How Dr. Tanya Destang-Beaubrun is Transforming Caribbean Healthcare by Treating the Whole Person

Success leaves clues. Welcome to the Health Business Growth show, where we take you behind the scenes of the top health businesses to learn how they built their success. I'm your host, JJ Virgin, founder of the Mindshare Collaborative, along with members of our Mindshare mentor team. Each week, we are joined by some of the most brilliant, innovative health business experts you're going to ever meet. These folks have built empires from scratch, navigated the choppy waters of entrepreneurship, and we'll be sharing both their struggles and their successes on the journey of creating a thriving health business. So if you're ready to take your business to the next level by learning from the best, you are in the right place. So let's get this party started. We are so glad you are here, Dr. Tangan.

Thank you for joining me here today.

Thank you for having me, Nat.

We are at the mindchair Leadership Summit 2024, and I have the most amazing memories of when I saw you last in the most fabulous costume. One of the things we love here is dressing up. Are you dressing up again this time?

Yeah. I can't disappoint you.

I didn't think you were going to disappoint. I think you might have won the costume.

I did. I was representing St. Lucia con.

You really were. Well, it was beautiful.

Thank you.

And you're beautiful as ever. And so thank you for sitting down and having a little bit of a chat about your business with us.

Thank you for having me.

Yes. Because one of the things we love to do here is really create those moments. Entrepreneurship as a health provider is hard. It's different. It's not like anything else. And creating a few of those me too moments that you can inspire other practitioners through your story, I think is really important. So for those that haven't ever come across you, you have a very unique story. Maybe in a couple of minutes. Can you give us a little bit of a background?

So I am a family physician practicing on the beautiful Caribbean island of St. Lucia. And I am traditionally trained in Western medicine and practiced like that for many years, until one day I became a patient. And I was on the other end of a stethoscope and looking up at my colleagues and realizing that nobody was looking at me. I was just a disease process. And I realized then that I, too, had been trained that way and looked at many patients that way. There was a deep sense of shame and embarrassment that, you know, how could I have done that? I knew that I could heal myself and that the only person who could heal me was me. And I had to stand fully in my power as a female physician with male colleagues looking down at me and thinking, you know, she's stressed, she's tired, it must be that time of the month.

That's always a good excuse.

Yeah. And that just took me on a journey of self discovery. I discovered that I could heal myself. And part of healing myself was looking at my healing from a holistic perspective, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. I found functional medicine, or more like, I'd like to say functional medicine found me and I healed burnout. I didn't know I was burnt out. I healed burnout with functional medicine. And I realized that there was no way on the small Caribbean island that I could hide this. I had to learn more about it. I had to learn more about treating people and not just disease and getting to the root cause. And I went on a. What was supposed to be one year that turned into three years studying. I did a fellowship in functional medicine and ended up doing a degree in alternative medicine. And everything fell into place. It was like I had done everything back to front, but it was the best ever. And through a series of synchronicities as well, I found jg. And I never thought of myself as a business person, really. I was just a doctor who had opened a solo practice. And realizing that there was need for more within my community, I launched into a multi specialty clinic. And I still considered myself. I'm just a doctor and I'm just offering a service to my clients in the community. But I enrolled in TAA Trusted authority accelerator because I felt compelled to learn more about the business side of what I was doing. And on a small island, I'm the only one nobody understands, you know, when you talk about gut health and so everybody just looks at you, you know, oh, there she goes again. So I found a tribe in mindshare and I never looked back. I embraced myself as a health business entrepreneur and I started looking at how I showed up in the world as such. Yes, I was a doctor, but. But in providing a much needed service to my community, something that had never been seen before, I really was the entrepreneur. And I had done an archetype test years ago that labeled me an explorer, a creator and a healer. And I never embraced that. I'm like explorer. I mean, I play it safe and then I look back and realize, you know, opening a clinic on your own and you know, in a place where there's nothing going into functional medicine and leaving a well known practice and a successful one at that, to Take not just one, but three years off was risky, but I've never looked back.

I love that. And so from that time, you've really started to build your own authority and brand in what you do. How important has it been to get very clear on what that looks like in terms of growth for you?

