Vivien Wong left a lucrative accounting career to co-found the mochi ice cream brand Little Moons with her brother. She shares lessons learned about launching a business, emphasizing the importance of embracing imperfection, making sacrifices, and maintaining brand focus.
Vivien Wong's story highlights the realities of entrepreneurship, emphasizing that significant success often requires years of dedication, sacrifice, and strategic decision-making beyond the visible viral moments.
Vivien Wong, at 28, left a lucrative £80,000-a-year accounting position to pursue her dream of running a business, co-founding the mochi ice cream brand Little Moons with her brother Howard. Inspired by her family's bakery background and a father's cancer diagnosis, Wong took the leap into entrepreneurship.
Little Moons achieved viral success on TikTok, particularly during the pandemic, but Wong emphasizes that this apparent overnight triumph was the culmination of over a decade of hard work. She advises aspiring business owners to adopt an '80-20 rule,' launching products when they are sufficiently developed rather than waiting for unattainable perfection. This approach allows for iterative improvement based on market feedback.
For the first five years, Wong focused on selling mochi to restaurants and cinemas, reinvesting profits to build the brand and eventually move into supermarket distribution. She recounts significant personal sacrifices, including moving in with her brother to minimize expenses and reinvesting all profits back into the company. Wong also detailed learning various aspects of the business, from IT to product development and managing payroll, often handling tasks outside her expertise.
Brand identity is crucial, according to Wong, who advises entrepreneurs to define their brand values clearly to navigate trends and opportunities effectively. She cautions against blindly following expert advice, encouraging founders to critically assess recommendations and apply them to their specific circumstances. Working with her brother presented challenges, requiring them to establish professional boundaries and view each other as colleagues rather than just siblings, especially when making high-stakes decisions like relocating to a larger factory.
Now, with a chief executive and leadership team in place, Vivien and Howard Wong are less involved in daily operations, allowing them to return to a more typical sibling relationship. Wong reiterates that the 'overnight success' narrative often obscures the years of foundational work, including scaling manufacturing, training staff, and establishing retail partnerships, which are essential for surviving and thriving during viral moments.