Chances are, you could think up a few dozen reasons to celebrate as a business or a team. Revenue milestones, the completion of a large project, or the closing of a big deal are all really fantastic reasons to throw a party and, you might agree, a party is a really fantastic way to boost company morale.
TweetAt ABG Capital, there is a short list of what we take very seriously amidst our ping pong, arcade machine, and scotch cart breaks. Near the top of that list is the Health and Wellness of our team. We are always looking for new ways to increase our staff members’ access to healthy choices around the office. We play quarterly sporting events, serve healthy lunches, publish a Weekly Wellness E-blast and encourage the whole office to take a daily break at 2:00 p.m. to get outside and get some fresh air. Continue reading
TweetWelcome to another Motivational Monday! As we mentioned last week, this is our final feature in the series. We hope you’ve enjoyed these posts that showcased the journeys of Tim, Justin, Erica, Jeff, and Jerry, and have taken away some great tips and ideas to share at your office or in your own life!
Today, we’re introducing you to our Communications Specialist Cherie Steffen. Yes, it’s me! I’ve been with ABG Capital for seven months now and couldn’t be happier to have found such an amazing company and group of people who value health and wellness. They don’t just talk about it; they are about it. Like you, some of them don’t know my story, so let’s get into the whys and hows of my health and wellness transformation.
Welcome to another Motivational Monday! We truly hope you’ve been enjoying these wellness transformation stories we featured this month–we only have a couple left!
Many of us know it can be difficult to make healthy food choices or lace up those sneakers and get out the door. Our hope in featuring our fellow employees who have gone on successful journeys is to show you that it CAN be done–bite by bite and step by step, making little changes and committing to living a healthy life.
But a “healthy” life is not always centered on weight loss. Sure, our last couple of transformation stories like that of Tim, Justin, Erica, and Jeff, focused on dropping body weight. But the story of our Director of Development Jerry Eddy, is a little bit different. Jerry’s journey is that of traveling down the road of wellness. Keep reading as we introduce you to the health and wellness transformation of Jerry Eddy.
Hello everyone! We’re back with another Motivational Monday inspirational post for you. Why and what kind of inspiration, you ask? Well, in case you missed the previous three posts featuring Tim, Justin, & Erica, we’ve been spotlighting a few team members here at ABG Capital and our portfolio companies, such as VoIP Innovations, who have gone on amazing health, wellness, and fitness journeys. After all, we are a group of people who tend to play hard and strive for an active lifestyle, so this ties right into our culture!
This week, we are featuring the heartbeat of our company, Chief Executive Officer Jeff Tapolci! Nowadays, arriving at the office fresh from an early morning gym session, to sitting down at the lunch table where Jeff eats portioned, nutritional and colorful meals, we see him as a focused, dedicated man embracing his healthy lifestyle. But it wasn’t always this way…Follow along as we share the health and wellness transformation of Jeff Tapolci!
Happy Motivational Monday! If you follow us on any of our social media pages, you’ll know that we are are a company that promotes the entrepreneurial spirit, whether that’s from a new employee in his or her first month, a manager, or all the way up to the CEO. But we don’t only strive for that inside the office; it’s something we like for you to carry into your personal lives. If you think about it, what’s more entrepreneurial than going out on your own on a personal wellness journey? It’s scary, it can be frustrating, you may doubt yourself a thousand times, and it carries great risk. But if those risks, pay off…watch out!
They definitely paid off for Tim and Justin, VoIP Innovations’ employees we featured the past two weeks. This week is no different. Let us introduce you to ABG Capital Controller, Erica Penrod. Erica took the risk and committed to living a healthier lifestyle. Fellow employees watched her transform before their eyes in just under a year. So how did she do it? Check out her health and wellness transformation!
Hello everyone and Happy Motivational Monday! Our company is one that strives for a good balance of work and play and truly supports being active inside and outside of work. As we mentioned last week, we’ve had quite a few staff members decide for their own personal reasons to take this all a step further and really commit to being fit. They’ve gone on very successful health and wellness body transformation journeys and it started to have the rest of us asking, “How did you do it?”
So last Monday on our blog, we decided to kick off something new. We featured our very first body transformation story, that of VoIP Innovations Lead Engineer Tim Linn, and we’re continuing this week with another.
