Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on December 13, 2013 by Natalie DeCario

Happy Friday everyone! We know that today is Friday the 13^th, but we’ve had a great week so we’re not worried about the “bad luck” that usually surrounds this day. As you remember from our post last week, we ranked No. 6 on the 2013 Best Places to Work in PA list! This was such a huge accomplishment and we’re proud to share the news again! We were in the small to medium employers who have 25 to 249 employees. Last year we ranked No. 14 and it’s such an impressive increase for our entire organization! Here’s a message that our Management Team sent out to all the employees:

“Thank you for your individual time, passion, energy, and dedication in assisting with this effort! We are very proud and honored to have a culture of success and this award is a direct reflection of your hard work, commitment and overall engagement with in our company.”

Again, congratulations to everyone at ABG Capital who helped to create the fantastic culture that we’ve come to love!

We have another great announcement to make today that involves a new hire! Kimberly (Kimmie) Rivetti will be the newest member of our ABG Capital family and will be joining our team as a Billing Representative. Kimmie is joining us from Sincerely Yogurt where she handled all accounting activity in her role as Office Manager for the organization. Her prior experience stems from Four Points Sheraton Pittsburgh Airport where she managed the overall billing functions on all accounts. Kimmie earned her Associates in Specialized Business Degree in Hospitality Management Administration from Boyd School, a division of PTI, in October of 2001. We’re looking forward to welcoming her to the office on Monday, December 16!

We have just a few more Holiday themed announcements to make and that’s it. We’re half way into December and that means that time is almost up for you to buy raffle tickets to our Giant Holiday Basket Giveaway! Remember that tickets are $1 and all of the proceeds will go to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. We’ll pull the winning name on Friday, December 20. If you’re interested in buying tickets, please send an email to natalied@abgcapital.com. If you are not local and would still like to support the Make-A-Wish Foundation, visit their website and you can easily donate from there.

The night is finally for our Annual ABG Capital Holiday Party! This party has been going on for years now and it’s always a great time. Everyone gets to hang out and enjoy the music, award announcements and overall fantastic atmosphere of the night.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been running a contest to name some signature cocktails for the night. There were tons of great submissions, but here are the winners:

Barry’s “Flaming Stache” in 1st Place
Erica’s “Erica’s Evil Elf” in 2nd Place
3rd Place was a tie between the following people who will be entered into a drawing to receive the last prize!
- Jed’s “adbase1234”
- Paul’s “The GlobalPOP”
- Jessica’s “3Amigarita”

Last but not least, here are a few pictures of the Christmas decorations we put up in the office.

Sara decorating the tree!

ABG Capital Christmas Decorations

The VoIP Innovations VI Guy was even helping out!

Sara and Sharon working on the tree!

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Natalie DeCario

It looks like October is starting to come to a close and we’re finishing out the month with a bang here at ABG Capital! All week our Executive Team has been in Las Vegas at the Gazelles, Inc. Growth Summit working on their leadership and strategic planning skills. They’ve attended these summits twice a year for the past eight years, and they always bring new information that will help our people and our organization prosper. If you’re interested in how the first summit this year went, check out this blog post! We’ve also posted some great pictures of the speakers so make sure you visit (and “Like”) our Facebook page.

While our Executive Team was off learning tools and techniques to bring back to the organization, the rest of the ABG Capital employees were learning some new skills of their own. Maria Gross Gray, our Health and Safety Specialist from Cintas, spent the day teaching our staff about CPR, First Aid and Safety. If you want to see some more pictures, CLICK HERE!

I have make a quick announcement about the FANTASTIC lunch that our October Lunch Committee put together. They went with a soup and salad bar and it’s safe to say that it was a hit around the office. Especially since we were seeing snow this morning!

Now that we filled you in on what went on all week at ABG Capital, let’s share some exciting things that we have going on next week. To start, we’ll be welcoming Brian Barnabei as our Legal Counsel. Although it is Brian’s first day, he isn’t a new employee. Brian used to work for us from 2007 to 2011 and now we’re excited to have him back in the office! We thought we’d give him a warm welcome by filling his office with a few decorations that remind him of his favorite sports team.

Brian is actually a huge WVU fan…

Also next week we will be having our annual Halloween Party and Pot Luck lunch. Everyone is encouraged to wear their best costume and compete in our costume contest. Of course we’ll be taking pictures all day so make sure to keep up with us by following our social media sites.

As most of you know, over the past few months we’ve been working on an office expansion project. ABG Capital is growing and our office is growing with us. Next Friday we’ll be holding an Open House to show our brand new office space to our family, friends, clients, and associates. If you’re interested in finding out more about our upcoming events, please contact to our Office Administrator, Sara Warhold.

