JDE Connection’s 100th episode is a milestone celebration featuring hosts Chandra and Paul reflecting on their journey of creating a podcast that delivers practical insights, fosters authentic connection, and serves the JD Edwards community. With special guests Jon Vaughn, CEO of Quest Oracle Community, author and former 4-time CIO and tech CEO, Chris Laping, the team discusses the podcast’s origins to help business analysts and other ERP professionals learn in engaging, conversational ways that suit modern learning styles. The conversation includes memories from the early days, the evolution of the podcast’s audience, the critical role of community and authenticity, and the impact of major topics like AI. Chris Laping shares content creation, his upcoming book, and collaborative programs with Quest, emphasizing the value of real-world skills and mutual support.

04:08 History of the podcast

14:23 Why a podcast?

17:10 It’s not just about BA’s or BSA’s

25:04 Chris’s new book deal

31:32 Investing in goals and coaching

37:48 Chris’s connection to Quest and BP4D

42:37 Working with Chris on impactful content

45:43 Quest is launching a six-week coaching cohort

48:50 Midwesternism

Resources:

Unignorable Cohort Info Links

• Program sign-up now open: https://questoraclecommunity.org/become-unignorable-chris-laping/
• To learn more - join our upcoming info session on April 29th: https://questoraclecommunity.org/events/webinars/info-session-become-unignorable-cohort-w-chris-lap…. OR learn more about it at BLUEPRINT 4D where Chris will be presenting 2 sessions specifically designed for the Quest community

Chris Laping:

• Unignorable: https://chrislaping.com/
• People Before Things: https://peoplebeforethings.co/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claping/

BLUEPRINT4D Registration: https://questoraclecommunity.org/events/conferences/blueprint4d/register/

Quest Oracle Community proudly presents the JDE Connection,

a Quest on Air podcast production. This podcast

explores and showcases how JDE customers are harnessing specific

functionality and capabilities to drive business success.

Hello, JDE Connection listeners. Welcome back.

I'm Chandra Wabshaw, one of your podcast hosts and I'm the

business solutions lead at Colas is support.

Back with me this week and most weeks

is my friend and podcast partner Paul Hout Cooper,

Vice president of JD Edwards Product development at

Oracle. Welcome back, Paul. How are

you? I'm doing okay. I mean, I think I finally

dried out from that little venture over to

Hawaii. I had the pleasure of enjoying a

70 year storm, so a Kona Low

cyclone. So everybody loves to take a vacation in a, in

what would it be considered a Pacific hurricane. Is that effectively what

that is? Basically, yeah. Tropical storm Hurricane Cat 1.

Somewhere in there. It's hard, it's hard to time those, I tell you,

but when you can get one, it's quite fantastic. Nailed it.

Way to go. So, but how about you, how are you doing? I'm

doing pretty good. Stuck in a couple days of

user acceptance testing, or actually I think it was business acceptance

testing. So it's been a very busy week to

say the least, and my brain is very tired. But that's a good

thing. Yeah. Stuck in a, stuck in a room with 30 of your

closest, not so closest friends, right? Yeah. And the room wasn't

very big and there were no windows, but. But the

business has, has been preparing this whole time and is well aware of

everything that you guys are rolling out. So they're, they were ready to jam, Right.

This was never the first time that the business has seen any of this. Right?

Well, maybe a few of them. We're new to it, but it was great,

actually. It went really well. So that's good. Overall I was

very pleased. So I, I'm not going to complain too much. Yes, of

course we have some additional work that, that comes out of, of those

types of, of sessions.

Normal, but overall not too bad. Good. Yeah,

that's great. Yeah. And of course we took a couple weeks off to try to

get, you know, recharged before we come into our hundredth

episode. So congratulations on 100. And we brought

some, brought some fun guests with us today to help celebrate. Did you

want to introduce them? I'm very excited that we have some special

guests with us today. We have John Vaughn,

who is the CEO of Quest Oracle Community, and we have

Chris Laping, so he is a return

guest, as a matter of fact, with us today. So

welcome, both of you. So great to be back. Yes.

We're so glad that you could be here to celebrate 100 with us.

And, you know, last time I was jinxed this time,

because last time we recorded a podcast together, I had just

come off of being sick, and sure shooting. Here we

are again. Sick again. So I'm showing up with

my Wolfman Jack voice for the podcast, ready to

go smoking my. My pack of Marlboro

Reds. That's right. On. On the back of your Harley. I mean, just come

on. I mean, the weather's been really nice in Colorado. You've been, you know, just

be honest. You've been on your Harley the last week. It's been great. Exactly.

Great. It's all good. Well, that. That worries me that if

we're gonna ask you again in the future, you may say no, because you're like,

every time I come in, I get sick. Exactly. Have to break

this cycle like

the JB Connection curse.

Ouch. We don't like that. So you

don't need that? No, not at all. So how do we want to kick this

off? Chandra, what were you thinking? Well, I think the first thing that

I would really like to do is thank John

for supporting and allowing

this crazy idea to

move forward. It has been, you know, a hundred

episodes, so we're just over two years in.

