Lucy Goff: ‘In seven years, I went from one-person start-up to my wellness firm being valued at £170m’

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Your assist makes all of the distinction. Learn extra W hen Lucy Goff gave delivery to her daughter in 2012, she caught life-threatening septicemia and her physique started to close down. After six weeks in intensive care battling the situation, medication saved her life – however her physique was left exhausted and fragile. In a bid to revive her well being to what it was, the Selfridges public relations govt flew to a clinic in Geneva, the place she met a long life professional and Oxford tutorial, Professor Paul Clayton, who prescribed her peer-reviewed, pharmaceutical-grade dietary supplements composed of rigorously dosed elements. Goff’s physique had been shaking for months. But, inside a matter of weeks, she started to really feel herself once more, went again to work, and by no means appeared again.

The expertise impressed Goff to depart behind her profession in communications to discovered the complement, laser and skincare enterprise Lyma, which now facilitates hundreds of thousands of individuals all over the world to entry the patented and punctiliously formulated merchandise that Goff found in Geneva, which helped her to realize a greater high quality of life following her terrifying well being disaster. Inside simply seven years, the one-person start-up has grown into a world enterprise that’s value roughly £171m, with Goff – who left college with none {qualifications} – assuring that the wellness model is simply getting began.

I remortgaged my home to get the cash to make the ten,000 merchandise wanted to launch Lyma. I should have written to just about 100 enterprise capital trusts within the UK and the US with what I assumed was a very good marketing strategy – however all of them stated no. All of those males instructed me I didn’t know what I used to be speaking about as a result of I’d by no means been in enterprise earlier than. Everyone stated that nobody would pay £150 a month for a complement. It was solely after we offered out of all of the inventory within the first week after the launch that I realised we had been onto one thing. Then all of them needed to talk with us, however I took a £2m funding from Pembroke as an alternative. I needed to decide on a associate that believed in me from the beginning.

My brother-in-law gave me the e book Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson once I began reaching out to traders for funding. It’s about figuring out when to cease pushing ahead alongside a sure path. I believe I wasted numerous time at first pitching to traders who simply didn’t see the imaginative and prescient, who couldn’t image what was contained in the marketing strategy. I want I hadn’t wasted time on that. I ought to have moved on quicker and self-funded. It might have saved me a superb two years.

Jo Malone is a businesswoman whom I actually admire. She took a candle that you just’d have beforehand purchased in a grocery store and put it in a special package deal, added a scent, and turned it into a way of life assertion and standing image for the house. It was genius. Equally, I needed Lyma to take dietary supplements out of the kitchen cabinet by placing them into a fantastic hammered copper vessel. It’s not sufficient simply to have the perfect formulation.

I made a mistake with a copper provider when Lyma first launched. We purchased a great deal of vessels that got here again and the standard wasn’t adequate. It wasn’t match for objective. They needed to be discarded and returned to the provider. I’ve nonetheless acquired one of many first copper vessels that wasn’t proper on my desk as a reminder that high quality will not be a negotiation and you could truly overcome something – even issues that appear like the tip of the world on the time. Each mistake teaches you a useful lesson. Each single rejection has made success extra significant.

You wouldn’t cross the street when there was an enormous truck hurtling in the direction of you. Equally, I don’t take dangers with my cash. If you happen to’ve labored all of your life to get someplace, why would you do this? So, I don’t spend money on shares and shares. I’m the kind of one that will likely be very glad to have a 5 per cent yield and never danger something. I didn’t see remortgaging my home as a danger as a result of I knew that if worst got here to worst, I might promote all of the inventory I had.

<img src="https://static.the-independent.com/2025/12/23/15/42/LucyGoff4.jpg" srcset="https://static.the-independent.com/2025/12/23/15/42/LucyGoff4.jpg?quality=75&width=320&auto=webp 320w, https://static.the-independent.com/2025/12/23/15/42/LucyGoff4.jpg?quality=75&width=640&auto=webp 640w" loading="lazy" alt="‘Every single rejection has made success more meaningful’" class="sc-1mc30lb-0 ggpMaE inline-gallery-btn"/> open picture in gallery

‘Each single rejection has made success extra significant’ (Lyma/Neale Haynes) I knew my life had modified when the corporate was first valued at £100m. I’ll at all times keep in mind that second, and the realisation that I’d created one thing that was of unbelievable worth. I grew up in a modest household. My father was a solicitor and my mum was a Justice of the Peace and a housewife. I had 5 siblings and we didn’t have a flash life. We had been entertained by board video games and the TV, moderately than something flamboyant.

It’s secure to say that I’m not a scientist. I left college with no {qualifications} and went by means of clearing to get right into a polytechnic college. College wasn’t one thing that lent itself to the way in which my mind works. I couldn’t ingest something in a biology lesson, however I can simply perceive a narrative {that a} scientist tells me. Lyma works with an unbelievable group of laser scientists, geneticists, surgeons, dermatologists and longevity professors, who all have their half to play within the engineering of our lasers. They’re specialists of their fields. I add to how the merchandise and the model look, which is inside my talent set.

Letting go of people that had been with me after we launched the enterprise has been powerful. I deal with Lyma nearly like a family-run enterprise, in order that’s been the toughest half for me. You may’t be wedded to everybody; you’re not going to work collectively ceaselessly. Individuals who had been proper on the start-up stage of the enterprise won't be proper for the subsequent stage. Nonetheless, personally, I discover that fairly upsetting – however that’s the unhappy actuality of progress as an organization.

The very best buy I ever made was my first Chanel 2.55 purse. It’s fairly trivial, but it surely makes me so glad. I acquired it for my fortieth birthday. I've these possessions that look good however make me really feel one thing, too. Like a Cartier love bangle makes me take into consideration once I had my baby. It makes me really feel grounded. You may’t take enjoyment away from purchases or the feelings out of life, or it turns into meaningless. Then you definately simply develop into a pc.

Lucy Goff is a champion of FFinc Ahead Quicker Accelerator 100 – a UK-based enterprise accelerator programme designed to assist female-founded corporations scale their progress quicker, which was launched in September 2025. For extra data, go to ffinc.co