Macronutrients are foods that contain nutrients your diet needs in large amounts. The macros humans need to survive are:<ul><li>Carbohydrates, which provide us with a quick source of energy. They provide 4 calories per gram.</li><li>Proteins are the building blocks for many structures in our bodies, helping us grow, build muscle, repair injuries, and produce hormones and enzymes. They provide 4 calories per gram.</li><li>Fats are essential to help our body absorb fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D, E, and K. They provide 9 calories per gram.</li></ul>

Calories in macronutrients

A macro calculator helps you evaluate the breakdown of a particular food. It is useful if we follow a specific diet based on the macros consumed. For example,<ul><li>Building muscle requires an increase of protein.</li><li>Endurance sports require a higher carb intake to fuel the body for longer periods.</li><li>Fat loss where the reduction in carbs can reduce the likelihood of excess glucose storage.</li></ul>

The macro calculator

<ul><li>Healthy Eater uses your age, gender, height, weight, and activity level to calculate your macronutrient level.</li><li>Muscle for Life uses your weight, body fat percentage and activity level to calculate your lean body mass (LBM), your basal metabolic rate (BMR) and total daily energy expenditure (TDEE)</li><li>Katy Hearn uses your age, gender, height, weight, and activity level. It helps to improve your body composition or increase your lean body mass.</li><li>Freedieting is a good choice if you know how many calories you need.</li><li>IIFYM (If It Fits Your Macros) gives a step-by-step process to calculate your macros.</li></ul>

The best online macro calculators

When you know how to calculate your macros, you may want to track them to keep an eye on your eating patterns. Think of it as a digital food diary that keeps track of your daily intake. <ul><li>MyFitnessPal provides a useful pie chart with a breakdown of your macros.</li><li>Cronometer tracks vitamins, minerals, macros, blood pressure, cholesterol, sleep, mood, pulse, and more.</li><li>MyPlate Calorie Tracker provides a daily snapshot of your macro intake.</li><li>With MyMacros+, simply scan a barcode to log food intake.</li><li>Fitocracy Macros has an online fitness coaching platform and is best for manually tracking macros.</li></ul>

The best macro trackers

You don't need to track your macros unless you are a high-level athlete. Although tracking is helpful for flexible eating plans, it can sometimes lead to an obsession. <ul><li>Daily tracking food can breed an unhealthy habit that removes the pleasure of eating food.</li><li>It can impact our social lives where we avoid eating with friends because we're unsure of what the food contains.</li><li>It can lead to insufficient fuel for your body if you have undercalculated.</li><li>It can lead to orthorexia nervosa, an eating disorder where you are obsessed with eating only foods you think are healthy and clean.</li></ul>

Potential risks of calculators and trackers

From calculating the carbs in a slice of bread, to tracking your protein intake, macro calculators and trackers are there to, well, keep you on track!

Stashed ideas

What Are Macro Calculators And Trackers?

The Wealth of Nations described the industrialised capitalist system that overthrew the mercantilist system. Mercantilism stated that wealth was fixed and the only way to prosper was to hoard gold and tariff products from abroad. The essence of Smith's thesis was that people's natural tendency for self-interest leads to prosperity. By giving people the freedom to produce and exchange goods and opening the markets to competition, people's natural self-interest would create greater wealth than with strict government regulations.

Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations had a huge global impact

The central thesis of Smith's The Wealth of Nations is that people's individual need to fulfil self-interest results in societal benefit. This free-market force became known as the "invisible hand". However, the market that emerged from an increasing division of labour created inter-dependencies and promoted social welfare through individual profit motives. For example, the baker only produced bread and relied on one person for clothes, another for meat, and yet another for beer. The people specialising in clothes depended on the baker for their bread, and so on.

The invisible hand

The invisible hand is not actually a distinguishable entity but the sum of many phenomena that occur when consumers and producers engage in commerce. <ul><li>The invisible hand theorem suggests that the means of production and distribution should be privately owned and that trade will flourish organically without regulation.</li><li>The government affects the invisible hand, not the other way around. It is prescriptive and intentional and pursues defined goals through coercion.</li></ul>

The invisible hand versus the government

The lack of market mechanisms frustrates government planning. This is also known as the economic calculation problem. When people and businesses make their own decisions based on their willingness to pay money for a good or service, the information is captured. In turn, resources are automatically allocated toward the most valued ends. Governments' interference causes unwanted shortages and surpluses. However, the forces that guide voluntary economic activity toward the benefit of societies are the same forces that curb the effectiveness of government intervention.

