Around Town with Jeff

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WHO: Jeff Tapolci, Jason Tapolci, Sharon Kolesar, Dan Ravenstahl, Ron Eggert, Lowell Smith, and Nick Medina

WHAT: 2013 Leadership Summit Presented by Fortune

WHERE: Orlando World Center Marriot Resort in Orlando, FL

WHEN: May 9-10, 2013

Jeff and his Executive Team have been attending these Fortune summits twice a year since the spring of 2007.  These summits are broken into two different themes; the spring summit focuses on growing the leaders within an organization and the fall summit, that will take place in October, will focus on the overall growth of the organization.

ABG Capital Lunchbreak

Where they had their lunch breaks!

When I was talking with Jeff about this particular summit, he said that this was definitely one of his favorites, and he’s been to quite a few of them! It wasn’t just the theme of this summit, it was the overall experience; the speakers, the food, the city, and the venue, were all top notch. He even mentioned that it’s great to see Verne Harnish, founder and CEO of Gazelles, make changes over the years to the summit based on the attendee’s comments.

Before this summit, the days were much longer and had additional speakers which made the days seem almost as if the next break couldn’t come fast enough.  Jeff noted that the days ended earlier this year and it made for a much more relaxing time.

As we mention the speakers, let’s talk about one that stood out in Jeff’s mind. His name was Giovanni Livera. There were eight speakers with various background, but Giovanni had the most energy out of them all. He is one of “the most sought-after corporate entertainers in America,” and he proved that at this summit! A second speaker that grabbed Jeff’s attention was the U.S. Naval Academy Graduate, David Marquet. He told stories of how he took a nuclear powered submarine that was “dogged by poor morale, poor performance, and the worst retention in the fleet, until David Marquet took Command.”

ABG Capital Executive Team

Part of the team waiting for their plane.

All in all, this summit provided the ABG Capital Executive Team with a great deal of information. One of the hardest parts about these events, is coming back to the office to figure out the next steps to take with the tools you’ve just learned. It’s not possible to utilize every single tool or technique that they learned at the summit, but after analyzing all the notes, the Executive Team will come up with an action strategy that will be implemented into the ABG Capital structure.

 

 

 

WHO: Jeff Tapolci and Sean Andreas

WHAT: Pittsburgh Cornell Football Association Baseball Event

WHERE: PNC Park

WHEN: Monday May 13, 2013

Jeff was invited to this event by Sean Andreas, the VP of Wells Fargo Insurance Services who is also our broker and a good friend of Jeff’s. It was a night filled with old football stories, Pirates baseball, food and drinks. The event was open to any Pittsburgh alumni, former/current players, and friends of Big Red Football. Jeff also brought along his son and his friend and they had a great night touring the Pirates offices and watching the game.

cornell football picsmall

The view from their seats

PNC Park was a different venue than what Jeff is used to being at for these types of events, but nonetheless, it was a great event with great people. He even had the chance to catch up with the Cornell Head Football Coach, David Archer. He remembers hanging out and watching the game tapes last year with him when he was only the assistant coach.

Sean Andreas is well known for bringing together great people with similar interest and Jeff described this as a night out with the guys. Everyone was joking around and teasing each other, and telling great stories from back in the day. He even learned that Cornell is considered the blue-collar ivy league school! Overall, this was another fantastic event where Jeff can share the ABG Way with his community.

Just another Friday at ABG

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Who’s happy it’s Friday? I know I am! If you’ve been keeping up with ABG Capital this week, you probably saw that we had a ton going on. Before I get into that though, I’d like to mention a little something about our Giving Back initiatives. Throughout the year we are always looking for ways that we can give back to our community. There are a few things we do every year and there are always new things we’re trying out as well. So far this year we’ve already sold roses and carnations for Valentine’s Day, potted flowers for Mother’s Day, and raffle tickets for a Cinco de Mayo basket as a way to raise funds for Make-A-Wish. Next week we are heading to the National Cemeteries of the Alleghenies to clean headstones in order to help them prepare for their Memorial Day ceremonies.

I want to look a little further to an event where YOU can get involved in too. July 19-21 the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank will be hosting their annual Blues Festival at Hartwood Acres. There will be volunteers from our entire organization who attend this event as a way to donate their time to a cause. If you are interested in joining over 700 other volunteers for this great event, you can visit www.pghblues.com starting on Monday, May 13th to sigh up.

