If you own a service business in Florida, understanding SDE and EBITDA isn’t optional—it’s essential. These numbers don’t just measure performance; they drive the sale price. In this article, we break down what they really mean, how they’re used in real-world deals, and how to get the highest valuation when it’s time to sell.

SDE and adjusted EBITDA measure the same company and land on two different earnings numbers — sometimes six figures apart. Where your business sits on the size ladder decides which one buyers will actually use, and mixing up the two is how owners end up chasing multiples that were never available to them. Here is the dividing line, a worked contrast, and what happens when a platform buyer re-cuts your math.

At the current average multiple, a dollar of documented SDE is worth roughly $2.70 when your business sells — which makes the year or two before going to market the highest-paid stretch of your ownership. This is the working plan: a 12–24 month documentation calendar, the expense moves that survive diligence versus the ones that get reversed, and the math on what each improvement returns.

The bottom line of your P&L is not the number your business sells on — SDE is, and calculating it correctly is a forty-five-minute exercise most owners get wrong on the first try. This field guide walks a hypothetical $1.4M Florida service company from $92,000 of net income to $299,000 of SDE, line by line, then covers the add-backs SBA lenders push back on and the three DIY errors that skew the result.