Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

Today we’re having our St. Patrick’s Day festivities! Every Friday we have a delicious lunch that’s provided by ABG Capital and then once a month we have different lunch committees put together the lunches instead. On holidays we usually have an awesome Pot Luck Luncheon that gives everyone the chance to bring in their signature dishes. Here are some pictures from today.

Yummy homemade hummus from Sally!

Paul is so excited!

Delicious grape salad from Trichelle!

There’s some Karate chopping happening at the chip table!

Have you stopped drooling over all of our delicious food yet? Good! Now let’s talk about what’s been going on with the ABG Capital blog this week. We featured a guest post that highlighted the importance of keeping employees educated. Sometimes employees start to get bored and unmotivated in their jobs and it’s a good idea to look into education programs to get them excited again. At ABG Capital, we offer quarterly Lunch & Learn programs as well as various other training workshops throughout the year.

Next week we’ll talk a little more about employees and their retirement plans. This sounds like something that Inspira would be interested in reading! The whole article is going to focus on how offering excellent retirement plans actually encourages employee loyalty and productivity.

If you’re worried about missing this blog post, or any other ABG Capital news from the blog, please enter your email and subscribe! By doing this you’ll be sure to get an email every time we have a blog post to share with you. The subscribe button is right at the top of our blog, you can’t miss it!

Now that our blog post has come to an end, I want to wish everyone a safe and fun St. Patrick’s Day! May your weekend be filled with pots of gold and happy leprechauns!

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

ABG Capital has had another busy week! We had a great blog post, hired another new employee, put our managers through a training webinar and added some more fantastic artwork to our walls. Let’s start by talking about the blog post we had this week and the one that you can expect to see next week.

The blog post we featured this week explored the benefits of using Customer Development to help shape your business. There are four parts to Customer Development that an entrepreneur must consider if they want to ensure their business will fit the needs of the market. If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, then this article is for you!

Next week on the blog, we’ll explore the benefits of employee education and online degrees. Having employees that are well trained and eager to learn is a key recipe for remaining successful in your industry. For example, ABG Capital offers various Lunch and Learn workshops throughout the year that help to grow employees personally and professionally. Just this week all ABG Capital managers were invited invited to join a webinar that focused on managing and motivating the 7 most challenging employee types.

In other big news, we’ve hired another great Customer Service Representative for Inspira named Chris Wallet. Chris actually started a few weeks ago as a temp to fill in for an employee who was out due to an injury. Chris fits right in, and since we saw a need to hire another new employee, it was a perfect match! Welcome to the ABG Capital team, Chris!

Last week we showed you some pictures of the new artwork in our office. Today, we want to share a few more pictures that are the final touches to Phase 2 of our office decoration plans. Phase 3 is under way and we’ll share pictures when we can. The first pictures below are our ABG Way Tree and the elements that make up the ABG Way. We still have some additions to make to the tree, but it’s getting close to being complete.

We want to give a huge shout out to Trophy Works for creating these beautiful awards for us. Our front lobby looks amazing!

Before we end this week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital post, we want to share a few updates from our February Month End Meeting (we know it’s a little late, but we had to reschedule it the first time!).

Employee of the Month: Collin Ballantine
Honorable Mentions: The Inspira Call Center
Spotlight of the Month: Tyler Weimerskirch
Upcoming Events:
- Kickball in April
- Cleaning Headstones at the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies May
- We raised over $300 selling flowers for Valentine’s Day! These proceeds will go towards out Make-A-Wish fund.

Thanks for checking in with ABG Capital this week! We hope everyone enjoys their weekend. 🙂

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on February 28, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

“The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in the person’s determination,”

-Tommy Lasorda.

What a great quote to start off with for this week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital post! While we’re on the topic of determination, let’s bring up the post we shared this week: Business Development by Numbers. Setting a large goal is easy, but the path to reaching it is hard. If you have the determination to reach it though, you’ll do everything you can to make it happen. One simple way to make the goal easily reachable, is to break it up into smaller goals. The blog post goes into much more depth about how having weekly or monthly tasks is better than having one, giant yearly goal hanging over your head.

Next week on our blog we’ll be posting an article called, Develop Your Business Using Customer Development. Customer Development is a framework for discovering and validating your idea in the marketplace, building products that will truly solve a need, determining the best ways to get customers, and creating an organization with sufficient resources to scale the business.

In other ABG Capital news, this week Ron Eggert (President) and Jeff Tapolci (CEO) traveled to Nicaragua with other members from PghSE Organization that they are a part of. We haven’t been able to have much contact with them, but Jeff has been interacting on our social media sites so we take it they’re safe and sound. We look forward to having them both back in the office next week!

