Worst SBIR budgeting MISTAKE I've seen in $2 Million SBIR grants

And there's a big mistake that all founders are making, and I hope you're not doing this as well. But are you making up your salary number when you prepare your SBIR budgets? Please tell me you're not doing that because I've seen this one mistake tank so many applications. Here's what people mostly do. They want to make $2,000 as a salary on this project, and then they write that down their application. But that's not how it works when you budget your salaries for SBIR grants. Your salary isn't based on what you want. It's based on what you can define. So here's actually how you give yourself a salary and put yourself In the SBIR budget. Step 1, go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and that's a publicly accessible website. First, find your role, your location, and then find your rate, and then hit that to the median percentile with someone of your right expertise. That's your anchor of your hourly rate that you can include in your SBIR application, and that's completely defensible. Second, calculate your salary based on the total effort that you plan to pursue in your SBIR grant and use that rate you found on the BSL data sheets. To do so is your hourly rate. times the actual time and level effort required you propose to pursue in your SBIR grant. Now, if you throw in a super high number for your salary because it sounds good and that's a salary you want, reviewers might notice this. And then if they question it, you open a can of worms, your budget might get cut, and then you're gonna lose credibility as a PI. And we don't want that. Now, if you genuinely need a higher salary for your SBIR efforts, There are ways around it. You have 2 options here. First, you need a rock-solid justification and with comparable data to back up the higher salary rate. Or you can just cost share the difference yourself with another funding source. Because in the world of federal grants and contracts like SBIRs, you don't get paid for what you want. You get paid for what you can justify with the data. And by the way, for these SBIR grants, these grant salary caps Only limit what the grant can pay you. And this is not including your entire compensation that can come from additional sources. For instance, the NSF SBIR program expects PIs to commit at least 1 month of effort for every 6 months of an application. So the next time you go after an SBIR grant and you're figuring out, how do I get myself a salary? Make sure you can back your salary numbers based on the reality, not just wishful thinking. And that's how you get your salary approved in your SBIR grant. If you're looking for more content like this, To learn how to secure more non-dilutive funding through SBIR grants for your deep tech startup, make sure you follow this channel and send this to a founder also looking for non-dilutive funding help. And that way you both can learn how to keep your equity throughout your fundraising journey.