If you think it is impossible to be successful at your day job and still manage four other things on the side, wait till you meet our next busy inspirational lady – Vy Vu!

How does she do it all? Discipline to commit to waking up consistently at 5:20am, and getting to her FitFam Shanghai workout at 6am gives her an early head start. Keeping fit helps her to de-stress and keeps her emotions in check. Now, before you even begin to wonder, Vy does have a social life and drinks casually to unwind, catch up with friends and is not super strict with her diet...

Migrating to Australia in the 80s, Vy’s parents started with low paying jobs and sewed for a living. Working from 6am to 11pm everyday, her parents sacrificed everything for 35 years to make sure Vy and her five siblings had everything they needed and put them through college. Looking to them as her role models, their perseverance, hardworking work ethics, as well as the willingness to give rubbed off on her. Even with her personal relationships, Vy swoons about how loving her parents are after all these years and seeks the same balance & compassion in her own.

From Australia, to Hong Kong, and now currently based in Shanghai for the past three and a half years, Vy is thankful for the many opportunities Shanghai has offered to her. “I’ve said yes to the right opportunities and no to some which, on hindsight, seems like the best decisions I’ve made…Shanghai has been very good to me.” With a degree in design, Vy’s day job involves building the product development team for a French fashion brand. The challenge of building a team from scratch is what drives her.

Vy takes this knowledge of her interests in building teams, as well as a strong understanding of her own strengths to her side projects as well. Today’s FitFam Shanghai – a free fitness community for all – was born about a year ago and has already grown to almost a thousand people in the community!

Being part of the leadership of a fitness community, one would imagine Vy to have always been fit and sporty but she really only started working out in her adult years. She loved running and completed her first half marathon in Beijing on the Great Wall of China! Having busted her knee after running for a while, she turned to bodyweight workouts and yoga to strengthen the rest of her body. This eventually led her to the fitness group that preceded FitFam.

Given that the bootcamps were held outdoors in public spaces, the group died out in winter last year. However, Vy continued working out with a handful of others, and when some of the old members found out, they joined her. What started as five people in the mornings has evolved into the FitFam Shanghai we know today, with five separate bootcamp locations and the addition of FitFam_Pals of Inversions, Puxi Run and Boxing!

FitFam Shanghai is currently run by twenty volunteers, who understand the power and benefits of having a community – to have a group of fitness friends to be accountable for one another’s fitness. The little things like hearing a member say “FitFam has changed my life”, or when one of them has reached a personal milestone like completing their first half marathon, keeps her motivated to keep FitFam going. Naturally a ‘people person’, Vy looks after the communications within the FitFam community and members look to her for fitness advice as well as personal matters, knowing that they can place their trust in her. Her current goal is to continue growing the FitFam Shanghai community…but her vision is to bring FitFam out of Shanghai, and into other cities in China next!

Apart from FitFam Shanghai, Vy is also the digital content manager for Girl Gone International, with responsibilities including writing and editing. Bearing in mind that Vy still holds a management role at a fashion company as her day job, most would think that having two other side projects are more than enough to keep her busy. However, she has also launched her own fitness apparel line called SAN fitness apparel, and was the Shanghai Director for the most recent edition of Chi Fan for Charity. To give you an idea of the scale of Chi Fan for Charity – it involves 50 restaurants, 500 guests and a free flow after party where everyone gathers to make merry, compete in a raffle, and a silent auction…jaw dropped?

“I do a thousand things, and sometimes I do spread myself thin and I get exhausted, but I love love love most of the things I’m doing in my life and they give me energy.”

Being practical, process-driven and armed with lessons learnt from past experiences, Vy applies the knowledge she has acquired throughout the years to solve problems that come up with all that she is involved in, aiming to be as efficient and as effective as possible. She recognizes her own strengths and weaknesses, allowing her to be the best that she can be. The ability to also recognize and acknowledge other people’s strengths, gives her the capacity to create dream teams, be it in her day job, FitFam Shanghai or Chi Fan for Charity.

Are you inspired? We all have the same 24 hours as Vy does! We think Busy Women everywhere should be encouraged to recognize their own strengths (and weaknesses) as well. Do not underestimate yourself, you are stronger then you think you are! Surround yourself with a community of positive, inspirational, like-minded Busy Women who wants to share, collaborate, motivate and pushes you to new heights.

If you have not already done so, take some time today to sit down and think about what you would like to achieve in 2017. Similarly, with the other Busy Women around you, encourage them to share their mini (or huge) goals with you and let them know what you think. Applaud another woman’s success and be inspired! Let’s lift each other up and be stronger together!

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Would you like to get stronger / quit sugar / shed some weight, or have any other health & fitness goals in mind?

Join us in our Clean Slate Challenge! We want you to live better. Come January 2017, we will be kicking off a 4-week challenge on our private Facebook group - share your goals with fellow like-minded Busy Women, learn tips, share content, support one another...

...Together we are Stronger.

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