The other day I was listening to an interview with Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman, known internationally from The Killing, RoboCop, Suicide Squad and For All Mankind.
He was talking about nervousness.
And preparation.
Early in his career, nerves affected him badly. But he discovered something that changed the way he approached his work:
Preparation gave him control.
Not control over the director.
Not control over the other actors.
Not control over what happened around him.
Control over himself.
Kinnaman described how he now wants to know the material several days ahead. He works on it, sleeps on it, works on it again - until the words are so deeply embedded that he doesn't have to consciously search for them anymore.
And that is where something interesting happens.
The preparation doesn't make him more rigid.
It makes him more free.
As he explained, when you know the scene deeply enough, you can improvise. Someone can stumble. Something unexpected can happen. You can react to it, use it, and still find your way back.
You aren't desperately trying to remember what comes next.
You're actually in the moment.
And then he told a story about Nicolas Cage.
When they met for their first rehearsal for Sympathy for the Devil, Cage already knew the entire script by heart.
Not just his next scene.
The entire script.
Kinnaman described Cage as having spent countless hours with the material before they even started rehearsing.
That's taking preparation to another level.
But here's the important part:
He wasn't doing all that work so he could mechanically repeat the script.
He did the work beforehand so that once they started working, he could focus on how.
This resonated with me because it is something I have taught founders for years - and something I learned the hard way long before I started coaching.
I used to get nervous before important presentations.
And I discovered exactly the same thing:
The better prepared I was, the less power the nerves had over me.
I couldn't control the room.
I couldn't control the audience.
I couldn't control what happened around me.
But I could control how well I knew my material.
That lesson has stayed with me ever since.
It is one of the reasons I push preparation so hard with the founders I coach.
Preparation Changes What You Can Work On
Right now, I'm spending a few weeks on a movie production.
And watching the process up close has made this incredibly obvious.
The more prepared the actors are, the more the director can actually direct.
Instead of spending precious time trying to get the basics right, they can work on:
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Timing
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Emotion
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Intention
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Energy
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Small nuances
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Different interpretations
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What the scene is really supposed to communicate
The basics are already there.
So they can work on making it great.
And there's another benefit.
Things go wrong on a film set.
Technology stops working.
Schedules change.
Someone forgets something.
A scene gets changed.
Maybe the director is having a shitty day.
You cannot control most of it.
The one thing you can control is how prepared you are when you arrive.
And pitching is exactly the same.
Most Founders Stop Preparing Too Early
A lot of founders tell me:
"I've gone through the pitch several times."
Good.
But that's not necessarily preparation.
If you're still thinking:
"What comes after this slide?"
you're not prepared enough.
If you're trying to remember the exact wording of your opening while you're saying it, you're not prepared enough.
If one investor question makes you completely lose your flow, you're not prepared enough.
If changing one slide means you suddenly don't know what to say, you're not prepared enough.
Because preparation isn't about being able to get through the pitch.
It's about knowing it well enough that you have capacity left to pitch.
There is a huge difference.
Your Goal Is To Get Past the WHAT
When you know your pitch deeply, you stop spending mental energy on:
"What am I supposed to say?"
Now you can work on:
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How you say it
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Where you pause
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Which words you emphasize
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Whether the investor looks confused
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When you should speed up
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When you should slow down
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Whether you need to explain something differently
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How you respond when someone interrupts
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How you recover when you lose your train of thought
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How you adapt your story to the room
That's when pitching becomes interesting.
Because now you're not reciting information.
You're communicating.
And paradoxically, this is also why I am a strong believer in scripting a pitch.
People sometimes assume scripting makes you sound scripted.
It doesn't.
Not preparing the script enough makes you sound scripted.
When you're still trying to remember the words, you cling to them.
When you know them inside out, you can let them go.
You can change a sentence.
Skip something.
React to the investor.
Pause.
Come back.
The structure is still there underneath you.
Preparation gives you something solid enough to be flexible from.
Prepare for the Things You Know Will Happen
And your presentation isn't the only thing you should prepare.
Before an investor meeting, you should know:
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Your numbers
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Your assumptions
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Your competition
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Your market
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Your milestones
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Your funding ask
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What the money will actually achieve
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The difficult questions investors are likely to ask
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The weaknesses in your case
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The three things you absolutely want them to remember
You should also know who is sitting across the table from you.
What do they invest in?
At what stage?
What have they invested in before?
Why might your company be relevant to them?
Preparation isn't memorizing ten slides.
It's reducing the number of things you need to figure out while the stakes are high.
The Bottom Line - Preparation Gives You Freedom
You can't control the investor.
You can't control whether they had a terrible meeting immediately before yours.
You can't control the projector breaking.
You can't control the awkward question.
You can't control whether someone interrupts you thirty seconds into your pitch.
BUT - You can control whether you walked into that room ready.
And that is the level you're aiming for.
Not memorized.
Internalized.
Do the work before you enter the room.
So that when you're there, you can actually be in it.