Government response to the Invisible Hand

Smith believed a nation needed three elements to bring about universal prosperity.<ol><li>Enlightened self-interest. He thought most people would naturally practice thrift, hard work, and enlightened self-interest.</li><li>Limited government. Smith viewed the government's responsibilities as being limited to the defence of the nation, universal education, public works, the enforcement of legal rights and the punishment of crime.</li><li>Solid currency and a free-market economy. Smith hoped backing the currency with hard metals would prevent the government from depreciating the currency.</li></ol>

The elements of prosperity

The Wealth of Nations is an influential book that started free-market economics but has some weaknesses. For example, <ul><li>it is lacking proper explanations for pricing or a theory of value</li><li>Smith failed to notice the importance of the entrepreneur in breaking up inefficiencies and creating new markets</li></ul> However, both opponents and beliers in Adam Smith's free-market capitalism have added to the framework. The theory gets stronger with each reformulation and continues to be a powerful force today.

Smith's theories overthrow mercantilism

Adam Smith's 1776 classic "The Wealth of Nations" may have had the largest global impact on economic thought.

Adam Smith and "The Wealth of Nations"

"Emotionally agile people are dynamic… able to tolerate high levels of stress and to endure setbacks… to act according to their most cherished values and pursue big, long-term goals."

“Courage is not an absence of fear; courage is fear walking.”

“The ultimate goal of emotional agility is to keep a sense of challenge and growth alive and well throughout your life.”

“The most effective way to transform your life, therefore, is not by quitting your job and moving to an ashram, but, to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, by doing what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

It means being aware and accepting of all your emotions, even learning from the most difficult ones. It also means getting beyond conditioned or preprogrammed cognitive and emotional responses to live in the moment with a clear reading of present circumstances, respond appropriately, and then act in alignment with your deepest values.

Emotional agility

Forced optimism can’t be sustained, which means it’s only a temporary solution to a permanent problem.That’s because even negative emotions can have positive consequences, as long as you face them directly and draw the right conclusions. So don’t smile when you don’t feel like it.

Show up to your emotions, even the bad ones

<ul><li>Bottlers ignore, push aside, and avoid—sometimes getting repaid with unexpected outbursts. </li><li>Brooders complain, wearing out their friends, spouses, or themselves as they rehearse what might have been or what will be—but never moving on.</li></ul>

Bottling and brooding

<ul><li>Have-to goals are goals set for you by others in the form of pressure, for example, your doctor telling you you must lose weight. </li><li>Want-to goals are those you set out of conviction and after careful reflection of your true values. </li></ul>

Set want-to goals, not have-to ones

The ultimate social influence, it’s what causes us to pursue certain behaviors merely because we’re close to someone doing the same. This can be physical proximity or psychological relatedness through the media, for example.

Behavioral contagion

Mentally create distance by imagining going above or far away from the thought you are having.

Values are what helps you make the small, conscious decisions that add up to a life well-lived.To help you identify your values, each day habitually ask yourself, “As I look back at today, what did I do that was actually worth my time?”

Your values will lead the way

#1 Wall Street Journal Best Seller USA Today Best Seller Amazon Best Book of the Year TED Talk sensation - over 3 million views! The counterintuitive approach to achieving your true potential, heralded by the Harvard Business Review as a groundbreaking idea of the year. The path to personal and professional fulfillment is rarely straight. Ask anyone who has achieved his or her biggest goals or whose relationships thrive and you’ll hear stories of many unexpected detours along the way. What separates those who master these challenges and those who get derailed? The answer is agility—emotional agility. Emotional agility is a revolutionary, science-based approach that allows us to navigate life’s twists and turns with self-acceptance, clear-sightedness, and an open mind. Renowned psychologist Susan David developed this concept after studying emotions, happiness, and achievement for more than twenty years. She found that no matter how intelligent or creative people are, or what type of personality they have, it is how they navigate their inner world—their thoughts, feelings, and self-talk—that ultimately determines how successful they will become. The way we respond to these internal experiences drives our actions, careers, relationships, happiness, health—everything that matters in our lives. As humans, we are all prone to common hooks—things like self-doubt, shame, sadness, fear, or anger—that can too easily steer us in the wrong direction. Emotionally agile people are not immune to stresses and setbacks. The key difference is that they know how to adapt, aligning their actions with their values and making small but powerful changes that lead to a lifetime of growth. Emotional agility is not about ignoring difficult emotions and thoughts; it’s about holding them loosely, facing them courageously and compassionately, and then moving past them to bring the best of yourself forward. Drawing on her deep research, decades of international consulting, and her own experience overcoming adversity after losing her father at a young age, David shows how anyone can thrive in an uncertain world by becoming more emotionally agile. To guide us, she shares four key concepts that allow us to acknowledge uncomfortable experiences while simultaneously detaching from them, thereby allowing us to embrace our core values and adjust our actions so they can move us where we truly want to go. Written with authority, wit, and empathy, Emotional Agility serves as a road map for real behavioral change—a new way of acting that will help you reach your full potential, whoever you are and whatever you face.

