YouSaid · the spoken record

Sami Inkinen

lines on the record
127
first
2026-05-20
most recent
2026-05-20
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “Funny enough, this has been one of the topics of my team letters, one of the 530. I would separate it into two things, my advice. One would be this sort of planning. Literally, it would be very simple. Sit down for five minutes on a Sunday evening before the week starts and write down what absolutely completely needs to get done next week. Super duper simple professionally or personally and schedule it into your calendar like literally. And if you have the flexibility, then like block two hours in the mornings to get those two or three things done. And then when life happens or work happens, everything else kind of comes after that. So that to me would be the number one thing. And then I would couple that when Monday comes or Tuesday comes, you know, whether you work in an office on a remote sale. Do not let the universe”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “So that's, I would say, is the second category. And then the third is just internal. This is what happened. This is what it means for us. So honestly, it's, I kind of like it. It's my personal outlet and sometimes said, hey, 530 plus essays, there's a book in the making. All we need to do is upload it to Chat GPT and we have a book ready to be published.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “One example, this is a real world example that I've written quite a bit about. Since we use nutrition as the core tool, but obviously our providers use all the tools in the toolkit. One of the things that has really changed in addressing obesity and metabolic disease over the last couple of years is the GLP1 drugs. So these are the Ozempics of the world. And so I've had a number of letters discussing how do these drugs potentially affect how we take care of our patients and what's the impact on our business. So that would be sort of externality and how is it affecting our strategy. So that's one example. The other category is career and personal advice to our team members, like how to make most out of your experience working at Verto. And around that sort of kind of stuff that we discuss, we've discussed now like personal productivity and how do we make most out of it.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “Hypothetical, but Absolutely. Well, there's sort of half extended structure, so there's a quote from, again, we can go into details, but we're in a business of reversing metabolic disease and helping people get healthy with nutrition. So we treat patients like real humans, hundreds of thousands. So half of it is this existing structure. There's a quote from a patient, so we always kind of lead with, this is why we're here and here's kind of a positive feedback from a patient. And there's some business metrics like how much we've grown and what are the priorities. And just a reminder of this year's key objectives. So half is like that. And then the most important other half is topic of the week. So topic of the week is essentially my as a CEO founder essay. I think that's what you were asking. I would say they're raffling in two or three categories. One is what has happened in the external world? What's the context there? And how does that affect us?”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “Is MSLA write emails to myself or Stronovs? It's the same thing. So there's tidbits along the week and then I have it for Wednesday. And then half maybe in the brain and half is written somewhere so I don't forget it all.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “So, if the brain is in a consumption mode, you're kind of just filling the cup. And I've noticed the creative thoughts and the problem solving that's happening kind of backward background processing is not happening. So anyways, that's a tactical thing that I've noticed that too much audio book podcasts kind of filling the brain and it stops creating stuff. It's very interesting. That's at least my personal experience. So I'm very conscious of on those moments when I'm, you know, exercising or walking or driving somewhere that there's kind of like a cutoff point. No more listening. Just let your brain do its thing. And then the Wednesday comes in. It's more like, okay, now I kind of have the framework in my head. Take an hour and a half to, I don't know, write about next year's priorities. So this kind of the new product we're going to launch, or even these team letters that I write, I actually write them in my brain when I'm away from the desk.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “The creative work does not happen at the disk for me. And I'll give you one thing that I noticed. This was especially during COVID when COVID hit, I was listening a lot of podcasts and music and audiobooks on 100% of my workouts. It was maybe like a year. I realized that problem solving and the creativity almost like stopped. So now I have a role that maximum of half of my workout, I can listen to Tim Ferry's. So if your download numbers are going down or listening numbers.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Typically, the way my brain works is the actual thinking and problem solving happens 24-7. And I'll give you a specific example. My workouts every morning, which is about an hour, hour and a half, unless it's a very, very, very high intensity, that's one of the best times where my thinking happens. And so the problem solving and new ideas and creativity happens there. And then for the Wednesday, I actually just block like an hour and say, it's almost like the time to get the words and the thoughts and whatever that might be off my brain to a paper or obviously in the cloud unless I have to do a very kind of left brain mathematical deterministic problem solving thing like literally like okay let's look at how do we improve cross margin like that”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “Strategy, which sounds very high flying, but I would say one thing that's very, very easy as a CEO of a grow company is to fool yourself that you're productive and useful by being busy. If you miss a decision, something around a corner, no amount of knocking tasks of the to-do list is going to compensate that. And it's almost like managing your own brain and feelings. It's hard not to have a tightly scheduled counter, but in fact having that time open for like you can go for a walk and think about the problem. So anyway, so that's kind of my Wednesday. And then Thursday and Friday is a lot of internal client work and those kinds of things, but I usually that's not too structured. But that's a little bit of a typical week.