Title:
The Dog Treat Company Changing Lives: Inside Wigglewow
Subtitle:
How Wigglewow’s Mark Peifer and Amie Schindler are turning can’ts into cans, creating meaningful employment, and changing lives one dog treat at a time.
Alycia Anderson: Welcome to Pushing Forward with Alycia, a podcast that gives disability a voice. Each week, we will explore topics like confidence, ambition, resilience, and finding success against all odds. We are creating a collective community that believes that all things are possible for all people. Open hearts, clear paths, let’s go.
Alycia Anderson: Welcome back to Pushing Forward with Alycia. It’s Alycia and Marty today leading the charge on this interview. Marty, thanks for sitting in on this today with me. Welcome back.
Marty Anderson: Awesome. I can’t wait. Thanks for having me. This is such a special treat to be co-host today.
Alycia Anderson: I know. We have a pretty fun and exciting and interesting, show today, and I wanna start with a question. What if changing the way that we think about disability could start with something as simple as a dog treat? Today’s guests, Mark Pfeiffer and Amie Schindler, are the founder and the vice president of Wigglewow dog treats, a company with a pretty delicious mission, if I say so for myself. It’s creating meaningful employment, purpose, and belonging for adults with disabilities while making gourmet treats that all of our dogs, especially my Milo, cannot get enough of. But Wigglewow has grown into something much bigger than treats. There is so many opportunities about building community, opportunity, employment, and it’s about giving their epic chefs the chance to show the world what they can do. Welcome to the show. I’m so excited to hear your beautiful story.
Mark Pfeifer: Thanks for having us.
Amie Schindler: Yes.
Alycia Anderson: Okay, so I think if we can, we need to start from the beginning. We need to look in the rear view mirror a little bit and what was the mission? Like, where did this start where you came up with this idea to start to make these delicious gourmet dog treats that turned into this beautiful business that is employing people with disabilities? Where did this whole thing begin? I think for both of you. Give us a little backstory.
Mark Pfeifer: So for me, it started in April 2014. So I know some of our viewers probably haven’t even been born yet at that point. But anyway, so it was a ways back. My brother was talking to me from the Philippines via Skype, and he challenged me to quit corporate America and start a company that provides purpose for adults with special needs. ‘Cause his son, my nephew, Soren has about a 200-word vocabulary, very far on the spectrum with autism. And though it kinda caught me off guard. And fast-forward several different renditions, and I’m gonna get bored with all the details, but, God gave us enough wisdom to figure out that hey, we’re gonna do something with dog treats. So after he put that on my brain, the second thought he put in there is if you don’t have a recipe that dogs absolutely destroy, you’re not gonna employ many people with special needs. So I actually worked on the recipe, and we came up with what we call the Wigglewow Challenge. I used to work at GE Appliance Park, and so we would do blind comparisons where you take all the branding off of appliances, pay women to come in and choose which appliance they would buy based on the features, right? I’m like, “How can I apply that to the dog treat world?” So I found 50 of my peers that gave their dogs treats every single day and swore that the treats they gave them at home were their favorites hands down. And I said, “Here’s the deal. You’re gonna put that treat in the palm of your hand. Let your dog sniff it,” because it’s gonna try to eat it.
Mark Pfeifer: That’s a treat it normally gets. You cover it up, turn it over, let him sniff it again. They know their treat’s in this hand. You’re gonna put my latest recipe in the other hand, do the exact same thing. Make him sit there, so one dog at a time. Take a big step back, hold your hands far apart so they don’t confuse the smells. Put your fist at the dog’s nose level when it walks, and you let the dog choose and tell you if they could buy their own treats, would they buy the ones that you have at home you think are their favorite, or would they buy this new recipe from Mark Pfeiffer? So I told my boss then, ’cause I made really good money back then, I said, “Hey, as soon as 45 or more dogs out of 50 pick my recipe, I’m quitting.” And her name’s Jennifer, she goes, “You are never gonna walk away from this salary.” And I go, “You, Jennifer, obviously have never been on a mission from God.” I felt like Dan Aykroyd, and yeah, the first time I did it, only seven out of 50 picked my recipe. I was like, “All right, God, toss me a bone.
