The Amazon Flex is The reason that Amazon has been able to take over the world is that of how the founder Jeff Bezos approaches each day. Where most people focus on being the best, he focuses each day on pleasing the customer. The Amazon Flex is about how a company flexes their muscle to succeed. At 9INE POINT Health we call it the Amazon Flex.
He believes that when you strive to be the best, you lose your motivation once you are the best. When you strive to please the customer though, the customer is never happy, so you always have work to do. I think this is a great reminder for anyone inside of healthcare.
A reminder to be empathetic to the fact that if there were not people suffering than you would not have a job. In this case, the injured athletes are your customer, and they are never happy.
It is Easy to Complain Without an Amazon Flex Mindset
I am the worst culprit because I sit around on Twitter cranking out funny memes about what it is like to treat athletes every day. That is all in good fun though, and the truth is that it can never be forgotten that athletes are the customer. What these means is that once you lose sight of trying to keep the customer happy, all else is bound to fail.
Think about a grocery store that you go to. Imagine every single person that worked there hated working there and they just looked for a reason to complain about the customers.
- These people are so annoying with all their questions.
- They can’t find anything like the aisles is labeled well.
- They can’t even use-checkout out properly.
- No, I don’t know where the guacamole seasoning is.
- This customer is going to take forever to check out.
Imagine these are the types of things that the employees of the grocery store said every day while you shopped there. It would not be surprising if that store started losing customers, would it?
A lot of people forget that the same thing applies to anything in life. The customer will ALWAYS go where they feel cared for the best. If you have an attitude focused on the wrong things, the customer will vote to go elsewhere with their feet. As a healthcare provider, you can fall into the same trap.
- These athletes never do what I say.
- These athletes are ungrateful and spoiled.
- I have treated so many people today I am tired
- These athletes need to suck it up and stop being a baby.
- Is it six yet? I am ready to go home.
The list above could go on and on, right? Well, anytime you complain in this manner you have forgotten the Jeff Bezos way of taking over the world. You have to get back to focusing on the customer. That is what matters, and that is all that matters. You have to think through these things on a deeper level.
Don’t get it twisted though; I am not saying it is easy! I am merely saying that it will be worth it.
How Our Core Values Can Improve Your Life
Our core values here at 9INE POINT Health are in place to draw out the best of everyone on the team. We learned from their cor Knowing what I know now; everyone needs core values to guide them to success. Amazon Flex has their core values of the following:
- Customer-obsessed
- Boldness and collaboration
- Take Ownership
- Be Frugal
- Hire and Develop the Best
Amazon Flex Takeaway #1 – Committed And Driven Even When It Is Hard to Do So
Like I said earlier, just because it should be done, does not mean it will be easy to do. We made sure in our core values to add the words, “even when it is hard to do so” because that is true commitment. Anyone can commit when it is easy right?
It is easy to commit to your marriage in the first month compared to being 15 years in with four kids.
It is easy to commit to eating well until some jams that Strawberry Cheesecake in your face sprinkled with chips of chocolate and fudge drizzle.
Is it easy to commit to being a hard worker and giving your all until you’re fed up and want to smack someone in the face right?
This is our first core value because it comes with an understanding that you will not always want to do it. This is a big reason I take cold showers for a month straight twice a year. It is a reminder that success requires doing things that you don’t always want to do, but you do anyway because you’re committed.
Your job is to help get athletes healthy. Doing that means you will have to treat people who are ungrateful, needy and you may just outright not like. That is a personal problem, but when you are committed, it does not matter.
Amazon Flex Takeaway #2 – Walk a Mile in Their Shoes and Be Compassionate
I spent 16 years being an athlete myself and had three surgeries, pulled my groin, hamstring, and hip muscles numerous times and suffered major injuries to my L5 during that time. When I started the 9INE POINT Instagram and started to get athletes sending in questions, I showed VERY little compassion for others injuries.
I used to get upset and be bothered by the questions to be honest. The first reason was that I was not expecting them, but the second reason was that I just was selfish. The fact that I had to take time out of my day to help someone else was a waste and good display of my horrible attitude at the time.
When creating the core values, I knew this needed to be one. The fact that when I was injured, I demanded help at all costs no matter my attitude. I did not remember that feeling and became that person unwilling to help others.
My wife is an athletic trainer, and she ends up in a lot of wedding parties. The reason is not just because she is a good friend but because people know she has a servants heart. She will be at the wedding ready to do whatever is needed to make the day better for others.
When you decide to get into health care, you are choosing whether you want to or not to serve others. You have to put yourself second to help others be their best.
You have to get that compassion back, and the only way to do that well is actually to imagine yourself being in their exact position. Picture yourself hurting like they are, missing practices, losing confidence, having school and relationship issues all at once. When you do this helping other becomes that much easier.
