Company: Mike Bruce Design
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Mike Bruce: I’m Mike Bruce, a Brand Growth Architect and Consultant and the founder of Mike Bruce Design, a brand growth architecture company in Abuja, Nigeria. We work with companies across Nigeria, the UK and the US on positioning, pricing and brand visibility. My starting belief is that perceived value rises by subtraction: every extra thing in an offer is one more thing for the buyer to compare. I also write The Brand Code, a daily publication on positioning, pricing and brand visibility.
What was the moment you realized that complexity was holding your company back, and how did that shift your approach to product, operations, or strategy?
Mike Bruce: There wasn’t one dramatic moment. It was a pattern: businesses kept adding another service, another market, another message, and the buyer ended up with more to compare and less reason to choose. When we rebuilt our own website this year, I applied the same test to my own firm and took out everything that didn’t help a buyer decide. That became my working rule: before anything is added, ask what it makes the buyer compare.
Can you share one specific example of something you simplified (a product feature, process, pricing model, or customer experience) that delivered outsized results?
Mike Bruce: On our own website we keep one primary call to action on every page, and we moved our secondary programmes out of the main navigation and into the footer, so the main offer stays clear. With clients the work is the same: decide what to stop saying, stop offering and stop charging for. Results published with permission, all following our work: Grills In & Out, 150% revenue growth; Ikeja Hotels, a 45% increase in qualified inbound leads.
How do you systematically identify and eliminate complexity across the organization without oversimplifying in ways that hurt quality or value?
Mike Bruce: I use the Brand Growth OS, a four-phase system: Clarify, Construct, Connect, Convert. In the first phase we settle who the offer is for, what it will not say, and what the buyer is asked to do next. To avoid oversimplifying, I test every cut against the buyer’s decision: does removing this make it easier to choose, or does it remove a reason to trust us? Proof, price signals and the next step stay. Anything that only describes the company to itself goes.
What’s the biggest resistance you’ve faced when pushing for radical simplicity, and how did you overcome it?
Mike Bruce: The resistance is usually emotional. Every service, market or message feels like revenue left on the table, so cutting feels like losing. I don’t argue for the cut; I show the cost of the addition, which is one more thing for the buyer to compare. And where a team can’t let go, I move it instead of deleting it. That is why our secondary programmes now sit in the footer: still there, but out of the way of the main offer.
For other CEOs who struggle with feature bloat, process overload, or confusing customer journeys, what’s the most important principle or first step you would recommend they take?
Mike Bruce: Choose the one thing you want a buyer to do next, then remove whatever competes with it, on the page, in the offer and in the navigation. After that, write down what you will not say or sell, so the cut survives the next meeting.