Mark Pfeifer: I suck at this. I need to figure it out.” But two years and three months later, 47 out of 50 dogs picked our recipe. We started August 10th, 2019, with our first employee, Dante, and we now are impacting 50 families across the board doing all kinds of things. So I’ll turn it over to Amie.
Alycia Anderson: That’s incredible, by the way.
Marty Anderson: That’s amazing. Yeah.
Amie Schindler: My story is very different. I am a parent and actually while Brayden was in high school we often talk about as parents that we know after high school there are not a lot of opportunities. And however, we do have some matches because God laid it on my heart, I thought I would employ adults with special needs in Southern Indiana.
Amie Schindler: So we live about 35 minutes from Wigglewow. And, I had already traveled to another state to see someone else who was employing adults with special needs, and time had kinda went on and my daughter actually came home from a festival that I’m sure Mark is so glad that he met me. And God just had a different plan.
Amie Schindler: We have joined forces. But I really just wanted to go over and see it at work, and also to be able to just share it with the community. We hear it every day how people haven’t heard of what we do. He had said there’s a lot of things we’re not doing.” And I asked, and he said we aren’t doing any marketing.”
Amie Schindler: And that’s when I’ve kinda felt like the tap. And I said I have a marketing degree. I don’t know if you know that.” And before the end of it, that was kinda how it started. And then just some other things I would not say coincidentally happened, but Brayden had a job at that time three minutes from our home, and it was outsourced about five days later, and he no longer had a job. So that’s kinda how we ended up here, but the vision was just trying to create an opportunity that really isn’t out there, and to not really put limits on it.
Alycia Anderson: I love that. Create opportunities that aren’t out there and not put limits on it, and I think that second piece of the pie is pretty important to be lifting up, is that the limitations that are placed on people with really any type of disability in the workforce is significant.
Alycia Anderson: A lot of times led by assumptions and unknowns.
Alycia Anderson: So I love that you are going in with those open minds, open hearts, and opportunity that kind of innovate, I’m assuming the positions to allow them to work for the employee. Talk about that a little bit.
Amie Schindler: Today we actually had someone come in for a tour in a wheelchair, and that was one of the things that they immediately said, “Most people see the wheelchair first.” And I was like, “Wow.” You kinda forget about that, but that’s true. People see the disability first. And I would say that I have a one-liner that I’ve been using lately is, we turn can’ts into cans. They often sometimes will even say, “I can’t do this.” And I say we’re gonna try.” So we’re always trying to put them in a place that works for them so that their confidence is built, but then also to say, “When you complete this job, let’s try something different today.” And most of them will say absolutely, but some are a little hesitant because maybe they’ve never done that before. But we celebrate everything, whether you can put a glove on by yourself, whether you tie a bag and maybe you have never tied your shoes before or maybe you got to work in the kitchen today, and maybe you’ve never made anything in a kitchen before.
Amie Schindler: So it’s really neat to see, but their confidence is what’s really neat to see.
Alycia Anderson: I love that you turn can’ts into cans, and what you just said was sometimes your employees will come in and say, “I cannot do that.” Because we, as people with disabilities, start to believe the narratives that we hear before we even try. And so to have leadership, you all challenging that shifts employee confidence, like you just said, leaps and bounds, right?
Alycia Anderson: So, I think that is a really beautiful way to lead in.
Marty Anderson: I love this story starting off this way. It has so many wrinkles that relate to our audience and the people that we serve with having the purpose and the opportunity for the service almost feeling called on. I love that. And with also the energy that it takes to take that leap and start something new from scratch and how it’s related to the disability world and community and serving those needs ofemployment and bringing this whole thing into a conglomeration that just beautifully sits, all together.
Marty Anderson: So kudos to you guys and, I can’t wait to hear some more.
