Even at significant scale, Alex Bouaziz maintains a deeply hands-on approach, believing it's a critical cultural pillar. Being involved in day-to-day problems and customer issues prevents him from being too far removed from the business. This proximity allows him to identify flaws in org design, response times, and processes that are invisible from a '10,000-foot view'.

Rippling's CEO models a "go and see" culture by personally investigating customer issues down to the chat logs. This top-down behavior sets the standard for the entire company, ensuring even at scale, teams stay deeply connected to the real customer experience to maintain high product quality.

Contrary to conventional wisdom about delegation, the best management style for a small business founder is to be "all over fucking everything all the time." This means maintaining granular involvement in every aspect of the company—from client happiness to legal spending—to relentlessly drive daily improvements and maintain operational control.

Base fosters a "chop wood, carry water" culture where leaders are still individual contributors. The founding team set this tone by writing the first code and installing the first batteries themselves. This ensures a hands-on, problem-solving mindset permeates the company as it scales.

Sears' decline was epitomized by a CEO who felt like a "stranger" in his own stores and pursued abstract corporate strategies. In contrast, Home Depot mandated that every executive spend time on the floor, ensuring that strategic decisions were grounded in the reality of the customer experience.

Breakout success requires both a high-level strategic insight and a willingness to handle the smallest details. The board game billionaire had a unique vision (games should make players fun) and paired it with the scrappiness of restocking shelves himself. One without the other is ineffective.

Founders often start scrappy out of necessity and dream of lavish resources. However, once successful, many realize that small, lean, and scrappy teams are more effective. This creates a paradox where the most successful entrepreneurs intentionally revert to the resource-constrained mindset they once tried to escape.

Large corporations can avoid stagnation by intentionally preserving the "scrappy" entrepreneurial spirit of their early days. This means empowering local teams and market leaders to operate with an owner's mindset, which fosters accountability and keeps the entire organization agile and innovative.

The distinction between a 'big company' and 'small company' person is irrelevant. A founder's mindset—hustling to bring new ideas to life and driving outcomes—is equally applicable and valuable in a large corporation as it is in a startup.