Just another Friday at ABG

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Happy Friday! We’re hoping everyone had a fantastic week. We’ve been keeping busy here at ABG Capital with visitors and planning sessions and conferences all week. Let’s tell you a little more about all this.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, GlobalPOPs held their annual planning session in our new conference room and on Thursday and Friday VoIP Innovations held theirs.These sessions are designed to create a yearly and quarterly plan for the companies so they can stay ahead of their competition and continue pleasing their customers. Here are some pictures of the two planning sessions:

ABG Capital Annual Planning

The GlobalPOPs Team

ABG Capital Strategic Planning 2

The VoIP Innovations Team

On top of all the strategic planning that was going on this week, InspiraFS had a few visitors in the office this week too. They were just in time because our build-out project is almost complete! There are only a few small final touches that need to be finished up, include the wall designs that we have being printed right now. We’re looking forward to showing off the office in two weeks for the big unveiling at our Open House.

This week our HR Manager, Sharon Kolesar, spent a few days out of the office at the Pittsburgh Human Resources Associations (PHRA) 2013 Annual Conference and Exposition. This year was their 65th anniversary and they celebrated by hosting another fantastic HR convention. Some of the topics they covered were creating an inclusive culture, healthcare, decreasing stress, analytic tools that can help any HR professional, and even health and wellness topics.

The last thing we need to mention is that it’s that time of the year when our Executive Team will be heading out of the office for the second Gazelles summit of the year. The first summit they attended this year was in Orlando and focused on growing leadership within the organization. This summit is in Las Vegas and will be centered around growing the entire organization. The members of the Executive Team who will be attending are Jeff Tapolci, Jason Tapolci, Ron Eggert, Dan Ravenstahl, Sebastian Kiely, Pete Littlejohn, Nick Medina and Corey Potts. We can’t wait to see what this summit has in store for everyone at ABG Capital!

We hope you have a great weekend. 🙂

Just another Friday at ABG

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It’s safe to say that our office will be receiving a face-lift very soon. We’ve been mentioning that we put together an office decoration committee and we’re happy to announce the materials for phase one of the whole office redecoration project have been sent off to the printer. We’ve gone through tons of ideas and edits and then more edits on top of that. The next step is to get the materials from the printer and start placing them on the walls. We are going to have three huge pieces and then some smaller things ready to go for our open house on November 1st. Since that dates getting close, we can give you an idea of what these three huge pieces are going to be. One is going to be a giant clock that represents the 12 Chimes of Life. The second one is a giant tree that will highlight employees and other things that matter at ABG Capital. The last, and probably the most exiting piece included in phase one, is a giant (26ft long) timeline that walks you through the lifetime of ABG Capital. These things are going to look amazing in our office and we can’t wait for them to be finished.

This week we also had a visit from Robin at Sunnybridge Natural Foods. She gave a great presentation on how health and wellness can be achieved through nutrition. The session was topped off with lunch and Sunnybridge gluten-free bakery treats, which everyone said were yummy!

TrichellesmallOn Monday we welcomed a new employee, Trichelle Barish, to the ABG Capital community. Trichelle was hired as the new Provisioning Representative for VoIP Innovations. Everyone help us in welcoming Trichelle!

The next piece of news that we have to share is about Halloween. We’re looking forward to the costumes and candy that are going to fill the office on our Halloween Party! Not only are we going to have a Pot Luck lunch, but we’re holding costume contests. There will be a prize for the best woman, best man, scariest and funniest costumes. There will definitely be pictures of the winners along with all of the other festivities that we’ll have going on.

If you remember from last week we were cheering on our Pittsburgh Pirates as they were making their way through the series against the cardinals. Unfortunately, our excitement didn’t last much longer because last night’s game proved to be the end of truly great season. It was a sad night in Pittsburgh, but it’s safe to say that this season was legendary. See you next year Buccos!

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Just another Friday at ABG

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Pittsburgh PiratesHappy 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!

Cameron | ABG Capital

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:

ABG Capital Vending Machines

Our brand new vending machines.

ABG Capital Lounge

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

ABG Capital Storage

Our new storage closet.

ABG Captial Copy Center

The future copy center.

ABG Capital Office

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

Just another Friday at ABG

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Happy Friday! October is right around the corner and that means that we have some announcements to make from our Month End ABG Capital Meeting that was held today. We first want to congratulate Jake Crisman on being voted the Employee of the Month for August. Here’s what the team had to say about Jake:

Jake from ABG CapitalWhen you hire a new employee the biggest issue you have upfront is how long is it before that employee can start to contribute. Well when Jacob Crisman, started he “hit the ground running” and never looked back. He started to contribute from day one and continues to both please and amaze us. Early in his start here, he helped the IT Services with our implementation of the Office 365 deployment.  He has been well received by both staff and management and has greatly helped Steve with the day to day IT tasks.

In our meeting today we also discussed some of the exciting training sessions we have coming to the office this fall. Here’s the list of things we have to look forward to:

  • Sunny Bridge Natural Foods will be coming to do a workshop on health and wellness.
  • We’ll be having CPR training for people who need re-certified and also for those who want to become certified.
  • Halloween is coming up so that means we need to think of costume ideas for our costume contest and pot-luck lunch.
  • We’re getting ready to plan our annual Turkey Bowl Flag Football Game in November.