That wraps up this week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital, so make sure to follow us on all of our social media sites as well as subscribe to our blog so you never miss a post.

Have a great weekend!

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Natalie DeCario

Happy Friday from ABG Capital! Before we get into any company updates, we just have one thing to say… LET’S GO BUCS! If you haven’t heard, the Pittsburgh Pirates made the playoffs for the first time in 21 years. Needless to say, it’s an exciting time for Pittsburgher’s. There was even a guy who was so excited after the Buccos won the wild card game, that the only way he could express that excitement, was to jump off the Clemente Bridge! The second playoff game in St. Louis starts at 1:07 today and you’ll probably be able to catch some employees watching the game in our new conference room!

Now that we got that out of the way, we can start talking about some ABG Capital news. Since it’s the beginning of Buctober… oops… we mean October (had to sneak another Pirates reference there :)), we want to give a shout out to all the October birthdays and anniversaries. For birthdays we have Tim Linn on October 6th and Jacob Crisman on October 24th. For anniversaries we have Sebastian Kiely celebrating 7 years on October 19th and Randy Stegner celebrating 4 years on October 26th. We want to wish these employees a happy birthday and happy anniversary!

Jason Tapolci, Jeff Tapolci, Cameron Nutter

Speaking of anniversaries, our newest employee Cameron Nutter just got to spend his one month anniversary at the Rivers for lunch with Jeff and Jason Tapolci. Cameron is working with VoIP Innovations as a Technical Support Representative. Congrats on hitting your one month mark Cameron!

In other news, the build-out project is starting to come to an end. We’re starting to look like a real office again! We mentioned the office decoration committee last week, and we’re glad to announce that things are in the works to start making their way onto our walls. Very soon we’ll have an office that represents the ABG Capital culture and we couldn’t be more excited. Here are a few pictures of the newest places in our office:

Our brand new vending machines.

The TV and lounge area in our new conference room. This is where you’ll see us watching the Pirate game today!

Our new storage closet.

The future copy center.

One of the new offices that’s almost ready for its’ owner to move in.

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Natalie DeCario

For today’s just another Friday at ABG Capita blog post, we’d like to talk about the build-out project we’re doing right now. As you might remember, we started this project in early March and now that it’s September, we’ve seen a great deal of progress.

The new kitchen, multi-purpose room, Network Operations Center (NOC) and call center are all about 99% of the way done. Only a few small maintenance tasks are left. We’ve already moved everyone into their new climate controlled spaces and it’s seems to be going great! We’ve even had a chance to use the new multi-purpose room for a Social Media Boot Camp.

The old kitchen.

The construction is still going strong as we still have some areas of existing space that need to be redone. The old kitchen and copier space is being transformed into new storage and copier space, along with two new offices. On top of that, there’s still touching up that needs to be done on the walls to cover up holes and chipped paint.

We’re estimating that the entire build-out project will be done by the end of the month. “This expansion sets the foundation for the future growth of our companies,” said ABG Capital CEO, Jeff Tapolci. “The new space allows us to fit upwards of 100 employees comfortably in our office.”

That’s all the news we have for you today, thanks for reading and try not to make any Friday the 13th bad luck for yourself by breaking a mirror!

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on September 6, 2013 by Natalie DeCario

Welcome back to the ABG Capital blog where you’ll find all of the important information from around our office! Things are starting to pick up again, now that summer is winding down and school is starting back up. It’s about that time when the push is on to get all of the projects completed before the end of the year.

The ABG Capital gang volunteering at the Food Bank last year!

It’s also that time of the year when all of our events are in full bloom! We are planning to have an open house to show off our brand new office, we’ll be heading to the Greater Pittsburgh Area Food Bank Repack Center in Duquesne to do some volunteer work and lastly we’ve begun planning the ABG Capital Holiday Party! Who wouldn’t be excited for all of these great events!

We’re also promoting some employee suggested events such as the Covered Bridge Festival, Radical Days and a Sporting Clay Shoot Fundraiser benefiting the Michael J. Novosel Foundation.

We mentioned that we’re planning an open house to show off our new office. That means we have to have something to show off, right? We’ll we’ve put together an Office Decorating Committee who will be in charge of making our office look awesome. We want to highlight our employees, our mission, our C.O.R.E. Values and basically anything that represents us and the ABG Way. There have been tons of HUGE ideas floating around, so we know the new office is going to look fantastic!

The last bit of news we have to mention is the newest member of the ABG Capital team. His name is Cameron Nutter and he will be working with VoIP Innovations. Welcome aboard Cameron!

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Natalie DeCario

Happy Friday! Has summer gone way too fast for you? It has for us! Anyway, we have just a few things to share before you can head out of the office and enjoy your weekend.

