UWISE.BIZ provides a unique menu of services to help individuals--especially those with disabilities--take the steps necessary to assess, research, plan, start, and operate their businesses successfully. 

Our customers for self-employment services are generally entities with funds to assist eligible individuals explore and pursue self-employment. These entities can authorize our services for their clients as third-party payors. We are approved vendors for the Utah State Office of Rehabilitation and the Utah Department of Workforce Services. We also serve private-pay prospective entrepreneurs.

Each of the services we offer was specifically designed to provide types of help that are not available via other resources such as the Small Business Administration, Small Business Development Centers, SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives), the Women's Business Center, etc. For example, many of those we've assisted have received good information through consultations or have taken courses from one or more of these traditional business experts, but had difficulty translating that information into the business planning process for their own business. The step-by-step, one-on-one method we developed in 2005 has been working ever since to take the mystery out the business research and planning process for prospective business owners, as well as other service providers, families, or team members they may be working with. We help them drill down into the specifics of their business idea and assist them to focus on, tackle the research, be realistic about feasibility, "test drive" their business, and write a business plan that meets the needs of any financing entity they want to approach.

For prospective entrepreneurs with disabilities who receive Social Security Disability Insurance or Supplemental Security Income, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, housing assistance, veterans benefits, and/or Workers Compensation, UWISE.BIZ provides invaluable help with benefits planning based on self-employment program rules. These benefits can help in important ways to support the individual until their business becomes profitable enough that they no longer need to receive them. However, losing benefits accidentally, prematurely can doom a business to failure or worse. Our benefits planning service is, once again, designed to fill a gap.

In addition to one-on-one services to individuals, we offer consultation, policy research, and training to agencies and organizations that serve people with disabilities to help enhance their abilities to work effectively with their clients and consumers involved with self-employment. We understand that, while self-employment is an important type of employment and holds great promise for some, assisting and supporting individuals with a self-employment requires a different knowledge and skill base than for a wage job. Most entities that serve people with disabilities don't tend to have business experts on staff to investigate pertinent questions, solve policy problems, and so on. Agency personnel often haven't received much if any systematic training on self-employment. We can provide ways to bridge those gaps. 

Please look around in our website to learn more about the services we offer―to both individuals and agencies--our experience and qualifications, how we make these services available, whom we collaborate with, and more.

Please don't leave without visiting The Mall, a web-based opportunity for entrepreneurs with disabilities to make their businesses known, especially to people who would like to support local Utah businesses owned by people with disabilities.