Kamiyama Certified Administrative Scrivener Office: ¥2.47M Revenue vs ¥3.5M+ Costs in Year One, Then Past ¥10M by Year Three

Kamiyama, a Japanese gyoseishoshi (certified administrative scrivener), published his first-year results on his blog “Shossy”: ¥2.47M in revenue against more than ¥3.5M in expenses. Costs ran at over 1.4 times revenue, a clear loss, and he writes that it was “a year of watching my savings shrink.” He took on exactly six engagements in year one. Small Start’s archive of first-year records includes out-of-pocket starts like the kitchen car that began at ¥400 per hour in effective wages, but a nationally licensed professional joining that list makes this record unusual. The common assumption that a license plus registration brings work on its own is contradicted head-on by the practitioner’s own numbers. Even so, revenue roughly doubled in year two and again in year three, crossing ¥10M in annual sales. Here is what made year one a loss, and what made year three worth ¥10M, using only the figures he has made public.

Breaking down the first-year accounts

First, the published numbers. There is no monthly revenue data, and every figure is an annual actual.

Office rent alone comes to roughly ¥1.38M a year. More than half of the ¥2.47M in revenue disappears into rent, and once registration fees, equipment, and promotion are added, expenses of ¥3.5M arrive quickly. He set himself the goal of “never letting revenue hit zero” and ran about 40 self-organized seminars in a year, so the picture that emerges is one of bridging with speaking work while waiting for core engagements.

The six engagements are itemized publicly: an inheritance case (drafting the estate division agreement), two company formations, a garage certificate, a designation application for a disability-welfare service facility, and funding-support work. The routing matters most. Every engagement except the inheritance case came through inquiries via his website and blog. He writes that two months after opening he realized he “had no network,” and indeed zero engagements came through personal connections. The blog he had updated daily since before opening, together with the office website, functioned as effectively his only client-acquisition machine.

Why revenue doubled in years two and three

Kamiyama grew revenue “roughly doubling” through years two and three, passing ¥10M in annual sales in year three. Starting from ¥2.47M, doubling twice makes the arithmetic work. The judgment he credits for that growth is service selection.

The first service he made his mainstay was company formation. A client who forms a company will go on to need permits and licenses, startup financing, and bookkeeping. One engagement brings the next one with it. He explains the doubling as the result of “prioritizing work that leads to the next work,” and adds that focusing on services that recur and on higher-priced work is especially important for a one-person practice.

This reads the structure of the profession accurately. One-off, low-priced work like garage certificates guarantees nothing about next month’s revenue no matter how many cases come in. Company formation as the entry point, by contrast, generates permit and financing work from the same client, and bookkeeping becomes recurring monthly income. That two of his six first-year engagements were company formations looks less like chance and more like the pillar being set in place early.

On the acquisition side, the foundation was daily publishing on the blog he had run since before opening. His own summary is that “publishing information someone actually wants is what turns into work.” He tried business cards and flyers as well, but what actually delivered clients was the website and the blog. In the case of a tax accountant who reached ¥700K per month via the Coconala marketplace, a licensed professional’s client acquisition likewise took off through online channels rather than referrals or a street-front sign, a route common to professionals who have credibility but no acquisition machinery.

What missed, and the uncomfortable numbers

The value of this record is that the numbers on the failing side are written down too.

Network-based selling missed. Two months in, he recognized he had no network, and he moved to build contact points, including a monthly startup seminar for women, yet not one of the six engagements came through connections. The 40 seminars a year helped keep revenue from hitting zero through speaking fees, but there is no statement that they directly produced core engagements.

The expense side, ¥3.5M, is heavy. The office rent of ¥115,000 a month in particular was locked in as a fixed cost before any revenue visibility existed. Kamiyama himself writes of the period when he finally became able to pay the rent, and he does not hide that the first-year loss was driven as much by fixed costs committed up front as by low revenue.

Note that no monthly revenue or monthly profit is published for this case, and every figure in this article is annual. The “over ¥10M” in year three is revenue, with profit undisclosed. Annual sales of ¥10M is a recognized milestone for a gyoseishoshi, but if the cost structure stayed as it was in year one, take-home could fall to around half of that. When reading the numbers, it is worth keeping revenue and profit separate, exactly as far as his own writing does.

First-year actuals, side by side

Small Start’s published “year one” actuals line up like this. Tomei Shoten, the bookstore run by a freee subsidiary, disclosed monthly sales of ¥2.65M and operating profit of about ¥350K in the April of its first year, while the kitchen car started at an effective ¥400 per hour in month one. Kamiyama’s first year was ¥2.47M for the entire year, which averaged monthly comes to less than one month of the bookstore’s sales. The business models and capital outlays differ, so this is no ranking, but the gap between a business whose first year is groundwork and a business that earns on turnover from month one opens this wide in real numbers.

Year one at ¥2.47M was the year that seeded year two’s referrals

Our reading is that the first year, ¥2.47M in revenue against more than ¥3.5M in expenses, was less a loss-making year than the year that seeded continuing work and referrals from year two on. The two company formations taken in year one brought permit, financing and bookkeeping work only after a lag, and that lag is where the doubling curve starts.

The limits deserve their own paragraph. This record was published in 2020, and the competitive and search/SNS environment at his opening is not today’s. The back half of the curve, doubling to ¥10M by year three, is disclosed only as annual revenue, leaving no material to verify the month-by-month path. The six engagements also depend on region and specialization, and the same service mix carries no guarantee of the same result in a different market. Even so, a record that publishes a licensed practice’s first-year revenue, expenses, and engagement count as a set is rare, and as starting values for someone about to register, the numbers are more than concrete enough.