I would have cut the services short the minute he was yammering about the dog and just got paid there.
I've had people who tried to be cofounders or have me invest who say the stupidest things about my past and the next week it's a "this won't work out" situation.
On top of what others said just I'll emphasize
Depends on risk, maturity of business and growth potential. Most small businesses have a range of 1.2 to 3.
You may also find that you're industry has a range and what it's based on such as total sales, revenue, customer list ect
Your single experience is not how data works.
Additionally you didn't cite a single article but instead went on about conspiracy thinking narrative talk.
A single article I found with 30 seconds of reading shared their source and how they collected it. Including the fact that they don't even calculate brick and mortar into their record sales.
It took me longer to reply than to find out that there is in fact not some mass conspiracy across newspapers to pretend there was a record breaking sales, let alone why anyone would waste the time to invent such a scheme.