A conversation with Ayomide Abdullai-Makinde

A transcript from Episode 3 of Breakfast & Launch

Editor’s note

Some people think best by listening. Others by reading.

Every conversation on Breakfast & Launch begins as spoken language, but I believe good conversations deserve a second life on the page.

What follows is a lightly edited version of my conversation with Ayomide Abdullahi-Makinde—Customer Support Specialist, educator, and advocate for one of tech’s most overlooked professions.

We’ve removed repetition, tightened the language, and reshaped the conversation for readers while preserving the ideas, stories and personality of the original discussion.

I hope you enjoy reading it.

“I sat down one day and looked at all the accounts that we had. It was worth one billion. And I’m like — this is what you are sitting on”

— Ayomide Abdullahi-Makinde

Introduction

Taiwo: Ayomide Abdullahi-Makinde has spent her career helping customer support specialists stop feeling stuck and start seeing their own value.

She’s built a name for herself educating people in the field through her LinkedIn content, and generously hopping on calls with anyone who needs career direction.

Ayomide, welcome.

“I’m a customer support specialist — helping people get unstuck.”

Taiwo: For people meeting you for the first time, who is Ayomide?

Ayomide: Hi everyone. My name is Ayomide Abdullahi-Makinde. I’m a customer support specialist — that’s the field I specialize in.

I wouldn’t say I loved this from day one, but I love it right now. What I’m passionate about is helping customer support specialists around the world really excel and thrive in their roles, instead of feeling stuck.

One of the ways I do that is by educating people in the field through my LinkedIn posts, and by being generous with hopping on calls with anyone who needs career direction.

A degree she didn’t plan for

Taiwo: You studied sociology. What informed that choice?

Ayomide: Honestly, I wanted to study mass communication, but I didn’t get in. Everyone around me kept saying sociology was a good course, and I actually agree — I really, genuinely enjoyed it.

If I had to go back to university, maybe I’d study business administration. But aside from that, I’d still pick sociology. It shaped the way I see the world even now.

Sociology, she explains, is the study of society and the people in it — where psychology looks at the individual mind, sociology looks at the collective, and at behavior within it.

Falling into support by accident

Taiwo: How did you get into support? That’s actually where you and I connect — I studied medicine myself.

Ayomide: Which is still a shocker to me. “Dr. Taiwo” — wow.

Honestly, when I finished NYSC, I was job hunting. I told everyone around me: I’m looking for work, I studied sociology, I’m not sure what I can do with it, but I need a job.

Then I got a call about an internship — for a customer support role. I said yes, let’s do it. The rest is history. I got into SureGifts, and that’s where it all started.

Learning on the job

Taiwo: What was that early experience like?

Ayomide: It was good, because I had a great manager — I need to shout out to her, Fisayo Nana. She gave me a really strong foundation for what good customer support should look like.

She was friendly, but also no-nonsense. When it was time to work, it was work time. When it was time to play, we played hard.

I think that’s part of why I grew to love support. If my first point of contact had been horrible, I probably wouldn’t be in this role today. Getting into it, I really didn’t want to do it — but her presence made a real difference.

The stigma nobody talks about

Taiwo: I remember something you said the first time we spoke — about going to parties and hearing everyone introduce themselves as a treasurer of this, a CFO of that.

Ayomide: Honestly, that’s one of the reasons I was so skeptical of this career path. I had a bias — I believed support wasn’t a very “honorable” role.

If you’re African, you know how it goes. Parents and culture push you toward introducing yourself as Dr. This, Engineer This, Barista Even-That — heavy, respected titles.

I’d go out, and my friends would say “I work at JP Morgan,” or “I’m in fintech,” or “I’m a developer.” And I’d say, “I work in customer support” — and you could literally watch the interest drain from their face. “Oh, you’re just… calling people. Saying good morning, how’s it going.” That’s it, apparently.

I really hated that. For the longest time, I told myself: this is not the career path for me.

The billion-dollar realization

Taiwo: We’ve both gone from feeling self-conscious about being in support, to realizing it’s what we make of it. How did you make that switch?

Ayomide: I sat down one day at SureGifts and looked at all the accounts I was managing as head of customer support. It was worth about one billion.

And I thought — wait. I was essentially an account manager, even though at the time I didn’t realize I was doing customer success too. I was keeping accounts healthy, keeping customers coming back. If anything went wrong here, there was real business impact attached to it. This wasn’t “just” customer support.

Another moment came at LeadDyno — a completely different, international environment — seeing how much regard the organization had for its support team. That gave me real insight: this is not just an “anyhow” profession.

What I believe is that those of us in customer support haven’t done a good job of articulating the value we carry — not just for the people on the front lines, but for managers and leaders too.

A problem bigger than Nigeria

Taiwo: There are companies that celebrate support, and companies where the manager of support looks down on it.

Ayomide: Yes! Exactly.

Taiwo: I’ve worked in North America for the past five years in success and support roles, and it’s not just a Nigerian problem. It’s rampant here too. I once had a manager sit me down — meaning well — and ask, “what future do you want? Where do you see yourself going?” Nobody grows up saying “I want to be a customer support specialist.” And that was coming from the director.

Ayomide: Yikes.

Taiwo: And I couldn’t help but think — you want your spouse to support you. You want your family to support you. You want to support your own child. Support is such a beautiful word — except when you bring it into tech. Then it becomes a “dead-end” role.

Ayomide: Exactly.

The real potential of the role

Taiwo: So what’s the actual promise and potential of a support career?

Ayomide: It has a lot of potential — but honestly, it depends on the growth stage of the company you join.

If you’re just getting into support, go do it at a startup. You’ll learn so much. I’ve seen people scale from support into customer success, into customer operations. Depending on how big the organization is, you can move from support agent to team lead, team lead to manager, manager onto the path toward director.

It really depends on how far you want to take it.

Finding personal branding through value, not virality

Taiwo: You once told me you wanted to build such a strong personal brand that if you’re ever back on the job market, people would already be waiting for you. How did you discover the power of personal branding?

Ayomide: I’d been hearing about personal branding for the longest time. But honestly — no shade to anyone — what everyone was saying about it never resonated with my values, until I found Caleb Ralston. Shoutout to him. I listened to his six-hour YouTube video on personal branding, and it clicked.

Everyone treats personal branding like a funnel — build an audience, then launch a product, sell, sell, sell — and half the time what you buy is worth half of what was advertised.

Caleb’s mindset is the opposite. He says if you want to build a personal brand, focus on value — not virality, not the numbers. Your job is to give value consistently, and give it away free. What people eventually pay you for is the personalization, the customization, of the value you keep putting out.

Closing

Taiwo: That’s food for thought. Ayomide, thank you so much. Everyone — she’s amazing at the personal branding stuff, and her content is genuinely meaningful. If you need help getting “unstuck,” reach out to Ayomide Abdullahi-Makinde on LinkedIn.

Ayomide: I’ll be happy to chat.

Prefer watching?

If you’d rather experience the conversation as it was originally spoken, you can watch the full episode on YouTube.

→ Watch: The Most Underestimated Career in Tech (Until You Understand It) | Ayomide Abdullahi-Makinde