MBA2638 Extended Interview: Felippe Nardi - How to Run Magical Live Online Workshops & Presentations

0:00Today on the podcast, I sit down with Philippe Nardi, the founder of the Inside the Show program that teaches you to transform your online sessions into unique, magical audience experiences.

0:18Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhom, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business. It's hard to put into words how amazing Philippe's presentations are online. These are not old-fashioned, boring meetings or webinars or workshops. These look like they are done in post-production. It's live, but it looks so polished. It's incredible. Philippe came across my radar about 18 months ago. And when I saw him do a workshop online, I was totally sold because I've been doing a lot of webinars.

0:59I did 500 webinars in my course of my career of running Webinar Ninja, and I never saw somebody do an online presentation live that looked so good. It looked literally like magic online. So for the past 18 months, I've been chasing Philippe as a student of his program to get him here on the podcast to teach you what his Inside the Show program is all about, what he teaches, why his presentations are so magical, all that kinds of stuff. So we're going to show a live demo of this magical experience of his presentations. So you can know what we're talking about at the end of this conversation. So if you're listening to this podcast, then you may want to go to YouTube and check this out later.

1:40Just go to 100mba.net slash YouTube so you can see this magic in action. Philippe is a dynamic person. He is an engineer. He's a designer. He's a teacher. He's also an amateur magician. And that's kind of how the Inside the Show program started because he knew a lot of people in the magic world, and they reached out to him knowing that he's an engineer during the pandemic. They were like, hey, I need to do magic shows, and they need to look as magical as they do in real life. How do I do this on Zoom? And with his wizardry, he was able to help these magicians. I mean, And if this is good enough for sleight of hand and magicians that are using props and cards and all kinds of stuff while managing their screen and managing the presentation, then you know it's good enough for a sales webinar.

2:27I was so impressed by Philippe and his program and his presentation that I signed up. And I took the program, I went through the training, and I actually presented and used his techniques and his way of presenting in my latest launch, Own Your Job. And it was a three-day event. And we got incredible feedback about how amazing it is. the first thing that people ask is that, is this live? This seems so polished and so well done and the animations and the effects and everything is incredible. And the next question I ask is, how are you doing this? So this is why I'm doing this episode to explain how we do this, what this is all about, why this is so important, how this can really earn a lot of trust and credibility in your sales funnel, in your business, in your marketing, in everything.

3:09The other thing I want to mention is that it's really loud and crowded online. If you want to stand out, this is a great way to stand out because you're going to look so much better with your presentations, your webinars, your workshops, your coaching using the inside the show methods and technology. Philippe is also from Brazil. He's a non-native English speaker. And yet he still is out there presenting, teaching, not worrying about his accent or anything like that. He's owning it. I love that about him. I love the fact that he's showing people that anybody can do this regardless if their English is perfect or not or whatever it might be.

3:43So I got to give it up for him. And we talk about that in the conversation. This is not a sponsored episode. I'm not an affiliate of any sort. I'm just a fan of Philippe and his work and the Inside the Show program that I had to share it with you. So if you want to learn more, you can check out insidethed.show is the website. So without further ado, let's jump into that conversation with Philippe Nardi. Philippe, great to have you on the podcast. Hey, how's it going? Thank you so much for inviting me. Yeah, it's lovely to kind of have this chat. We've kind of been working with each other from afar.

4:17I've been part of your program. So I'm really excited to share your story, but also share your perspective on online presentations. So one of the things I want to kind of start with is one of the things you do is reword this idea of online presentations and you call them online or virtual experiences instead of like I show you how to run a better webinar or something. Tell me a little bit about why do you call it experiences and what does that mean for somebody who wants to kind of level up their presentations online? I think nowadays we go to meetings every single day and we are really tired of them.

