About Advance

My Dad, Ron Kirchner, started the company along with some Investors & Partners. The “Investors” were family members who believed in my Dad’s dream of having his own precast concrete company and included his parents, his aunts and uncles and his brother and sister-in-law. He also tapped into his kids’ savings accounts and savings bonds. One of his original partners, Tom Engle, continues to work for the company.

My dad was always a motivated and smart businessman and an entrepreneur at heart. When he was just 18 years old, he built his first house. He built it with leftover building materials that construction companies and lumberyards were discarding.

When he was attending Michigan State University, he started working for a precaster during the summer. He was hard-working and motivated but his foreman gave him a hard time and called him a “College Boy”. He would never let my Dad advance or get overtime. When my Dad graduated from college, he became his former foreman’s boss. After a few years he was running two precast plants with hundreds of employees.

As a young man he saw how high employee turnover hurt a company. He didn’t like the fact that companies hired people when times were good and laid them off when business got slow. He knew that he could do better than that. He wanted to create a company with a strong reputation that could attract the best workers, keep the best customers and provide job security consistently. He was dedicated to helping his employees reach their potential.

My Dad always said that good business is simple. Just treat others the way you want to be treated. This includes everyone you come into contact with – employees, customers, vendors and neighbors. Just treat people well. He also said, 'When you make a commitment, stick by it. Always deliver what you promise'. He was adamant about that. He taught us to know the needs of the customer and to be willing to do whatever it takes to serve their needs. He thought it was important to be flexible and willing to adapt.

My Dad built the company the same way he built his first house: by finding things that other people had discarded and making something out of them. He had a very conservative approach to growing his business and disliked waste of any kind – wasted resources, wasted time, wasted potential.

My Dad was dedicated to his employees and, because of that; his employees were dedicated to him. When I was a kid, I remember hearing that he had bought his salesperson a new car to use on sales calls. At the same time my Dad was driving around in an old rusted Pinto wagon with glued on wood panels.

Every Christmas Eve my Dad would hand deliver a turkey to every employee’s home. He would also organize a company Christmas party in the lunchroom for the whole team. At those annual parties, he would give every employee a year-end bonus. One year, cash was tight. There wasn’t enough money for a party or year-end bonuses. But in his mind it wasn’t the employees’ fault so instead of disappointing them, he re-mortgaged our home so that he would have the cash to throw a party and give year-end bonuses. No one ever knew.

My Dad always said that your reputation is your most valuable asset. He told us to guard it carefully because once you lose it; you can never get it back.