It's all about getting to the core of your brand and making the most of foundational aspects of your business, says Nucleus Maximus founder Adam Spriggs. This also means getting real about what consumers care about. To get there it pays to answer some tough questions.

Nucleus pares down the agency model with a small team that helps clients understand where their brand can go. Spriggs says, "We like to build that out as a concept for them to preview: This is how this brand would go out and meet the world if you adopted this type of positioning."

In this Expo West Natural Products Business School interview with New Hope's Bill Giebler, Spriggs combines his branding wisdom with the freshness of a startup. Indeed, Nucleus is just a year old. Identifying what's important about a brand can be tricky in a world of choices. "We're living in the age of the world's most overwhelmed consumer," he says. "As a brand you have to think about whether you're contributing to clutter and noise, or going around it."