4:53So when you hear about training online, usually what you think it's like something like a meeting is boring, it's dragging and you want to hear the subjects interest you. So you have to make an effort to connect with the presenter, the session and pay attention. But if this same thing was a all day in-person summit, it suddenly becomes something very exciting. Oh, I'm going to travel. I'm going to spend all day with them. So why does an hour, the perspective of an hour online is more dreading than going to an in-person event for eight hours? And the reason is because it's the same thing and we are doing it every single time.

5:33So I'm shifting away from looking at online presentations as meetings. And I'm looking at an experience, how they can be something that could not be lived otherwise, but live. Yeah. And we're teasing everybody a little bit here, but we're going to be showing what you're talking about towards the end of this conversation. But I have joined your program. I have implemented what you teach. I use the software that you recommend. And anytime I run a presentation online, when I run a live launch, when I'm doing workshops, and I'm using your techniques and using what you teach, the first thing that people say in the chat is, is this live or is it recorded?

6:14It looks so good. It seems like it's in post-production. It looks like all these graphics and all these elements are happening not live because they've never seen somebody do this live. I remember the first time I saw you present online, it was Taki Moore's group. And I thought this is like something new. This is like very magical experience. It's not like the actual presentation itself has value. So I want to ask you, where did this idea come from to really level up the online presentation world? Because you haven't been doing this for very long. It's been a few years, but I think you quickly have grown and people have paid attention very quickly.

6:51Yeah, there has been five years so far. And this is exactly what happens. People go to the presentations that we do and they say, how is this happening? And sometimes they even say, is this live? This is a problem for me, actually, when I'm doing a presentation masterclass that I teach people how to do these things and I invite them to join the program. They just pen in the chat, this is recorded, this is not live. And we usually now expect when this happens, I have someone on my team just pin the message for me and I can bring it up on screen and I say, hey, John, you're thinking this is not live, so I'm talking to you right now, this is live.

7:24Or I always have a part of my presentation that I know to expect someone is going to say that it's not live. But the idea, it comes from magic, really, the magical world. Since it was a kid, I was always passionate about magic, and I grew up learning magic tricks. And then it went a little bit off in my life. I became a designer, then I became an engineer. And later, a little bit before the pandemic, I started diving into the world of magic again. And I learned some very professional communities of people doing magic. So I started using my skills as a designer, as an engineer to create what they call magic tricks.

8:05Actually, they call it effects. You cannot call them magic tricks. They call it magic effects. So I started creating magic effects. And it started growing very quickly. and I had some of the most popular and famous magicians in the world using it. And then the pandemic came. And when it came, all these people were doing the effects that I was creating in in-person events, going every day out and about, and suddenly they couldn't go out anymore. So I started seeing quickly magicians go online and started doing magic shows. So I was excited and I saw this YouTube clip of magicians with Dan in the middle and then people around the magician and then the magicians quickly switch between the spectator, interact with them, then they are back to the audience.

8:50So it's something super interactive and magical. And when I went to it, it was nothing like that. It was really boring. It was like a meeting with a magician. And here's the thing about magic. It's either it has to be impactful or it's lame. And I knew what these people were capable of doing. They were able to go online with you, have a library, like a little shelf behind you and tell, pick a book in the shelf right now and get another spectator. So tell me a number from one to a hundred. Okay, so Omar, open this book at this page. First word, look at it and look at me. So the book is yours. You didn't show anyone and they will tell what word you were looking at.

9:31This is the kind of thing that they can do, but it was really terrible on Zoom because you would bring a spectator, oh, you have to unmute yourself or do the entire show and people were looking at the audience, not a magician. Or even worse, like you're doing a trick, you're showing something, then someone coughs and it covers the screen because the speaker goes in front of them, covers the magician, then you go back to magician, it's like the thing has disappeared, but you didn't see anything. So it was really terrible. And this inspired me to, okay, I have to do something about it. I have been helping these magicians.