Let’s check out our second health and wellness transformation story and introduce you to GlobalPOPs and VoIP Innovations Network Operations Technician, Justin Sparks!
Around here, we believe that healthy employees equal happy employees. Striving for a good balance of work hard and play hard, we have many active company-wide sporting events throughout the year and have a Wellness Committee that is tasked with helping our employees organize health and wellness challenges to keep us on point. We even encourage daily active moments throughout the day whether that be playing ping pong, shuffle board, doing pull-ups or taking a stroll around the block during the Tend to You at 10 and 2 breaks.
But some of our lovely team members have gone above and beyond our company culture of being healthy, fit, and active. On their own, with sweat, determination and dogged will power, they’ve managed to go down that sometimes bumpy road of a body transformation by putting in the work, succeeding, and living to tell the tale!
Seeing as though we’ve had so many members of our staff who have been successful losing weight, maintaining it, and learning to live a healthy lifestyle, it was time to have them share the wealth. Because as any of us who have tried to lose weight before (and not succeeded) want to know, HOW DID YOU DO IT? Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll share the stories of a few of these fabulous people so you can be inspired, learn great tips, and maybe one day pay it forward with your own story of inspiration!
Our first health and wellness transformation story is that of Tim Linn, Lead Engineer for VoIP Innovations, one of our portfolio companies.
From a young age, we’re taught that we should avoid risky behavior. The outcome could be less than stellar, or worse than that, adversely affect us for the rest of our lives. One bad risk taken and that’s the end. But are all risks bad? Is there a way to know when the risks we take could lead us to a better situation than our present one in our personal and business lives? After listening to Rebecca Harris, the Director of the Center for Women Entrepreneurship at Chatham University, speak on the topic of risky business, when to take risks and when to pass, we are closer to figuring it out.
Last Thursday afternoon, our Human Resources Manager, Sharon A. Kolesar, and I, our Communications Specialist, Cherie Steffen, attended the Association for Corporate Growth Women’s New Year’s Party Luncheon & Bad Gift Swap at the Fairmont Hotel in Downtown Pittsburgh. Braving the weather was the first risk taking of the afternoon, as an ice storm was upon us. We arrived safely though, making our way through the gorgeous hotel to an event room full of dedicated businesswomen from many different professional backgrounds.
The only part of the afternoon that the Association for Corporate Growth planned for us that did not involve any risk taking whatsoever was eating the delicious lunch. From the tortilla soup appetizer to the healthy and colorful buffet, to the almost-too-pretty-to-eat desserts, the Fairmont Hotel prepared an amazing arrangement of food to keep us happily full as we began to listen to our emcee and guest speaker, Ms. Harris.
Possessing quite an exciting and humorous way of communicating with her audience, Ms. Harris began by telling us we have to be more comfortable with taking risks. That was something we needed to hear right away. Somehow coming from a woman who has taken many professional risks and still lived to tell the tales, it was genuine and not just an easy command. She went on to give us the “why” behind it.
Her speech centered around four themes:
♦ How to recognize good risk-taking opportunities (know your field; know the trends)
♦ Knowing when to get in; when to get out
♦ How to calculate your own risk-taking comfort level
♦ How to balance the right amount of risk to maximize your business potential
Ms. Harris also threw in these to-the-point, messages that hit home as well:
♦ Red flag risk raisers! These risks are outside your core competency area and you worry about the details later. Bad idea!
♦ Admitting what you don’t know is really important.
♦ We identify ourselves with our successes and our failures.
♦ Take the risks. Your results may be very different from what you expected.
By time she was finished speaking I feel like I had nodded so much I could easily be mistaken for a bobble head; she was on point with everything. You know, the types of things you either know in the back of your head but you somehow choose to ignore either due to fear or stubbornness? Those things. Also, there were so many one-liners that left me saying, “She nailed it!” that I had enough witty Facebook statuses and Tweets to last a week.
After Ms. Harris finished speaking, we continued with the other risk taking themed portion of the afternoon: selecting our gifts from the Bad Gift Swap. Think of it as one of those White Elephant Gift Exchanges.
With this, we also learned not to judge anything by its pretty wrapping–another great motto for business. There were some doozies in there for sure!
The worst gift of all was decided by vote–a faux fur table runner. The gift we brought to throw into the mix, a hideous 1970s-esque yarn picture of a city scape, ended up coming in second place! Not too shabby. And surely if someone recycles that gift and brings it back next year, not too much risk would be involved; she should win hands down. It was awful.