While we’re talking about our ABG Capital Giving Back initiatives, do you remember earlier this week when we wrote about Eric Butler? He’s a VoIP Innovations employee who is growing his beard for a cause! The Pittsburgh Penguins are in the Stanley Cup playoffs and are currently holding a Beard-a-Thon challenge that raises money for the Mario Lemieux Foundation. Please check out the blog post we wrote about him that covers all of the information and rules of the Beard-a-Thon.

ABG Capital Executive Team

From left to right: Nick Medina, Ron Eggert, Jeff Tapolci, Jason Tapolci, Lowell Smith

The last piece I want to mention is that our ABG Capital Executive Team is at the Gazelles in Orlando this week. They are attending a two-day leadership summit that features a number of fantastic speakers. I’ve been getting pictures from their trip and uploading them to our Facebook page! Don’t forget to check them out!

I hope everyone had a great week and has a great weekend 🙂

The Geese of ABG Capital

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Welcome back to another installment about the Geese of ABG Capital! Last week we had tons of great things to say about our office geese. This week, we want to embark on a whole new journey into the world of the ABG Geese.

Sure these geese get tons of cuteness points as a babies, but that eventually wears off when they hit that inevitable “ugly duckling” phase. When this starts to happen, we notice that they get a little bigger and their feathers don’t look as soft and well kept. This is the point where they become less innocent, and more devious.

We’re not referring to their deviousness as them doing things like plotting to pop the tires on our cars or hit us with paintball guns as we exit the building after a long day. No. The deviousness we’re talking about is more subtle, but packs a powerful punch. We’re talking about goose crap. All over the parking lot and sidewalks. Did you know that a single goose can poop once every 20 minutes? It’s true and believe us we can prove it! We even started contests that would see who could run across the parking lot the fastest without stepping in goose crap. Luckily, our landlords understand this issue and we are so fortunate that they have a maintenance staff who keeps the parking lots and sidewalks clean. If they didn’t, we’d be in a load of trouble. Despite this downside, we accept our geese counterparts because those babies are adorable and entertaining to watch.

The ABG Capital GeeseSpeaking of entertainment, there comes a point sometimes where it gets painstakingly brutal to watch them interact with each other. There are a few key spots where these geese like to fight; an open area where a building might one day sit and right outside our Accounting Managers’ window. These fights basically turn into ‘Fight Club’ for geese and it does gets violent sometimes. There was even a time where some geese pushed a baby goose into the sewer drain! Thankfully, someone was able to get him out of the drain before something bad happened.

This story about the innocence of one baby goose is once again combated with a tale of goose horror. From afar, geese may seem like they are docile creatures, but we have story on top of story about close calls with these geese. Our first story takes us to the time a goose built her nest outside of the front door of our building. When geese lay their eggs, the mother will not leave that nest for any reason. They also become much more hostile when anyone gets close. In our case, we didn’t want anything to do with them or their nest, we just needed to get in the door! Eventually it got to the point where we had to get creative and use shields to block a fierce attack from the mother goose. People would resort to opening umbrellas in front of the charging goose and some would even sacrifice their legs as an effort to hold her back while they got in the door. It wasn’t long before someone alerted the proper authorities to come and relocate the next.

Once this situation was subdued, it was time to rethink whether having geese on the property was a good idea. So, like in many of these other situations, we called upon the help of the landlord and their maintenance staff. They installed a Goosebusters system that would blast the sounds of a shotgun, distressed geese, and coyotes every 10-15 minutes. This tactic was a success! For a little while at least… We did miss the innocence of those baby geese, but it was met with rejoice in the fact that we could freely walk around the parking lot without fear of being attacked or worse, having our SHOES attacked (you know they’re never the same once you step in stuff like that).

You may be thinking that this is the end of our goose story. If you are, you are very wrong… Tune in again next week to see what happens next!

ABG Capital Heads to the Gazelles

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It’s that time already? Yes it is! This week at ABG Capital, our Executive Team will be attending the 2013 Gazelles Leadership Summit presented by Fortune. Jeff and the team attend Gazelles events twice a year and they are usually in May and October. This year, Jeff will be taking Ron Eggert, Jason Tapolci, Dan Ravenstahl, Lowell Smith, and Sharon Kolesar. Nick Medina from M2 Telecom, a strategic partner of GlobalPOPs and VoIP Innovations, will also be joining them.

