Pre-sale advisory for owner-led companies
The sale takes months.The full multipleis built years before.
Strengthen what buyers will value. Address what they may use to negotiate.
Full Multiple Advisory helps owners and CEOs identify, prioritize, and address the risks and value drivers most likely to affect buyer confidence, price, terms, and closing certainty. The value to you: a healthier, more transferable company with stronger support for the higher end of its defensible valuation range—and fewer surprises that could shift leverage to the buyer.
Risks understood and prepared for can be managed.
Risks first discovered by the buyer can shift leverage in the buyer’s favor.
With founder, Ashley Lukehart.
What buyers underwrite
What feels routine inside the company may be viewed as a vulnerability during diligence.
A buyer is not only confirming that the company performs today. The buyer is underwriting the durability of earnings, the transfer of relationships and rights, the depth of leadership, and the reliability of the evidence supporting the business.
Revenue durability
Recurring revenue is valuable only to the extent that its durability and transferability can be supported.
The company has long-standing customers, strong retention, and recurring revenue, but renewal authority, pricing exceptions, executive sponsorship, or key referral relationships remain concentrated in the founder or a small number of people.
Whether revenue and customer economics will persist after the ownership transition—and whether concentration, relationship ownership, or undocumented commercial practices increase retention risk.
Commercial continuity: account ownership, renewal and cohort evidence, contract coverage, concentration analysis, relationship-transfer plans, and documented pricing authority.
Quality of earnings
Management reporting can be operationally useful without yet being sufficient for transaction scrutiny.
Leadership understands the economics, but owner adjustments, revenue recognition, one-time investments, margin movements, accrual practices, and working-capital requirements have not been reconciled into one transaction-ready earnings narrative.
Whether normalized SDE or EBITDA is repeatable, whether adjustments are supportable, and how much cash must remain in the business for the company to operate as represented.
A defensible earnings bridge: source-level reconciliations, conservative adjustment support, accounting-policy clarity, margin analysis, and M&A-experienced CPA or quality-of-earnings input where appropriate.
Management depth
A capable leadership team can still leave material decision rights concentrated in the owner.
Managers run departments, yet major pricing exceptions, escalations, vendor concessions, hiring decisions, capital commitments, and cross-functional tradeoffs continue to route through the founder.
The operating dependency created by the owner's judgment, relationships, and institutional memory—including replacement cost, transition requirements, and the risk of performance disruption.
Decision continuity: explicit authorities, escalation criteria, management accountability, succession coverage, cross-training, and evidence that important decisions can be made without defaulting to the owner.
Transfer rights
Economic value does not automatically mean the underlying rights will transfer cleanly.
The business performs through customer and vendor agreements, licenses, intellectual property, leases, permits, employment arrangements, and informal amendments accumulated over years of operation.
Whether assignment, change-of-control, consent, ownership, compliance, or undocumented-term issues could affect closing certainty, post-close economics, or the protections requested in the purchase agreement.
A transfer map: material-contract inventory, consent requirements, IP chain of title, authority records, exception log, and counsel-led remediation or disclosure where legal judgment is required.
Market resilience
Historical performance is stronger when management can demonstrate how the company responds to change.
The company has navigated competition and market shifts successfully, but the implications of a new entrant, vendor disruption, customer loss, regulatory change, technology shift, or channel dependence may not be quantified in a rigorous operating view.
Whether forecasts are appropriately risk-adjusted and whether management has identified the external developments most capable of changing growth, margins, customer retention, or capital requirements.
An evidence-based strategic risk view: a substantive SWOT, scenario analysis, leading indicators, response owners, investment implications, and a record of how management monitors and responds.
Strong performance begins the conversation.A buyer still needs evidence that the earnings, relationships, leadership, rights, and operations will endure the ownership transition.
Buyer-readiness framework
The Full Five™
Known issues can be managed.Surprises become leverage.
The framework focuses preparation on five dimensions a buyer needs to understand, trust, and verify.
Defensible earnings
Normalized SDE or EBITDA reconciles to the records. Adjustments are supportable. Concentration, margins, trends, and working capital are understood before a buyer scrutinizes them.
Repeatable operations
Critical work lives in usable processes, systems, training, and accountable roles—not only in the owner's head or with one indispensable employee.
Leadership beyond the owner
The company can make decisions, retain relationships, and continue performing without the owner remaining at the center of every material activity.
Sound contracts and governance
Ownership, authority, intellectual property, employment terms, material agreements, privacy, and compliance are current and documented well enough to withstand professional scrutiny.
Diligence-ready evidence
The financials, contracts, operating records, data room, and disclosures tell a materially consistent story. A rigorous, evidence-based SWOT identifies competitive, customer, regulatory, and market threats—and the response plan—before an outside development becomes a deal surprise.
Readiness is not a binder that sits on a desk. It is a business whose value can be understood, supported, and transferred.
The Math
The buyer will run these calculations.Run them first.
A sale price is not simply a multiple pulled from a table. Earnings establish the base, while quality, growth, and risk influence what a buyer is willing to apply.
Hypothetical example · $8M annual revenue · $1.2M normalized EBITDA
What can a one-point difference in the multiple mean?