It makes it so much easier because.

I remember when you first came into.

Taa, I was all over the place when I first I just wanted to help everyone. And I remember the module on niching and I'm like, but I have all of these patients, you know, how could I not help everybody? And I think there was one module where I think you said, you can't help everybody, but you help people who need you the most. And I also realized that the people who were drawn to me were people who had come through a similar path as mine, and I was five or 10 years ahead of them. So I was able to tell them, listen, I have walked in your shoes. I know what it is to feel tired and overweight and anxious and bloated. I know what it is. I've been there. I know what it is to feel burnout and the shame associated with it. Because how could you as a doctor allow yourself to burn out? You should know better. So it was very clear within weeks of joining TAA that I was on the right track. I had found my tribe and I was ready to do big things that scared me.

And since that time, have you been able to implement a lot of the strategies that you learned during the training?

100%. I have niched down. And as much as I was afraid to do that, it happened organically. Once I committed to niching down, people found me. I was speaking a little differently. I showed up differently on social media. I owned who I was as that person dealing with that particular type of patient, and they found me. I didn't have to do much, but.

Also at the same time, that as a practitioner means that you get to actually serve the people that are people that you want to serve.

And it brings so much joy. I think there are many moments in my day where I close my eyes and I think, gosh, this is work, right?

But so before, when you were trying to help everybody and wanting to be everything, to be everybody, and so it is a hard thing to transition. You've got to trust the process. It is a process, right?

I had to trust and trust really, really heav and lean into the fear.

So you think that you're a better doctor now for having a niche?

A hundred percent. I would Say, I am a better person. I'm a better wife and a mother as well, because there's so much clarity now on everything I do.

And there's a sense of calmness, too, that comes through in clinic. I think you might find that you have just a different listening ear for patients. You're more calm in clinic. You're very dialed in. Like, it just is a different energy.

There is definitely a different energy. And a year ago, almost about two weeks now, I actually opened the first functional and integrative clinic in St. Lucia and in the Caribbean. There's nothing like that.

Congratulations. That's amazing.

And I did it within two weeks of leaving the first summit. And I knew that, without a doubt, I wanted this space. And I created this haven for my patients where they would be nurtured and given a safe space to heal and be held as they are healed. And I think being clear about my niche, being clear about the women or the patients I was going to be working with, I was able to give them what I would have liked five or 10 years ago.

Yeah, 100%. So how is it now that you do connect with your patients and clients? Are they coming to you because they're finding you through word of mouth, your social media presence? What marketing strategies have you put in place?

I have been more consistent on social media and also more authentic. I used to be on social media thinking I had to portray a particular look, you know, how a doctor is supposed to be on social media. But being clear about who I was and tuning into that power of me as an authentic healer, I show up differently. I speak more authentically and I speak my truth. And I think that has drawn patients to me. And there's a lot of word of mouth on a small island, as you can understand. It would be quite easy for somebody to say, oh, I'm called Dr. Bubbles in St. Lucia. Oh, Dr. Bubbles will fix you, and things like that. So it has been a journey, and it's just over, I would say, 14, 15 months, and I've never looked back.

So that's still fresh.

It's still fresh. And I think I still walk into my new space and I like, oh, this is yours. You created that. And it's still a little.

I think we do forget sometimes that we get to create and help the people that we actually really want to like. I think we have to be, to your point, everything to everybody. But when we get very clear on this, we get to choose who those people actually are. You're seeing probably the same type of person over and over again now.

Yes. But, you know, each one is different. And because I go in with the mindset that I am looking at the entire person, I get a different experience with each patient because, you know, when you go in depth to the history and you get to know more about them, you get. They become for me like family to some extent, where I am invested in their well being as well as they are. It's soul filling. It really is.

I know it's only been not that long, but I'm sure there have been some challenges along the way.

Oh, yes, yes.

Can you name any of the bigger challenges or hurdles that you've had to get over to be where you're at right now?