Mark Pfeifer: So something else I find most typical small businesses try or attempt when hiring our population, right? They… Let’s say they have four different jobs opportunities. They’ll let the potential employee try job one. “Oh, you can’t do that.” Okay, we’ll try job two. And they just look whether it’s pass or fail. When someone comes in and we have them try different stations, I’m analyzing why is it that they can’t be successful? Can we add a job aid? Can we have someone help them? Do they need a fixture? What is it that sets them up for success? Because God gives us all abilities, right?
Mark Pfeifer: They just may look different. So how can we incorporate those to set them up for success? Because we also all want to have a purpose.
Alycia Anderson: Yeah.
Mark Pfeifer: And once you give someone that purpose, look out, it is life changing.
Mark Pfeifer: We see that all the time, and our kitchen’s called The Doghouse.
Marty Anderson: Marty probably likes to stay out of the doghouse.I love to stay out of the doghouse, that’s for sure. But, I also just wanna throw out there that this is amazing. We’ve touched autism and cognitive disabilities throughout our careers. We’ve worked with The Arc. We’ve had Anthony Kennedy Shriver and Best Buddies on.
Marty Anderson: We’ve worked with Pride Industries, some of the largest leading employers of people that you’re serving here. But the beauty of it is, is there’s so many different things they can do, and this just proves again that anything is possible. I just love the opportunity that’s out there, and that’s continuing to grow.
Alycia Anderson: Let’s talk about that. So let’s talk about The Epic Chef. Can you introduce like what your crew is doing, what they’re bringing to the table, what some of the roles are, and maybe dive into the doghouse a little bit more? Give us a visual.
Mark Pfeifer: Okay. Yeah, so the Epic Chef does everything, right? And that’s why we love people coming into The Doghouse because I think most people’s perceptions are all they do is seal the bag or all they do is put a label on the bag. No, from the time we’re unloading bacon and eggs, we grind up our bacon.
Mark Pfeifer: So we have a commercial grinder that our Epic Grinder dude, that would be McGregor, he goes by Mack, he’s our Epic Grinder dude. Every Tuesday morning, he grinds 100 pounds of bacon for us to use all week long. And so they take the, all the raw ingredients. We have five ingredients. It’s oat flour, because most dogs are allergic to corn, wheat, or chicken; bacon, because who doesn’t like bacon.
Mark Pfeifer: Come on.
Marty Anderson: Oh yeah.
Mark Pfeifer: Eggs, a little bit of salt, vitamin E, and our staff says lots of love. So they start with those five ingredients, throw it into a commercial mixer. It mixes for a while. They pull out a seven pound ball of dough, smash it down in an aluminum pan. It then goes into a dough sheeter. It makes it a consistent thickness that FHS then can then hand cut all of our different treats. They then get placed into a pan. It gets put in a staging rack. So once we have six pans, then those six pans go in an oven. We have three different ovens. They can hold six pans at a time. Once they’re done being cooked, they go into a drying rack so that they can cool. Then they go into sealed containers that are still in the kitchen waiting for the next operation. And the next operation is either to be bagged as bulk treats that don’t get decorated with our dog friendly icing, or they actually go into our prep area where they paint the background color of our decorated treats. Once those dry overnight, then those painted treats go into our decorating room, where we have more people do the final layer of decorating, and we even do custom treats for people that want their own logo on treats or whatever, especially like at the holidays.
Mark Pfeifer: A lot of our customers love giving gift baskets out to their customers. And 80% of people have dogs, so it’s a sure bet, to have your logo put on some dog treats. You just gotta make sure that people understand that they’re dog treats, because they look like really good cookies. The great news is they’re not harmful at all to humans, ’cause it’s everything we’ve had for breakfast except maybe the vitamin E. But it’s gonna be very dry, and you’ll want a chaser of water or something to help wash it down.
Mark Pfeifer: I love it. They literally helped through everything.
Amie Schindler: I mean they carried in 50 pound bags of oat flour this morning, so.
Mark Pfeifer: 1500 pounds on it. Yep.
Alycia Anderson: And you know what? Way to go to make a dog treat that’s healthy for our little guys too. You know what I mean? I love that. So this is incredible and did you say that you have 50 employees currently?
