Although it's just a few minutes on TV, a segment on ABC's "Shark Tank" can be a make-or-break moment for the small business owners competing to land investment.
The experience can be nerve-wracking, exciting and life-changing all at once says Sara Margulis, CEO and co-founder of Honeyfund , a platform for crowdfunding honeymoons, which landed a deal with Kevin O'Leary during season 6 of the show.
"When you're waiting to go into the 'Shark Tank,' you're in a trailer on a big studio lot in Los Angeles and it's very surreal," she tells CNBC Make It. "You've got your hair and make up done and you're waiting for them to come and tell you that it's time."
When contestants are taken to the green room, an area where talent waits when not filming, Margulis says producers give you a simple instruction: "Walk straight down the hall, stand on your mark and whatever you do, don't look at the camera." But the realization you're about to be seen by millions of viewers and five renown investors can make even that difficult.
"I looked straight at the camera," she laughs.
Here are a few things you might not know about what it's really like in "the tank."
1. The sharks really are that boisterous
"I feel like the sharks are almost more cutthroat with each other than they are with the entrepreneur," Margulis jokes.
After she and her husband and co-founder, Josh, gave their two-minute rehearsed pitch to introduce Honeyfund, "the questions started flying from all corners of the room," Margulis says. "Sometimes the sharks are talking over each other, sometimes they're disagreeing with each other, sometimes they're fighting over how much to offer or counter offering and cutting the other shark out."
Even the investors admit, it can get little loud.
"We know that they're going to edit [the show] down, so when we get mad, we'll start cursing at each other, yelling at each other, and the entrepreneurs will be like, 'What the hell is going on?'" billionaire investor Mark Cuban tells AOL.
2. The pitches can actually take hours
"A lot of viewers wouldn't know that sometimes you're in the tank for two hours," she says. "What you see on television is just a few minutes." And those two hours aren't easy.
The pitch process was, "really very challenging," Margulis explains. "Not only are you pitching your business for the first time in front of real investors, you're doing it in front of a national audience, with cameras all over you and lights."