We talk to Lucy Goff, founder of science-based supplement LYMA, loved by celebrities and beauty editors – and the Frank team!
Lucy, tell us how you started LYMA?
Lucy Goff: I’d like to say LYMA was planned but it was a phenomenal accident. Following the birth of my daughter, I became really ill and spent weeks in hospital with septicemia.
Although medicine saved my life, it came at a cost because my body was left at rock bottom. A chance meeting with Dr. Paul Clayton introduced me to evidence-based nutrition; medical-grade, peer-reviewed ingredients that are scientifically developed to work. After spending months bed-bound, unable to function, a few weeks after taking them I was back at work, feeling like my old self again. This was the impetus for starting LYMA.
So many people suffer unnecessarily. We accept feeling drained as normal when it’s not. If you can’t sleep, you’re stressed, have low immunity, a lack of focus, if it’s menopausal symptoms or you feel life is proving too much, that’s where LYMA can come in.
What is the science behind it?
Lucy Goff: LYMA is the only supplement in the world to exclusively use medical-grade ingredients that are peer-reviewed and proven to work at those exact clinical doses. This is the LYMA difference; our nine power ingredients are patented and gold standard in their potency, bioavailability, and quality of extract. Each ingredient has been selected for its unrivalled health benefits and the synergy it brings to the formula as a whole.
Anyone can look up the ingredients on PubMed and see those results in published medical papers. You might see other brands starting to use some of the same ingredients but they’re formulated at miniscule doses, which renders them ineffective.
It really is a wonderful supplement. What kind of feedback do you get?
Lucy Goff: We hear back all the time that LYMA is life-changing. Whether they take HRT or not, we have women reporting that LYMA allows them to glide through menopause. We have men and women who haven’t slept well in decades, telling us they finally know what good quality sleep is and that they’re waking up feeling well-rested – that’s the affron® and KSM-66® Ashwagandha 600mg working.
We have customers who see their moods significantly lifting, their brain fog being replaced by a new mental clarity and they no longer feel the anxiety that’s hindered them. I can’t explain how incredible it is to get each individual response from real people, telling us how their lives have been made better by LYMA.
We love the design of the capsule and casing, how important was this for you?
Lucy Goff: I came from a luxury consumer background and was always fascinated by what Jo Malone did with candles: transforming a simple homeware product into an iconic lifestyle brand. No one had done that with supplements. By changing the capsule to a copper colour and using it in synergy with a copper vessel, it gave that experiential edge. Copper as a colour is known to evoke feelings of optimism and it is also a natural anti-bacterial metal so it chimed with my vision for LYMA.
Some people may think it’s expensive but many of us are probably racking up high costs buying a whole raft of monthly supplements. What would you say to those readers?
Lucy Goff: LYMA costs £149 a month (the equivalent of your daily coffee or juice quota) because the medical-grade ingredients are expensive and we refuse to dose them at anything less than the clinically proven level. I’m a businesswoman and if I could make it for less I would.
Most people don’t know that 90% of the supplements market is unproven; multivitamins aren’t proven, nor are fish oils. Organic turmeric is a placebo and yet people buy into these products based on hope alone. Organic ingredients are generic and unproven in the main, and cheap to use which is why brands formulate with them as a marketing gimmick. If you’re eating a healthy, unprocessed diet you probably don’t need to take all those different supplements.
That’s why we only formulate LYMA with nutrients that you cannot get in effective doses through food, which is what the true premise of a supplement should be.
How has the business grown since you started?
Lucy Goff: I started out from my kitchen table three years ago and we’re now a team of 30 people and shipping to over 70 countries worldwide. That still astounds me. Growing a business remotely during Covid has been extremely challenging but the fact that our business has grown exponentially is a testament to our incredible team.
When Covid started, we were in a fortunate position to provide a scientifically proven supplement that could genuinely help people transition to their new world. What’s more, we launched a world-first skincare laser for at-home use so when all the dermatologist clinics were closed LYMA offered people the opportunity to experience a medical-grade laser.
What advice would you give to women starting a business?
Lucy Goff: Don’t believe anyone but yourself. I am very dyslexic and at school, I was told that I couldn’t achieve big things and that I should limit my career expectations. Subconsciously this has stayed as a niggling voice in the back of my mind – that I wasn’t as good as others and destined for a life of mediocrity.
When I first had the idea for LYMA so many investment companies refused us based on our price point and it pulled me back to all those negative messages. They saw no place in the market for a medical-grade supplement and refused to believe people would invest this much in their health.
After much deliberation, my husband and I took a huge risk and decided to seed fund LYMA ourselves. We launched and sold out in two weeks. All the investment companies that had turned me down, contacted me again wanting to change their minds. I refused them all and we have never looked back since.
Agility is also key. Your journey will require continual adaptation. Focus on the many roads to success – you might have to change the way you get there but get there you will!
Connect with Lyma here and follow them on Instagram here.