10:03I think I can help them create a magic experience online as well. So this is where it started. I love this origin story because you're taking a seamlessly kind of like an unknown or an unrelated world, magicians and illusionists and things like that, and bringing it to online business, people that are trying to create more engaging sales webinars or trying to create more engaging presentations or coaching sessions. And I love this idea because by doing this, you're kind of leveling up, you're kind of doing something different, you're doing something that's higher level than what everybody else is doing in our world.

10:42You know, I've been doing online business for 15 years. I ran a software company, which is called Webinar Ninja. So I ran over 500 webinars. I've seen a lot of webinars, you know, over a million webinars are hosted on Webinar Ninja. So when I saw what you are doing, my first thought was, how can you, first of all, explain to people the value of what you're offering in a way that they understand that this actually is going to convert into sales, this is actually going to convert into more customers or retention, keeping your coaching clients. So when somebody asks you, okay, I love what I'm seeing.

11:14This is great. It's brilliant. It's entertaining. It looks fantastic. But what does it mean for my bottom line? What would you say to somebody who's listening to this and saying, okay, this sounds interesting, but is it actually going to convert to dollars? I have never heard that question. Because people, when they see like they are immediately, wow, There is this effect. And the main objection that I have is actually not if this is going to bring value, but is it going to be so hard that I cannot do it? That's the main thing. The technical point of view. They ask me. Yeah. Yeah. And how do you overcome that hurdle when somebody says, okay, this looks amazing, but I'm not a tech person.

11:53What I tell them and what we have built the Insider Show program around is this was made for magicians. They are not tech savvy. They are one person and they are handling magic effects and tricks in their hands at the same time they are producing shows. I was able, we were able to get them to do amazing shows while running magic cards and doing, using props and managing everything by themselves. And they were not tech savvy. So since then, we have built the program around for people that are not tech savvy because we know that the, I'm a tech person. And I don't think there is value in only having tech people in the program.

12:37I think there is so many talent that's not necessarily tech savvy. So we have built it in a way that allows anyone really to get up and running fast. Because usually when you are learning these things, you have to learn how to set up everything, how to do every single thing. So when you go for tutorials online, they are teaching you how to configure everything from scratch. And this is something that I don't do. I don't teach a software. I teach you how to go online and make an impact. So I paved the path to make it so easy that anyone can do. And we have people ranging from, I think the youngest one is 18 to 80 years old.

13:14And these are people that are from all different ages. And they are using inside a show. So they're presenting that way every week, every day. Yeah. And just to go back to my original question about how does this convert into dollars or sales, I'll just share my own experience. I ran it with my three-day launch. I was using your techniques, all the things that you share in Inside the Show. And just to give people a picture before we kind of go live and show you, there's a lot of interaction happening, meaning that there's live on-screen polls. There's a way for me to celebrate, for me to give shout-outs.

13:49people's comments are printing on the screen. I have slides behind me, vertical slides, and I'm able to kind of go in and out and talk to people and be able to present the slides without like kind of overhauling my whole screen. So I just show slides and I'm gone. I lose the connection. One of the things that you talk about in your program is flow and how you got to keep the flow going so you don't lose your crowd. I believe all of that increases your perceived value. A lot of people just feel like, okay, this is trustworthy. I can trust this person because it looks really polished. It looks really professional.

14:20This person actually made an effort and then just phoning in with like just popping on Zoom and winging it. So many people are just kind of doing a half-assed job, which is kind of sad. And we got testimonials for the free webinar, not even the product. People were just like, this is amazing. I've never seen anything like this. It's so professional. I would attend any of his trainings. So from my perspective, I feel like If you're trying to quickly earn trust with your audience and quickly get them to the point where they're ready to buy, this is a good way to do it because automatically differentiate yourself.

14:55One of the things that really surprised me, because I've done a lot of webinars, is the retention rate. How long people are staying on and not dropping off because they're really engaged by the whole experience of the presentation. So I just want to kind of tip my hat and say that when it comes to that. I would say that definitely you're adding a lot of value in terms of earning trust with your audience. And if you're looking to really level up your trust and close the sale quickly, it's a very fast way to kind of earn as much trust as possible because people are going to be seeing you as a credible source of information.

