In this episode, Barbara and Jonathan discuss:
  • Why it is important to sustain the connection with someone
  • How to traverse the Reconnect journey—a book written by Jonathan Sprinkles
  • How Telehealth changes everything during and post-pandemic

Key Takeaways:

“The toughest part there is, comes when you look at yourself and have to
figure out how to pour back into yourself. But this is what I discovered through my
journey, the more you have, the more you have to give.”
– Jonathan Sprinkles

Connect with Jonathan Sprinkles:

Website: https://jsprinkles.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathansprinkles/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/JSprinklesDotCom/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9no0voD3Cv8eiq9MnxTa-A
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jsprinkles
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JSprinkles

Connect with Barbara Hales:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBarbaraHales
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theMedicalStrategist
Business website   www.TheMedicalStrategist.com
Show website- www.MarketingTipsForDoctors.com
Email: Barbara@TheMedicalStrategist.com
Dr. Barbara Hales:  Welcome to another episode of marketing tips for doctors. I’m your host, Dr. Barbara Hales. Today, we have with us a real treat.
Today will be a very fun conversation with some gems for your business that you don’t want to
miss. Jonathan Sprinkles is the Founder of the Connection Lab. He is a 14-time author,
including international bestsellers. People call him the “Connection Coach” because he coaches celebrities, professional athletes, and top business performers on how to use the power of human connection to build powerful brands, and close more deals.
Welcome to the show, Jonathan.
Jonathan Sprinkles:  Hey, Barbara, thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Barbara Hales:  It’s really my delight. You know, in the start of the pandemic, which if you can believe is like more than a year ago,  you started by showing us all how to get the best out of zoom, or virtual call, which was excellent. With you, we learned how to do things that we did not even know zoom was capable of doing, like whiteboard and breakout rooms, and all sorts of things that the average person would have no idea other than just going on and talking.

