I ran a business for a decade and never once wrote down what "enough" meant. Not until after I'd already sold it.
It wasn't carelessness. There was always a nearer, louder milestone. Get through this quarter. Land this client. Get the numbers right for this valuation conversation. Enough is not that kind of question. It doesn't have a deadline attached, so it never got one.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, I also learned how business valuation actually works, which turned out to matter more than I expected. Most people assume there's a formula. Revenue times a multiple, apply the going rate for the sector, done. There's a starting point, and then there's the actual deal, and the gap between the two is bigger than most owners expect.
EBITDA gets you a range. Three times, four times, five times, depending on sector and size. That gets you in the room. It does not decide what you walk away with. What decides that is everything negotiated after the multiple is agreed. Whether it's a share sale or a trade and asset deal. What gets treated as a completion deduction and what doesn't. Whether you're paid on completion or the payment is staged, and how comfortable you are carrying that risk versus taking less money sooner.
I went through all of it. The multiple got me a range. The negotiation is what actually decided the outcome, and most of that had nothing to do with EBITDA at all.
Here's why that gap matters more right now than it did even a year ago. Business Asset Disposal Relief, the main tax break for owners selling up, went from 14% to 18% back in April. Still meaningfully better than the standard rate, but the direction of travel is clear, and it's one more reason "I'll sort the exit properly when I'm actually exiting" doesn't hold up. The tax environment moves. The valuation conversation is complicated enough without adding time pressure to it.
None of that answers the actual question, though. Enough isn't a valuation multiple, and it isn't a tax rate. It's the number that means money stops driving the decision and starts serving it instead. I could have told you my valuation range to the pound. I couldn't have told you what "enough" meant for years after the deal was done.
If you're heading toward a sale, already sitting on one, or just quietly aware you've never actually written the number down, that gap is the thing worth closing first. The Poreia Clarity Framework pulls your full financial picture together, business or otherwise, and gives you three clear things to look at first. Free, about 20 minutes, no sales call.
I've also just published four new posts on the site walking through the actual numbers behind retiring at 40, 50, 55, and 65 in the UK, the bridge years, the pension access timing, what most people miss. Worth a look if any of those ages are on your horizon.