Mark Pfeifer: So 31 Epic chefs work in the Doghouse. Amie had the great idea of let’s expand it because we’ve had so many people on the waiting list so long, as everyone probably understands, once someone with a special need gets a job opportunity, right? They’re not leaving. It just doesn’t happen, right? Unless they get deathly ill or reach a point where they can’t work anymore, they’re not gonna.
Mark Pfeifer: Especially if you ever see any videos of… We have an, a great time at work. We’re always joking, cutting up, whatever, and we are still very productive. People love our work environment. So it’s, yeah.
Marty Anderson: How big of a shop is the Wigglewow shop?
Amie Schindler: Not big enough.
Marty Anderson: How many square feet?
Mark Pfeifer: Yeah it’s only 1500 square feet?
Mark Pfeifer: And we’re in the process of trying to purchase the building because the back 1500 square feet needs some major love and renovation. But we have a vision to actually blow that out the back make that all manufacturing on the first floor.
Mark Pfeifer: Because of where we’re zoned we can put three stories total on there, so we wanna add two more stories. The second story will have a conference room and some other rooms and stuff but then the third story’s gonna have several more single bedroom apartments and a double bedroom apartment cause one of our junior managers who’d be like a resident assistant in a dorm for our Epic chefs that are living somewhat independently within our own facility.
Mark Pfeifer: And that’s gonna be kind of a microcosm of what we’ll probably talk about here in the near future what our true vision is expanding beyond just Dog treats.
Marty Anderson: Wow, that’s awesome.
Alycia Anderson: Let’s talk about that a little bit ’cause you dripped it a little bit before we started the conversation. What is the future vision of this beautiful not only employment opportunity that you’re building, but it feels like a movement.
Alycia Anderson: What is the North Star? What are you dreaming up? What’s coming?
Mark Pfeifer: So let’s talk about why.
Alycia Anderson: Okay, talk about why.
Mark Pfeifer: Is the percent of people with special needs, do we find that it’s increasing or decreasing in the world?
Marty Anderson: Oh, it’s definitely increasing.
Amie Schindler: Absolutely.
Mark Pfeifer: And what’s being done about it?
Marty Anderson: There hasn’t been a lot done about it, and that’s why we continue to keep pushing forward with bringing great conversations like this to the table.
Mark Pfeifer: Yeah. And so we’re sick of waiting too and, so this isn’t meant to be a slam, so I hope no one takes it that way, but there’s a lot of nationwide organizations of our population that focus on streamlining our population into normal neighborhoods. Normal with quotes, right? And what I would say is I’m an old guy for those that can’t see me, and so born in ’65, so when I went to school there was a special education class.
Mark Pfeifer: You might see them at lunch, see them at recess, but after we graduated from high school you never saw them out in public. So we’ve made great strides as a culture of accepting our population, right? Because we realize they have the same wants and desires that we all do. But what still hasn’t changed is they’re still not fully accepted, and I would give you an example by just take any business that has hired one or two individuals with special needs, the staff loves on them at work and everything, they’re a great part of the team. Any time the team gets together outside of work to go have a drink, to go party or whatever, do they invite the person with special needs? And 95% of the time the answer’s no. So they end up hanging out with their same friends whether it’s Special Olympics, whether it’s from their day program, whatever, because that’s where they’re accepted, right?
Mark Pfeifer: Because we all wanna be where we’re accepted. I’m sick of waiting for that. So when we applied for our nonprofit, we started back in 2023… Yes, I’m pretty slow, sorry. But not only do we … Most nonprofits make the mistake of applying for a very narrowed scope for the IRS to approve. We asked for the world.
Amie Schindler: Go big or go home.
Alycia Anderson: There you go
Mark Pfeifer: That’s right. And then the cool thing is ’cause we’ve already had three years of experience working with different families to find out what are all the needs, right? So one of the needs is, okay, parents are concerned about what’s gonna happen to my son or daughter when I’m gone?