It really came in handy over the year. In addition to that, for people that felt creating webinars
was a little bit overwhelming, you told us that it doesn’t need to be, and because of that, I was
no longer worried about how I would make my slide decks. So, tell us a little bit about your
program that you had there. Is that something that you still do?
                                                              Virtual Certification
Jonathan Sprinkles:  Sure. So, the program is called the Master Virtual Presenter Certification Program.  And right now, I am the only person who is offering that master virtual presenter certification. The reason why this is different than some of the other programs that you can find on just public speaking skills is that I bring in the ever-important component of emotional connection.
One of the biggest objections that people have to web-based conversations is that there’s a
lack of emotional connection, or there’s a lack of connection between people that is normally
present when you’re staring at someone across the table or in a classroom.
And people always tell me, “Well, on zoom, it’s so hard to really engage people,” I say, “Well,
not for me and not for my students.”
There are a lot of different things that you can do. And I’m sure we’ll talk about some of them to create that ever-important emotional connection. Let’s be honest, is it exactly the same? No. But are you still able to do what you need to do? Meaning get your point across, serve people, and have people energized and feel good about the conversation? Absolutely, have cracked the code and figure it out,  Writing the Book “Reconnect”
Dr. Barbara Hales:  That’s great. Well, people that were asked in a study, what is it that you
missed most? Or what would you have liked to have during this past year, and almost
everyone said, “The thing that I would like most is just being able to hug or connect with, like
friends and family.” The thing that we miss most or crave most is just that human connection.
Now, I understand that you have taken the time to create a program or a book that’s coming
out called Reconnect, which is so appropriate for this time? Can you tell us a bit about that?
Jonathan Sprinkles: Yeah, thank you so much. My heart is overjoyed because it’s the first
book that I’ve written in a long time, and it happens to be my 14th book overall. The reason
why Reconnect means so much to me is that I wrote it during the pandemic. It came from
a time of struggle; it came from that time when business was going crazy because a lot of my
business at the time was face to face. So, within the first five days of the pandemic, I lost five
figures worth of business, and it was a struggle.
It was a challenge because everything that we knew was not the same. And it caused us to have to go into places that we weren’t expecting to win, we can’t be with our friends or family or neighbors. We don’t even know if we can be around people, around any person at all, because that person could be someone who can make us sick.
The thing we need most to your point about statistics, people wanting connection. That was
the thing that was taken away from us. And that’s the thing that makes human beings human,
the fact that we’re able to connect on some level, whether it’s because we both love the same
team, we’re from the same hometown, or we have the same profession, something makes us
say, “I like you because you’re just like me” well when you take that out, it’s a big struggle. Of
course, all the other things that were happening with politics, the violence, and the issues going
on within our country. There are just a lot of things that continue to just beat us down one after
another.
Eventually, I started to do things that I had never done, things like taking time to actually just
stop and breathe and be more mindful, take time to write down how I feel, take time to look at
what moments in the day I had very high energy and moments in the day in which my energy
was drained.
And then I started to realize that there were some patterns, Barbara, there were some patterns around what I felt and the things that were going on. And when I could fix that, I could change the pattern that I could change the outcome.
                                                       Reconnect
Even though things weren’t always better on the outside, I started to feel better. I could get
through it a lot more quickly. I had more strength, more grace, focus, and clarity through it all.
And it felt fantastic. As a result, I put together that book Reconnect as a gift from my struggle
and pain through to the people who want a turnaround in their life. That doesn’t have to just be
pandemic related, it could be that you want to go to a higher level in your job; you want to get
to a higher level in your relationship or lose weight, and whatever it is. The one thing that’s
common among all of it, Barbara, is that regardless of what area of your life is the common
point, and all of it is you. You take you everywhere you go. And when you want to go to a
higher level, you can start with this “reconnect” journey.
Dr. Barbara Hales:  Jonathan, you’re so correct because so many of us are rushing around
from one thing to the next and crossing off our to-do list to go on to the next to do list. We are
seeing patients or clients. We are just going from one thing to the next. Until at the end of the
day, we just fall down or call it “compensating,” and that’s it, we don’t stop to think about what
we need as people, we don’t stop to breathe, we don’t stop to say, well, who are we like
outside of work?
What is it that we can do to be better human beings to be more inspired?
What is it that we would want to do outside of the daily responsibilities that we have? It was an
opportunity for many to just have introspection and see like, who it is that we are, since we
were not capable of running around the way we had in the past. It was sort of like the divine
intervention to say. You know what, everything is on pause now. You need to figure these
things out things that you may have been ignoring and rushing around without thinking about
for the last however many years.
                                                             Pandemic Insights
Jonathan Sprinkles: Yeah, that was the toughest part. We had to sit with ourselves. We had to sit with a lot of things that you were too busy to look at it actually do something about that stack of papers, or certain things around the house or certain even aspects of our body that we said that we were going to get better at things that we were going to take care of that we just were too busy to do. Over that time period, we had to stop and take a good hard look in the mirror, and I’d say for the first few months, that had to be one of the toughest parts because we realized how many folders were yet undone.
How many folders that we have opened in our lives could have been, could have made our
lives a whole lot better and more meaningful. One of the things I know to be true is that when
we have a lot of stuff and a lot of things on our agenda, it makes it very easy to ignore
ourselves, especially if you’re a parent or a provider of some type of health or hope for other
people.
You spend your life investing in others, but who cares for the caregivers? Who feeds
the one who is feeding others? And that’s the toughest part there because then when you look
at yourself, now you have to figure out how to pour back into yourself. But this is what I
discovered through my journey, Barbara, the more you have, the more you have to give.
                                                                           Telehealth
Dr. Barbara Hales: That is really profound. I love that saying, doctors who had not been
pivoted yet to digital care and didn’t have a way for their patients to be treated or to consult
with them online. It hurts because they couldn’t see their patients in the office, and the number
of patients that they were able to see plummeted. A lot of doctors were really in jeopardy of
bankruptcy overnight.
But it enabled them to pivot to Telehealth which is a new type of “care”, but maybe something
that they could have been doing over the last few years. And now it was, you know, like do or