Emotional Agility

When you onboard new customers, you introduce them to how your business works. The right customer onboarding is vital to long-term satisfaction. The goal is to eliminate any friction between the initial customer contact point and post-purchase. Automating customer onboarding:<ul><li>Speeds up the onboarding process</li><li>Dematerialises the corresponding workflows</li><li>Reduces latency between touchpoints throughout the customer journey.</li></ul>

The benefits of customer onboarding automation

Automating your onboarding process can free up human resources. Automation also helps with scalability. Automating client onboarding solves the following challenges:<ul><li>It makes the process shorter and more structured</li><li>Easier access and segmentation of documents</li><li>Eliminates errors and miscommunication.</li></ul>

The importance of automating customer onboarding

<ul><li>Before you start automating customer onboarding, define your goals and customer journey. Which processes in the customer journey do you want to automate? Which segments of customers do you want to automate?</li><li>Ensure your onboarding tool is integrated with CRM. Using CRM as part of an onboarding initiative will help manage the process.</li><li>The next step is to create simple workflows, such as sending them a welcome email or high-value action steps.</li></ul>

The first steps in automating onboarding

Define the milestones and business outcomes for every step of the onboarding journey. Set rules in your onboarding tool for the next set of actions. <ul><li>When a customer achieves a milestone, what is the next set of emails or training videos to be sent? </li><li>What alert needs to be sent for a delay in achieving a milestone?</li></ul>

Add different functions to customer journeys

Segment your customers based on common traits and define every segment's ideal customer onboarding journey. Create a playbook and automate the process. A playbook is a detailed checklist of steps that should be followed in the customer journey. It consists of tasks and timelines for the customer and the Customer Success Manager (CSM).

Create onboarding playbooks based on segmentation

As a CSM, you'll handle multiple accounts. You'll need to get notifications for important steps achieved so that you don't have to look manually into each account. However, automation should never compromise the customer experience. For example, if your product usage drops drastically or you have inactive customers, you should get an alert for human intervention.

Human intervention tasks

Continuous customer interactions can help to fine-tune the process and improve your product. Automating onboarding can provide the necessary resources at the right points of a customer journey. This can save time and costs while responding to customers when they reach out for help.

Obtain timely feedback through customer interactions

Use this guide to understand the ins and outs of automated customer onboarding. Proven tips that can help you to automate.

Learn How to Automate Customer Onboarding in B2B SaaS

As a designer, your role is to bring everyone on the same page and unite over one common goal. <ul><li>First, interview stakeholders to understand what and why we are trying to achieve for the business and on what timeframe. Check their expectations regarding look and feel, functionality, and target audience. </li><li>Interviewing dev and support teams it’s also a good idea to get more insight into what are problem areas.</li><li>But your primary target is users. </li></ul>

Start with building shared understanding

Your goal is to listen and capture everyone’s thoughts and propositions, but don’t take it as absolute truth. In the end, you are the expert who needs to filter through the noise and find where to focus.

Don’t take anything for granted

There are many activities you can do to understand users better, build empathy. <ul><li>User journeys and value propositions are beneficial, but there is not always time to do them when we are talking about something small. </li><li>Personas, on the other hand, are fluffy and fake and have very little practical application. </li></ul>An essential thing that you can do is to list Jobs to be done. This will help you understand the user’s motivations and expectations.

Define Jobs to Be Done

The number one mistake that designers do during the redesign process is that they completely ignore and disregard the current design. The worst thing you can do is to take the current design and create a new one based on your personal preferences. There was probably a ton of thinking and research that went into the creation of the original solution. Your goal is to carefully inspect the current design, try to understand how it works, and the intention behind each decision.

Deconstruct existing design

Once you narrowed down your focus to some key areas, you need to know the performance of the design. <ul><li>Pageview and traffic analysis. Tracks your visitors’ entry and exit from different pages, what browser and screen size they are using, and where they are coming from.</li><li>Behavioral flowchart. It helps you to understand how users behave and common journeys.</li><li>Timing and conversion. Funnel creation and analysis. Analyzes conversion and creates baseline metrics to compare the new design.</li></ul>

Review analytics

It’s one of the first natural questions that should come to mind. “Well, what are others doing?” As your customers will have to choose between your product and its alternatives, you need to analyze the experience they provide to customers. When reviewing both direct and indirect competition, look for commonalities, similar flows. Define what is considered a standard experience for your case. You can collect all of your findings in the InVision board or any similar tool.

Review competition

Fresh ideas and innovation are never coming from competitor analysis. As everyone keeps a close eye on each other, you can only learn what is considered to be a standard. For inspiration, look beyond your domain. There are hundreds of amazing products that deal with similar problems that you are trying to solve in a different context.