Gazelles LogoThe summit will be held on May 9-10 at the Orlando World Center Marriott Resort. During these two days they will hear from speakers from a wide variety of industries, but who all share a common interest: Leadership. A few of the speakers will be Jack Stack, Founder and CEO of SRC Holdings as well as author of The Great Game of Business, Laurie Bassi, author of Good Company: Business Success in the Worthiness Era, and Giovanni Livera, World Champion Magician, Celebrated Inventor, and author of Live a Thousand Years: Have the Time of Your Life.

Jeff makes it a point to attend these events every year and every time he gets back, he strives to educate the ABG Capital staff on the new techniques and best practices he’s learned. In this case, he will come back from the summit with information about leadership and he will strategize new ways that he and the Executive Team can work to implement any new tactics. When they return next week, you can expect that we’ll be filling you in with all the tips they got from this summit. Hopefully they’ll even take some pictures that we can share with you!

Pittsburgh Penguins Beard-a-Thon

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Eric Butler, clean shaven for the Pittsburgh Penguins

Eric Butler is clean shaven!

“It’s a hockey night in Pittsburgh!” Sound familiar? If it does, then I’m sure you’re aware that the Pens are in the Stanley Cup Playoffs right now and the Beard-a-Thon is well under way. Eric Butler, from VoIP Innovations, is taking part in this challenge. He’s not usually one to shave his beard, so there must be a good reason for him to do it. His reason is that the Beard-a-Thon was created to not only be something fun to do during playoffs, but also to raise money for a great cause: the Mario Lemieux Foundation. Please continue reading for more information about the Lemieux Foundation as well as information and guidelines on participating in the Beard-a-Thon. If you’re an ABG Capital employee reading this, did you know that Jeff and Jason Tapolci are planning to match dollar for dollar the money that Eric raises? It’s true! So shave your beard, sign up or donate for the cause, and join the Pittsburgh Penguins Beard-a-Thon!

The Mario Lemieux Foundation information:

The Mario Lemieux Foundation is an organization dedicated to raising funds for cancer research and patient care, as well as Austin’s Playroom Project, an initiative that creates playrooms for children and families in medical facilities.  The Foundation’s newest project, the Mario Lemieux Center for Blood Cancers, opened at the Hillman Cancer Center at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute in December 2012. It offers comprehensive diagnostic services, individually designed treatment plans, and long-term follow-up services to patients with leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and other blood malignancies.  Key elements of the center include a non-institutional design, advanced information technology integrated into the patient experience and the opportunity for complex treatments to be provided to patients on an out-patient basis.  The Foundation has also opened 26 Austin’s Playrooms in western Pennsylvania in addition to our first military playroom at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.  The Foundation is now raising funds for a second military playroom, scheduled to open in early 2014 at the Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton in southern California.  More information about the Mario Lemieux Foundation and Austin’s Playroom Project is available at their website.

Beard-a-thon Information:

  • There is a 10.00 donation all the way up to 250.00 with incriminates of 10.00 or 25.00.
  • The donations are 100% tax deductible.
  • You have the option to make your donation anonymous or you can make it public that you donated.
  • Click here to make donations.

The rules for the beard-a-thon:

  • Start with a clean shave on the first day of the playoffs.
  • Shaving while your team is in the playoffs is prohibited.
  • Trimming is optional and only allowed in between rounds, never during.
  • A goatee and a mustache is not a beard. Don’t be fooled by imitations.
  • Document beard growth on Beardathon.com and raise money for charity.
  • Growers are allowed to shave only after their team is knocked out of the playoffs.

If you have any questions or you would like more information, please visit the Pittsburgh Penguins website.

Around Town with Jeff

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Welcome to our newest ABG Capital blog series! The CEO of ABG, Jeff Tapolci, is always looking for events going on around Pittsburgh where he can learn new things and promote ABG. This is something that we consider part of The ABG Way and that is something that Jeff takes very seriously. He usually goes to a few of these events each week and there is always something to say about them, so we figured that we might as well fill you in!