Has been quite amazing from my

perspective. It's been fun. I've

learned a lot, actually. Not just about

podcasting, because clearly I had no background in that,

but I've learned more about the product. I've met

a lot of great people, new faces in the community

through the podcast, whether it's at conferences

or guests that we've had on. I've learned a lot about

how important the BA Role

is in the JD Edwards sphere, but I've also

gotten to learn more technical areas

as well. You know, having no CNC background,

having, you know, Clayton come on to speak to us about

CNC topics, I've learned through you

a ton, covering form, design aid, and

how, as a BA I can capitalize it and use that

to help in my day job. So it's been. It's been

an amazing 99 episodes. Yeah, no

kidding. Did you have imagined that this was going to be 100 episodes

when you started? Actually, no. I

didn't know where it would go. I didn't know

how it would go. And to be clear, I mean, this was

Chandra's idea. She hit me up, you know, one day and said,

hey, I just talked to John Vaughn about some of the challenges within the community

with business analysts and trying to train new business

analysts and, you know, get that next generation of

JD business analysts up to speed. Would you do a podcast with me? And I

went, what the hell? And, you know, that sounds like fun.

You know, had no idea that it would get here. And John, you

know, actually stepping up to say, you know, he was

receptive to it, obviously. And then. And then, you know, the help, you

know, with Quest's help, you know, supporting and putting a structure

around it. One of the fun memories was we had already,

you know, after Chandra asked, we went through and came up with

like a, well, a background or a logo. Right.

And because we had met at Blueprint

and this was all about, you know, kind of the blueprint for jde,

we had this napkin concept. Because JDE started with a

napkin, right? We always traded ideas with napkins. And so we drew

out this napkin and everything for this logo. And that's one of the

first things that we presented to John and company about, you know, hey, we got

the J.D. you know, we want to do this J.D. podcast. We actually were going

to call it the Blueprint, and we had this, this. This napkin design

that went with it. It was pretty cool. It was fun. Yeah, we really didn't.

I know that when we first started talking, we didn't set

a lot of definitions of success or, like, what we

expected to happen. I think we really were just kind of

waiting into the space. We knew that there was a need, you know, in the

marketplace to make sure that business analysts in

informed, better educated on everything around the

opportunities that J.D. edwards offers. And I remember us having

some conversations of, well, what are our definitions of

success? And I remember us kind of struggling of other than just saying,

well, we want to find an audience, we want to deliver

value. You know, I think where. Where this podcast is today. I mean, I.

I appreciate the recognition, but you guys are the

ones, you know, doing the. The. Doing the heavy lifting. And

I mean, it's just amazing. Congratulations on a hundred episodes. I

mean, it's. It's not easy. That is. It is hard work, what you guys

do. And it's a testament to the consistency and,

and the value that you're creating for the community, for the J.D. edwards

community, because you've developed a, I think, a very

loyal, consistent following that, you know, when we

compare it to benchmarks in the podcast industry,

you guys are, you know, way above average. And so I'm

really proud of what you guys have done. What. And, you know,

I do think there are Members of our team at Quest that, you know,

I know, Chandra, you said you want to make sure to recognize those folks too.

But there are people behind the scenes doing some work. But, you know,

just Chandra and Paul. You guys are amazing. And I look back

fondly on those early conversations I really enjoyed

after I received your invitation. Just really enjoyed kind of

reflecting on sitting in the lobby at

Infocus and there in Denver and some of those

initial conversations we had. So it's been fun to kind of

reflect over the last couple of years. Here's what I find

fascinating about the story is as somebody

who focuses on content creation for

the marketplace all the time, as part of my day job,

I have the opportunity to run in circles with people

that have big production crews.

They do this all the time and they put

tons of spit and polish on it almost to the point where it's

almost sanitized and over packaged. And the

fact that the two of you have side

hustled this thing and have done

100 episodes and have the kind of chemistry you

have and then just the everyday

attainable person that we all like to spend time with

versus some, you know, podcast star, I think

it's simply amazing. I'm so happy for

both of you and happy that you made it a hundred

episodes. I mean, come on, if this wasn't going

to work, you guys would have probably fully known it by episode

10 and by episode 20, John would have

probably pulled the plug in like, you guys are going to have to do

this on somebody else's brand name.

True story. A very true story. That is part

of what makes us who we are. We're just, we want to be

authentic. We want to be reachable. We want to be

somebody or some people that you can relate to. Right. And

connect with. Hence connection

for us. That's who we are outside

of. Well, at least I'll speak to me. That's why

outside of work as well, I'm just. And

your audience, they do hard work. Oh,

yeah. And they need a support system like

no one's business, because they're not getting this support system within their companies

most of the time. Agreed. So this is a

lifeline for them. So in addition to everything else, this

is kind of a service project for you guys? Well, it's funny because

we've joked many on many episodes that some of our interviews with some of

the folks in the community, our conversations turn into therapy, therapy

sessions, you know, that we're doing more to just provide

almost empathy to the rest of the community so that they know they're not

alone when you pitch John on this. So, like,

what is the pitch at this point? Like you're trying to get him on

board with providing resources, or

is it just permission to talk to people in the community,

bring us into that. Do you mind if I give a little

context? Go right ahead. I think it would be good. Just kind of

thinking back of just like, well, you know, where sometimes you get a little

bit dis. You get a little distance and you're like, where did this thing start?