Explore beyond your domain

Once you have understood everything clearly with the help of data from analytics, you can start identifying key problem areas with the existing design. Those problems can range from usability issues to visual flows, bugs, inconsistencies, wrong patterns applied, or exotic solutions without any reason.

Identify key problem areas

Once you found out the issues, the next step is to find solutions for each identified problem. Competitive research and exploration should give you enough inspiration.

And find improvement opportunities

Having a list of problems and ideas on how to solve them is a good thing, but it needs prioritization. We need to understand what are the low-hanging fruits. For each opportunity, we need to understand what it will take to deliver it and how much value we will add for the end-user.

Understand the value versus the effort

There are no perfect designs, and there is always space for improvement. But excellent user experience comes at a great cost. Creating a marginal improvement in already great design will require exponentially more resources invested than taking something bad and turning it into an average design. Sometimes to substantially improve the experience, you need to reinvent it completely.

Great design is hard to get

Hand sketches are great ways to start offloading some of the ideas from your head into the physical world.

Sketch on paper first

Each hour spent on low fidelity will save 10 hrs from being spent on high fidelity work later. Try to sketch a very rough idea of flow, have a quick validation, and add a layer of fidelity. Starting feedback sessions with presentation of high fidelity work may show your stakeholders that there is no space for changes, and their opinion was not taken in the account.

Get feedback fast, with low-fi storyboarding

It is as simple as that. Everyone can confidently say that they know better than the users, and “users don’t know they need it till they get it.” That statement is true only in a very rare case. Don’t forget that everything you are doing is for users.

If you are not testing with users, you’re wasting time

Like in a fancy restaurant, presentation is as important as the dish itself. If you spend months crafting a design, spend some time on presentation. And remember you are not selling new styles, clean fonts. Create a new story, a story about newly empowered users, because humans are fascinated by stories and visions.

Sell your design

Users hate change, doesn’t matter how bad was the original design, they got used to it, and now they need to learn something new. Monitoring analytics post-release and keep in mind users will need to go through some initial adjustments. Give them some time to recover attitudes and fall in love with a new design. Support easy feature adoption with some contextual help and guidance.

Users hate change

The design process never stops. New patterns emerge, more tools become accessible by users. Smooth user experience comes when you truly understand the problem you are solving and help users solve it effortlessly.

There is always space for improvement

The process described in this article will work for various scopes of redesign — from a feature or view level to full application redesigns. These recommendations will help you avoid pitfalls and…

How to redesign, step by step

<ul><li>Pipeline/Market awareness of the product: If the market is not aware of your product, they can’t buy it.&nbsp;</li><li>You still need enough sales reps to talk to prospects to make the sale happen. This boils down to constraints around sales hiring velocity.</li><li>Dev/implementation/customer success capacity comes down to hiring and Ramping.</li><li>The pay off on the sales and marketing investment comes in the months after you start paying those salaries.</li></ul>

Thoughts on non-linear growth in B2B startups

Here’s how self-serve models speak to the 4 operational constraints above:&nbsp;<ul><li>Self-serve enables a Word-Of-Mouth based growth in market awareness that sales driven models don’t have.</li><li>Self-serve products don't require sales reps until you layer on an enterprise plan.</li><li>If the product is simple enough to be truly Self-Serve, implementation is not required.</li><li>The faster and/or more cost-effective growth enables access to capital to drive market awareness further. The faster and/or more cost-effective growth enables access to capital to drive market awareness further.</li></ul>

Go self-serve

<ul><li>When you’re selling to the fortune 2000, much easier to get desired coverage of accounts given the buyer list is identified.</li><li>The number of reps you need to add $10M, $25M, $50M of new Arr in a year is 33–50% of what you would need with Mid-Market.</li><li>Higher deal sizes more than justify it. Higher deal sizes also come down to hiring and capacity optimization.</li><li>If you can demonstrate Product-Market fit and momentum amongst enterprise customers, it actually helps with fundraising.</li></ul>

Go large enterprise on day 1

A few months ago, I was reading “Tools of Titans” by Tim Ferriss where I stumbled upon a question that Peter Thiel likes to ask of himself and others: “If you have a 10-year plan of how to get…

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Maria Case
@maricase

What Are Macro Calculators And Trackers?

Adam Smith and "The Wealth of Nations"

Emotional Agility

Learn How to Automate Customer Onboarding in B2B SaaS

How to redesign, step by step

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

Maria Case@maricase

What Are Macro Calculators And Trackers?

Adam Smith and "The Wealth of Nations"

Emotional Agility

Learn How to Automate Customer Onboarding in B2B SaaS

How to redesign, step by step

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Maria Case
@maricase