Category Archives: small business

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on by
Reply

Happy Friday to everyone! 2014 is looking like it’s going to be a great year for ABG Capital and its portfolio companies. Business is going great and we’re planning some awesome things for our employees to take part in this year. As you read in our blog post last week, we were planning on volunteering at the Great Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. Unfortunately though, it looks like we maybe have to cancel that volunteering opportunities due to scheduling conflicts with the Food Bank. Our Giving Back Committee will be meeting soon to discuss the initiatives that ABG Capital can take part in in 2014. Some of the things that will definitely be on our list again are the employee payroll deductions that go towards our Make-A-Wish contributions, Headstone cleaning at the National Cemeteries of the Alleghenies and other raffles and fundraisers throughout the year. We’ll be keeping everyone informed of any new activities that we’ll be getting involved in this year!

This week the ABG Capital Office Decoration Committee met to discuss the final touches for phase one as well as get phase two in the works. If you remember from November, we had an Open House to show off our brand new office since the build out was completed. We were able to get a few things on the walls before the Open House, but now we’re kicking it into overdrive and planning on some great things including employee awards, company awards, collages, and much more! Here are a few pictures of the things we currently have displayed in our office…

IMG_2296small

“The 12 Chimes of Life,” from a book called Live a Thousand Years by Giovanni Livera

 

IMG_2287small

A Timeline of our Success: Looking to the Future, Remembering our Past

Stay tuned for more pictures as the art continues to fill our office!

The last thing that I want to mention that you’re going to start seeing more great blog posts coming from us. The first one we have in store for next week talks about how to develop a positive corporate culture. This is something that we put a great deal of focus on and we want to make sure we have employee appreciation day 24/7, 365 days a year!

Have a great weekend!

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on by
Reply

With a new year, comes new activities for us here at ABG Capital! Once a quarter we make it a priority to take a half day on a Friday and spend it out doing something as a company, instead of working (although our support staff will ALWAYS stick around to assist our customers). We also make it a priority to go out and volunteer our time to help better our community.

Our very first event of 2014 will be volunteering at the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank on January 24. This will be the second year that we’ve spend time to help out the Food Bank and we’re happy that we can come together as a company and help them serve the community. Here are a few pictures from last year:

513small

494small

508small

The second event of the year that we have planned will be in February when we take a half day and go bowling! Here are a few pictures from when we went bowling last year:

IMG_0242small

 

IMG_0210small

 

IMG_0217small

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on by
Reply

ABG Capital is wishing everyone a Happy New Year! Take a look at this video that was created by Google+. It shows you a snapshot of what we were up to in 2013.

It may be January 3rd but it’s not too late to make a New Year’s Resolution that will be long lasting and help you advance your career in 2014. Forbes pulled together a list of the 11 most popular resolutions that are geared towards career advancement. At ABG Capital, we want to see everyone succeed. Take a look at the list below and see what resolutions YOU can take control of in 2014..

  1. ABG Capital 2014 ResolutionsGet a Raise or Promotion
  2. Reduce Stress
  3. Be More Organized
  4. Quit Your Job/Get a New Job
  5. Improve Your Work-Life Balance
  6. Network More Effectively
  7. Improve Your Relationship with the Boss/Co-Workers
  8. Develop Your Communications Skills
  9. Get a Degree
  10. Be Better with E-Mail and Voicemail
  11. Have a Better Attitude.

What are you going to do to make 2014 your best year yet? Let us know by commenting below!

Just another Friday at ABG Capital

Posted on by
Reply

Happy Holidays from ABG Capital

We hope everyone enjoyed their holiday festivities and spending some quality time with friends and family. ABG Capital employees have been in and out of the office all week long spending time with their families. Instead of posting about things going on here at ABG Capital, we want to share some tips with everyone.

As the year dwindles down to it’s final days, the New Year’s Resolutions start to fill everyone’s minds. Some might want to go to the gym more, others might want to eat less chocolate while others might even want to change their whole attitudes.

These resolutions are created with such good intentions of following through and really making a lifestyle change. It is estimated that almost 40% of Americans make New Year’s Resolutions, but only 8% actually achieve their goals (via Forbes). Have you ever let your resolution fall by the wayside? Well make it your 2014 goal that you will stick to a resolution because we want to offer you some tips!