Right. How did this start anyway? Yeah, no doubt. But

you alluded to it a little bit earlier. You know, Chandra did

of this was three or four. I guess it was

the spring of 23, when we were in Dallas,

I believe, for Blueprint, and at that

executive forum, Paul, you may remember this because you were. You were

probably standing up front receiving questions from J.D. edwards

executives that were attending the executive forum, and they were talking about

the challenge it was becoming for them to find the knowledgeable resources needed

to actually run their JD Edwards. And then out of that

was born a small focus group that was

charged with really identifying the root causes and

the root issues that we needed to identify in order to actually

for quest to try to come up with an offering to hopefully

help meet those needs. And Chandra was on that focus

group. And that's kind of where that conversation started, was

around business analysts or business systems analyst

role and how, you know, that was kind of the

critical piece or the critical role within an organization

if they were going to effectively leverage their

J.D. edwards investment. So I think that's kind of the

initial background. And then Chandra,

maybe I'll pass it to you to take it from there on your memories and

your perspective of how. How it evolved. I think it was actually

2022. Was it 22? Yeah.

Wasn't it? They started. The podcast started in January

24th. I thought it was the executive forum in 2022

because. No, okay, it was 2023. Okay, it was

definitely 2023 because it was in Dallas. Is. Is then this

question came up and you know, and

then later, you know, following that conference is when you got

on the focus group, and then we started talking about that. But I mean, again,

what. It was your idea to do a podcast. But

what, but why a podcast? I mean, I remember, but I'm going to cue you

as, as, as, as the question, you know, the podcast, I have to ask other

people questions. So there you go. You know, why a podcast?

Well, for me, there's. We're in a

transition period right now. Where in the J.D. edwards

community, we have a lot of, and a lot

of that knowledge is with people that are probably soon to be

retiring. And we are trying to bring

up to speed people that might be a little

bit younger. And some of those younger

individuals consume learning

in different formats than maybe your traditional

going to take a class or going to sit with

somebody for two weeks.

Podcasting is really a great way to

be able to share little bits of knowledge that people can

consume on, you know, a run, a walk

while they're vacuuming, maybe they're cooking dinner. They can do it kind of

on their own. There's no structured format

necessarily to what we're delivering. We

try to keep it more conversational in nature,

which tends for a lot of people is a great way to

learn things. It's, it doesn't feel so pressured, if you will. It

doesn't feel so structured. Not only that, we, we hope as

a part of it, we, we make it fun. You know, something that's a little

bit different than maybe listening to a pre recorded training

session on udos. Absolutely. I mean, it's, it's

a completely different medium than anybody had necessarily tried

before. Right. So it's like, hey, let's, you know, we've tried to put

materials out there in all these various formats in the past.

Why continue to repeat to do the same thing that we've done? Right. Why

not change it up a little bit and see if we can't educate through

conversation instead and shared experience?

I don't know if we're educating everybody else as much as we're educating ourselves. I

mean, I've. You've mentioned learning about the importance of bas.

I mean, you've expanded my

obviously awareness and recognition of, you know,

who really makes J.D. edwards tick when it comes to our customers,

you know, and how critical your role is, you know, for all

of our customers across the world. Everybody's got BAs and essays,

and they are the core of what really connects the business and the product

and makes it all work. We wouldn't be, you know, J.D. edwards effectively would

not be where it's at if it was not for all of you. So

this has been great. Getting to know many, many other BAs and

gaining just a different perspective than I think we would

have had if we were just trying to be educators in the

traditional sense. Right, right. Yes. Yeah. And I

think too, you guys, you know, we started with

a focus, original focus on kind of the, you know,

the business analyst role. We wanted to, you know, I remember some of those early

conversations of, you know, we wanted to focus on people translating business

needs into system functionality of those

working between IT and the business and solving real world operational

problems. So it was really about the people doing the work that

are making the system actually deliver value. But as I

was kind of thinking back over time, I feel like you've had a bit of

a natural evolution with regards to your audience.

It's not that your focus changed, but I think the audience has

expanded beyond just business analysts to be interest

to functional leaders, IT leaders, consultants, partners,

broader ERP decision makers. Because the challenges

aren't isolated. Right. ERP decisions are cross

functional and strategic. So, you know, that's how I see maybe how

you all have evolved a little bit. But the one constant thing that I

think just is so true to the podcast and

who you are is that the one thing the podcast has

always been grounded in is practical real world

application and problem solving. And

so yeah, I think you've evolved into

something even bigger than I think what we originally envisioned,

which is a space for the jdwards

community to share real world insights and navigate

this increasingly complex ERP decision making.