Mark Pfeifer: When I die? What can we do about that as a company, right? Another one is what’s their living environment gonna be like? Where are they gonna stay? Is it gonna be safe? This is my son or daughter. How do I make sure that I’m not setting up for failure? No one knows them like I do.
Alycia Anderson: Very good.
Mark Pfeifer: Right? And so these are all things we want to keep in mind when we were applying for our nonprofit.
Mark Pfeifer: So what we did is we applied for dog treats. When I originally launched this back in start of 2014 I designed a dog facility that does everything dog related under one roof. ‘Cause as a dog owner you have to go one place to be groomed, you have to take them some other place if you want a professional photographer, if you want a trainer, if you want vet services or if you have a kennel.
Mark Pfeifer: Normally… i’m not aware of one place that offers everything dog related. We wanna open that facility and it has the capacity of 375 to 400 dogs as a kennel, we’ll be able to employ hundred people with special needs. Most of them will get paid to play with dogs. if you ask 100 of our population, 85, 85% of them would tell you they wanna do something with animals. and so we just
Mark Pfeifer: think that’s a great fit. So when we applied for the IRS nonprofit, we included that and we’re like “You know what? Why don’t we also apply for the approval to build subdivisions that are attached to that dog facility where… That will have everything except the hospital?”
Mark Pfeifer: And we don’t want it to just be a subdivision that gives anyone access, we want it gated, we want it guarded so that the predators are kept out. You’re not allowed in unless you’re on the guest list. And any business that’s gonna be in our subdivision has to be willing to hire at least one individual from our population so that we can prove to the world that they are capable of doing all this. Otherwise, we’re not going support your business You can be outside our walls.
Amie Schindler: That’s right.
Mark Pfeifer: The IRS approved it all.
Alycia Anderson: Wow.
Mark Pfeifer: How epic is that? yeah!
Alycia Anderson: Amazing.
Marty Anderson: Amazing.
Amie Schindler: It’s going to be the happiest place on Earth.
Mark Pfeifer: Oh it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be crazy ’cause there’s gonna be a swimming pool, there’ll be a movie theater, there’ll be a rec center, there’ll be a central kitchen for people to get make their own meals. There’ll be different levels of housing support like a retirement community. There’ll be like groups of apartments with RAs.
Marty Anderson: That’s a well-thought-out plan, Mark, and I love the comprehensiveness of the idea and dreaming big like, Amie said, Go big or go home.” That’s amazing. So tell us about how, the nonprofit has been, doing on its fundraising. What kind of tools are you guys using for your outreach?
Marty Anderson: I see that you’re putting on a golf tournament.
Marty Anderson: We love adaptive sports, so we’d love to hear about that as well.
Mark Pfeifer: So whatwould tell you is that we finally got approval. The IRS is not very fast at approving 501[c][3] applications.
Mark Pfeifer: I hope I’m not hurting anyone else’s feelings, but they’re just not real quick about it . So when we finally got approved, they’re like, “Oh, any donations you had for the last two years are now deductible.” Like I was gonna ask for a donation saying, ‘ Well, we hope we get approved as a nonprofit.'”
Mark Pfeifer: So when we finally got approved last year, honestly Amie and I have zero experience when it comes to applying for grants, leveraging the different opportunities that are out there for our population. There’s tons of them. One of the things that frustrated me when I first started Wigglewow was that all these businesses, I call them headhunters for our population that find them employment, word travels fast, and when people found out about this new dog treat company that was hiring our population, oh my gosh, people were knocking down my door.
Mark Pfeifer: Voc Rehab was calling me asking me questions, “What’s their title?” They said, “Epic Chef.” And they’re like that’s not in my system.” I said you better add it.” They’re like, “What?” I go, “There’s gonna be a bunch of them, so you might as well add it to your system.” And so the, the guy in charge of the state of Kentucky actually came and visited us, got a tour, and he goes ” You’re considered an enclave.” And I said, “Okay. Is that a bad thing?” He goes only two positions really qualify to get funding from Voc Rehab.” Because what was happening before that happened, anyone that found employment at Wigglewow that prepped them to work in our company, they got a total of $21,000 if the person stayed employed 90 days.