WHO: Board members and shareholders

WHAT: Dinner and Drinks after a long day of work

WHERE: Cadillac Ranch

WHEN: Monday April 29, 2013

On Monday this week we had our quarterly board meeting. I’m sure you would agree that board meetings are always the best way to start off a Monday! Well maybe we should rephrase that… The gatherings AFTER board meetings are always a great way to kick off a Monday! During this meeting our board members had the opportunity to discuss some important ABG news. The top executives issued a state of the union for their respective companies as well as a status report, and they reviewed the 1st Quarter to ensure everything was going according to plan. Their ultimate purpose is to serve as an entity that establishes accountability and offers problem solving guidance to ABG and its portfolio companies.

ABG Capital Board Meeting

At ABG Capital, we’re lucky though, because our board meetings usually aren’t that bad. We’re not saying they’re fun, but we’re not saying they’re unbearable either! Usually we even try to avoid the typical board room, but sometimes that’s just not possible. No matter how comfortable or uncomfortable we are for the meeting, we always find that the best part is wrapping the meetings up with action items and then heading out to relax. This may seem unconventional compared to other board meetings, but that’s how we operate under The ABG Way.

In our case, we chose to unwind at Cadillac Ranch with dinner, drinks, and cigars. Along with Jeff, we had John Nemcek, Santo Laquatra, Jason Tapolci, and Adam Scott. Dan had to head home because he wasn’t feeling too well. This was a relaxing night filled with some quality male bonding time for the good ol’ boys.

One of the most memorable parts to this night were the stories that Santo couldn’t resist sharing with everyone. If anyone knows Santo, you might find this a little hard to imagine because he’s a very quiet and reserved guy most of the time. He was going on and on about the things he did while he was going to school at Cornell and playing football as well as when he was a kid growing up on the Northside.

Outside of Santo’s entertaining stories, these guys still managed to talk about business and attempt to solve the world’s problems. Well at least any ABG problems. They love taking time out for relaxation like this because that’s where most of their ‘light bulb moments’ grow from. This is the time when their minds are free to think of things in a different light, while also just enjoy listening to some great stories! In the end, these meetings turn into just a bunch of guys hanging out trying to solve business issues.

 

WHO: Jeff and Sharon

WHAT: PVCA Luncheon on Psychometrics

WHERE: Duquesne Club

WHEN: Tuesday April 30, 2013

On Tuesday, Sharon Kolesar, our HR Manager, joined Jeff at the Pittsburgh Venture Capital Association (PVCA) for a luncheon that discussed psychometrics. The focus of this luncheon was on how to recruit, retain, and continue to engage the right people for your organization. The tool that they highlighted was called the predictive index (PI), and while we don’t use this exact practice at ABG Capital, it’s always nice to learn about other tools out there.

There was so much to be discussed at this luncheon, but what Sharon and Jeff got out of it was that this PI tool can be used in hiring new employees and putting existing employees in the right seats. This goes along with what Jim Collins had to say in his book, Good to Great. This technique is designed to make sure that managers make the right decision when hiring new employees. They want to hire the best people for the open position as well as for the organization. We understand that when you hire a new person, you need to focus on growing that employee into a better worker than any other person in their industry. To be able to do this effectively, managers need to know who they want to search for, keep around, and ultimately keep engaged with the organization.

Jeff is very active with the PVCA so he already knew most of the people there and was able to introduce Sharon to them. They even had the chance to sit with Kelly Szejko who is the President of the PVCA and her son, Ian, who is also involved with the PVCA. During this luncheon they also got to meet Jeff Kimball who is someone they’ve known about, but never actually met. Once they got to talking with him, they found out that he has moved on to a new chapter in his life and had become a Business Growth Consultant.

A few weeks ago, Jeff and Sharon received a questionnaire that would be determine their own PI. They were given the results when they got to the luncheon and they were SPOT ON to each of their personalities! Even though we may not use this exact technique in our hiring practices, we use similar tools that provide the same results: putting the right people in the right seats. Tactics like these are what got me hired at ABG Capital and I truly feel like I’ve been put in the seat I’m supposed to be in!

 

WHO: Jeff and Natalie

WHAT: Network After Work

WHERE: Villa on the South Side

WHEN: Wednesday May 1, 2013

On Wednesday, Jeff Tapolci and Natalie DeCario, our Communications Specialist went to a relatively newer event in Pittsburgh called Network After Work. It was just like any other networking event, but it seemed more like a speed-dating atmosphere. We had some light hors d’oeuvre and drinks, got to know a few strangers, and handed out business cards until they saturated the room. It was a good time and we were able to meet a few new people and even catch up with some old friends. Jeff even ran into someone who knew his mom from one of ABG’s previous companies, Computer Comfort! That’s one of the great things about living in Pittsburgh; it’s big enough where you can always find someone new to talk to, but you can still find a familiar face in the crowd.