I think that's a testament to you guys and just how

curious your minds are and how you allow that to guide you.

And it has delivered great value, I think, to a lot of different people out

there. Thank you, John. Thank you. You guys

appreciate how the changing the landscape in the last

two years as well has changed. Right? I mean, especially with AI and

AI revolution and all that's changed everything.

It's been a game changer for every role within the business as well

and kind of served for us as an opportunity too to

help people along that, along that path. Right. We've,

we've had to evolve along with it. So it's pretty cool. Yeah,

very, very cool. And you're creating year round value, right? Like this isn't a

point in time, you know, where you have to show up. You

know, people can listen to your content anywhere and

everywhere at any time. And you know, I think that's,

you know, again, more of the direction of,

well, you know, wanting to meet customers where they are and where they need your.

When they need you, where, where, where they need it. So again,

testament to you guys for we've probably most successful at educating

people on Midwesternisms. I mean, I know that that's probably the

most value that, that, that I've gotten out of this whole thing is,

you know, we've been doing this now for, you know, 100 episodes. We've been doing

it for two years and our list of Midwesternisms has grown, not

shrunk. That's what I just don't understand. I'm like, did they just create these

things every week? I mean, what is this? Every time I turn around,

there's, you know, Chandra adds another four or five to the list because

she has a conversation with somebody back home. She's like, oh, yeah, I forgot about

that one. Ding, ding, ding. It's pretty funny. It's like my bucket list.

You know, one thing comes off, like five things go on. It's kind of the

same thing with the Midwesternism. Or I make a trip back home,

I'll mention something to you and you'll be like, what's that? I'm like, oh, we

should cover that better. Add that, you know, it's.

Yes. I was, I was wondering too, if that was where John was going to

go. Like, I can't believe I've learned so much about Midwesternism.

Exactly. You know, the last time I was on, I'm not sure

if my wife and I had purchased our cabin or not in

northern Michigan, but now we have solidified

a foothold in, in the Midwest. She

grew up in a small town in northern Michigan called Lake City. And

one of these 1940 Lincoln log

cabin on the lake, it's like a block off the

lake came up for sale and

we decided to go in and get that. And so now I'm like

immersed in that culture because we spent all

of or most of last summer in Northern

Michigan. Summers in Northern Michigan. It doesn't get much better

than that. It's so beautiful. Yes, it's

like northern Minnesota too. But I just love the Midwestern people.

And Christine makes fun of me because

she'll say, Chris left the house to take a 20

minute walk and he comes home three hours later. It tells

me about 10 different neighbors that he met.

And then this was like within a week of us having this cabin and

being there. We went for a walk one morning and probably we

passed three or four people where they're like, hey, Chris, what's going on, Chris?

And she's like, my husband, the extrovert.

These Midwestern people are not going to know what to do with you, Chris,

with all you jabber, John. They're going to, they're going to eat you up. They're

going to eat you up. You know, we were talking about podcasts, an interesting fact.

I don't know if you all know this about podcasts, but they really grew because

of women. When men decide to do

Leisure stuff. We just shut it all down. We just, like,

go do what we're gonna do and don't feel guilty about it.

But women tend to do it more on the run.

And I know when I was a chief innovation officer at Einstein

Bagels, one of the things that we learned is

that women were going into the stores and buying, like,

a bagel sandwich for breakfast, and then they would

just sit in their car in the parking

lot. They didn't want to eat it on the run,

but they didn't want to be around people in the restaurant because they're,

like, always on, always demanded of.

And so this was, like, their moment of peace. And it was

funny when Chandra was talking about what people could do when they

were listening to the podcast and she was mentioning all these

things on the go. Women do that more than

men do. And so the industry really grew

on women listeners. Wow. And

is the. The audience that most of

sponsorship is driven around? So, yeah, I think it's. I thought

it was fascinating to hear that. Absolutely. That is.

I mean, I didn't. I didn't realize that that is fascinating to think about.

But if you look at the top podcasts, they're

predominantly women audiences. So, like, if you think about

Mel Robbins podcast as an example, first one I thought of. I love her.

I am friends with her husband, Chris. Oh, yeah.

Got to do a men's retreat with him back in

September. Oh, wow. And he.

He's the Robbins in the household that I love the most now.

No offense, Mel, but, you know, it's just super sweet

and generous people. Oh, awesome. Yeah,

they're very cool. That was one of the first

podcasts that Chandra actually introduced me to. I mean, I.

I was really actually fairly new to podcasting and listening to

podcasts when Chandra and I met, and we

quickly, you know, started well. She helped me basically build out my library

very, very quickly. And Mel Robbins was definitely one of the first that she

introduced me to, which was really cool. So, Chris, you've got some news coming up,

right? I mean, we've got the new book. You know,

I got the new book. Unignorable. The

Science of Being Taken Seriously will be out by year

end. I signed a contract with

a publisher last week, Amplify Publishing Group. So I'm so

excited about them and

the support that they're going to provide in this launch.