Amazon Flex Takeaway #3 – Never Do 10 Reps of Anything
If you tell someone to do push ups the chances are they will get on the ground, and they will do 10. We are fixated on the number 10 for some reason when it comes to reps. I think 10 is a poisonous number though. The idea ten it is a poisonous number is because it forgets about every number above it. Why are you doing ten pushups when you can do 40 and go to failure? You will get much more out of the 40.
Never doing ten reps applies to every area of life. Going through the motions means that you are not producing your best work. It means you have checked out mentally and you no longer want to be great.
Everyone has areas in their life where they have decided we are doing ten reps no matter what. Once that decision is made all creativity, chances of learning and ability to grow to go out the window.
Amazon Flex Takeaway #4 – Balanced in Pursuit of Health Wealth Love and Happiness
We are passionate about what we do, but work represents one major area of life. What is the point of building up your wealth if your health is declining at a rate that will stop you from every enjoying life? If you don’t think love matters, talk to anyone who just went through a divorce. We know all of these areas matters, but we don’t act as they do.
The biggest one I have noticed for health care providers is health. It is pretty ironic that people who help others get healthy are often not healthy themselves. I have always encouraged my wife to take care of herself first because it only helps to gain the respect of athletes.
I will never forget this one time a therapist was trying to show me a stretch that required her to get her leg up on the table, and she was so overweight that she could not show me. It was embarrassing, and it made me uncomfortable. That does not mean you need to be a top-level athlete to help athletes, not at all. Being able to have a decent range of motion is helpful though.
For our team, if we don’t put some of our time into all four areas of our life each day, we consider that to be a failure to the team and ourselves. We think you should adopt the same attitude.
Amazon Flex Takeaway #4 – Humble Yourself and Learn Something New
To be a healthcare provider it requires at least four years of undergrad. From there many go on to graduate schools or get graduate assistant positions to further their learning and experience. Then after graduation, many never pick up a book again.
You might be saying well that’s not fair, I do my continuing education every year! I call bs on that because that is not learning if you are forced to do it to keep your job. Real learning is what you do on your own after you think you know it all.
Our team prides us on our pursuit of knowledge. We want to grow ourselves to improve our own lives and improve the team. If you are not learning, you are going backward, compared to others learning and going forward. The gap between you and them gets bigger daily, and the only way to change this is to be a learner.
The issue with being a learner is that it first requires admitting that you don’t know it all. It takes a solid humbling to admit this and be able to recognize it often. Make it a habit though. The worst people to deal with in health care are the ones that seem like they think they know so much that they can be a dick and it won’t matter since they are so smart. But customers usually could care less about how much you know if it is first not shown that you care along with it.
Amazon Flex Takeaway #5 – Be Creative and Open Your Eyes to The Possibilities
There is more than one way to Rome, and that is true with health care and business. The worst thing you can do is get stuck in a ten rep mindset because you stopped being creative and tried to see what can be. The possibilities are endless if you keep working your creative muscle.
One reason we create 9INE POINT is that we needed a creative solution to athletes using Google to self-diagnose their injuries. The human body is complicated, and every injury is different because each human comes with a unique injury history. It took getting creative and thought outside of the box to think of starting with just a simple question.
What do you do every single day at work just because you have been too lazy to come up with a creative solution? Are you doing what you know does not work? What are the possibilities you overlook every day?
Takeaway #6 – Respect Others With Open and Effective Communication
We all know how important communication is but we very rarely make sure that we are living a life of better and more effective communication. Communication is everything and once it gets off track, all else breaks down until the miscommunication is figured out. The best advice I have ever received on communication was, “communicate to be understood.”
Communicating to be understood means that you speak to the level of whoever you are speaking with. If you use words that the listener does not understand, it is no different than speaking Spanish. We forget that words are just sounds that carry meaning and if we don’t know that meaning. When someone speaks a language we don’t know, they are using sounds that we are not able to attach meaning to.
It is for you to creatively and selectively find the right words to make an IMPACT on your customer. It is not their job to go home and do research to understand you.
Show The Customer More Love Like Amazon Flex
When you bring these core values to life every day, it becomes very difficult to put everything on the customer. It puts the onus on you to make sure that you are first living the way you need to live for the customer to succeed. Get up every day not disappointed you have to deal with the customer, but be excited that you have another chance to improve their lives. You will never make them 100% happy, and that is good because you will always have a job and a new problem to solve.
9INE POINT Health is the Amazon Flex for sports medicine. Anything you need we got it for you. No two-day delivery Amazon Flex style. Instead, you can get on KhoHealth.com and find your provider in a few clicks.
KHO Health was acquired by was acquire by 9INE POINT in the summer of 2019 and is now referred to as 9INE POINT Health.
9INE POINT Health was created by 9INE POINT in '19 as a means to provide athlete-driven resources to "Protect Athletes' Minds, Body and Belly". As well as be a platform for healthcare providers and other specialists to display their knowledge.