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “Week. Every week, and there's like one topic. And again, another topic we could dive into. But what I find is that it's as a company has scale, there are a few things that are very scalable. Like whether my email hits five inboxes or thousand, obviously doesn't take any time away from me, but I can give context, explain what's happening, what's important, what's happening in the outside world, what's happening inside the company. And then every employee feels hopefully some level of connection. That's one example. There's a couple of things that I've kind of repeated ever since day one and now a thousand employees scale still very scalable. But that's just one example. It could be prevailing for board meeting or thinking about”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Should say this has changed all the time. There's been 15, there's been 10, and I had eight for a long time, but for the last couple of months, I've had two. Only two, which is a very small number. And again, that could be another one hour conversation. But when you're building a grow company, you always have to ask yourself, what's most important for this year? And there's not really kind of a school book perfect kind of approach. But anyways, it is two right now. So Tuesday is that Wednesday, I actually tried to reserve for thinking and writing, thinking and writing. So the default is no meetings. One example of writing that I do, I write a team letter for the whole company from the CEO. So I've now written 553 of.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Again, this is sort of in an optimal world, but I would say professionally, I do try to group kind of similar type of tasks into specific days. So just to give you an example, Monday is filled with a lot of kind of group and leaders in meetings and stuff like that. So there's one kind of context switching, that it's meetings in front of the whole company and in front of leadership team and so forth. So that's Monday. Tuesday I try to have all my one-on-ones again one type of context switching. And as an introvert, that takes a lot of energy, by the way, as important it is and sometimes very enjoyable, but the kind of one person after another very draining for me personally.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “How am I allocating my time? It's very easy to let the universe of entropy to kind of take control over your time, whether that's your inbox or text messages from others or phone calls or it's actually very, very easy. Let the world run your life as opposed to you.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “Sure, you can't do 99% of things quote unquote normal people do, but it's probably incredibly satisfying to be able to do that one thing for the five or ten or 15 years of your life. So that's what I meant. So maybe it's a narrative that, oh, if I say no to all these whatever that is, or movie night every night or some distraction, whatever, staying on social media and watching Netflix for hours a day, that, oh, it's a sacrifice not to do that. That's my guess. One thing that's a narrative in our minds, like, oh, you want to do all these consumption things that maybe take time away from the thing that could move your life or profession forward. So that could be one. And then the other thing is, I think this sort of life structure that if you don't have a basic, we can go back to your original question, what's kind of your architecture? What's your structure? If you've never taken the time to take a step back and say, hey,”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Here's my guess. I think one might just be a narrative. I can't tell you how many times someone has it. It must be sacrificing so much to be able to do what you do. And I'm sure you could say the same for an Olympic athlete. Like, oh my God, so many sacrifices. But if you're an Olympic athlete, focus on your sport and your craft”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “Honestly, the biggest secret is saying no to 99% of the things that many people consider quote unquote normal. So what you care gets done. And sometimes people ask me, like, wow, so many sacrifices trying to be an athlete and your CEO and a founder and trying to be a parent as well. And you even travel with your kids. You must have so many sacrifices. I actually find that saying no is incredibly liberating in life. I'm way happier that I married to one person versus five. It's awesome. There's no way I could be a CEO of many companies. I love the kind of focus. And so I actually find it personally in life when you find something that kind of fills you a cup and is satisfying and gratifying, just having the one or two things that I focus on and then go all in.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “Yeah, exactly. It's 247 and the Sunday afternoon walk with your kids or your spouse may not happen because you need to address the crisis. But let me start with you mentioned like, oh, can I impress how many things you can do?”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “I do have a system Well, a couple of things first, kind of, I think it's good to remind when myself or anyone's like, oh, here's the system. And the reality is life happens all the time. So let's just remember that. You're running a company, you have kids, crap hits the fan all the time or at least frequently. So obviously you have to be flexible. So what I'm going to share next is the kind of beautiful clean scenario where you can kind of live with your structure. But the reality is.