I quit my £80,000 job to make ice cream - here's how

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**From £80,000 Job to Ice Cream Empire: Vivien Wong's Little Moons Journey**

Vivien Wong, co-founder of the mochi brand Little Moons with her brother Howard, shares the story of leaving a lucrative career to pursue her entrepreneurial dream. At 28, Wong resigned from her £80,000-a-year accounting position to embark on an ice cream venture with her sibling.

Having grown up immersed in her family's bakery, Wong harbored aspirations of owning her own business. She credits her father's cancer diagnosis as the catalyst that prompted her to take the leap and establish Little Moons. While the brand's mochi balls—doughy rice filled with ice cream—achieved viral fame on TikTok, this "overnight success" was, in reality, more than a decade in the making.

Wong offers valuable insights gleaned from her journey and advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

**Little Moons Co-founder Vivien Wong: Perfection Isn't the Goal**

Wong identifies a common pitfall for budding founders: the pursuit of perfection. She advocates for an "80-20 rule," advising against waiting for everything to be flawless. "Don't wait for perfection because that extra 20 is going to take you too long and you might miss the market," she states. Instead, she suggests launching a product when it's "80% of the way there" and refining it iteratively, a strategy she employed with Little Moons.

For its initial five years, Little Moons supplied mochi to restaurants and cinemas. This period allowed Wong to accumulate sufficient capital to invest in branding and expand into supermarkets.

Wong made significant personal sacrifices, leaving a well-compensated job and moving in with her brother to save money and reinvest all profits back into the business. She recalls the stark contrast between a polished City environment, where support was readily available, and the demands of running her own company, where she had to handle nearly every task herself. "All roads lead to you when you run your own business so even though I wasn't great with IT, I was head of IT," she recounts. Her responsibilities also extended to learning about machinery, product development, ice cream production, and payroll. Wong even managed the company accounts on Sundays to avoid the expense of a bookkeeper, prioritizing cost savings over personal time.

**Strategic Focus and Independent Thinking**

Wong emphasizes the importance of understanding one's brand identity and declining opportunities that don't align with it. "If you know what your brand values are, you know how you can apply that to a trend, but you also know when to leave it alone," she explains. Her advice is to "pick and choose what you say yes to and don't try and do everything. Stay focused, know exactly what you stand for."

She also cautions against blindly accepting expert advice, instead encouraging founders to listen critically and think independently. "You realise that advice they're giving you was probably right for another business but not for your specific set of circumstances." Wong and her brother would deliberate over received advice, sometimes adopting it and sometimes rejecting it, a process that ultimately bolstered her confidence in decision-making.

**Navigating Sibling Dynamics in Business**

Vivien acknowledges that working with her brother, Howard, has been a significant asset, despite "definitely a lot of arguments." They learned to interact as colleagues in the workplace rather than siblings. Wong cites a pivotal moment when the company considered moving from a 5,000 sq ft factory to a 30,000 sq ft site, with annual rent escalating from approximately £40,000 to £500,000. She was more inclined to embrace the risk, while her brother was naturally more cautious. This divergence in perspective, however, proved beneficial, as they "balance each other out" and make more informed decisions.

Her advice for those working with family is to establish clear boundaries for workplace interactions. "You have to be really mindful that you're being as respectful to your brother as a colleague and you see him as a colleague and not a sibling," she stresses. With Little Moons now boasting a chief executive and a broader leadership team, Vivien and Howard are less involved in the daily operations, allowing them to "just be brother and sister again."

**The "Overnight Success" That Took a Decade**

Little Moons' surge in popularity during the pandemic, largely fueled by TikTok, often gives the impression of an overnight success. However, Wong points out that most people are unaware the company had been operating for a decade prior. "Everyone says we're like an overnight success 12 years in the making," she remarks.

Before achieving viral status, the company dedicated years to mastering large-scale manufacturing, staff training, product export, and supplying major retailers. This extensive preparation proved crucial when demand suddenly skyrocketed. Without the established team and infrastructure, the business might not have survived its moment of viral fame.

"Business is a combination of many, many, many boring things and many boring small steps," Wong concludes. For those observing founders seemingly achieve instant success on social media, she emphasizes the importance of remembering that the viral moment is often the visible culmination of a much longer, less glamorous journey, rather than the starting point.