Alycia Anderson: Wow.
Mark Pfeifer: And, I was like, wow, all these other people are getting 21,000 and we’re the ones employing them. And again, they really didn’t do anything to prepare them working for Wigglewow because Wigglewow is very unique, right? I’m sure they didn’t teach them how to cut dog treats out, but so anyway, so. We didn’t have much experience with that part of the nonprofit and so Amie is very, motivated.She’s like, “Oh, we’re gonna sign up for a fundraiser. We’re gonna do our first fundraiser. We’re gonna get over 300 people there,” and I’m like, “Oh Lord, we’re in trouble.” We’re gonna go bankrupt with our first fundraiser. Let’s see how this goes. And I will actually … quote, our goal was after having our first fundraiser; we didn’t want people to walk away going, you know it was only their first one” and so that was our goal. So I will actually let Amie take over because she truly heads up our fundraising opportunities for Wigglewow.
Amie Schindler: I love it. I really just came to the board and said, “One, we’re gonna do this really quickly,” because we really wanted to separate that lot immediately from our for profit and our nonprofit. And, I just kinda went to the board and said, we’re different, and, I want our fundraiser to be different.”
Amie Schindler: So when I went to the board to start our fundraiser, I really just wanted to build a picture that Wigglewow is different, and I wanted us to be different, and I wanted our fundraiser to be different. I didn’t want people just to hear about what we did. I wanted them to experience what we experience every single day. And the reality is, our epic chefs are the stars of the show, and they were gonna be the star of the show. Like Mark said, I like to go big or go home, and I said, ” I think we can get 350 people in this room.” That was at capacity, and they did definitely give me a little bit of she’s crazy.” And that’s okay. Most people say that. So it just makes me push a little bit harder. But proudly, we had 328 people in the room that night. We had 42 tables, and 35, I believe, of those tables had an epic chef seated at the table. They were a part of that night, whether they greeted, whether they … We had an epic chef whom when she started in the Doghouse literally stood behind her mom, and we would tell her to yell at us because she talked so quietly. But again, her confidence built as she was there, and obviously she got comfortable. She wrote a song that we didn’t even know about until she shared with us about the fundraiser, and I looked at her and I said, “Would you be willing to sing the song at the fundraiser?” And she said, ” I’ve been manifesting that.” And she got up in front of the room and sang in front of basically 350 people, and it really just kicked off the night. And if you go on our website, you’ll get a small glimpse of inside the Doghouse with part of her song. So if you wanna go listen to it, you can, and it’s called Welcome to Wigglewow, and that’s really what we wanted to do.
Amie Schindler: We wanted to introduce people to it. So it was a wonderful evening, and we raised well over $115,000 on our first fundraiser.
Alycia Anderson: Okay, so that is an amazing story, number one. Number two, I love the song story, like enough confidence to get up and showcase.
Amie Schindler: Ya.
Alycia Anderson: We have a lot of corporate exposure on this podcast. We’re gonna leave all of your information in our show notes for people to link and go support.
Alycia Anderson: But give us your elevator pitch on how to support you and donate to your nonprofit and all the amazing things that you’re doing.
Mark Pfeifer: So yeah, so I would say you can go to our website and there’s a donation block there. So any fundraisers we have you can always be there. My phone number’s plastered everywhere, my mistake. And so you can reach out to me personally.
Mark Pfeifer: I may not be answer right away, but if you leave a message, I promise I will get back to you because we know there are people that God has blessed financially, and they’re just looking for opportunities to make a difference in either their son or daughter, even their own lives, creating opportunities versus all the barriers that exist, and that’s what we want as well.
Mark Pfeifer: We’re not just gonna do one neighborhood. We’re gonna be all across the country, because this is what is needed everywhere. It’s not just Louisville, Kentucky. We even have an opportunity where we want to help rural areas raise chickens because we go through 175 eggs a day So we’ll be able to employ people with special needs in rural areas. Wigglewow is gonna buy the chickens for these farms so that there’s gonna be four or five people with special needs that are gonna be collecting 300 eggs a day so that we can use them in our treats.