And I mean, it's crazy because the book was done in

December, and it's crazy to think that it's not going to

see the light of day until December of

2026 and then the full hard launch for it's going to be

first quarter 2027. So there's a part of me

that thinks I should already start writing book number three so that

I don't have such a lag. But it's pretty significant

to sign this contract because

10 years ago this week, my first book, people

before things came out. 10 years already. 10

years. And I would have never thought

that I would either write book two or that if I

did that it would take me 10 years to

research and write. But it is what it

is and I'm grateful for where it landed.

I'm actually really, really proud of the book and

cannot wait for people to read it. I am excited

about it for sure. Did you ever think that you would, you know, when you

think back over your career, did you ever think you would be an author?

No. And what it was funny, the inkling came to me because

it first came to me. I was a CIO at Red Robin

and I had a tradition of writing a playbook for

my team every year. And it was a little pamphlet

that I printed out for them. It was generally

20, 25 pages long. We'd do an off site

event, we would talk about the goals for the year,

explain where it was at in the playbook, and then just ask them.

Anytime somebody asks you to do something, make sure it's in the

playbook. And if it's not, my door's open, come see me. And let's talk

about where that might fit in. Well,

probably year two of it. There was a gentleman on

my team who came to me and he was like, this is really.

I like this. I like this playbook. I like the way you write.

Have you ever thought about writing a book? And I literally, first phrase

out of my mouth, it will be a snowball chance in hell

that I will ever write a book. That I do not have the kind of

attention span to sit down and do that kind of

thing. And right around that time,

my grandmother passed and to. She

was the most, and still is the most important person that

had, you know, come into my life. And

to get through that grieving, I started journaling

and I started journaling every day

and I started to build a muscle around writing

and sharing my ideas. You know, in high school and

college, I was. I was a rock and roller. I was in a

band. I did not want to finish college. I wanted my band to get

signed and I wanted to, you know, rock the

world. And so there's a cre. There was a

creative bone in me. But this starting to write

was this new creative expression for me.

And so really, by the time this guy

mentioned, have you ever mentioned writing a book? And, you know, this

journaling was happening, those. Those ideas started to come

together and at some point I said, oh, I might. I might

be interested in that. So I did a few. So, by the way, the first

few times I took a swing at it, I'd write a chapter, I'd give it

to Christine. I'd be like, hey, what do you think? And she would read it

and she would say, I think you should keep journaling. Just keep

journaling. I don't think you need to write a book. And

finally I came to her and I had a chapter

and she read it and she said, I think you might have something

here now I think you should work on this idea a little bit more.

And that's what became people before. Thanks. Very, very

cool. I think it's probably

hard for people to understand the amount of work that goes in

and the time and energy and just the process

around actually writing a book. It's a lot.

I heard from a few that it's a lot more significant than people believe

it is, but wow. So. Well,

and it's significant because, like, the first time I wrote a

book, I sat down for 10 months and wrote a book. That

was all I did. Oh, wow. Wow. You

know, writing this book, the research process for

it, the writing of it, that was up

alongside everything that I have going on based on the

people before things, platform and work.

And it's trying to find that balance this time

around, too. I hired a literary coach because I was committed

to. I want to be a better writer. I want the second book

to be a really well written book. And

so the process was a little more

thoughtful and intentional because I had

somebody who's written 19 books herself right

alongside of me saying, like, hey, this could be better,

or, yeah, we're not going to use this. We had one

chapter that I was, like, super excited about, and she was like, I do not

think this should be in the book. Really? And.

And that process then required more from me

than the first time because I was balancing a lot of things,

but I was also committing to create a better product than

I did the first time. That's an intense. Yeah, yeah, it's

an intense process, for sure. I thought getting

the coaching on it too, knowing that you wanted to do a better job,

you know, you wanted to make your writing better. That's.

That's cool. Well, and what I'd say to the listeners in

general, what I've learned is you can be cheap

about anything, but do not be cheap with your

goals. And if my goal was to be a better writer, I was

going to invest in the best literary coach that money could buy,

and I could afford to be

cheap on things that just don't matter as much.

And so when it comes to our goals, if we really want

something, to have somebody alongside of us

who has that lived experience and has all the receipts of

succeeding to have that kind of guide, I mean,

she changed the way I write completely. And just

so you know, my normal, and you can see on the podcast, my normal communication

style is it takes me a while to land the plane. And she has

zero tolerance for that whatsoever. She calls it

the high heartbeat moment. Like, you need to bring the reader

right. When they start reading the opening paragraph, you need to bring them into the

high heartbeat moment. And then if you interest them, then you can

back into how you ended up in the high

heartbeat moment. So, like in my new book, I tell the story

of getting electrocuted by my father's lawnmower.

You open up that chapter with me laying

on the ground feeling like I just died in the middle

of a hot summer day in Florida. And then if the

reader's like, why does he think he's almost dying? What happened?

Then we back into, let me tell you about my

father's lawnmower. I think you can even translate that

to delivering presentations. I have a chapter in a new book.

