Can I just price my business based on what I need to retire comfortably?

You can start your thinking there, but pricing the business purely around your personal retirement number, rather than what the business itself can support, tends to produce an asking price the market simply won't accept. A buyer is paying for the business's earnings, assets, and risk profile, not for your personal financial needs, and a price built backward from what you want to retire on, rather than forward from what the business is actually worth, usually shows up quickly as unrealistic once buyers or their advisors look at your numbers.

The nuance is that your retirement needs are still a legitimate and important input into the process, just not the starting point for the number itself. If a realistic valuation of the business falls short of what you need, that's important to know early, since it points you toward other options — working longer, reducing your retirement expectations, exploring additional savings, or reconsidering the deal structure — rather than holding out for a price the market won't pay.

Working with your accountant to understand both what the business can realistically fetch and what you actually need financially, as two separate calculations, lets you plan honestly rather than anchoring your asking price to a number the business itself doesn't support.