I quit my £80,000 job to make ice cream – here's howThe co-founder of Little Moons shares her advice for anyone thinking about starting a business of their own.

I quit my £80, 000 job to create ice cream – here's how.

Key points

• At 28, Vivien Wong walked away from an £80, 000-a-year accounting job to start making ice cream with her brother.
• One of the biggest mistakes aspiring founders create is waiting for everything to be perfect so Wong recommends after an "80-20 rule".
• 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.
• Little Moons became a TikTok phenomenon during the pandemic but Wong notes most residents don't realise it had been running for a decade already.
• "Don't wait for perfection because that extra 20 is going to take you too long and you might miss the market, " she notes.

Growing up in her family's bakery, she had dreamt of one day running her own business. She notes her father's cancer diagnosis produced her take the leap to create Little Moons.

In practice, 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 regarding starting a business of their own.

For its first five years Wong sold mochi to restaurants and cinemas before she saved enough funds to invest in branding and move into supermarkets.

Wong left a well-paid job and moved in with her brother so they could save funds and reinvest any profits into the business.

She remembers swapping a polished City environment, where there was always someone else to call for support, 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 additionally had to learn concerning machinery, product development, making ice cream and paying wages.

Wong notes she even did the business accounts on Sundays rather than pay for a bookkeeper since, at the time, saving the capital mattered more than getting the day back.

Wong's advice to individuals starting a business is concerning 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 notes.

"Pick and choose what you say yes to and don't try and do everything. Stay focused, know exactly what you stand for."

She additionally warns against blindly taking advice from experts – but to listen and think for yourself.

"You realise that advice they're giving you was probably right for another business but not for your specific set of circumstances."

She and her brother would discuss advice they received, sometimes take it and sometimes reject it and over time, making those decisions supported build her confidence.

Wong notes working with her brother has been a enormous strength but there were additionally "definitely a lot of arguments".

They had to learn to behave like colleagues at work rather than siblings.

When the firm was considering moving from a 5, 000 sq ft factory to a 30, 000 sq ft site, with annual rent jumping from around £40, 000 to £500, 000, Wong states she was more willing to take the risk while her brother was naturally more cautious.

But that difference in opinion has supported them produce better decisions as they "balance each other out".

Her advice for anyone working with family is to set boundaries for how you interact in the workplace.

"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 notes.

Now that Little Moons has a chief executive and wider leadership team, the pair are less involved in the day-to-day running of the firm which Wong states has allowed them to "just be brother and sister again".

"Everyone says we're like an overnight success 12 years in the making, " she notes.

Before going viral, the firm had spent years learning how to manufacture at scale, train staff, export products and supply major retailers.

That preparation proved essential when demand suddenly exploded as the business might not have survived its viral moment without the team and infrastructure already behind it.

"Business is a combination of many, many, many boring things and many boring small steps, " she notes.

For anyone watching founders seemingly blow up on social media overnight, she notes it's notable to remember that the viral moment is often the part of the story everyone sees rather than the beginning.

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For now, I quit my £80, 000 job to make ice cream – here' s howThe remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.