More risk to underwrite
Owner dependence, unsupported adjustments, or unclear transferability leave more uncertainty for the buyer.Better-supported readiness
Clearer evidence and stronger transferability give the buyer fewer open questions to price or protect against.The enterprise-value bridge
At $1.2 million of normalized EBITDA, each 1.0× of multiple equals $1.2 million of enterprise value.
$3M annual revenue · $500,000 normalized SDE
An SDE-based example
More owner-dependent profile
$500,000 SDE 2.5× multiple $1.25M enterprise value
Better-supported transfer
$500,000 SDE 3.5× multiple $1.75M enterprise value
+$500,000
$15M annual revenue · $2M normalized EBITDA
An EBITDA-based example
More uncertainty to underwrite
$2M EBITDA 4.0× multiple $8M enterprise value
Better-supported profile
$2M EBITDA 5.5× multiple $11M enterprise value
+$3,000,000
A quick earnings reference
SDE and EBITDA are not interchangeable. The relevant measure depends on how the business is operated, how owner compensation is treated, the likely buyer, and the conventions used at that transaction size.
Earnings before interest, income taxes, depreciation, and amortization, plus one working owner's compensation and benefits and supportable owner-specific, nonoperating, or nonrecurring adjustments.
The transaction is priced around the economic benefit available to one owner-operator.
Earnings before interest, income taxes, depreciation, and amortization, normalized for supportable adjustments. The owner's operating role is generally reflected at a market-rate replacement cost rather than fully added back.
The business is evaluated as an operating company that can support professional management beyond one owner.
There is no universal revenue cutoff. Deal size, industry, buyer type, management structure, and market convention can change which measure is used.
Directly with Ashley. No preparation required.
Hypothetical arithmetic only—not valuations or predicted proceeds. Each example holds normalized earnings constant to isolate the effect of the multiple. Actual multiples and proceeds vary by company, industry, buyer, market, terms, debt, cash, working capital, taxes, fees, and deal structure. Preparation may influence—but cannot determine—value or outcome.
About Ashley Lukehart
I know how a company looks from the inside—and how differently it reads to a buyer.
I'm Ashley Lukehart, founder of
Full Multiple Advisory™
Two decades ago, I founded a business from the kitchen table of my tiny apartment in Larkspur, California. Over the next twenty years, I helped build it into a profitable, six-location technology services, security, and compliance company generating more than $12.5 million in annual revenue, with recurring revenue at its core.
In 2025, I completed a successful ownership exit. Leaving the company and legacy I had built was not easy. It taught me lessons that cannot be learned from the sidelines, and I am excited to bring that knowledge and experience to owners preparing for what comes next.
I created Full Multiple Advisory™ for owners and CEOs who want to find the matters most likely to affect buyer confidence, determine the right priorities, and build credible support before a transaction begins.
You and the leaders you choose remain involved, make the decisions, and implement operating changes. You determine how broadly to communicate the work internally: selected leaders may be informed that a potential transaction is on the horizon, or the initiative may remain confidential and be presented—accurately—as company-improvement work.
Legal, accounting, tax, valuation, and transaction specialists retain responsibility for their disciplines. The company should emerge from this work healthier and more resilient—with clearer financial support, lower operating risk, deeper leadership capacity, and greater transferability—whether or not a sale ultimately occurs.
My perspective comes from both sides of the table.
- Transitioning my ownership interest to a new owner gave me the seller's perspective.
- On the buy-side, evaluating acquisition opportunities and working with business brokers and transaction professionals has sharpened my view of how buyers assess a company's strengths, dependencies, and risks.
Founder and owner record
2005
Founded Parachute
75+
Full-time employees
$12M+
Annual revenue
2025
Ownership transition
- Founder-level judgmentPractical perspective on what can realistically change inside an operating company.
- A buyer-oriented reviewFocused attention on what may affect confidence, value, terms, diligence, or transferability.
- Priorities determined togetherClear decisions about what matters now, what can wait, and where specialist input is required.
- Coordinated follow-throughDefined owners, dependencies, evidence standards, and progress on the work you decide to pursue.
The right work, in the right order.
Preparation is prioritized by what could most affect value, terms, buyer confidence, diligence, or the ability to close—not by what is easiest to complete.
The buyer's-eye baseline
- Assess the business through a buyer's lens across the Full Five.
- Identify the issues most likely to affect value, terms, buyer confidence, diligence, or the ability to close.
- Prioritize what happens now, what can wait, who owns each item, and where specialist input is needed.
Priority-led preparation
- Set the next highest-value priorities and define what credible completion should look like to a buyer.
- Advise you and your leadership team as you address owner dependence and other material readiness gaps.
- Review the resulting documents, controls, and evidence through a buyer's lens.
Transaction handoff
- Brief the selected broker or investment banker on completed preparation and known remaining issues.
- Help management organize the evidence buyers are likely to request in diligence.
- Remain engaged as an owner-side advisor while transaction specialists lead the sale.
Start before the leverage shifts
Find the gap before the buyer does.
In 30 minutes, we can determine whether the timing is right, where preparation may matter most, and whether I am the right person to help.
Directly with Ashley. No preparation required.