> Never saw the guy again.
It doesn't scale. If you have the knack to build a company like that, eventually you won't be able to touch the front lines of what your company is doing. Hopefully, having that type of leadership at the top creates emulation all the way down, but still, it rings of "die a hero or live long enough to become the villain"
I think that's truer than you mean. The legend can scale, but the reality doesn't. Unfortunately I'm more interested in the latter.
At a certain point, you've got to stop pumping the gas. You want the company to outlive you. Gas needs to get pumped after you're gone. You fade into the background and replace yourself; others carry on your legacy. You cash out and ski six days a week or whatever.
Edit: some legends are bullshit. Scale that up and it's called "toxic culture".
If you are a leader in a field, and you have forgotten or no longer can do the work at the very lowest levels (for example, even something simply like mopping), you have lost an expertise that made you valuable in the first place.