Muffins gave me a recipe for success
Meet the entrepreneur who weathered lockdown in a whirl of activity
IT started with a batch of muffins, created to pay for a teenage cinema trip, but serial entrepreneur Chikumo Fiseko has packed more into her 27 years than most people do in a lifetime.
She launched her first business at the age of 15, built a strong background in food development, has won multiple awards, been a brand ambassador for Henderson, tackled mental health and racial issues on her blog and has now launched a marketing consultancy.
The Zambian-born businesswoman’s dream was to travel the world with her west Belfast boyfriend Sean while running her businesses from her laptop, but the pandemic upended those plans, leaving Chikumo stuck at home in Newtownabbey while Sean works in Morocco.
When Covid arrived, she had just become a brand ambassador with Henderson, but she was furloughed and found herself stranded at home, unable to visit her parents and far from her boyfriend.
Chikumo admits she found herself struggling with mental health issues due to lockdown.
“My boyfriend was in university in Liverpool. I was living aloneandicouldn’tgoandsee my mum and dad,” she says.
“Staring at the same four walls every day is extremely hard. You can even see it through my blog entries — that exhaustion — not just because of work, but life in general, Black Lives Matter (BLM), the way women in business are treated differently and how black women in business are treated very differently.”
But two things helped: her content creation and businesses.
“My businesses saved my life in lockdown,” Chikumo says.
After years of delivering marketing for other companies, including B&M, Green Angel Skincare, The Body Shop and The Laser Clinic NI, she decided to launch her own marketing consultancy, CF Marketing Solutions, which she runs alongside her blog, baking business Mostly Muffins and new baking kit business Nyina. She also discovered Tiktok, creating a treasure trove of videos about food and life.
Originally born in the town of Luanshya in Zambia, Chikumo was raised in Sheffield from the age of seven. While her mum and dad now live in Northern Ireland, her brother, aunties and cousins still live in England.
“Sheffield is one of those places that, until I moved to Northern
Ireland, I had no idea how multicultural it was,” she says.
“I love where I live here, but in Sheffield I loved the differences in cultures. You could learn so much from each other.
“You’d go into different areas and there were different restaurants. It was like you were travelling even though you were in the city centre.
“It’s like a massive family — you’re surrounded by people that very much want to help you.
“As I grew up, there was a running joke that I was the little man of the house. I did all the DIY stuff with my dad.
“At school, I enjoyed product design and was going toward engineering. I wanted to be a biomedical engineer.”
Meanwhile, her baking business had taken off.
“When I was 15, I remember my mum teaching me how to make muffins,” Chikumo says.
“I imagined it would go really wrong, but they tasted really nice and I took them to school for my friends to try. They loved them.
“I remember wanting to go to the cinema, but we were only allowed to do certain things, so I told my dad, ‘Mum says I can go to the cinema if you say it’s okay’. He said, ‘That’s okay, but you have to get the money off your mum’.iwenttomymumand said, ‘Dad says it’s okay if you say it’sokay’.shesaidicouldgoas long as I raised my own money.”
Faced with having to come up with a way to raise money for the cinema, Chikumo took her friends’ advice and baked up a batch of muffins to sell at school.
“They were all wrapped up in