Stop selling with slides or sell without slides. That's

exactly one of the pieces of advice. Like, come in

high heartbeat moment. We are here today because I'm

asking for approval to spend $2 million

on blah, blah, blah. Instead, you know, as an executive,

I would sit through decks where it was a 43 slide pitch.

Yep. And then you get to the ask on slide 44, when

everyone is completely fatigued, which is the worst

time to ask somebody for something. Something. I think you just hit on

Paul's pet peeve. I'm, I'm not saying, but I'm saying I,

I, I mean, I've been. One of the coaching moments I had in my

career so far was around executive communications. And

one of the big takeaways I took or, you know, that, that

I had was lead with your conclusion. Right. And I've

tried to coach my team and others that, you know,

when you're talking to executives, you know, you

got to think, you got five minutes. You don't get the 45. You don't get

the 30, you know, you just got to lead with that conclusion and then let

everything behind it, then support whatever that is.

But if you try to do like you were writing your normal thesis

statements and everything else that you've done in your life where you've got this intro

and then you, you know, and you, you break it all down and then 45

minutes later, to your point, 110 slides later or whatever, now

we get to the actual proposal. Now we get to the punchline. You've lost them.

You had five minutes of their attention and you totally lost it. You need

to take advantage of that five minutes, get straight to the point, and

then if they need the additional details, sure, you can have the other

slides there and support and go only through the

ones you need to go through to answer any of the questions. But

you may very well only need that first slide if it makes,

you know, who doesn't want to get in and say, hey, at the end

of the day, we have three options here. You know, here's one, here's

two. We're recommending three. Makes the most sense. Any questions? No? Then we're done.

If it's. Why? Okay, well, I've got additional stuff to back that

up. But one of the things that just kills me is I get into a

meeting and I've got an agenda and I can just see it. I was like,

okay, there's the first 15, there's the next 30. Okay, we're going to

get. I can, I can put this on mute, take myself off video

and wait for 55 minutes until I care. I hate to say it

that way, but here's what I share in the book. What I share in

the book is the science says that our emotional brains move much

faster than our rational brains. And

yet when you think about slides, we try to engage people's rational brain.

So in the book, I share a story about one of the biggest pitches I

ever did. I got in front of the board and I literally opened

with. We are here today because I'm going to ask you for

$25 million to invest in our general

managers to improve their lives. Let me tell

you a story about Sarah. Sarah is our

highest performing general manager. She's a single mom. She's been

in this system for seven years. She does not get to have

breakfast nor take her kids to school. Why? Because

she's got to be in the restaurant at 5am to be

ready for the restaurant to open at 11am

because she's using pencil and paper to do things

that technology should be doing for her. So

what you do in that flow is you open with this

is the ask, and then engage the emotional

brain immediately by telling them a personal

story about who the high performer is and what the

stakes are if she is unable to have this

resolved and what the cost of the organization would be if

she were to leave. That does not

require slides. I

think we put slides up because we're uncomfortable.

And so what we do is we make our audience uncomfortable because we're

uncomfortable. I want to interject here. So speaking of

uncomfortable, remind me to never come on a

podcast with Chris Laping again, because I can't stand up to this

guy. Like, what? Come on. He's just

over here spitting. Truth and knowledge just flows

from him. That's why you want to be here, John. You can learn as we

do the job. That's why we love doing it. I

have been fortunate to have been around Chris for 10

years, because when he published his book, that was when he and I first met.

I. We weren't doing podcasts, but I invited Chris to

allow me to interview him about his book, and we were going to share it

with our community. And I think he came to our conference

that next year and spoke. And so for off and

on, over the course of 10 years, we partnered with Chris

and a lot of different ways and. But the one

thing that is, as you can tell when you talk to Chris,

is. I mean, he's such a great storyteller. He is so

knowledgeable about what he's talking about, and his

message really resonates with our community,

and that's why we've always enjoyed

partnering with Chris and, you know, his. I'm excited

to read this book when it comes out, so it'll be amazing.

Speaking of that partnership, though, we've got blueprint 4D then coming around

the corner right first week of May, I believe, this time around,

for the second year in a row, Chris, you're going to. You're going to be

a part of that conference and helping us.

Obviously, we've got this JD Everidge community, we've got the

PeopleSoft community, we've got part of the Oracle community coming in.

And I know we had a great time last year, and, you know, you

were introducing some of the concepts right behind, I

believe, the unimaginable. What. What do we have in store

this time around with Blueprint? I love the

Quest community and the people that I've met in the community.

I love John and John's team and

Christine, my wife, and also my business partner. She comments to

me all the time when I get off of a call with the Quest

team that I'm generally bouncing off the walls. I just really

like working with everyone. So this year

I'm going to be hosting a couple of workshops for people

to come in and learn the concepts around

unignorable and the science of being taken seriously.

But when I say workshop, I'm not going to be talking at

people. They'll be like the workshops I did last year

where I'm prepared and I've got things that I can share.