Network After Work is and international organization and they have events like this all the time. This is only their second Pittsburgh event, but you can expect to see the third event happening in July at Bar Louie in Station Square.

The venue for this event, Villa, was fantastic as well. We got to meet the owner who allowed us to see the upstairs portion of the building and it was a great space that we can see utilized for the different activities we do at ABG Capital.

Like I mentioned before, Jeff is always at events like these so maybe you’ll spot him at one sometime! If you do, make sure you introduce yourself and let him know that you’ve been reading about him.

 

WHO: Jeff and Ron

WHAT: J.P. Morgan 2nd Annual Energy Summit/Symposium “Jurassic Spark”

WHERE: Heinz History Center

WHEN: Thursday May 2, 2013

Jeff Tapolciand Ron Eggert attended this event as a way to broaden their horizons and learn some new things about a different industry. Since most of ABG Capital is focused around technology, getting a look into the Energy sector was a good way for them to seek new opportunities and represent ABG.

The symposium examined Energy from a World-Wide, U.S., and Western Pennsylvania point of view. There were industry experts, investors, politicians, business men and women, along with many other backgrounds who all shared a common interest in the Energy sector.

This event stared with a few speakers from J.P. Morgan and then led into a panel discussion and then lunch. They even had the chance to walk through the Heinz History Center. The highlighted exhibit they have going on right now revolves around what it was like in 1968.

As I mentioned before, ABG Capital has primarily focused on technology but you never know what you may find at an event like this. When I was talking to Jeff about this, he explained his philosophy to me; “I like going to things like this because I always learn something. It’s just like taking a class on the side that you might be interested in. It’s like think, if you never play outside of your sandbox, you might never see what the other sandboxes have to offer.” This makes sense if you know anything about Jeff because he is always looking for a bigger sandbox to play in!

Just another Friday at ABG Capital

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What a beautiful Friday we are having in Pittsburgh! It’s also been a great week for us at ABG Capital as well. We started off the week with our Quarterly Board Meeting and our Annual Shareholders meeting. Our board members are Jeff Tapolci, John Nemcek, Santo Laquatra, Jason Tapolci, Dan Ravenstahl, and our shareholders are Jeff, Jason, Dan, and Adam Scott. During this meeting the top executives issued a state of the union for their respective companies as well as a status report, and they reviewed the 1st Quarter to ensure everything was going according to plan. Their ultimate purpose is to serve as an entity that establishes accountability and offers problem solving guidance to ABG and its portfolio companies.   They closed these meetings by having a relaxing dinner with a few drinks and cigars at Cadillac Ranch. If you want to read more about how their ‘after meeting’ went, check out our newest blog series called Around Town with Jeff. This series follows the ABG Capital CEO, Jeff Tapolci, as he makes his way to many different events around Pittsburgh each week.

This week was also an exciting time for Inspira! Lowell Smith, Ron Eggert, Jeff Linkowski, Joe Golubski, and Pete Littlejohn all attended the 2013 NIPA Annual Forum and Expo in Las Vegas. Jeff even did an educational presentation where he discussed how TPA’s Record-keepers and Advisors can provide a valuable service to their clients by educating them on the benefits of mandatory distribution and helping them set up a routine process for sweeping out small accounts. Jeff did an awesome job with his presentation!

Dan - ABG Capital

Dan Ravenstahl… The lucky winner!

Next we have to mention our Cinco de Mayo celebrations. First, we had a fantastic pot-luck lunch where we had everything from tacos, walking-tacos, dips, chips, and toppings galore! It was by far one of the best lunches we’ve had! After lunch we moved on to pulling the winner of our Cinco de Mayo basket filled with all of the necessary things for a celebration. The winner was Dan Ravenstahl and he was such a great winner because he shared his winnings with the staff! We can’t forget to mention the most important part of the basket raffle. As you’re probably aware, we place a high value on our giving back initiatives and the Make-A-Wish Foundation is an organization that we do most of our fundraisers for. After all of the ticket money was calculated  we ended up raising $650 for Make-A-Wish! It’s always a great feeling to give back to well-deserved organizations.