Alycia Anderson: So think that you are creating an incredible example for companies out there to start to understand how to think bigger from an employee pool standpoint and capabilities. And so I think there’s a lot of companies out there saying, and have good intention of, “I wanna hire more people with disabilities.” But they don’t know how to move that forward in an intentional way that are hiring people, like you just said, that never leave after they receive the job. So can you give some advice to any organizations that are out there of how to do this better, with better intention? Whatever comes to mind, ’cause I think this would be really helpful for people listening.
Amie Schindler: I would say not only that, they also will probably be the people who will be at work sick, not sick. They will not take days off. You’re sometimes gonna have to tell them not to come in. These are people who are so enthusiastic about work and will show up. And I would say that today’s work employment is not necessarily like that.
Amie Schindler: It used to be. I think that my dad was probably like that. I think the other thing for people to think about is, a lot of times we just do things. The school is the same way, right? We have what’s called an IEP as a parent for our child, and that’s really almost the same thing for employment, right? Instead of it just being you’re trying to put a circle inside of a circle, that’s not really how it works.
Amie Schindler: And a lot of times they’re busy. So it’s not to say that every job is always available, but I promise you there is an opportunity, and that’s really what we say. We always say, “God created Wigglewow to show the world what they can do,” and it’s more about how can we show an employer how this can be done?
Amie Schindler: Because it’s not all about everybody only working at Wigglewow. It’s how can we give them opportunities? They all want to do different things just like us. We don’t all want to be a doctor. We do not all want to be an attorney. So why don’t we have all of these different opportunities out there? So I think it’s really being able to learn and sit down and really focus on that, and it’s almost like you’re trying to take someone and find their strength and see where that fits within your company or within. Mark, do you wanna add in on that?
Mark Pfeifer: So one of the things that I want employers to understand upfront that parents are gonna be most concerned about is it’s funny that parents are real concerned about their son or daughter losing their SSI, their Social Security benefit. That’s because they don’t understand the math behind it. If they lose 100% of their social security benefit, their son or daughter actually is making more money by not getting it than they would if they were sitting at home and getting it. And so I guess the easy way to explain it is, let’s say the cap’s at $100. So once I start making more than $100 as an individual with special needs on Social Security, every dollar I make above $100, my Social Security is going to decrease 50 cents. I’m still 50 cents ahead. So if I’m 50 cents ahead on $1, take that times $100, look how much more you’re ahead now, right? And so the other thing that’s real crucial for business owners to understand is ’cause a lot of times you’ll put the individual special needs qualifications from Medicaid at risk. No one wants to lose their health benefits that’s on disability. And so the key behind that is each state normally has some type of trust or some tool for an individual with special needs that you can have created for that individual, and what your employer does is they pay directly to that tool and not to the individual, and this all perfectly legal. And that way it doesn’t risk their impact on Medicaid at all. So it allows them to accrue more than the silly $2,000 limit that we currently have, right? So they can have much more than that, and if something ever happens with the individual, it can be earmarked to be passed on to another family member versus an ABLE account that goes back to the state.
Mark Pfeifer: So, that’s, just something else that’s very critical for employers to know is because yes like Amie said, they’re gonna give 100% of whatever ability they have. They’re gonna show up to work maybe sometimes even when they shouldn’t. As an employer you also need to make sure you don’t jeopardize their long term medical care when you think you’re doing a great job because you’re paying them more than what they might make somewhere else.
Mark Pfeifer: Is that fair?
Marty Anderson: That’s awesome, Mark. You really stole my question before I even got to ask it. But there is a little more to it. So there is this fine dance between what your, medical needs are and all of your benefits and this employment. But now I wanna talk about do you have the 401k matching?
