Running a Small Downtime Business - Impossible to Profit?

[Trinite]

So I'm trying to wrap my head around how the downtime rules work for an organization. And I'm trying to figure out whether it's impossible to make a small organization work, or if I'm just not doing it right.

My player is financing an archeological expedition to try to go dig up treasure at a (slightly dangerous) old monastery. I figure a small organization for him looks something like this: 1 Priest, 1 Elite Guards, 1 Craftspeople, 1 Sage. Manager: 1 Lieutenant.

That's 1,380 gold to make, plus 4 gp per day for the manager.

But here's the problem: the teams' bonuses on the capital check for gp add up to 20. Doing the math and taking 10 on the capital check, the organization only makes an average of 3 gp per day. That's not even enough to pay their boss's salary, let alone enough to start recouping the capital expenditure for creating the organization.

Even without a manager, it would take 460 days for this organization to pay off its cost. That's pretty bad.

But wait! It's even worse. Since my player doesn't own a building for the organization to work in (they're an archeological expedition), the rules say they only make half their earnings. Now they only make 1.5 gp per day, and take 920 days to pay for themselves - two and a half years!

So do organizations work this inefficiently at every scale, or only at the small scale at which I'm operating? Or have I completely misunderstood the rules in some way?

[EWHM]

The downtime rules aren't very good in my opinion. They're way way too liberal in some respects (retraining, for instance, and in the rate at which you can acquire capital of the various sorts in short bursts of downtime). But they're also way too stingy for long term investing.
In my games, I usually use the rule of 5/10/15. That is to say, investments that aren't risky and don't have an economic moat to reduce competition, like, say, growing wheat in Canada, generally earn 5% per year. That's a return after taxes, bribes, salaries, etc.
Investments that are risky OR have an economic moat (e.g. requires 5th level spells in an area where such casters are rare, a royal monopoly or cartel, etc) earn 10%. Investments that are BOTH (e.g., a magical distillation rig at an active volcano with substantial connections to both Hell and the Plane of Fire) earn 15%. My assumptions are that the game is taking place in an era of rapid economic expansion as most settings are post-apocalyptic. If your assumptions are a much more developed economy where Malthus is rearing his head, use 4/8/12 or even 3/6/9.
As a Gm, you just need to decide, is this business venture a plausibly viable one, and then just assign it to its risk/economic moat class. The more risk associated with it the more frequently you throw challenges at it.

[godlearner]

"it would take 460 days for this organization to pay off its cost."

At 3 gp per day you are making about 660 gp a year (based on a 5 day work week). That's 50% return on your investment. Looks pretty good in my book.

[My Self]

Ah! Where's a paladin when you need one? Thread necromancy!