In the spotlight: Lean Greens supplements (An interview with the founder Tim Goodwin)

By | February 15, 2020

Lean Greens is one of the brands that I featured on my blog in the past and now I decided to contact one of their founders, Tim Goodwin, to find out more about the brand and how their supplements can fit into a healthy lifestyle. Tim kindly agreed to do an interview with me and answered all my questions so you can decide for yourself whether this is a brand you want to buy from.

Continue reading to learn all about Lean Greens and how their supplements can help you be healthier. Now over to Tim…

Tim from Lean Greens with his wife who is his business partner

How would you summarise Lean Greens as a brand? How are you trying to help people and what makes you different?

Lean Greens is all about people “upgrading” their life. It’s not about creating the perfect body, or obtaining optimal performance. We simply want to enable ordinary folk with real lives, careers and families to upgrade their nutrition, sleep and exercise.

Whilst other brands will make out their product is the miracle cure and magic pill to your problems, our products are all about helping to develop better habits and lifelong changes.

Tell us briefly about yourself and your background.

I originally come from an I.T. background working in offices for big companies, but quit in my late 20’s to retrain as a Personal Trainer. I ran my own studio and group training business in the EU city of Luxembourg. That taught me a lot about nutrition, exercise and lifestyle habits of real people.

One of the things I did back then was ask my clients for food diaries. And I realised how little vegetables people ate. And that many people struggled with cravings and appetite control.

Strangely, at that time, I didn’t prescribe nutritional supplements, I thought they were mostly a waste of time. Later I discovered that I was about half right in this opinion.

When did Lean Greens start? Tell us about early beginnings and how it all started.

Lean Greens started back in 2012. My original business partner, Paul Mort, had this idea for a greens vegetable drink that actually tasted good. All the greens products we’d tried up till then had tasted awful and normal people simply wouldn’t touch them.

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Kinda obvious really, when you present a pond like liquid to someone who hates vegetables. It’s likely they’ll not drink it!

We properly bootstrapped the business in the early days, a true kitchen table enterprise. We created the website ourselves, emailed our old clients, and other personal trainers we knew about our new product.

We ordered just 100 tubs of our product to start out. When we sold all 100 tubs in less than 4 days we knew we had a good idea on our hands.

Like many new business ideas, we had our teething problems and we struggled with inconsistent suppliers and awful logistics. But we stuck to our guns and provided a product that almost everyone liked to drink, and did our best to make our service and support as good as possible.

What we discovered when selling anything online, service and support are almost more important than the product itself, and it’s something we’ve prided ourselves on ever since.

Today, the business is owned by myself and my wife, Sam. We operate from our offices in the Scottish Borders.

Lean Greens products

Who would benefit from taking your supplements and why?

The type of person that would see the most benefit from Lean Greens specifically is someone who hates vegetables, or knows they don’t get enough veg in each day. If you’re already making 5-a-day consistently, drinking veg juices etc, then our product is probably not necessary.

Each of our other products has their place for specific people. For example, our Drift Off product is ideal if you want to upgrade your sleep. TRIM, our whey protein isolate is great for those that don’t get enough protein is, but have struggled with other whey products that have caused bloating.

Are Lean Greens supplements safe? How do you ensure high quality?

We have always stayed away from products that have questionable positioning. For example, we don’t do fat-burners, weird berry concoctions with questionable claims, or CBD based products. In an already heavily scrutinised industry, it does our brand no favours to sell those types of products.

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The products we do have are all UK manufactured, with ingredients that are tested for contaminants before use. Most of the ‘safety’ questions you see about products are for the ones produced in the far east or in America with different food standards.

We try to set ourselves apart with our products by purposely not using the cheapest ingredients. In fact, we actively seek out the highest quality raw ingredients, where there is still a benefit to the consumer. It does mean our products are more expensive, but it means I can sleep at night knowing I’ve delivered the best product I can to our customers.

What are your bestselling products?

Our signature product, Lean Greens, is still by far our best seller. According to an NHS study from 2017, over 71% of UK adults struggle to consistently eat the recommended 5-a-day. I think people are starting to realise that they still need the vegetable nutrients, and Lean Greens is the top up when their diet falls short.

The Amber Boost Turmeric blend we sell is also a big seller right now. There’s been a lot of positive media around Turmeric over the last few years. Our customers seem to love Amber Boost and see benefits from using it. However, there’s not much we can say about it, as the EU has not approved any health claims as yet for Turmeric/Curcumin.

Finally, our Drift Off Formula product is very popular, especially for females, as the benefits for hormonal balance across the month are widely praised by our customers.

What are your favourite Lean Greens products and why?

I’m a big fan of our Drift Off product. I developed it for myself originally to help with my awful sleep habits, and I use it religiously every day.

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The unsung hero of our range is the Omega 3 fish oils product, Good Fats. It is the highest quality fish oil capsule available in the UK. It’s an amazing product with so many proven health benefits, everything from blood pressure regulation, brain health, eye health and more.

Are your products vegan?

Some are, some are not. Our signature product, Lean Greens is, but Drift Off is not. We don’t set out to create Vegan specific products. Personally I am not a vegan, so it’d be hypocritical for me to start creating a vegan specific range.

From a nutritional standpoint, I think there needs to be better scrutiny about the negative and positive effects of the vegan diet. Veganism is getting a lot of positive media right now, and in many cases, for exactly the right reasons. But I do think there needs to be more promotion of the downsides and deficiencies of a vegan diet.

Do you have any advice for those looking to be healthier?

Lowering stress is just as important, if not more important, than consuming the right nutrients. We gain and hold on to body fat because of inflammation and stress.

If you’re stressing about the piece of cake you ate, then it’s likely the stress will cause more body fat than the cake you ate.

Sleep well, chill out and laugh more often, and life gets a whole lot easier and healthier.

A big thanks to Tim for giving us such detailed insights about his business and for his top tips. To learn more, check out the Lean Greens website here and if interested in buying any of the products, don’t forget to use a discount code BHN10 to get 10% off.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links which means I may get a small commission if you purchase a product after clicking on a link. This does not cost you anything.

You may also be interested in reading the following posts:
Lean Greens Review
Health Benefits of Green Juice

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