One of the biggest challenges was getting over myself. I had to stop playing small. I had to be bold and brave, speak out and say, listen, this is how I feel healthcare should be delivered and I am going to change how it is seen in my island. And I created that space. The other one was the acceptance by colleagues who knew me from. Some of them knew me from childhood and I think they came from a place of genuine concern because they were all western medicine trained and they didn't understand what functional medicine was and they didn't know what I was doing. So I got called by a few, you know, are you sure you're doing the right thing? Are you having a midlife crisis? There were so many. And I'm like, I am not running away from anything. I am running to something that I am 100% sure that I need to be doing. And I still face where I know. Some of my colleagues look at me, you know, at our last annual conference, they asked me to give a talk and I played sound bowls for 20 minutes of that talk. And I could see at the beginning they were like, what is this? What is she doing? But by the end of those 20 minutes, there were tears. There was a lot of deep introspection and quiet. The place was very silent for a while. And I was very proud of myself for doing that because I was scared. I didn't know how they would take the sound bowls or they would stop me or, you know. But I think my greatest hurdle has been getting over myself and standing fully in my power and saying, you are on the right path. Functional medicine is the medicine of the future and you're leading it. And becoming very clear on that. With a tribe like Mindshare behind me, and knowing that there are other people who have blazed this trail for many years than I have, makes me feel that you Know, I can do this.

Sound bowls, first of all, are mesmerising anyway, so how anyone can't drop into another state is beyond me. That would have been fantastic to experience. Speaking of sound bowls, though, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I saw you playing sound bowls on television.

Yes. So I got called. So it's Bravo Below Deck.

Yes.

And it was being filmed in St. Lucia. And I got called and said, you know, Below Deck is filming, and they would like you. And I immediately thought, oh, they need a doctor on the set. And they said, no, we actually want you to play sound pose. And I thought, I am going to be on international TV as a doctor playing soundboards.

Could it not be any more perfect?

I said, yeah, no problem. Tell me when and where it happened. And in the middle of all of this, I'm doing this, and I'm like, who would have thought that you got on international TV to play soundboard? You know, it was surreal, but it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. Because I said yes. It would have been very easy for me to say, no, maybe that's not the right image. You know, doctors don't do these things. But my whole body said yes, and I did it.

Once upon a time, when we had an opportunity to go on television like that, it used to have a different impact, I think, anyway, to what it does now. Did you see any ramification? Did you see any positive or negative influence as a result of that being on television?

It was primarily positive. I had a lot of people call me from other places in the world and say, I just saw you. You know, I was on a flight, and I was on a flight.

When I saw it, I nearly fell away. You can't fall off a chair on a flight, can you? But I was like, no way. I can't remember.

Positive. I don't think I had any negative feedback from that. It was.

I would always argue that any feedback is always positive anyway, regardless of how it feels at the time. But I do think what it does is being on TV or whatever that looks like. Any type of media really can help to position you as an expert or an authority.

Yes.

Or give you that exposure to a different audience as well.

And I think that's what people saw. People actually saw the healer part of me come out. You know, they used to see me, the doctor with the stethoscope, and rushing around and doing things. But there I was healing in a totally different way. And I have to admit, it felt really Good.

Yeah. I mean, I think it was. I, like I said it was. I was delighted when I saw it. I was like, look at her go. I do think that it has changed a lot. I've done a lot of media my entire career and it's definitely moves the needle differently now than what it used to. Like I said, we used to come off a television segment and you'd sell thousands of books. And I don't think that really happens anymore. I think you go on there for a credibility build.

Yes.

You know, something you can put on your website. Yeah.

So that's what it is. I put it on my website. I did the Oprah the life you want class. I was able. And that was right after taa. And what happened was that from taa, I came up with this concept of starting a movement of health and well being through actually from the first module.

Wow.

From the first module. And I tapped into it. I called out Dan and Stacey Levens and I pitched to them and I said, why don't you film me in St. Lucia? And Stacey said, why not? I'm like, well, let's do this. And that was the first time they had filmed outside St. Lucia. And that movement, I was talking about it and somebody must have heard about it. And I got the invitation to be on that Oprah show, the Life youe Want. And it was on service and it was all about really serving my community. And I think back and think, if I had not signed up for taa, I would not have met Dan and Stacey, I would not have met all of you. I think, I think bigger. I think, you know, you try to think that you just want to make a small impact every day, but to truly help, you really need to think big and go bold. And that was the biggest hurdle. I had to step over that hurdle and say, okay, you can do this and you can be on international TV and you can say yes to things that scare you, that make your legs shake, but you can do it and you can do hard things because there's so many others that you have seen who've done it. And that's the beauty of mindshare. You see others doing it and it gives you the courage and inspiration to do that as well.

