3 types of founders in front of a camera. Only 1 of them needs a script.

01The mistake I used to make

Most shoots start with the same bad line. Relax. Just be yourself. Talk like you talk on a phone call. Then the camera starts, the founder goes stiff, and the rest of the sitting is painful for everybody.

A founder does not sound fake because he used a script. He sounds fake because he was handed the wrong setup.

I work with founders who run real businesses. The starting point for the kind of founder I am talking about here is at least 10 million dirhams a year in revenue. These are not shy people. They sell, they lead teams, they handle hard rooms every week. Put a camera in front of them and some of them still freeze.

So the first thing I check is simple. Does this person have a lot of stories and experiences that he can speak about easily? If yes, my job is lighter. If not, he needs help, and that help has a shape.

02The 3 types, in 1 look

Read these 3 and you will know which one you are in about 10 seconds. Most founders recognise themselves straight away.

None of the 3 is better than the others. The only mistake is treating a type A like a type C, which is what most people do.

03Type A. He needs the script

Type A wants to know what he is going to say before he says it. He wants to rehearse it well. That is not weakness. That is how he protects his own standard.

Inside type A there is a smaller group. They also want the teleprompter. They are not comfortable moving around. They want to sit in front of the camera and read the whole script out, and that is enough. Ask that founder to walk and talk and you break him.

The slower founder I filmed is close to this. He thinks about the lighting. He thinks about the angle. He cares about how polished the video looks and about the work that happens after the shoot. He needs more preparation before he can speak. There is nothing wrong with him. He just cannot be handed a question and a camera and be expected to fly.

What to prepare: get the script written in your own words, not in marketing words. Read it out loud a day before, not on the shoot day. Then set the teleprompter, sit down, and stay sitting.

04Type B. He needs the questions, not the script

Type B is the one people get wrong, because from the outside he looks like he needs nothing. He does not want a script. A script actually makes him worse, because then he is reading instead of talking.

But he does want the questions in advance. A founder told me this in the middle of his own shoot. He is a raw creator, he does not need a script, and he said that next time he would like to have the questions ahead of the shoot so he can prepare even more. That 1 line changed how I plan every sitting.

It is a small ask with a big result. Questions a day early do not make him sound rehearsed. They give his brain time to pick which story to tell.

What to prepare: ask for the question list before the day. Do not write answers. Next to each question write 1 story you could tell. 1 line each is enough.

05Type C. He needs nothing at all

Type C is me, Digital Pratik. I do not want questions in advance. I do not want a script.

The only time I want a script is a quick ad, where an exact thing has to be said out loud in front of the camera. Even then I read it once or twice, I know what is coming, and I act naturally in front of the teleprompter instead of reading off it.

When my assistant asks me something on WhatsApp, I have no idea what the question will be. The moment it lands I reverse engineer it inside my own head and self audit my past. Past 1 hour, past 10 hours, past 10 years. I skim all of it in my head and speak in the rawest form, without thinking about whether this is a 1 minute answer, a 10 minute answer or a 1 hour answer.

Same on stage. My keynotes have no presentation. I take a starting point and carry the conversation forward from there.

What to prepare: nothing on paper. Just do not assume everyone else in your company is like you.

06How I run the sitting

Here is the setup from the shoot that worked. I asked the questions. We recorded on an iPhone with the Blackmagic camera app. The founder was not looking at the camera. He was having a conversation with me, which makes it look like a podcast setup even though there is no podcast.

That is the whole trick. The camera stops being the audience and I become the audience. He is talking to a person, not to a lens.

The first shoot with a new client is also a discovery. You cannot plan the perfect shoot before you have seen the office, met the people and found out who can actually talk on camera. So shoot 1 maps all of that, and from shoot 2 you build the system.

All of this sits inside what I call STORM. Strategic, Targeted, Organic, Relevant Media. From now on, before I film, direct, ideate or strategize for any founder's STORM, the first thing I answer is which type he is.

07Questions, answered