At 28, Vivien Wong walked away from an £80,000-a-year accounting job to start making ice cream with her brother. Growing up in her family's bakery, she had dreamt of one day running her own business. She says her father's cancer diagnosis made her take the leap to create Little Moons.
The mochi balls of doughy rice filled with ice-cream exploded on TikTok, but its apparent overnight success was more than a decade in the making. Wong shares the lessons she learnt along the way and her advice for anyone thinking about starting a business of their own. One of the biggest mistakes aspiring founders make is waiting for everything to be perfect so Wong recommends following an "80-20 rule".
"Don't wait for perfection because that extra 20 is going to take you too long and you might miss the market," she says. Instead, she recommends getting a product "80% of the way there", launching it and improving it as you go - like she did with Little Moons. For its first five years Wong sold mochi to restaurants and cinemas before she saved enough money to invest in branding and move into supermarkets.
Wong left a well-paid job and moved in with her brother so they could save money and reinvest any profits into the business. She remembers swapping a polished City environment, where there was always someone else to call for help, for having to do almost everything 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 also had to learn about machinery, product development, making ice cream and paying wages. Wong says she even did the company accounts on Sundays rather than pay for a bookkeeper because, at the time, saving the money mattered more than getting the day back. Wong's advice to people starting a business is about the importance of knowing your brand and saying no to opportunities that don't fit.
"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 says. "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 warns against blindly taking advice from experts - but to listen and think for yourself.
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