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “And then whenever my wife wakes up, then we have sort of a 15, 20 minute couple of small men drink coffee and talk about life. It's a really wonderful moment there. So that's kind of the very morning. And then my real workout usually happens between sort of 6.30 and 8.30, like exercise. And then after that, get to office. Exception would be if I have any meetings that are across time zones, then it could be a 6 a.m. Zoom or something like that. But before that, I've always done my swimming in a lake and a little bit core and maybe a couple of espresso. That's a routine. And pretty much repeated that for more than a decade. And there's nothing too special. I always say people ask like, what's the science behind? I say, listen, if it doesn't feel good, it's not right for you. If it feels good, Repeated.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “So that's time for an espresso or cup of coffee at that point. And everybody else is still sleeping in a house. I sit down and basically I write down kind of my sleep, how many hours I slept. And I kind of have a little diary. It's a spreadsheet online. 16 years of data now. And I also write three things I'm grateful for. So it's kind of a little gratitude journal, super, super simple things. And I try to focus on the mundane such as, you know, leaves in the aspen trees or warm temperature, which is simple things, very, very simple things. So I do that and write down a few things. And then I usually work for about an hour. So like clean email and slacks or maybe I have like a 20 minute writing thing. So this is kind of my CEO job. So I try to do about hour of that.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “Little bit. And that's pretty much the first five, ten minutes. And then the other thing I try to do always right after is do something useful for other people. Something useful for other people. What is that in practice when I'm not traveling? It's preparing coffee for my wife. Emptying the dishwasher sounds very simple, but that's like 15 minutes after I've woken up, I haven't had a second to think about a ruminate. Oh, my back's hurting. Oh my God, someone's work or whatever that is. It's like a 15 minute sort of boot-up sequence. And it's like life's rocking. And then kind of I'm ready to go and do the other things.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “After that, maybe just like a minute or two of some Aerosquats and jumps and core, like literally core work, nothing too special. So that's like some Superman's and Legraces and stuff like that. And I do it because I raise bicycles quite a bit. And I have some lower back issues. And core work, it just never gets done unless it's the very, very first thing in the morning. And then I'll throw in a couple of pull-ups there. So that's five to ten minutes. straight off the bed, jump into the lake, tripping wets, a little bit core, a little bit jumps, a little bit this and that. And I'm just a huge, not just a believer, but the practical experience I've had is kind of mood follows movement emotion. So before I even ruminate or think anything, I've already been in a lake and done five or ten minutes of co-work and some jumping and get the heart rate up.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “Let's separate into traveling and not traveling, traveling for work, not traveling. I wake up. 5 a.m. latest, like this morning alarm was 4 45. So I woke up pretty early. And I have the amazing privilege and luxury that the second I roll off the bed, Jump into a lake or pond, you know, it's not a long time, maybe like a minute, just cold water, a couple of strokes, but it's essentially it's like a freezing, cold shower. And this is a mountain lake. So we're talking like 40 degree weather pretty much straight off the bed.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “Well, we talk about training. So, this is sort of physical training. Physical training. It's really in two buckets. The primary focus is really on drug sports around cycling. So I do a lot of mountain bike racing as well as road bike racing. So that's essentially endurance training. So I'd say 90% is cycling related. And that's my core workout. That essentially happens in the morning every day. 99% of the time it's one of the first things. It's not the very, very first thing in the morning. So that's one We can go and do morning routines and stuff like that in a second if that's interesting. But I do a little bit of just sort of core work. Pretty much first thing after waking up. So I don't even have to schedule that. That's sort of a non-negotiable before the brain even boots up. I've done my kind of core work. But cardiovascular work is the main.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “Yeah, Verta Health. So we're about a thousand employees. And the caveat these days, of course, is don't brag about employee is because the more employees you have, less you leverage AI. But, you know, I guess mentoring thousand employees, it's a real company and obviously growing fast, so it takes a lot of effort. So about a thousand people.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  26. “This could be a long conversation, but it's either early morning before the kids wake up and kind of Sunday gets going, or if I don't have it done by Sunday afternoon, then it's after 7 p.m. when everybody else kind of quiets down and I take my own time.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  27. “100% it's every Sunday I just find the structure allows flexibility and spontaneity if you don't have structure like nothing gets done at least in my life and not that my life is super special but you know two pretty young kids happily married running a company growing that doesn't employees and then trying to be a kind of semi-athlete in the process If I don't schedule, it's not going to happen. So I spent about 15 minutes at the end of each week that Sunday. Professionally kind of listed three things that absolutely have to get done. And then I schedule a few things, including workouts. And it works very well.”

    2026-05-20 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #866: Sami Inkinen of Virta Health — Reversing Type 2 Diabetes, Rowing 2,750 Miles, and Lessons from Fixing Metabolic Health in 100,000+ People · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT