About Marcus Reid — The Person Behind FormulaTested
If you have landed on this page you probably want to know who is actually writing these reviews and whether you can trust what you are reading. Fair question. Here is the honest answer.
WHO I AM
My name is Marcus Reid. I am an independent supplement researcher and the founder of FormulaTested. I have been personally testing health and performance supplements for six years, covering nootropics, fat burners, testosterone boosters, probiotics, and sports nutrition products.
I am not a doctor. I am not a pharmacist. I do not have a PhD in nutrition science. What I do have is six years of documented personal trials, a consistent testing methodology, and a genuine interest in separating products that work from products that just have good marketing budgets.
I started FormulaTested in 2026 because I was tired of reading supplement reviews written by people who had clearly never opened the bottle. Most of what you find online in this space is either a thinly disguised sales page or a listicle scraped together from manufacturer websites. Neither of those things helps you make a real decision.
This site exists to be different from that.
HOW I TEST
Every supplement reviewed on FormulaTested goes through a minimum 30-day personal trial. I buy every product at full retail price. No free samples, no brand relationships, no sponsored content. If a company offered to send me free product in exchange for coverage I would decline it because it creates a conflict of interest I am not willing to have.
My testing protocol is consistent across every product. Same wake time throughout the trial. Same diet and exercise baseline. No other new supplements introduced during the testing period so I can isolate the effect of the one product I am evaluating. I keep daily notes from day one through day thirty and I photograph the unboxing, the product itself, and the usage context before I write a single word of the review.
I measure what I can measure. For nootropics that means focus session length, reading comprehension scores, and subjective clarity ratings tracked daily. For fat burners that means weight, body measurements, appetite ratings, and energy levels. For sleep supplements that means sleep quality scores and morning alertness ratings. The data is not clinical-grade but it is consistent and it is mine.
I also deliberately document the negatives. If I felt a side effect you will read about it. If an ingredient is underdosed compared to clinical research I will tell you. If a product did not work for me I will say so clearly and explain why someone else might have a different experience. The “Who This Is NOT For” section in every review is not a formality. It is often the most useful thing on the page.
WHY I DO THIS
The honest answer is that I have wasted a lot of money on supplements that did not work. Not because the ingredients were fake but because the marketing overpromised, the doses were too low to do anything meaningful, or the product simply was not right for my situation. I wanted a resource that would have saved me that money and that time.
There is also a personal reason. I work remotely doing research and writing. Long focused work sessions are how I earn a living. When I started looking seriously at nootropics and cognitive supplements a few years ago I found almost no trustworthy information. Most reviews were either written by affiliates with a financial incentive to be positive about everything, or by critics with an ideological opposition to the entire supplement industry. Neither extreme was useful.
FormulaTested tries to sit in the middle. Genuinely useful, genuinely honest, financially transparent about how the site works.
HOW THIS SITE MAKES MONEY
FormulaTested participates in affiliate programs. When you purchase a product through a link on this site I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This is how the site covers its costs and my time.
I want to be clear about what this means and what it does not mean. It means I have a financial incentive to recommend products. It does not mean I recommend products I do not believe in or inflate scores to drive purchases. Every score on this site reflects my genuine assessment after a full personal trial. If a product scores 6 out of 10, that score stays at 6 regardless of the commission rate.
I only write about products I have personally tested. I do not publish reviews of products I have not used. If a product is not on this site it is because I have not tested it yet, not because someone did not pay to be featured.
WHAT I HAVE TESTED
Over six years of personal trials I have tested more than 24 supplement products across nootropics, weight loss, bodybuilding, male health, and general wellness categories. The reviews on this site represent the ones I feel most confident recommending, criticizing honestly, or comparing directly against competitors.
The site is new. The content will grow as I complete new trials. I publish a new review or comparison piece roughly every two weeks, which is the minimum time needed to run a proper trial and write about it honestly.
A NOTE ON TRUST
I know that trust is earned and not assumed. If you read a review on this site and something does not feel right, or you had a different experience with a product I covered, I want to hear about it. You can reach me through the contact page.
I will not claim to be perfect. I will not claim my personal experience applies universally. What I will claim is that every word on this site reflects a genuine attempt to be accurate, honest, and useful to the person reading it.
That is the only standard I hold myself to.
Marcus Reid Founder, FormulaTested