Lessons from Sony × Honda's EV Exit | Administrative Tasks Private Tutors Should "Cut Losses" On

Even Big Corporations Quit

Sony Group and Honda's joint EV venture has been canceled.

Hundreds of billions of yen invested. Thousands of people involved. Worldwide expectations—and yet they made the call to walk away.

Exiting isn't failure. It's cutting your losses.

The "Admin Work" Private Tutors Can't Quit

Major corporations managed to exit the EV business. So what about independent private tutors?

👩‍🏫

I've been copy-pasting invoices in Word at the end of every month for ages. It's a pain, but… I don't know any other way.

🤔

How many years have you been doing that?

👩‍🏫

…About four years. It takes two hours every month, but I'm used to it by now.

📊

4 years × 12 months × 2 hours = 96 hours. That's 4 full days of your life.

"I'm used to it" is not the same as "it's optimized."

Sony and Honda made their decision based on data, not habit. You should do the same—take a hard look at how much time your admin work actually costs.

3 Manual Tasks You Should Drop Immediately

Loss-Cut Target List
1. Counting lessons in a planner

  Tallying with tick marks or notebooks. Every month-end: "Wait, did we have a lesson last week?" → Automate with Google Calendar integration

2. Calculating tuition with a calculator

  Different rates per student. Makeup lessons and cancellations cause confusion every time. → Auto-calculate: lesson count × rate

3. Creating invoices in Word or Excel

  Copy a template, update the date and amount. Typos in names, transcription errors in amounts. → Auto-generate PDFs

These three tasks alone eat up 2–3 hours every month. That's 24–36 hours a year.

What if you could spend that time on lesson prep or your own professional development?

The Cost of Quitting: ¥500/Month

¥500

Monthly

5 min

Setup time

2–3 hrs

Saved each month

Sony and Honda's EV exit cost hundreds of billions of yen.

Your "exit from manual admin" costs ¥500 a month.

Decision	Sony × Honda	You
What to exit	EV business	Manual admin work
Cost of exiting	Hundreds of billions of yen	¥500/month
Cost of NOT exiting	Mounting losses	2–3 hours of your life every month
Difficulty of the decision	Board approval required	5-minute setup

Don't Keep Going Just Because You're "Used to It"

Sony and Honda were certainly "used to" their EV venture. They had teams, technology, and plans in place.

They quit anyway. Because the data said they should.

The same goes for your admin work. "I'm used to it" and "this is how I've always done it" are not reasons to keep going.

Exit Admin Work with Kagemusha System

  Just add your lessons to Google Calendar. Tuition calculation, invoice PDFs, and attendance tracking are fully automated. All data stays within your own Google account—nothing leaks to third parties. For ¥500 a month, free yourself from 2–3 hours of manual work every month. If major corporations can make the call, so can you.

The sooner you cut your losses, the better.

Still managing tutor attendance manually?

Discover Kagemusha System