Fitness
and noncompetitive: Come on
in and do what you can; make
it work for yourself,” says Judi
Sheppard Missett, the compa-
ny’s founder and CEO. “People
get a sense of community out
of it. They meet each other in
that class and become friends.
They’ll have a big luncheon on
a holiday where 50 people will
go to the Olive Garden.”
It all works for now. The
question is, will it work forever?JAZZERCISE DIDN’T always have
a snappy name. It began with a
longer one: Jazz Dance for Fun
and Fitness.
It was 1969, and Missett was
teaching dance classes for moms
in Chicago. But people kept
dropping out. As she sought
ways to keep them in class, she
came upon the insight that
would transform her life: Women
aren’t interested in being trained
like dancers—they’re interested
in looking like them, havingIt is 9:45 a.m. on a Wednesday
morning in Oceanside, Calif.,
and the crown jewel of the
Jazzercise class schedule is hit-
ting its stride. It’s called Dance
Mixx, and it’s taught by Shanna
Missett Nelson, the daughter of
Jazzercise’s founder and CEO.
Nelson says that Jazzercise
prides itself on having “a little
sprinkle of everybody in class,”
and the more than 60 women
who gather in this studio next
to a Buffalo Wild Wings indeed
represent a little bit of every-
body. There’s one in the front
row with hair dyed neon red,
another near the windows
dancing in her sandals, a lanky
18-year-old in sleek, forest-
green leggings, and a group
of 40-somethings who call
themselves the Mom Squad,
who whoop and rib each other
throughout the session.
“We try to come Monday
through Friday,” explains
Stephanie Rosenthal, one of the
moms, as she cools down after
class. “Saturdays are for sports,
and Sundays are for church.”
She first took to Jazzercise three
years ago after she had a baby,
but her friend Mindy Batt—
another Mom Squadder—had
been trying to get her to come for20 years. “You get made fun of
at first because they think it’s for
old ladies,” says Batt. Rosenthal
rejoins: “But I started coming,
and my friends said, ‘You look
amazing—what are you doing?’ ”
Such is the challenge and
opportunity for Jazzercise, the
brand that practically created
the fitness class as we know
it—but that doesn’t always feel
like it’s kept up with industry
changes. The 2019 fitness land-
scape teems with boutique stu-
dios, data tracking technology,
and organized feats of strength.
Jazzercise, meanwhile, has fallen
out of the cultural conversation—
enough so that people may be
surprised to learn it still exists.
But it does, and it attracts mil-
lions of fans. The company did
$98 million in sales in 2018 and
has almost 1,800 locations, rep-
resented in every state in the U.S.
and 25 countries.
How is that possible? The
answer, it seems, can also befound in Nelson’s class. Nelson is
50 years old, now the president
of Jazzercise, and teaches three
days a week—and her class feels
local and small-knit. She carries
a big, white smile, a high blonde
ponytail, a six-pack, and a buoy-
ant, can-do demeanor. She
punctuates her choreography
with rhetoric that ranges from
the instructional (“Right shoul-
der back!”) to the quotidian
(“Is anyone going to the Shawn
Mendes concert?”) to the empa-
thetic (“Are these sit-ups over
yet?”). At one point, Nelson calls
out a woman in the class who
would be teaching her daughter
at school in the fall. Later, she
brings someone up on stage to
dance for her birthday.
All of which is to say: While
Jazzercise has been overtaken
by faster-growing, polished
operations, it has clung tight to
the comfort of familiarity. “We
try to create an atmosphere
that’s friendly, nonjudgmental,72 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2019I
→ JUST FOR KICKS
Missett leads a class at the
Kennedy Center in 1996.PHOTOGRAPHS^ COURTESY^ OF^ JAZZERCISE