Founder Extraction Advisory
Your business runs through you. We get it running without you.
Sales, delivery and most decisions wait on you before they can move. That's how the business was built, and it can be rebuilt so it doesn't.
The Growth Transfer is the founder extraction advisory practice of Jordan Murphy, founder of Brain Apes.
Every line leads to you.
The map draws five squares around a gold founder square at the center: sales, delivery, operations, systems, and team. One line runs from each area back to the founder, and the weight of the line is how much that area waits on a founder decision before it can move. In this illustration sales and delivery are the heaviest, operations and systems are moderate, and team is the one line running light. Four of the five squares are filled gold, which marks the areas still waiting on the founder.
The Bottleneck Tax
What being the bottleneck costs you
Every decision that routes through you costs you twice: the hours you spend clearing approvals, and what a buyer would pay for a business that stops when you stop. The Score measures how much still routes through you.
Work out what it costs you
The worked example: a founder billing $250 an hour, 6.5 hours a day inside approvals, 253 working days a year. Change the two numbers below to yours.
About 6.5 hours a day. Your best guess is fine.
What you bill a client for an hour, or would.
The worked example
$411,000
A year of your time
Based on what you said
- Hours a year
- 1,645
- Full 40-hour weeks
- 41
This counts your time only. It doesn't include the cost of wasted resources, like subscriptions and payroll, or what a buyer would pay for a business that stops when you stop.
The Founder Bottleneck Score shows where those hours come from: your stage, which of the five areas still runs through you, and the one to fix first.
The Score's free, takes about 5 minutes, and comes with a full report and a written debrief with suggested next steps.
The Mechanism
How the work runs: Diagnose, Extract, Build, Transfer
Four phases, run as a loop. Each pass moves you one stage further out of the daily operation. The gold arrow is the transfer: the decisions and relationships that now sit with your team instead of you.
- D Diagnose Map the bottleneck. Score every area.
- E Extract Get the decisions out of your head.
- B Build Turn judgment into systems.
- T Transfer Hand the load off. Verify it holds.
Extraction Stages
Which stage is your business in?
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Stage 0
Trapped
The business stops when you stop.
-
Stage 1
Delegated
Tasks move. Judgment stays with you.
-
Stage 2
Systemized
Processes hold the work without you in the room.
-
Stage 3
Transferred
You choose what to work on. The business runs either way.
What a business that runs without you actually is, stage by stage
Proof
Founders on how Jordan works.
Recommendations from founders and operators who have seen Jordan Murphy, founder of Brain Apes, work firsthand. Trimmed for length and otherwise in their own words.
-
Jordan gave me an hour of straight strategic advice on a call he had every reason to keep short, with nothing to sell me. He's a builder-operator who's successfully scaled multiple ventures himself... Within minutes he'd named the constraint I was stuck on and showed me exactly how to sequence what needed to be fixed.
Matthew Nance Founder, Orbit -
What I notice most about Jordan is access and systems... He builds and leads teams himself, and when a project needs specialized talent he doesn't have on staff, he brings in vetted people he already trusts. You get the full picture without the handoffs and friction that usually slow growth work down.
Andrew Childs Founder & Principal, Marcostrat -
Jordan helped me with a specific blockage in my process. He isolated the issue, helped me see where I was going wrong and they laid out a pathway forward... Update (9 days later): Just wanted to let you know, in the last 2 days I've had $60k worth of program sales calls based on your suggestion...
Gavin Tye Founder, Sales Market Fit
The Founder Bottleneck Score
What your Founder Bottleneck Score tells you
0 to 100, scored across five areas: Sales, Delivery, Operations, Systems Maturity, and Team Readiness. Under 40 is Stage 0. The goal is 80 or above.
It takes about 5 minutes. No call required.
Free. About 5 minutes. No call.
Find your Founder Bottleneck Score
A short diagnostic across five areas. You get your score and the one area to fix first.
Free. No account required.