But we're going to have some good old fashioned work therapy together

and just talk about the struggles that everyone has at

work in getting their ideas heard. You know, the reason

I wrote this book is that Gallup reports that

75% of the global workforce

75 do not feel that their

opinions matter at work. And

I think you shouldn't have to be loud and obnoxious and

self promoting for your ideas to be heard, for your opinion to be

heard. And that's what I explore in Unignorable and that's what

I'm going to explore in these workshops. Asking people to just

interact with me. Live about like what's going on at work and what's

irritating you and what do you wish people were listening

to? What do they need to know? What ideas do you have that

they need to know? And I'm going to give them some

tactical, practical steps that when they go back to the office,

they can immediately implement. That's two

of the four things I'm doing. I'm also going to be involved in the executive

forum and we'll be moderating a panel of

some outstanding leaders in the community

and having I think a very thoughtful and intentional

conversation about some lessons that they've learned on

being on the leading edge of things. And then we're going to have a general

conversation in the executive forum about how we innovate

and engage and galvanize people in our organizations,

again with our ideas. I brand it in the book

as trusted influence and I

branded that way because when you think about people

with authority, they have positional power.

But just because you have C in your title

does not mean that your ideas are being heard either, does not mean

that the boards are investing in your ideas or

your plans and sometimes

C levels. They have a point of view about something that needs

to happen, either to accelerate something

like AI or to tap the brakes and say listen, for our

business, that's nothing but hype. And they have a

hard time getting that message through. So with the executive forum, that'll be a part

of that conversation. Nice. And then I think the last thing

is I'm doing a lunch talk for, I think, the Oracle Cloud

breakout. We love working with Chris. So,

Chris, the feeling is mutual, what you shared earlier. And other

than just being someone that is just an absolute pleasure to be around. I know

that Chandra and Paul, you guys agree with that statement that, that, that

is Chris. But, you know, we also are fortunate

that I think we share kind of this aligned vision of

how we deliver value, how to make content

impactful, and that it has to be put into practice. So

a lot of the things that we're doing together, but then also even

in our own businesses, independently of helping

people build skills, can't be done by just consuming content.

It has to be put into practice in order

to build skills. So. And you know, that's. Chris

obviously is talented and delivering content, but I

think he's even more talented at helping people

translate that into applicable

skills. Well, I know you guys have partnered with Chris

and I think. Was it the Mastermind class way back,

way back in 20. What was that? 2021?

Yeah, yeah, I was a part of

that. And then Chris was also a part of the ELP

program that I completed about a year ago.

Emerging Leaders Program with Quest. Thank you.

Again. We talk acronyms, like, we think everybody should know them, but not

everybody always does. So which I imagine, Chris, you

are still part of that program, this cohort. And

coming up for the next one, John, like, until John kicks me

out, basically. Look,

we're not kicking Chris out anytime, actually. We're partnering together

on something else that Chris didn't touch on.

So Chris spoke about what we'll be doing together at

Blueprint, but also after Blueprint, we are

partnering with Chris to launch a quest

oriented, unignorable cohort. So

it'll run in that June, June

to early July time frame. It's. So, Chris, you

may want to talk about some of the formats and things like that, but

we're really excited. It'll be a lot like that Mastermind experience

that you went through, Chandra. It's

six weeks. It's online, but it is pretty intense. Six

weeks. Again, it's just aligned with

how I think both Quest and Chris look at delivering

value. It's not just events, it's not just podcasts.

We're also doing cohorts. It's a guided experience. It's

application focused. It's high touch,

high experience type model. So Chris, I don't know if you want

to elaborate on that, I know that we will give

Chandra and Paul links for where people can go

and learn more and those can be put in the show notes, things of

that nature. But anything you would want to add about that? Well, I'm super

excited about it and I am already pointing

non quest people to be a part of this. Oftentimes

I will end up with some kind of meeting

on my calendar where someone's found me. They get on the website, they

book a let's meet call and I think

generally people's intentions are to do one to one coaching with me,

which I'm totally grateful and flattered that that's where they want

to go. But it's a little pricey I think for people to do

that. And so oftentimes they ask, well, what other

options are there? And so now I've been like, oh, I've

got a cohort that's starting on Wednesday,

June 3rd and it's six weeks and I'll send you a

link for the landing page. So this is going to be,

it's going to be great to be more

deeply entrenched in the quest community,

in the kinds of struggles that they have every day. And again, this

is going to be a safe place for people to hang out for six weeks

and really fine tune the behaviors and

skills that they need to be able to get their ideas heard. This is

not a communications 101 or

like personal branding course. Nothing like that. And

open to all levels, I assume. I mean you're not just targeting this at

whatever executives, it's anybody that's interested, right?