15:25So I want to tip my hat and say thank you for that. That's awesome. That's awesome. There is something in terms of rotation that I also see on my sessions. something that I always expect when I'm doing this masterclass is that an hour before I will have like 50 people in the waiting room like an hour before just waiting for it to start then at the end we have like it's constant people very few people drop the call and we usually the last one we get 700 people live and we stage we ended it with 600 or something then we ran the partial with something that we do like a little ending for the session with our logo a little music and just something to end the session.

16:08And there is nothing like this is over. It's done. This is for people to drop off. And I think 50 % of people stay until the very minute that I turn off the call. So even the very, very end. Because it's so interesting to see what's happening. How is this all happening? I know. I mean, I think people are really even impressed even before we get started because you have this thing called the pre-show where you have a screen and music and people see their faces flying in. It's pretty cool. Yeah, I think that definitely when we show the crowd, the demo, they're going to really love it. I just want to be fully transparent here.

16:38I reached out to you because I think that you'd benefit and help my audience just like you helped me. This is not like a paid promotion or I'm not even an affiliate or anything like that. I just think that when there's good work, it should be shared. And I don't want to just keep it to myself. So I want to make sure that people know this up front. One of the things I want to get into is a lot of our audience members, a lot of people that I teach at the $100 MBA, English is not their first language. English is their second, maybe even third language. You're from Brazil and you present, you teach all your whole program is in English.

17:10You know, you're not a native speaker. A lot of the people that I work with are non-native speakers. They're a little bit tentative. They're a little bit self-conscious and they don't want to put their work out there in English because they feel like, you know, it's not polished. You know, people might criticize my accent or maybe my vocabulary or whatever it might be. What advice would you give somebody who is got good work but is holding themselves back because they're not a native English speaker? I think what gave me confidence, and this is not even something that I think a lot, to be honest, when I started doing content and putting myself out there, the language itself, I was more worried about my image.

17:45I worked remotely for companies for over 10 years. And this has been like 10 years speaking every day. And when I started, my English was really, really bad. And I started working with a French company. So they have a lot of accent. too. So it was very challenging for me to understand. And there was a Ukrainian that I couldn't understand anything. So I didn't have my skills or my listening skills developed yet, but it was like, I just threw myself out there and I started doing what I need to do and practice and really immerse myself. So I said everything in English and I went to calls and meetings and I spoke.

18:25And I think it's practice that will give you confidence. Confidence is like the knowing you're able to do something after doing it over, over and over. So today for me, really, I noticed something that I got to a level that people started saying, okay, so you have an accent. When I thought that I was already speaking well. And then I started working on my accent. And I got to be honest, this is really hard. I've tried doing coaching classes, private coaching coaching classes, but there was a lot of memorization and muscle memory that was developed. So at the end of the day, what is most important is, are they understanding you?

19:01It's not your accent. If they are able to understand you, what you're saying, even with the accent, then I think this shouldn't be a barrier. You should go. Like, you should not be worried about accent. And if you really want to, you can develop it on the way, but not make it stop you. Yeah, I actually think is a great differentiator. I think it's a way to stand out some way to be remembered. A lot of people kind of blend in because they all sound the same. So I think that if there's anything different about you, I think you should just own it. You know, one of the things that I talk about a lot is that like, if you Google my name, Omar Zen home, because it's so different and so unique, you know, my parents are Egyptian and migrated to the US, there's not a lot of Omar Zen homes online and putting themselves out there.

19:46So I'm like 20 pages deep on Google. But somebody like a friend of mine, Justin Jackson, for example, shout out to Justin, who runs a great company over Transistor.fm. If you Google his name, there's like athletes and actors and all these other people named Justin Jackson. It's so hard for him to get known on Google or to be found. So I think you should own whatever you feel like is different about you that makes you unique, even if you feel like maybe it's a little bit of a struggle or a little bit of a challenge for you in the beginning like you said i think the confidence comes through the action so i really love that advice one of the things i absolutely love about brazilians uh and one of my best friends just say just say if you're listening love your dog just say is from brazil he's actually from sao paulo so you're from rio one of the things i love about brazilians is that fun is a priority Like if you look at a lot of cultures, fun is not one of the top priorities.

