To develop a reputation as a thought-leader in your industry, you must look at your life as a business and invest a significant amount of time and money in your own success. Are you willing to become your own Chief Strategy Officer? To hire coaches and a PR team? To practice your first presentation 40 times before taking the stage? Robin Farmanfarmaian is a professional speaker, serial entrepreneur and angel investor working in cutting-edge technology and medicine, and she has a deep understanding of how artificial intelligence is likely to impact and disrupt the healthcare space in the next ten years. Farmanfarmaian currently serves as the VP of Business Development at Actavalon, a startup working to cure cancer, and she is an angel investor in Dance Biopharm Holdings, a company developing inhaled insulin products to treat diabetes— among many other projects. Her book, The Patient as CEO: How Technology Empowers the Healthcare Consumer, is a bestseller on Amazon. Today, Farmanfarmaian shares the story behind The Patient as CEO, explaining how a misdiagnosis led her to take charge of her own healthcare. She addresses the advances that have been made in medicine to this point and how technology is dramatically accelerating our progress moving forward. Listen in for Farmanfarmaian’s insight around developing the confidence to thrive and investing the necessary time, effort and capital in becoming a thought leader in your field. Key Interview Takeaways Become the CEO of your own healthcare. Farmanfarmaian’s misdiagnosis at the age of 16 led to countless hospitalizations and multiple surgeries—before she took control. She was finally diagnosed correctly and went into remission overnight. The human body is an incredibly complex system. Yes, we have made great strides in our understanding, and life expectancy has doubled in the last 100 years. But we still only have treatments for a few hundred of the more than 10K known human diseases. Technology is dramatically accelerating human progress in healthcare. AI allows us to apply machine learning to massive data sets, providing insights that would otherwise take us years to discover. View your thought-leadership as a business. Farmanfarmaian invested a great deal of time, effort AND capital to become a sought-after speaker. She hired high-end coaches, designers and a marketing team, and she practiced her first presentation 40 times before delivering it on stage! You are that strong. Farmanfarmaian’s secret weapon is confidence coupled with a strong sense of mission. Despite the extreme trauma she has experienced, Farmanfarmaian is determined to positively impact 100M patients worldwide. Connect with Robin Farmanfarmaian The Patient CEO Robin Farmanfarmaian on LinkedIn Robin Farmanfarmaian on Facebook Robin Farmanfarmaian on Twitter Resources The Patient as CEO: How Technology Empowers the Healthcare Consumer by Robin Farmanfarmaian