That wraps up this week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital. Thanks for reading and enjoy your weekend 🙂

The Geese of ABG Capital

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ABG Capital GeorgeIn one of our Just another Friday at ABG blog posts, we talked a little bit about the geese we have living in the front pond outside our office. This is the start of many posts that will walk you through the past, present and future of the Geese of ABG Capital.

When we moved to this building in July 2007, there was only a single goose living in the pond that we named George. We all thought he was a pretty cool guy, too! He never seemed to have a care in the world and just walked around looking for some attention. He reminded us of the kind of friend that everyone has who always wants to hang out and do nothing, while eating your food and drinking your beer. George stuck with us all through the summer and fall, but after he left for the winter, we never saw him again. We did, however, have a new set of geese grace our pond. Those two geese laid 6 eggs that spring and when they came back after winter, they had brought their mates back with them. That meant that we had 12 geese in our pond. When it came time for those 6 sets to have babies, it seemed as if they would take turns laying eggs because there was always just one nest. From this point on, their goose family grew just as much as our ABG Capital family did.

Now that you know a little bit of the history of these geese, we need to tell you about what it’s like when the babies start exploring their new home. It’s really an incredible site to see right outside our windows! You may know what to expect from watching it on the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet, but trust us when we say it’s a completely different experience watching it in person. They would all line up, the mother in the front, the father bringing up the end, and walk around the pond, the parking lot and the building. The parents were training them to stay within the parameters of their home and you could tell the babies were understanding their training. Every now and again we’d see a little one testing his boundaries and then retract when the mother started to notice.ABG Capital Baby Geese

Once the baby geese became familiar with their surroundings, it was time for them to start learning how to fly. This may be our favorite part of having the geese around the building. Seeing them learn to fly is just like you can imagine it; jump a little, *fall*, jump a little and flap the wings, *fall*, jump a little higher and flap a little harder, *SOAR*. Hopefully this year we can get videos of this to share with you!

Another adorable story that comes with watching these baby geese grow up is when they first see their reflections. It’s much like watching a baby look at himself in a mirror for the first time except instead of a mirror, the baby geese would use windows or bumpers. Once they saw their reflections they went a little crazy and even tried fighting with it!

We don’t want to share all of our stories with in you in one day, so check back next week for another post! We’ll tell you about the not so cute times we’ve had with these geese and some of these some of those stories are not pretty…

ABG Capital 1st Quarter in Review

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“With the close of the 1st quarter, all four of ABG Capital’s portfolio companies have contributed to another successful quarter that puts ABG Capital on its way to a record breaking year,” stated Jeff Tapolci, CEO of ABG Capital.

Scotch Friday Celebration

Scotch Friday Celebration

We’ve had so many exciting things happen during this year’s 1st quarter: business is booming, our companies are making huge names for themselves in their industries, we’re hiring great new people to our teams, and we’ve started expanding our office to keep up with the rapid growth. Overall, we couldn’t be happier with how we ended the 1st quarter and we’ve definitely set a great foundation for the 2nd quarter.

We’ll start by reviewing VoIP Innovations, our largest investment by far. They are a wholesale VoIP (voice over internet protocol) services provider who finished their best year ever in 2012 and they are positioned to have a stellar 2013.  This company’s revenue is up 27% from the 1st quarter in 2012 and they are positioned to have an overall better year in 2013 than they did in 2012. The company continues to enhance its current product offerings while constantly releasing new and updated features, functionalities, and products.

Its latest release is called Titanium Private Label platform (TPL).  TPL was designed as an option for VoIP resellers who do not have or want their own VoIP switch. When they purchase the TPL platform, those resellers can have the best of both worlds; the VoIP Innovations network and a VoIP solution without the need of a VoIP switch.  VoIP Innovations continues to create features, functionalities, and products to stay one step ahead of everyone else in the industry. They design their services based on what their customers want and what the market wants. Everything they do is designed to create a more user-friendly experience that keeps the customers coming back. As they continue to thrive in their industry, they are on their way to achieving their goal of being the industry’s largest wholesale provider of North American origination and termination.

“This company is where we are seeing tremendous growth,” said Tapolci.  “In an aggressive market such as telecommunications, VoIP Innovations has not only been able to contend with their competitors, but are among the leaders of their industry.”