USA Today has posted an article with some helpful hits on making sure your goals stay achievable. Below is their list of ‘6 ways to make your New Year’s resolutions stick.’

  1. Make changes to your behavior
  2. Define SMART goals
  3. Track your progress
  4. Reward Small Achievements
  5. Make it public
  6. You are human

If you want more details on these tips, you can view the entire article here. Thanks for reading and have a great New Year’s celebration!

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on by
Reply

Welcome back to our weekly Just another Friday at ABG Capital blog post! We have a few very exciting things to share with all of you today since we’ve had a pretty fantastic week. The first piece of news that needs to be shared is the donation we made to the Make-A-Wish Foundation this week. Every year we do various volunteering and fundraising events. All of the money we raise is matched by ABG Capital and then Donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation so we can grant a child’s wish. This year though, was a little different. We ramped up our fundraising efforts and with the generous matching contribution from ABG Capital, we were able to grant two wishes this year! Giving back is such a huge part of our mission and values and we’re just ecstatic that we’ll be helping out two fantastic children who deserve to have their wishes granted. Here are a few pictures from the donation event:

ABG Capital at Make-A-Wish ABG Capital at Make-A-Wish  ABG Capital at Make-A-Wish

We also want to mention that Kimmie Rivetti, the new employee we mentioned last week, is finishing up her very first week with us. Kimmie is working as our newest Billing Representative and we’re happy to have her as part of our team!

IMG_3262small

Kimmie in her ugly sweater for our ugly sweater party!

Since it’s right around the holidays, we decided to have a Pot Luck Lunch today along with an Ugly Sweater Contest! We also announced the winner of the Holiday Basket of Cheer today, which was Nick Jenkner. He wasn’t in the office today, but we couldn’t wait and had to call him to share the good news!

Last week we had our Annual Holiday Party and it’s safe to say that everyone had a fantastic time! There was great food, music, dancing and even some holiday trivia games! We announced our Annual Sports Awards and the recipient of our Gerard F. Tapolci Award. Randy Stegner has been with us since 2009 and since then he’s shown tremendous passion and dedication for the organization. Choosing him as the recipient of the Gerard F. Tapolci was a clear choice. Congratulations Randy and keep up the fantastic work! As for the Sports Awards recipients, each of these individuals let their talents loose and they shined throughout the games. Below is the list of awards and winners:

Bowling

·         King Pin – Nick Jenkner

·         Gutterball Guru – Sally Stewart

·         The Striker Award – Jason Marshall

Kickball

·         Golden Foot Award – Ari Sigalov

·         Take Your Ball and Go Home Award – Ron Eggert

·         Keeping the Peace Award – Lowell Smith

Softball

·         MVP – Natalie DeCario

·         The Slash Award (Cheerleaders/Scorekeeper/Photographer/Umpire) – Erica Penrod and Sara Warhold

·         Best Fence Jumper – Dave Smith

Football

·         MVP – Cameron Nutter

·         Best QB – Jeff Linkowski

·         Biggest Heart Award – Tyler Weimerskirch

·         Brian Barnabei Hands of Stone Award – Brian Barnabei, since no one else could compete with his hands of stone.

Here are some other pictures from our Holiday Party:

IMG_3212small IMG_3213small IMG_3215small IMG_3222small IMG_3229small

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on by
Reply

Welcome back to the Just another Friday at ABG Capital weekly blog post! We hope that you were able to have a fantastic Thanksgiving with your loved ones. We started this week by having one of our Portfolio Companies, InspiraFS, announce their 2014 Annual Plan. Inspira has seen tremendous growth this year and we’re excited to see what they have in store!