20:43It's like security, you know, making sure that you're financially secure or health or whatever. Every culture has it. But fun is like top three in the Brazilian culture. I think that that's something that really shows when you are presenting, when you are teaching, when you are online, when you're on Instagram doing your reels, like you're having fun. How important is fun in business? I think it's crucial. Like you have to like what you're doing. Otherwise, you are not going to stand waking up another day if you don't enjoy what you're doing. So having fun and doing things that make you proud, that make you feel proud of yourself, really, when you are doing your work is something that helps a lot in creating the morale and making you more excited.

21:31So definitely, just to note that, just to give some context, in Brazil, we have a lot of holidays. So I asked Google just now, it looks like there is like 11 national state holidays. They usually are on Thursday, so then you don't work on Monday as well, or Thursday and so forth. So we do prioritize time off as well. I mean, it's just like it's so natural that when we look at some other cultures, especially when you look at the U.S., like it's scary, the number of holidays that are in there. When I was working as a developer, that was one of my worries. Oh, my God. I will not have time off. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

22:14I mean, and I also say that when I go on holiday with my buddy Jose, who's from Brazil, when he's on holiday, he's on holiday. Like he's off. He's not working. Like he's not constantly checking his phone. He's really prioritizing the time off, which is, I find very refreshing. So I love that about your culture. There is something that I'm very actually workaholic. So when I was not like when I had my time off, that was when I was working at my side project and which was inside the show. And now that there's no other side project anymore, usually when I'm not working, I'm like working as well, just because I love it.

22:50That's entrepreneurship. It's hard to switch off. That's for sure. Speaking of like growing inside the show, you do a lot of teaching. What are some of the personal growth experiences you had through teaching, through growing the business? What are some of the things that you learned along the way? It's, I think it's really hard to do this alone. My look, for example, for I think for everyone, when they see me online, they look at my Instagram and YouTube and my emails and everything. They think that I'm running everything. And this is not true. From the beginning, I had a partner, three partners from the beginning where we didn't know anything about marketing online and anything about running online business in the practice.

23:31And we learned it together, but I couldn't have done and I cannot do this by myself still today. And today we have a team of 10 people to run the business. And I think that was the number one surprise for me because I would have thought that I would be able to do everything because I can be in front of the cameras. I'm a programmer, I'm a designer, and I know how to do stuff online and put websites up and et cetera, but it's impossible. So even today, I struggle with that, need more people on the team, but that was being realized. And you have a thriving community, you know, you have a circle community and you have to maintain that community and keep people engaged and run practice sessions.

24:09I mean, one of the things I love about your program is that you only just teach, this is how you're supposed to do it. And this is how you present it. This You allow opportunities for people to jump on calls and practice what they learn, you know, on a live, you know, Zoom call, which is really interesting. Why do you feel like that's important for people to be able to kind of implement before they actually go live and do it in front of their own audience? Here's the thing. We are doing magic effects. We are surprising the audience. We are impacting them. We are creating an experience. So the same way that magicians need to practice, they don't learn a magic trick and go do it immediately to show someone.

24:47You have to practice and practice and practice to get it right. We embedded it from the ground up in the program. We know that practice is the most important thing. So we have the program, like the acceleration sprint, where we get people up and running in a few weeks. And then we have practice sessions all year long, every Wednesday, two times on. Basically, you go there and you are put on Spotlight. And you ask it to do like a small task, like 30 seconds a minute task. like present a topic with a slide and bring someone to the stage and unmute them and then send them off or do a poll with the audience and bring the first person that got it right to the stage and then ask questions.