Marty Anderson: What do our retirement plans look like? Do we get the paid days off? Tell me how good you’re treating your employees. So we, so full transparency as a nonprofit we’re staying afloat barely without any extra benefits, but we have just started figuring out the whole grant writing stuff. And so that is all in plans for the future. So they will have their matching. They will have paid days off all that kinds of stuff.
Alycia Anderson: I think you have a lot of big plans for the future. And congratulations on just getting all of this up off the ground and offering so many opportunities that weren’t there prior. And more importantly, maybe creating a model that other organizations will be able to follow, Think that’s a really big deal too, to have more guideposts for other organizations to start thinking outside of the box.
Alycia Anderson: So well done. I feel like we could talk forever.
Marty Anderson: Yeah, I just wanna say thank you too for broadening the conversation and bringing these types of questions to the table, because this is what we need more of in our community. We need to be thinking more opportunities than less and how do we create those opportunities and bring more great products to the table along with it?
Alycia Anderson: Okay, so I warned you, we’re wrapping up. Did we miss anything that’s monumental?
Mark Pfeifer: There’s one thing I’d like to add. If you ask any parent of a special needs individual what their number one concern is, if they’re totally transparent with you, they would all tell you, “Who’s gonna take care of my son or daughter when I die?” And so we spent the first five years of our business putting together a model where we truly have QR codes that show how to do every single aspect of putting a tablecloth on the table, how you put the banner up, how you put the tent up. Every aspect of selling Wigglewow treats is available to see from our YouTube channel that’s private. And so we are helping families all across America start their own for-profit business so that they can start selling Wigglewow dog treats. And I know it sounds ridiculous, but we’ve started four partnerships so far. We don’t want a kickback every month based on what you sell; we want you to keep it all. And, of the four that we started, two of them with their very first event, one day event, cleared more than $1,000 profit. And I had one mom tell me as she was sobbing after she, I told her how much she had made. She goes, “I’ve been busting my butt as a single mom my son’s entire life trying to make ends meet. I have never made $1,000 in one day. We just spent the last eight hours autographing bags, having a great time telling this story, andnow you’re telling me we just made $1,000. Thanks for this opportunity.” So that is one thing I think is So we can help people all across America help provide for their son or daughter after they’re gone.
Mark Pfeifer: ‘Cause we’ll get that up and running, it’ll reach a point where you’ll need to put that into a trust, then you identify an executor to take care of that, and the profit from that going forward will still care for them.
Alycia Anderson: Amazing. Amazing. Congratulations. We’re gonna leave all the links in the show notes for everybody to get involved. We’re gonna wrap up the show with a pushing forward moment. I see Mark getting ready with his shirt. So you each get a little pushing forward moment to motivate our listeners on their way out. Mark you’re up.
Mark Pfeifer: All right. I encourage us all to be epic. And you might think what does EPIC stand for?” It is what all of you are. You are exceptional people influencing change. Do that. Be, step out and be bold about it.
Alycia Anderson: What about you Aimee? Beautiful.
Amie Schindler: I really stick with mine. I’m all about the we turn can’ts into cans, and I love seeing it, whether it’s proving to our staff to themselves or also to their parents. ‘Cause often, and I’m surprised didn’t come up out of Mark today, that sometimes the parents are the ones that we sometimes have to convince. And I am a parent, and there are times where I might even think it about my own just because I know a lot. But the reality is they’re in a different environment, working with their peers and doing something, and they’re getting these boosts of confidence, so why would we tell them that they can’t when we can really try and see?
Amie Schindler: So just to see the pride in all that they learn and what they take away from it, it truly changes their life, and it’s really fun to be a part of.
Alycia Anderson: Turning cant’s into cans and be epic. And y’all are epic. Thank you so much for everything that you’re doing for our community and our world. This has been such a beautiful conversation and hopefully relationships and friendships that will continue to grow. We wanna always support what you’re doing.
Alycia Anderson: So whatever we can do on our end to do that, we would love it, and just thank you so much for your time. Marty, thank you for joining. This has been an amazing epic episode of Pushing Forward with Alycia, Mark, Amie, and Marty, and that is how we roll on this podcast. We will see you next week.