The rest of the week was spent getting things ready for the Employee Appreciation Party that we held today. We love our ABG Capital employees and to show them that they do make a difference in our organization, we wanted to treat them to something more than their typical Free Lunch Friday (but we still provided a great lunch from Sunny Bridge Natural Foods). Once that delicious lunch was over, we brought in desert… We had a chocolate fondue fountain and trays stocked with strawberries, bananas, Oreos, pretzels and more! There was a ready to go ice cream sundae bar will all sorts of great toppings, including the fondue. We continued the celebrations by announcing the winners of our Chinese auction and then concluded with our traditional Scotch Friday. Overall, it was a great day, focused on showing our employees that we truly do appreciate everything they do.IMG_3164small

IMG_3173small

IMG_3163small

As you know, the holiday season is upon us and with that comes changes in office hours. ABG Capital will run on a normal schedule for the rest of the month, but the office will be closed on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. We’ll also be having our annual ABG Capital Holiday Party next Friday, and we all can’t wait for that!

The last note that we’ll make about the holiday season is about the Holiday Raffle Basket that we’re selling tickets for. If you want to know more information on how you can get a ticket, where the proceeds go, or what’s in the basket, visit this blog post. Just remember that we’ll be drawing the winning ticket on December 20.

And now… Drum roll please… We are thrilled to announce that ABG Capital has ranked No. 6 in the 2013 Best Places to Work in PA list! Last year we ranked No. 14 and from feedback we took away from the surveys we were dedicated to making our organization better. We’re proud to say that we achieved that goal!

On that excited note, have a great weekend everyone.

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on by
Reply

We’re back again with another weekly ‘Just another Friday at ABG Capital’ blog post! We had a fantastic week filled with a ton of excitement. We first want to say that we had an amazing time playing football in our Annual Turkey Bowl last Friday. The memories were captured and you can relive them over and over and over again by checking out the pictures and videos that are posted on our Facebook Page and YouTube Channel.

Holiday Basket FlyersmallBefore we get to into the week’s events, we want to announce the holiday raffle that we’re doing to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. For this particular fundraising event, we’ll be raffling off a basket filled with all kinds of goodies. Tickets are $1 each and if you are local and would like to purchase one, please send an email to Natalie DeCario at natalied@abgcapital.com. If you are not local and would still like to support the Make-A-Wish Foundation, visit their website to make an online donation.

basket_of_cheersmall

 

 

Today was a busy and exciting day for us at ABG Capital. We had our lunch Committee, Tim Linn, Jaime Doyle, Sharon Kolesar and Natalie DeCario, organized a great Thanksgiving themed Chinese food lunch. They had decorations and all kinds of great food!

After lunch was served, everyone stuck around so we could have a company meeting to make some announcements and recognize a few employees. For our employee recognition announcements, our ABG Capital Employee of the Month was Tom Cavey and Sara Warhold was our Honorable Mention. Another announcement is for Terri Sams who was presented with her 5 Years of Service Award. Congratulations to all of you!

IMG_3115small

Terri Sams and Jeff Tapolci

IMG_3114small

Tom Cavey and Sharon Kolesar

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just to make some closing announcements, ABG Capital is hiring! We’re looking for someone to join our Billing team and our Portfolio Companies are always looking for great people to add to their fantastic team of Customer Service Reps and Technical Support Specialists. If you are interested in any of the positions, please send an email to marketing@abgcapital.com. VoIP Innovations is specifically looking for a new Account Manager to join their growing Sales Team. If you are interested in this position, check out the detailed Job Description and apply online.

IMG_0941Last but definitely not least, we want to let you know that one of our employees will be featured on the TLC show, Four Weddings. Jed Blazanin got married in August and the episode featuring his wedding will air next Friday, November 29th at 10pm EST. Set a reminder, set your DVR, do you whatever it takes to not miss it!

That wraps up this week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital, have a great weekend everyone.

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on by
Reply

Welcome back to your regular Just another Friday at ABG Capital Blog post where you get to hear all about the great things going on around the office. This week we got a visit from students who attend Canon McMillan High School. These students belong to the Entrepreneurial Program at the school and are made up of Freshmen all the way to Seniors. They got to learn about ABG Capital and its Portfolio Companies and the road that led us to success. There has been struggle and tragedy, but that is what made us and our Portfolio Companies stronger and more grounded. We’ve been able to create a culture that is unlike any other and the people we employ are what keep our business thriving. These students got to hear from different key members of the Executive Team who all offered a different perspective to portray to these students. If you want to read more about how this visit went, check out the blog post we published earlier this week. Here are some more pictures of their visit!