The build-out project is getting to close to complete and our office decoration committee is working hard to come up with ideas to make our office reflect our culture. The committee is planning come HUGE things and since we’re planning for our Open House to be November 1, you’re going to start seeing some pictures of the design process soon! That wraps up this weeks rendition of Just another Friday at ABG Capital and we hope you have a great weekend!

Just another Friday at ABG

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Who’s ready for the weekend? Everyone at ABG Capital! But first lets look back at some of the week’s highlights; birthdays and construction!

Jeff Linkowski and Nick Jenkner both celebrated their birthdays this week. Jeff turned 50 and Nick turned 30. Happy birthday to you guys! Here are some pictures from the mini parties we had for them in the office.

ABG Capital Jeff

Jeff reading his card!

 

 

 

 

 

Nick ABG Capital

Nick smiling by his hockey themed cake!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This week we also saw a lot of progress with our build-out project that has been going on for the past couple of months. At the beginning of week there was an empty floor and now there are some walls and framework in an area for new offices and storage space. Check out this vine that shows you some of the construction.

Our Managers are in Training Today with Brad Withers

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Today we had the pleasure of welcoming Brad Withers into our office for day filled with training. All of our managers participated in this training so they can grow their leadership skills. Brad has extensive knowledge on facilitation and training in leadership, team building, systems thinking, communication and much more. He has worked with leaders in profit, non-profit and government settings, as well as thousands of small to large U.S. and international firms.

Here are some pictures of our managers during the training session:

Manager Training 1 Manager Training 2 Manager training 3

 

Just another Friday at ABG

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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.

ABG Capital Construction

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!

ABG Capital Employees Spend the Weekend at Seven Springs!

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Last weekend a few people from ABG Capital got together for a weekend of relaxation and bonding. Jeff Tapolci, Ron Eggert and Pete Littlejohn joined Jim Hoffman at Seven Springs Mountain Resort and they had a blast!

The first night they were there, they were up until 3 am playing cards, drinking wine, smoking cigars and enjoying each others company. They played Hearts and Spades and Pete even taught them how to play Eucher!

Seven Springs view for ABG Capital guys.

Look at that view!

Staying up until 3 am didn’t keep these guys off the golf course though, they were ready to play at 9 am. Pete and Jeff teamed up to play against Ron and Jim. Pete and Jeff were the winners of the game and you can check out their score cards on our Facebook page! Pete and Jeff were also victorious in sporting clays. Those score cards are also on our Facebook page.

ABG Capital weekend away

Jim Hoffman and Pete Littlejohn on the golf course!

The weekend was an overall great time for these guys. Weekends like these are about the camaraderie of a group of colleagues and friends. It can be hard to feel like a close knit team when you don’t get to work with everyone on a daily basis, but when you have times like these it brings back that team feeling!

Just another Friday at ABG

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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.

ABG Capital Volunteers

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!

Newest ABG Capital employeeThe 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

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We were unable to get our Just another Friday at ABG Capital post out last week, but today we have some great updates for you. I first want to report on our office build-out that is moving along nicely. Our “fish bowl” like conference room is almost complete and has already been in use. Our Communications Specialist, Natalie DeCario, was signed up for a 3-day Social Media Boot Camp sponsored by ASPE-ROI. Since they were unable to host the course at their facility, due to a low enrollment, we held it in the new conference room so it wouldn’t get canceled. Our visitors enjoyed the new space!

Speaking of social media, we want to give a shout out to Natalie on her first podcast. It revolved around “Social Media Tips and Faux Pas.” She was interviewed by Suzanne Bowen who is blogger for TMCNet on their Monetizing IP Communications channel.

100 Fastest Growing Companies

From left to right: Barry Yancosek, Tim Linn, Randy Stegner, Jason Tapolci, Jeff Tapolci

We have to give a huge congratulations to our portfolio company, VoIP Innovations, for their recent achievements. They were named 13th overall in the Pittsburgh Business Times 100 Fastest Growing Companies. In their technology category, they ranked number 1! What a great accomplishment everyone, it’s well deserved! Follow these links to see photos from the event along with a video of Jason Tapolci, President of VoIP Innovations, who talks about the company’s success.

Not only did they receive that accolade, but they were also notified last week that they ranked 1207 in the Inc. 500/5000 Fastest Growing Company list. This is the second year in a row that VoIP Innovations has ranked in both of these lists. Again, we congratulate everyone at VoIP Innovations for their hard work!

Paul Frye - Employee of the Month

Paul Frye – Employee of the Month

Lastly, we want to give you some updates from our month end company meeting that was held today. Paul Frye was nominated as the ABG Capital Employees of the Month for July. We also want to recognize Dustin Campbell and Jake Crisman who were our Honorable mentions for July. Keep up the great work, you guys rock!

As we wrap up this week’s Just another Friday post, we want to tell everyone to have a fantastic weekend celebrating Labor Day!