Yeah, yeah. I've learned a lot from Chris,

obviously having been part of the Mastermind class and then

the Emerging Leaders program. I've read your

book People Before Things probably three times over the

last several years because there's things I just want to keep reminding

myself up or I'll pull up a certain chapter to be like,

oh, this reminds me of something Chris talked about. Let me go

refresh my mind on this. What's a good way to maybe approach

this? So I'm a huge fan and

can't wait for the next book and may have to look at that

cohort program myself. I find that

I learned something from you constantly,

even through, you know, the emails that you send up

that I have signed up for. So for those that aren't aware,

you can find Chris online. We will link to his online

presence as well and you can sign up for emails

and I, you know, they come out. I think it's every Friday. If I'm not

mistaken, they were every Friday until this week. They started on

Thursdays because I realized people are not reading this stuff on

Fridays. When people reply to my

newsletter, they're usually replying to me like on

a Monday or Tuesday. So it sort of sits there for a while.

So I'm going to be trying different days. Love it.

Thank you for all the nice things you all said, but we are here to

celebrate your hundredth episode. We are not here to

celebrate me, so we should change the subject.

I mean, if we have to. I mean, at the end of the day, you

know, one of the things we, we always said this podcast was going to be

about was, you know, practical application and exchanging

ideas that, you know, for everybody and, and getting to know everybody in the

community. But we wanted to do it while having a little bit of fun. Right.

Is that, is that fair, Chandra? And, and the fun factor

has always been the Midwesternism. So I know we

had, we kind of segued there a little bit, talking about

Michigan and Lake City and whatnot.

And we've had this long list. I mean, we could probably even do a favorites

episode on just what are our favorite

Midwesternisms. We should do that. But what

did you pick for this time around, Chandra? Well, I

picked a topic that I'm not sure how many people are going to

be familiar with. Skyways. Skyways are what

I would call an elevated pedestrian way.

Walkway, whatever is probably the more applicable term.

Walkway that connect buildings. Oh.

So, yeah, typically they're in urban areas, obviously,

where you're going to want to connect a number of buildings together.

Minneapolis has nine and a half miles worth

of skyways. So you can go through

downtown Minneapolis in the skyways. You don't have to go

outside. You can go from building to building. You can get yourself

good and lost and cover more than nine and a half miles. St.

Paul has five miles worth in downtown as well.

So. Believable. I know. Which. It makes

sense. Yeah, it makes sense for a place that gets a lot of snow, I

guess, right? Snow. Oh, I see. You don't want to be outside,

basically. It's so terrible up in Minneapolis, St. Paul

area that you'd rather just stay inside and walk the city. I see.

Have you ever been there? The third week of January, I had

a corporate apartment in what used to be called Lake Calhoun.

They've. I think they renamed that. I had an apartment there. The

Calhoun Beach Club was what it. What they called it. Oh, yeah. It.

There's no, it's Not a beach. When you're like, it's,

you know, negative 12 degrees outside.

It's brutal. Yeah. When the nose hairs freeze when you go outside and

you're like, it hurts. It burns in your lungs, and it

takes the air out of your lungs. When you walk out of, like, the airport

into, say, -10 with a wind chill minus,

you know, worse. Right. All the air goes out. You're just like,

you know, it's like a shock to the system. Oh, yes.

It's fantastic. Well, I was just saying, after Paul described

such a terrible weather event or scene, I'm like, hence

the reboot from Skyways. Right. Like, that's. That's. That's

suddenly all makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The thing that doesn't make

sense to me, when I'm in the Midwest and

it's. It's summertime and it's really hot.

Like, our cabin does not have air conditioning. Nope. And I

ask, why don't people have air conditioning? They look at me like,

that's, like, such a asinine question. Like,

it's. It's not hot that

much up here, so why would we need air conditioning?

And I'm like, in Florida, it's hot

all the time, but we still have heaters. Like, come on.

Well, newsflash. Chandra's father, I

still don't think has air conditioning. Correct. Correct.

My. The house that I grew up in, at least from fourth grade on, did

not have air conditioning ceiling fans,

and. I don't know. You survived. I don't know. My dad would

say it made me tougher, so he would say, you

know, that Midwest we're going with. It'll make you

tougher, that Midwest stoicism. Is that still.

Yeah, exactly. If we're going to go with that. Whatever

anybody thinks about, you know, being a writer

and what kind of income might be associated with that,

Let me just say that our cabin, that has no air conditioning. We. We do

have this in window air conditioning unit that is

just so trashy, hanging out the

window and dripping water everywhere. Yeah,

the box. The box one. Yeah. That fits in the

window. And you can take it out in the winter because you don't want any

cool air coming in. So you take that out and you put the

window down, seal it back up. Yep, yep, I'm familiar. Little. Little

bugs coming in because there's. It doesn't perfectly seal in the

window. I mean, I don't know who designed these or why

it's. Or why it's a $12 billion industry, but,

you know, it is what it is. No offense to any listener

out there that supports that kind of business.

We appreciate those people as well. Absolutely.

All right, well, for questions, feedback or ideas for future

episodes, contact

us@the

jdeconnectionuestoraclecommunity.org until next

time, let's keep learning, sharing, and most

importantly, laughing together. Toodles.

See ya. Thank you for tuning in for today's episode

of the JDE Connection, a Quest on Air podcast

production show. Notes and links can be found at

questoraclecommunity.org jdeconnection

to learn more about what's happening in the Quest JD

Edwards community, visit our website at

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