Canon Mac Visits ABG Capital

 

Canon Mac Visits ABG Capital

Today is the day that we take part in our Annual Turkey Bowl! We’ll all be leaving the office shortly and heading to field to enjoy a great football game. Don’t worry though, because members of our support staff will still be in the office to assist our customers with any issues. At ABG Capital we try our best to give back to our employees and show them that we really appreciate all the hard work they put in every day. Once a quarter we treat them to a half day of work and a half day of fun outside of the office. So far this year we’ve gone bowling, played kickball and had a game of softball. The Turkey Bowl will be the last game of the year, but then we’ll pick right back up again with another sporting event for the first quarter of 2014. Check out these pictures from past Turkey Bowls!

2008

2008

2009

2009

2011

2011

2012

2012

 

Canon-McMillan High School Students Come for a Visit

Posted on by
Reply

This morning we got to spend some time with students who are in the Entrepreneurship Program at Canon-McMillan High School. These students, who were made up of Freshmen all the way to Seniors, got to hear from a few members of our staff to get a better idea of who we are and what we do.

They had a detailed presentation followed by a tour of our brand new office space. The presentation focused on our company and Portfolio Companies, what life is like as a business owner, how things change as an organization grows and also what it’s like to work in a family owned business. We also touched on the struggles of overcoming the life changing tragedy of losing our founder Gerard Tapolci.

Since our culture is a huge part of our business, we had to explain how it was created and how we maintain it. Since we found the key to creating a lasting and unique culture, we’ve been able to keep our culture the same as we transitioned from one industry to another. The secret to keeping our culture is creating the perfect balance between giving employees freedom while still maintaining a certain level of productivity. It’s been working great for us for the past 21 years!

We hope that the Canon-McMillan High School students got a real sense of what goes on here at ABG Capital and also what it means to be an entrepreneur. We shared our stories of misfortune and hard times and how we overcame those struggles to ultimately to build a thriving business.

Below are a few pictures taken from their visit.

Canon-McMillan High School Seniors Come for a Visit

Canon-McMillan High School Seniors Come for a Visit

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on by
Reply

Here we are again wrapping up another great week at ABG Capital. We have just a few things to go over and then it’s back to making your weekend plans. We first want to start off by saying that our open house was a huge success. The decorations for our wall came in on time and everyone was very impressed by how everything turned out. It was an overall great night that was shared with our friends, family and business associates. We hope to have everyone back for a visit soon!

Below are a couple pictures of our brand new office and office decorations. If you’d like to see more, stop by our Facebook Page. You might want to ‘Like’ the page while you’re there; we post some good stuff.

IMG_2287small

IMG_2281small

IMG_2296small

Now that November is here, we can start thinking about Thanksgiving. And since we’re thinking about Thanksgiving, we might as well be thinking about football! That’s right, our annual Turkey Bowl Football Game will be held next Friday. The two teams will go against each other in a fierce battle as they display their extreme skills in the mighty arena. Ok, maybe it won’t be that intense, but it’ll sure be a competitive game among co-workers! But as always, our support teams will be at your service! We’ll be posting some pictures from the game on Monday so make sure to check them out on our social media sites. Here’s an action shot of the game from last year:

071small

As we wrap up this week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital, we want wish a few people a happy anniversary and birthday. Here is the list of November anniversaries and birthdays:

  • Anniversaries
    • Jason Marshall – 3 years on November 1
    • Jed Blazanin – 12 years on November 6
    • Lowell Smith – 6 years on November 12
    • Matt Chapman – 12 years on November 15
    • Ian Hambelton – 6 years on November 19
    • Terri Sams – 5 years on November 26
    • Tom Cavey – 3 years on November 30
  • Birthdays
    • Natalie DeCario – November 1
    • Tom Cavey – November 1
    • Ari Sigalov – November 1
    • Jed Blazanin – November 7
    • Paul Frye – November 9
    • Steve Korbett – November 28

Happy birthday and happy anniversary to all of you! While we are celebrating many more anniversaries for these employees, we do have one that is ending today. Matt Bartko, a porting specialist for VoIP Innovations, has been with us since 2011 and will be leaving the company to explore other opportunities. We wish you the best of luck in the next chapter of your life!