die. And the thing is, as we come out of the pandemic, Telehealth is really here to stay. It will
not only be convenient for patients, but think of the people who are in rural areas where the
medical care is 500 miles away, or people who have the need for chronic care that are
bedridden, or the caregivers that really don’t have the opportunity to be in constant
communication with the health caregiver. These are all great benefits that the health
community has been able to pivot. And this really just filters down to everyone.
Jonathan Sprinkles: The number one objection that people would have been going to the
doctor, other than what you’re being treated for, and whether it was going to possibly hurt or
something like that. The number one objection people had was, if I’m late, I’m going to miss
the appointment. But the doctor could be two hours late. I have to sit there, and my whole day
is blown.
Well, now all of that is taken away because the drive time, the weight, and all of those
things have been removed. So, it actually allows the doctors to get back to the thing that they
love most, which is being able to care for people. And you can do that in a way that is not geographically locked. I know a lot of people, a lot of my clients, who have done very well because now they’re no longer just serving people who live in their city.
You can literally serve someone across the world at this point. And so, it’s opened up for those who understand how to view their business differently and how to get the word out that they’re open for business. In this way, it has opened up a whole new level of opportunity for them. And I believe that everybody wins because of it.
Dr. Barbara Hales: This is especially why I love the title of your book, Reconnect because
that’s really what we are all striving to do, and when is your book coming out?
Jonathan Sprinkles: You know what, literally, they could be knocking on my door at any
moment. That would just be the perfect ending to this interview if they knocked on the door and
delivered it. It’s on the way right now. It is available technically in pre-order right now. At any
point in time, it will be here, and I’m going to sign each one of the first ones that are in when
assign them to personalize it, put the date on it and I’ll be shipping them out personally.
                                                            The Reconnect Journey
Dr. Barbara Hales: Will you have a program that is associated with it?
Jonathan Sprinkles:  This is really cool. This is something else that I’ve never done before.
The book is an eight-week journey. We talk about different concepts every single week. I
asked the same questions even with different concepts. This allows the brain to start thinking
in advance and develop a new muscle. It’s a term from psychology from the field of psychology
that allows people to mesh their situations with the learning that they need for them actually to
learn faster.
But what I’ve done is for those people who want to have a more intimate experience and
people who kind of like me, and I know you’re like this as well, it’s better when you have a
coach, or you have someone there with you because then you’re not doing it alone, you have
more accountability, you feel like you have a friend along with you. I did a program in which
you can have a video version of me walking you through each week.
I’m extremely excited about because I’ve never done that before. For every week of the eight-
week journey, I’m there coaching you along. I’m helping you to see some things that you may
not have seen and bring up some additional references which are not included in the book.
Dr. Barbara Hales: So, you’re sitting on my shoulder forcing me to not ignore the
assignments?
Jonathan Sprinkles
: Yeah, there’s something called a “spotlight effect” and we know that
people perform better when they know they’re being watched. Well, when you know that you’re
getting that email when you know that you have somebody who’s there knocking on your
digital door, say, “Hey, let’s do this”. You show up differently.
                                                  Connect with Jonathan
Dr. Barbara Hales: Absolutely. For people who say, “This guy has so much to offer, I need to
get in touch and see what his programs are.” How can they reach you?
Jonathan Sprinkles: Sure, there are two very easy ways. The first way is on my website, my
name is Jonathan sprinkles, and my website is jsprinkles.com. If you just put your name in the
email box, I will start sending you motivational content, about connection and how to use the
power of connection in your business and in your life. I’m also doing special offers for people
who are on my list. I call them “My Tribe”, for the book and the coaching and all of that good
stuff.
The other one is a lot more practical. If you’re already on LinkedIn, you can find me there. Just
type in my name, Jonathan Sprinkles, and I come right up. I respond to as many of the direct
messages and the friend requests as I possibly can, personally so that I can connect with you,
we can begin the relationship, and I can figure out how I can serve you.
Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, who couldn’t use that? For those people that have to be like the first
ones to get your book with your signature. How do they pre-order?
Jonathan Sprinkles: You could go through the website jsprinkles.com and you’re going to be
able to get it there. And you can also get on the list. There are some links in the emails that I’m
sending out that will tell you exactly where to go in order to get it. This is really going to be
exciting. I cannot wait. This is after 20 years in business. I can firmly say that this is my best
and most important work that I’ve ever done, because this is really going to change people’s
lives in ways that I’ve never had access to before.
                                                        Last Piece of Advice
Dr. Barbara Hales: Wow, that’s deep! What final tip or inspiration can you tell our listeners out there?
Jonathan Sprinkles: Barbara, I love what you said before people have to pivot. And this is a
thing that has been fresh on my mind for a while where you pivot is where you prosper. What
that means is not just opening up new lines of business but pivoting from being transactional to
being a connect-ologist, be a person who pivots toward people, not pivots toward the projects.
The projects will always be there, and the work will always need to be done.
But when you pivot toward people, everything else tends to work itself out. Everything else
happens faster, you pivot toward your staff, they get the project’s done faster when you pivot
toward your patients, the interactions, the engagement, and this is also important, your reviews
will also be better so that they know that you are someone who actually has their best interests
at heart.

That’s what people are looking for and over the last year, year and a half, what we’ve

discovered is that the big brands that are all about money and moving more numbers, all of
those things have gone away in terms of people’s interest and what people want now is to be
seen, heard, felt, and understood.  People really want that. The more that you can just ask yourself this one question, what do they need right now?
Dr. Barbara Hales: A digital hug!
Jonathan Sprinkles: Yes! You can pivot toward people and think like a connect-ologist and
just start thinking about what do they need right now? Everything in your life is going to get
better, and it’s going to get better very fast.
This is when we say, “Points are powerful, but it’s a connection that’s the key!”
Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, thank you so much for being with us today. I really enjoyed this
episode. This has been another episode of marketing tips for doctors with your host, Dr.
Barbara Hales, speaking with Jonathan Sprinkles. Thank you so much! Till next time.
Jonathan Sprinkles: Thank you so much.
Dr. Barbara Hales:      Thank you so much for being with us today. I’m sure it is a topic that our listeners can really enjoy. This has been another episode of Marketing Tips for Doctors with your host, Dr. Barbara Hales. Till next time.