Over the past few months we’ve been working to revamp our office and make it feel more like a home. The construction part of this process has been completed for a few months now, but we’re continuing to add some ABG Capital flare to the office. As of yesterday, we’re officially moving on to Phase 3. The first phase was when we added the Tree, Timeline, and 12 Chimes of Life Clock to the walls. Part of that phase also included a custom wall for VoIP Innovations where they can display their annual goals along with themed cardboard cutouts of their mascot, The VI Guy.

Phase 2 consisted of some finishing touches to Phase 1, including title banners for the Tree and 12 Chime of Life Clock. We also added banners for our Employee of the Month and Gerard F. Tapolci awards. The banners weren’t the only thing we added to the tree; our C.O.R.E. Values were added to the signs that rest underneath the tree and the elements that make up the ABG Way are also represented on the wall. Part of the ABG Way is our Business Philosophy, which is An American’s Creed written by Dean Alfange. This was given its own wall and was designed beautifully. The two final pieces to Phase 2 include a 6.5ft x 6.5ft ABG Capital logo that will be the center focus on our Awards Wall (coming as part of Phase 3) and an 18ft x 3ft logo for Inspira to mark their new space.

We already have our plans ready for Phase 3 and the next step is to start designing everything. We’ll be tackling some final elements of Phase 2 and adding things to our Call Center and the multi-purpose room. We also have plans to create a collage that will take up the wall across from our vending machines. There are a few more parts to Phase 3, but we can’t give away all the details today!

Our Business Philosophy – An American’s Creed

One of our C.O.R.E. Values

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

ABG Capital would like to wish everyone a very happy Friday! Later today we’ll all be heading to Latitude 40 to do some bowling. Employees from VoIP Innovations, Inspira and GlobalPOPs will be joining us as well. Not to worry though, we’ll still have a few people in the office for each company who will be assisting customers on any and all support issues. We’ll be taking pictures and Vine videos the whole time so make sure to check our social media sites to see everything!

Now let’s take a look back on our week… We featured an awesome blog post that highlighted some of the reasons why it’s important to understand that all employees are representatives of your brand. If a customer is on the phone with a Customer Service Rep and that Rep is rude or unknowledgeable, then that customer might consider taking their business elsewhere. On the other hand, if that employee is pleasant and well-versed in the company and its products, then the customer is at ease and is more likely to tell others about how awesome your company is. If ALL of your employees can’t sell your company to current or potential customers, then you might run into some problems down the line!

This week one of our newer employees, Yvonne Iwanejko, attended her Lunch with Leadership. This is something that ABG Capital does with every employees on their 30 day mark. Jeff and Jason Tapolci make it a priority to get to know their employees and this is a fantastic way to do it!

Post by ABG Capital.

If you check back into the ABG Capital blog next week, you’ll find a great article on business development; primarily how to make the large goals and numbers seem not so bad. If you’re worried that you might miss this post, you always have the option to subscribe! Once you do this, you’ll get an email from ABG Capital ONLY when a new blog post is published. It’s really a great way to keep up to date with our posts.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Just Another Friday at ABG

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

Happy Valentine’s Day! Did you make any special plans for that special someone in your life? Here at ABG Capital we’ve been selling roses and carnations to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Along with the pre-ordered flowers we’ve been selling for the past few weeks, we’ll be doing a cash-and-carry sale with extra flowers we ordered. This is great for those who may have forgotten to pick up flowers for their sweetie.

In other news this week, we posted two great articles on our blog: Helping Your Employees Get Their Degree and Changing Your Business to Better Serve Your Customers. Employees who get their degree become an overall better employee and ultimately drive up your revenue. Take a look at the post for more great reasons why helping and supporting your employees to get their degrees is a good idea.

The second post we had this week was on what your business can do to better serve your customers. The post covers some very well-known businesses who knew it was time for a change. Two of these companies are Samsung and Taco Bell!

Next week we have a blog post titled, Why All Employees Need to Sell. Whether you know it or not, every employee represents your company. Making sure they know how to represent you to your customers on the finer points of your organization is instrumental in continuing to run a successful company.

Last night Jeff Tapolci, Ron Eggert, Lowell Smith, and Natalie DeCario attended the annual KFMR e2e event. This event was created so that shareholders, staff, and friends of KFMR could get together and enjoy cocktails and conversation. It was a great night and it was nice to see old friends and colleagues. Thanks for putting on another great event KFMR!

The last announcement that we have to mention is that we’re going bowling next Friday. This will be the first employee sporting event of 2014 and if it’s anything like last year, it’ll be a blast. Stay tuned for pictures!

Just another Friday at ABG Capital

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

We’re so happy you could join us for our Just another Friday at ABG Capital blog post! We’ve made a great deal of improvements since our last post and we’re excited to share them with you.

Two weeks ago we introduced you to Yvonne Iwanejko who is our newest Porting Rep at VoIP Innovations. Since then we’ve welcomed three more employees to the ABG Capital team. Continue reading for a picture and a brief bio of these fantastic new employees.