We first want to apologize for not posting this blog series last week. We were having some technical difficulties and were unable to get into the blog. We’re happy to say that we have since then solved the issue and are back up and running!

Moving right along, our office build-out project is moving right along and things look like they’re really starting to come together. Take a look at these pictures and check out some of the new space that’s starting to fill up with employees!

New office space!

Our new Call Center!

As you know, once a quarter we like to treat our employees to a friendly sporting event. The first quarter was bowling, the second quarter was kickball and the third quarter is softball. Around 1pm today the annual ABG Capital softball game will kick-off. The two teams will battle for victory while having fun away from the office. While some are out at the game, our dedicated support staff will still be in the office ready to support our customers. We’ll be taking pictures, so check out our social media sites on Monday!

That’s all we have for you this week! Thanks for reading and have a great weekend 🙂

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Natalie DeCario

Welcome back to the Just another Friday at ABG Capital blog post! Today I have some great things to share with you. Since it’s almost the end of July, it’s time to mention our August birthdays and anniversaries. Our August birthdays include Geno Zucarro on August 5, Matt Bartko on August 10, Tyler Weimerskirch on August 12, Kathy Scheidlemeier on August 20, Ian Hambelton on August 26 and Sharon Kolesar also on August 26. Happy Birthday to all of you, we hope you have some great celebrations!

Next we have to announce a few August anniversaries. Barry Yancosek has been with us for three years as of August 2 and Denise Breide has been with us for two years as of August 23. Congratulations on making it to these fantastic milestones in your ABG Capital careers!

It is the end of the month and this is usually when we announce the topics we’ve discussed in our Month End Meeting, but that meeting has been postponed. We’ve moved the meeting to next Friday, August 2. That means that next week’s Just another Friday post will have all of the great July information.

In other ABG Capital news, our build-out is happen so quickly; old walls are coming down just as fast a new ones are going up! While those new walls are going up, they’re prepping the floors for carpet and then the furniture will be arriving August 5. The office is noisy and full of dust but it’s all part of making the final product happen that we can’t wait to see.

That’s all we have for you today folks. Have a great weekend!

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Natalie DeCario

How was your week? We’re excited to be ending another great one here at ABG Capital! The biggest thing that we had going on this week was our Month End Meeting. All the employees gathered around and got to hear the latest ABG Capital news.

We recognized our Employee of the Month, Terri Sams, who works for Inspira. She was nominated by Nate Rupp and Ryan Rice for her exceptional work. We recognized two VoIP Innovations employees, Justin Cornish and Randy Stegner, as honorable mentions for all the hard work they’ve been putting in. We also have to mention Eric Butler and Dustin Campbell, from VoIP Innovations, because they received some pretty awesome feedback from a customer. Caricatures of them are now hanging on our ‘Atta Boy board.

Eric (left) and Dustin (right)

At this meeting, Jeff Tapolci, CEO of ABG Capital, announced that profit sharing has officially been approved by the Board of Directors! This is great news for all of the ABG Capital employees because they’ll be able to get some extra cash in their pockets at the end of the year. Profit sharing was something that’s been on everyone’s minds for a long time now and we’re excited to see that it’s actually happening!

Now that we got all that good news out of the way, it’s time to get down to business! We’ve recently entered the Social Madness competition organized by The Business Journals. It’s a competition that measures the amount of social engagement you have with your fans and followers, not the growth of your network. The local competition kicks off this Monday, June 3, and the winners will be announced on July 9. From that point, the winners from each size category will move on to the national competition, which starts on July 16, and then the entire competition ends on August 20.

This is a competition that involves everyone and we need YOUR help to make sure we move on to the national round and win for our category. As a winner, we would receive a national editorial write up and have $10,000 donated to a charity of our choice. This competition is not about seeing how many likes we can get in the time frame; it’s about your engagement with our sites. That means liking, commenting and sharing the things we post. Show us some love people! The competition will focus on our Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ pages. Even though the competition only covers these four sites, we’re also on Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram and Vine (search for ABG Capital).

I planned on the Social Madness explanation being the last part of this ‘Just another Friday’ post, but I couldn’t resist sharing this picture with you. Our air conditioning unit is right above Ian Hambleton’s desk. He comes in later in the day and it wasn’t too long after he got here that he realized there was a problem… Water was leaking right onto his desk! He grabbed some bowls and is STILL waiting for the dripping to stop so he can get to work. Good luck Ian!

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Just another Friday at ABG

Just another Friday at ABG

Just another Friday at ABG

Just another Friday at ABG

Just another Friday at ABG

Just another Friday at ABG

Just another Friday at ABG