GlobalPOPs, the industry’s largest aggregator of dial-up internet services, continues to actively acquire wholesale dial traffic, as well as end-users through its End User Services (EUS) nameplate. GlobalPOPs has just completed an expansion of their network to cover the vast majority of the Level 3 territory. In addition, EUS has rolled out new product lines centered on static IP addresses that has proven in the 1st quarter to be solving a problem in the market place. Though the world of dial-up internet service is consistently shrinking, GlobalPOPs and EUS are positioning themselves to be in the dial-up internet market for many more years.

We’ll start to bring this 1st quarter review to a close with Inspira, ABG Capital’s most recent venture. They have seen the biggest improvement out of all of the companies with a 40% increase in revenue from the 1st quarter in 2012.  They have added validity to their comprehensive IRA rollover and retirement plan termination services in the market. In addition, they have acquired Fortune 500 customers who are bringing in a steady flow of accounts on a weekly basis. Last year it was Inspira’s goal to focus on acquiring clients. This year, they are focusing on sales, sales, sales that will help them secure more clients.

Look out 2nd quarter, here we come!  “We’re extremely proud of where we are at this point in 2013, and we couldn’t have achieved this success without the astounding team we have in place,” said Tapolci. “It’s not every day that you can have profitable companies and keep the fun, family atmosphere that we have, especially to the point where you’re named one of the best places to work in the state. We’ve been blessed, that’s for sure.”

Now that 1st quarter has ended, we know that we can achieve even more triumphs by the end of the 2nd quarter. To give a better representation of how far we’ve already come from last year, take this into perspective; from our current standpoint, if we did nothing else for the rest of the year, we would close out 2013 in the same spot as we closed 2012. Remember, that’s if we did NOTHING. Obviously we’re not going to sit around and do nothing, so that means we’re expected to end 2013 with record breaking success.

Just another Friday at ABG

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This was a pretty good week for those of us at ABG Capital and we have some great things to share with you today. Let’s dive in!

Coffee is the staple of most people’s days, would you agree? It’s the first thing some people think of when they get up in the morning and some people can’t even function at work until they get their first cup. If someone messes with that routine, the rest of the world better watch out because it’s bound to get ugly. We take our coffee very seriously here at ABG and our routine was messed with… Can you imagine the kind of turmoil that caused? There were broken coffee cups, shattered computers, brawls, and there may have even been a few desk fires… All because we weren’t able to get our coffee in the morning.

Okay, so maybe that didn’t happen. We still had to go about half a day without coffee, but we warned people ahead of time so they could prepare themselves. The lack of morning coffee happened only because we switched our services from Laurel Food Systems to Old Time Coffee. We have a very specific way that we like our coffee; it’s bold, but not bitter and Old Time Coffee can deliver just that!

Today was also our Month End Meeting where we talked about our 1st quarter, welcomed new employees, and congratulated other employees. April 1st was the start of our 2nd quarter and we’ve officially closed our books. Things ended up looking pretty good for us and our portfolio companies and next week you can expect to see a press release and a blog post that go into detail about financials, products, and an overall review. We also welcomed our newest employee Jennifer William to the Inspira Family. Click here to read more her and her new position. As for the congratulations, we celebrated the 5 year anniversaries of Jerry Eddy and Nate Rupp. We hope to see you both stick with us for many more years to come!

Jerry Eddy and Jason Tapolci

Jerry Eddy and Jeff Tapolci

 

Nate Rupp and Jeff Tapolci

Nate Rupp and Jeff Tapolci

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also this week, Jeff Tapolci and Ron Eggert attended the Pittsburgh Enterprise Forum. This event featured a discussion panel with influential people and some of their executives. They shared some great stuff with Jeff and Ron!

Up next, we have new developments with our build-out project to share with you. We’ve been hearing the sounds of expansion this week! And by those sounds, we mean hammering, drilling and all of those other great construction sounds.  Unfortunately, the Inspira folks who are in the temporary space are getting the most of that noise. They can handle it though! Here are some pictures of what was accomplished this week!

ABG Capital Build out 1

ABG Capital Build out 2

ABG Capital Build out 3

Lately you’ve been hearing about our growth and about all of the new employees we’ve been hiring. One of the newest projects we’re starting to work on, is a new employee onboarding video. This is going to be a welcome video with a few key people in the company talking about who they are and what do at ABG Capital. We’ve started the recordings and it’s going great so far. We can’t wait until it’s all finished!

That’s all we have for you today, have a great weekend 🙂