Rhonda is the newest Customer Service Rep at Inspira. She comes to us from Gillece where she handled Inside Sales and Customer Service as a Benefits Manager. She recently got married in May and lives with her husband Brandon in Spring Garden. Together they have five dogs (Zeus, Zena, Shiloh, Nikita and Delilah) and two cats (Leo and Isabella). She is a fan of many sports and enjoys skiing at Seven Springs.

Justin will be working in the Call Center as a Technical Support Representative for End User Services. Justin comes to us from Verizon Wireless where he worked in Customer Service and Tech Support. He was recently married in June and lives in Butler with his wife Christina. He has a Pitbull named Gemma and a cat named Heisenberg. Justin also enjoys geocaching and camping.

Coming up at the end of February we’ll be continuing the fun tradition of our annual Staff Bowling Event! Here are a few pictures from last year:

Sally and Bruce!

We have one last announcement to make before we let you in on some great posts we have coming up next week. Great Place to Work is holding a video contest called We <3 our Workplace and we’re planning to win! We’ve already formed a committee and we’ll hold our first meeting next week. The grand prize for this contest is $5,000 to a charity of your choice. As most of you know, the Make-A-Wish Foundation is the organization that we have the most dedication and passion for. We have been “Wish Granters”, raising at least $3,500 every year since 2008 but last year we were able to grant wishes for two local children! Winning the $5,000 will put us in the running to grant 3 wishes for some amazing kids this year. When the video is complete, we’ll be counting on all of you to vote for us and spread the word to your friends and family. We’ll provide more information as we get closer to the completion of our video.

Next week we have these awesome blog posts to share with you:

Helping Your Employees Get Their Degree – Better-educated employees improve the well-being of your business. This article looks at some of the issues involved in helping your employees get ahead in their field.
Changing Your Business to Better Serve Your Customers – Sometimes the best way to help your customers is to radically change the way you do business. Take for example WePay, who over the past year has moved from a “group payments” company to a payment company for platform businesses. They felt it was the best way to empower their existing clients.

Thanks for checking out this week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital blog post. Enjoy your weekend!

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

Here we are again wrapping up yet another great week at ABG Capital. We have some great news to share so let’s not waste any more time and get right into it!

Post by ABG Capital.

Our newest employee, Kimmie Rivetti, had her lunch with leadership this week! This is a great thing that we do so the new employees get to spend some quality time with Jeff and Jason Tapolci. It’s important to them they that the get to know their employees on a more personal level. Check out the amount of support their picture got when we posted it on our Facebook Page!

Yvonne Iwanejko, our newest employee!

While we were celebrating with one employee for making it to her one month mark, we were also welcoming another new employee into the VoIP Innovations Porting Department. Her name is Yvonne Iwanejko and we’re excited to have her with us! In the next few weeks we will be introducing to you to even more new people who are joining our team. 2014 is going to be a year of major growth for ABG Capital and its portfolio companies and it’s going to be exciting!

This week we also posted a great article on how to develop a great corporate culture. At ABG Capital, we take our culture very seriously. I’m not saying that we have a serious culture; I’m saying that the founders of this company have put a great deal of dedication and passion into developing a unique culture. What is your company doing to provide a positive culture for its’ employees? Share it with us in the comment section below!

Next week you can expect to see another great post that talks about the Return on Investment (ROI) that you can expect to see with professional development. Anyone can have fun at work, but are they having fun in a way that enhances their skills and ultimately can increase the profits for your company? This article will give you more insight on how exactly to achieve the most ROI.

We have one last announcement before you head out today. VoIP Innovations, a wholesale VoIP service provider, will be traveling to Miami next week to attend the Internet Telephony Conference and Expo (ITEXPO). We’ve been hearing about what they have up their sleeve for this and it seems like they’re going to WOW the crowd! If you have plans to attend the show, make sure you stop by Booth 606 and ask about their Industry leading BackOffice platform, Titanium III. You can’t miss them; they’ll be the guys in the orange ties!

That’s all that we have for you today! Bundle up and enjoy your weekend. 🙂

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

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…

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

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 January 10, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

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:

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:

Just another Friday at ABG

Posted on January 3, 2014 by Natalie DeCario

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 3^rd 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..

Get a Raise or Promotion
Reduce Stress
Be More Organized
Quit Your Job/Get a New Job
Improve Your Work-Life Balance
Network More Effectively
Improve Your Relationship with the Boss/Co-Workers
Develop Your Communications Skills
Get a Degree
Be Better with E-Mail and Voicemail
Have a Better Attitude.

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

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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 Capital

Just another Friday at ABG

Just another Friday at ABG

Just another Friday at ABG

Just another Friday at ABG