I think there's so many yes. Points to that. I think there's the elevation by association. I think there's also watching other people doing it and being inspired, thinking, I can do that. But at the same time, I also think that you almost have a little army behind you as well.

Yes.

That you don't really think about, but then they are there. And if you do stop and think about it, it's almost like I met.

Them in unlikely places. Last weekend I was at a conference and I met Dr. Bryce and I'm like, Bryce. We only met each other through TAA and would see each other on the calls. We met up like we were, you know, old friends. And it's really, for me, it means a lot having a tribe, people who understand the terms that I will use, people who will. Whose hearts will be open enough to share the things that we share so openly within Mindshare. You don't get that many places for us practitioners. No.

Yeah, A hundred percent. Obviously where you're at right now is fairly new in the process. Can't wait to see where that goes. But are there any more or other different things on the horizon or are we spending time doing this right now?

I think for the rest of the year I'm spending time doing this and I say that not knowing what's going to happen at the end on Sunday where I might get this great idea or meet up with somebody. I think I'm living in the space where I'm open to opportunities and I'm asking that the right opportunities be. And I'm willing to say yes. It may work or it may not, but each time I say yes, something else opens up and I want to have impact. I want to change how healthcare is delivered not only in the Caribbean, but in the world. And it's coming. There's a book coming, there are talks coming, there's a mindshare stage coming at some point, but I'm taking it one step at a time. I don't want to burn out again, so I'm putting my self care at the forefront of it all. So it's been an amazing journey. I'm just so grateful that I saw JJ Virgin attend Lisa Nicholl's wedding. And that's how it all started. Just because I had worked with Lisa for some courses and she was getting married in the Bahamas. I was fascinated. She was in the Caribbean, saw JJ and somehow it clicked. And I said, I've heard of that name. And lo and behold, within weeks I had signed up and never looked back.

Just from saying that one. Yes, yes to a wedding. You never know what might happen. Well, I'm excited and I'm inspired. For the person that's listening, you did taa, which is now known as Income Stream Bootcamp. It's had a name change. We continue to pour our heart and soul into things to, you know, get the feedback, what works, what needs to be upgraded. Those sorts of changes are constantly being made on our part because we are again, listening. Just like we're talking about listening to the patient, we're listening to our students. And it has become something of a campus around Mindshare because we're here to help lead people in their business, which is, like I said at the beginning, it's so unique. But I do want to say congratulations because you've done some amazing things and I know the best is yet to come. You are having an impact. You are doing wonderful things and you are representing an industry with so much integrity. So you should be really proud of yourself.

I am stepping into being proud, I think, you know, we've been taught, you know, you just do your thing and you go along with it. But Mindshare also teaches you about the importance of your self worth and charging for what you are worth. And that was another big thing for me. Charging more and being scared to raise the prices because, you know, what would they think? But I remember in one of the modules and said, the right people are just waiting for you and you need to be ready to serve them. And I stand here ready to serve.

Amazing. Amazing. Well, you're an amazing student too, by the way. I can vouch for that. And courageous and just, you know, ready to say yes when it makes sense.

Yes.

Well, thank you so much for taking some time to chat with me today. This has been fantastic and I can't wait to see what happens next.

Neither can I. I'm actually excited about the next three days. Yes.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Here at the Mindshare Collaborative, we are committed to helping you increase your vision, income and impact. One of the first things we'd love to support you on is adding a high profit leveraged income stream so that you can enjoy more time and money freedom. And to help you get started, I've created the Health Professionals Playbook for building Multiple streams of income that identifies five proven strategies for creating a sustainable income beyond your primary practice to create time and money freedom. To get your free copy as my gift to you, go to MS.365IO MSI. That's MS.365IO MSI.