Exclusive Interview | Business Marketing & Growth
Prashant Verma has spent years working hands-on with over 110 founders and senior business leaders to untangle why fast-growing companies suddenly hit a wall. We spoke with him about the real reasons businesses stall – and his approach to getting them moving again.
The conversation around digital marketing has shifted dramatically over the last few years. Budgets are tighter, platforms are more competitive, and the old certainties – spend more, reach more, sell more – no longer hold. Prashant Verma, who advises founders and CXO level executives as @prashant.elevates on Instagram, has made it his mission to show businesses a different way. Not louder marketing, but smarter systems. We caught up with him for a wide-ranging conversation about what is really holding new startups & brands back today.
Q: Prashant, your work sits at an unusual intersection: Marketing strategist, growth consultant, and systems thinker. How did you arrive at this particular way of advising businesses?
Prashant Verma: It was more discovery than design. Early in my career, businesses would bring me in to improve their marketing, but revenue wouldn’t move. I realized the marketing itself was often fine; the problem was what happened before and after it touched a customer.
The messaging was off, the website didn’t hold attention, or the sales process lost people halfway through. The whole engine had holes in it. I made a deliberate choice to stop working on individual pieces and start working on the whole picture. You can’t fix one gear in a machine that has three broken gears and expect it to run.
Q: You have been quite direct in saying that much of how startups currently spend on marketing is fundamentally misguided. What does that look like in practice, and what is the real cost of it?
Prashant Verma: I see scattered spending – businesses jumping across platforms and running campaigns without a clear hypothesis. It looks like effort, but it is really just expensive trial and error with no learning built into it. Beyond the financial burn, the hidden cost is that you start drawing the wrong conclusions.
Founders begin to believe the product isn’t right or the market isn’t ready, when often the real issue is that the message was never sharp enough or the journey was confusing. I have seen strong businesses nearly give up because they misdiagnosed their own problem.
Q: You have built your practice across different sectors like education, healthcare, real estate, and tech startups. What transfers from one industry to another when thinking about growth?
Prashant Verma: More than most people expect. Every industry has surface-level differences like pricing dynamics and sales cycles. But the underlying wiring of why people make decisions is remarkably consistent. Clarity, simplicity, and reducing friction always win.
In healthcare, I focus on trust-building; in real estate, making high-stakes decisions feel manageable; and in SaaS, demonstrating value before asking for commitment. Stripping away the surface dressing reveals psychology that translates beautifully across any sector.
Q: Can you walk us through how you actually work with a client?
Prashant Verma: I insist on understanding the business first – who it serves and what makes it worth choosing over every available alternative. Many founders struggle to articulate this in language a customer would respond to, so we cut through complexity to find the clear, honest story.
Then, I perform a thorough diagnostic of ad accounts, website experience, and analytics to map where the customer journey breaks down. Are people arriving but not engaging? Engaging but not converting? Each of those points to a different fix. After that, we build a proper plan for channel investment and funnel sequencing. Markets shift, so I stay involved to adjust the system as things roll out.
Q: You often point out that many businesses are sitting on more opportunity than they realize within their current setup. How do you help them find it?
Prashant Verma: Businesses often come to me convinced they need more reach or impressions. But when I look at their data, they are often getting plenty of visitors; those visitors just aren’t doing anything when they arrive. The page is unclear, the offer is buried, or the next step is ambiguous.
They are spending money to bring people to a door that is essentially stuck shut. I focus entirely on what happens after arrival – fixing the clarity and the path to a decision. Almost every time, the numbers move before we’ve changed anything about the media spend.
Q: You advise founders to build a visible presence themselves, not just the company brand. Why does that matter so much right now?
Prashant Verma: Because the market has become skeptical of polished, brand-level ads and promises. What cuts through is a real person whose thinking you can follow and whose perspective feels genuine. When a founder shares their voice consistently to inform and challenge, the right customers self-select. That kind of organic credibility takes time to build, but once it exists, it is a durable advantage that no competitor can copy and paid channels simply can’t replicate.
Q: Your own social presence has become a significant part of how you build relationships with clients. What have you learned from that experience?
Prashant Verma: The biggest lesson has been patience and consistency. For a long time, I put out content without obvious results, but I believed useful content builds trust. Eventually, the compounding effect became real. Now, when someone reaches out, they have already read my thinking and seen how I break down problems. They arrive with a level of confidence that normally takes months of relationship-building to establish. I focus on depth over reach; a smaller, engaged audience is far more valuable than a large one that just scrolls past.
Q: What is the most important thing founders need to be paying attention to right now?
Prashant Verma: The automation of execution. AI tools are becoming excellent at writing copy, optimizing bids, and generating creative variations. That is going to commoditize much of what currently passes for marketing expertise. If your edge is just knowing how to run a campaign, that edge is shrinking.
What remains stubbornly human and valuable is judgment. The ability to read a market and identify where a story isn’t connecting requires context and experience. Founders who invest in that level of strategic clarity right now will have a significant advantage.
Q: Last question, for a founder who feels like their business should be growing faster but can’t quite put their finger on why it isn’t, where would you tell them to start?
Prashant Verma: Start by being honest about whether you actually understand why people are or aren’t buying from you. Look at data and customer conversations rather than assumptions. Then, before spending more on reaching new people, go through your own customer journey end to end.
Pretend you know nothing about the company – is the value obvious in the first few seconds? Is the path easy to follow? Is there a reason to trust you that feels earned? Fix the gap between what you think the experience is and what it actually is for someone encountering you for the first time.
Says, Prashant Verma, a Marketing and Business Growth Advisor who has worked with over 110 founders and CXOs across EdTech, SaaS, Healthcare, Real Estate, and E-commerce. He shares strategic growth systems and marketing insights on Instagram at @prashant.elevates.
To follow his work and connect, visit: https://www.instagram.com/prashant.elevates