We’ll leave you with our two favorite quotes of the afternoon from Ms. Harris: “Don’t overanalyze. Just cut that out right now.” and “Really, let’s just go for it.” Two amazingly simple and powerful pieces of advice that after her already moving speech, left us ready to get out there and capitalize on our personal and business potential.
TweetAs a company, we at ABG always strive to give back. One way we serve our community is through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, as it’s our primary philanthropic organization. It’s always great to get those warm and fuzzy feelings, especially this frigid time of year, but knowing that we did something for others by giving is a feeling like none other. Specifically knowing that we made children happy and that ABG Capital granted the wishes of four Make-A-Wish kids is beyond words. But this being a blog post and all, words we must have!
Let’s back up. Do you really know what Make-A-Wish is? Most people have heard of Make-A-Wish, but in case you’re not familiar with exactly what the organization is or does, we’ll tell you. The Make-A-Wish Foundation of Greater Pennsylvania and West Virginia is a non-profit organization that grants wishes to children, aged 2 1/2 to 18, who have life-threatening medical conditions. Currently, this local chapter is one of the most active in the country, having granted more than 13,600 wishes. But at any given time, between 550 and 650 wishes are waiting to be fulfilled. That’s a lot of special children who need your help!
We’re thrilled to announce that through various fundraising activities, the generous donations of our employees, and ABG Capital matching what we raised, we were able to collect $15,600! One hundred percent of this donation was enough to grant the wishes of four Allegheny County children: Alyssa, Japhet, Matthew, and Zachary. Follow along to read a little bit more about each child and his or her granted wish!
ALYSSA
Sweet 6-year-old Alyssa loves to don her cowgirl hat and dance to country music. That’s a Western PA girl after our own heart! She also enjoys Candyland, Despicable Me, snacking on strawberries and playing softball. In general, any activity that will take her outside puts a smile on her face. With that notion in mind, it’s easy to see why Alyssa’s wish was to have her own playground in her back yard. Made of bright blues, greens, purples and reds, her dream playground included slides, swings, monkey bars and more—everything she could want. Alyssa loves her playground and wants to play on it no matter the weather; even in the snow!
JAPHET
Sporty Japhet, the 12-year-old, football lover, can’t get enough of the New York Jets or his favorite player Santonio Holmes. But instead of any sort of dreams of going to a JETS game or the even the Super Bowl, Japhet wanted to do what the teams do when they win the big game—go to Disney World!! The warm weather and palm trees were a beautiful sight to rest his eyes upon and a definite change of pace from Western PA! While at Disney, Japhet and his family stayed at the Give Kids the World Village, a huge resort for children like him. Japhet also experienced the Castle of Miracles, the Royal Spa, the Gingerbread House Restaurant, and especially his favorite ride, the Pirates of the Caribbean!
MATTHEW
Techie 10-year-old Matthew loves video games with Minecraft being his favorite of all. When not playing with his dog Pumpkin or watching the Steelers or Penguins, he will mostly be found in front of a computer. Obviously, this led Matthew to wish for an electronics shopping spree! A black limousine showed up at his house on shopping spree morning to pick him and his family up. This was Matthew’s first time riding in a limo so that excitement kicked off the morning. Running through store shouting, “This is the best day ever!” as he was selecting his computer, tablets and games, this experience made him forget all about his illness for a little while!
ZACHARY
Adventurous Zachary enjoys taking trips to the aquarium and has a special love for fish, his favorite animal! So it was only natural that his love of all things aquatic in nature led him to wishing for a trip to Atlantis in Nassau, Bahamas to snorkel The Ruins! Zachary and his family spent some quality time on the giant water slides, looking at the shark tanks and the dolphins, and climbing rock walls. Snorkeling the Ruins was the climax of the trip—he ventured down to the sunken ruins and the artifacts of Atlantis and snorkeled alongside sharks, stingrays and tropical fish making memories to last a lifetime.
Now you know all about our Make-A-Wish kids and are probably feeling warm and fuzzy, too! Again, we’re happy to have been a part of making their wishes come true. We thank the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Greater Pennsylvania and West Virginia for helping to make it all possible and definitely encourage others to pay it forward and contribute. There are still so many sweet children out there waiting for a wish come true!
