One of the best pieces of advice I received in the first month after quitting my corporate job and starting Cedarcrest was to “Plan for Big Success Some Day.” I was full of lofty ideas about the world-beating company I was creating out of thin air.

But my advisor meant something very mundane, almost the opposite of what I imagined: He specifically urged me to build solid infrastructure with legal documents, proper accounting record-keeping, and financial agreements suitable for a big company.

The biggest expenditure of Cedarcrest in my first year, by far, was for legal fees, to formalize a business structure built for big business success someday.

At the time, paying a lawyer was the least interesting expenditure imaginable, yet three years later I am grateful for the early advice as my business grows.

Imagine the United States without the US Constitution. As those political entrepreneurs known as the Founding Fathers knew very well, setting up a powerful yet flexible legal infrastructure set the stage for two centuries of phenomenal growth.

So, I prepared Cedarcrest for big success by imagining what a vastly bigger company would need decades from now.

“If you have built castles in the air,” wrote Henry David Thoreau, “your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”