own metric and none of them owned the outcome. The seams between them became where revenue leaked.
FOUR VENDORS
Gen 3Hipcraft
The system runs on the business.
We diagnose the constraint, build the system into your own stack, and cover it monthly. You own the asset. It keeps running whether or not anyone remembers to run it.
OWNED IN-HOUSE
Why keep renting the work when the system could belong to the business?
Build direct.
Diagnosis
The constraint is one step. Everything downstream runs at its speed.
This is the first thing we map. More traffic into a business whose follow-up is broken just produces more waste — faster.
More traffic doesn't fix this business. Follow-up is the constraint — and everything downstream of it is running at a fraction of what it could.
Symptoms
Most businesses arrive with a symptom, not a diagnosis.
Pick the one that sounds like yours. The line on the right is usually where the problem actually is.
Leads come in and disappear.
Usually a follow-up system problem, not a lead volume problem.
Traffic is fine. Revenue isn't.
Usually conversion and lifecycle, in that order.
The team retypes the same things all day.
Usually three workflows nobody ever wrote down.
Nothing talks to anything else.
Usually integration — the tools are fine, the wiring isn't.
Nobody agrees on the numbers.
Usually no single source of truth for reporting.
Growth created chaos.
Usually manual process that stopped scaling 18 months ago.
We've stalled and can't say why.
That's a diagnostic engagement. Start with a conversation.
Every one of those is a system that doesn't exist yet.
Built is the start. Kept running is the offer.
Systems don't fail loudly. A token expires, a platform changes an API, a flow stops firing — and nobody notices for six weeks. Coverage is a monthly engagement where what we build stays ours to watch.
How coverage works →
What it isn't
- Not a content or posting retainer
- Not media buying dressed up as management
- Not a monthly report about work that didn't happen
- Not billing you for a vendor's built-in features
Engagements
Four ways to work together
The entry point is whichever is honestly true for your situation.
Install a packaged system
You already have the playbook, the workflow or the AI skill. We configure it, connect it to what you run, and hand it over working — with the documentation to keep it that way.
Where the systems come fromBuild something custom
Nothing off the shelf fits how the business actually runs. We diagnose the constraint, design the system around it, and build it into your existing stack rather than beside it.
See what we buildKeep it running
The monthly engagement. Monitored, maintained, changed as the business changes — and honest about what it doesn't include.
How coverage worksWork across the whole business
The problem is bigger than one system. We work alongside leadership to find the constraints, order them against cash and capacity, and implement across them.
Turnaround engagementsHow we compare
What you'd otherwise do instead
Each of these is a real option. Here's the trade-off each one carries.
Retainer with no defined system
vs. an agency retainer
One person, one channel, no coverage
vs. a freelancer
Salary, ramp time, single skillset
vs. hiring in-house
The constraint compounds quietly
vs. doing nothing
_
Systems, not campaigns.
A decade of ecommerce, search, acquisition and automation work sits underneath that. It's the machinery — it just isn't the product.
SEOLocal SEOShopifyEcommercePaid mediaGoogle AdsMeta AdsEmail & lifecycleKlaviyoCRMConversionAnalytics & GA4AutomationAI workflowsWeb developmentChannel managementProduct launches
The decade
What ten years actually leaves behind.
Hipcraft has been running since 2016. Not as a solo freelance shop the whole way — over the years it has meant collaborators, vendors, assistants, contractors and family, working on real businesses with real money on the line.
01 — Patterns
The same problems, over and over
After enough engagements you stop guessing. The lead that goes cold, the checkout that leaks, the integration nobody has checked since launch — these repeat across industries. Recognizing which one you have is most of the work.
02 — Playbooks
What worked, written down
Every fix that held got documented, then reused, then packaged. That's what became the systems on this site and the tools on Turnaround Biz. Nothing here is theoretical — it earned its place by working somewhere first.
03 — People
A bench you can call on
A decade of working with designers, developers, media buyers and operators means the right specialist can be pulled in when a build needs one — without handing your account to an agency that bills for the introduction.
Ten years of figuring out what was actually broken. That's the product.
Operator
Built by someone who's actually built things
CJ Rooney — Founder & Principal
CJ founded Hipcraft in 2016 after years working inside digital businesses — ecommerce, search, customer acquisition, conversion, websites, automation and product launches. Over time the work kept moving past individual channels toward a bigger question.
What's actually preventing this business from working — and what needs to exist to change it?
That question is what Hipcraft does now.
2016 → 2026
A decade of building
2016
Hipcraft founded. Search, local SEO and websites for owner-operated businesses.
Early
Customer acquisition — ranking, lead generation and the phone actually ringing.
Expansion
Ecommerce, conversion, email and lifecycle. Channels started needing to work as one thing.
2026
Integrated business systems, automation and implementation — including turnaround work.
Contact
Tell us what's not working.
Sometimes you know exactly what needs to be built. Sometimes you just know the business isn't performing the way it should. Either is a fine place to start.