fun, and feeling good. Missett
simplified routines, taught fac-
ing participants (instead of with
her back to them, like a dance
instructor), and took an interest
in their lives.
Her timing was perfect. The
previous year, Kenneth Cooper’s
book Aerobics began to demy-
stify fitness for Americans,
explaining what exactly consti-
tuted aerobic exercise. “Cooper
defines fitness as something
that involves your heart, gets
you sweaty, and gets you red
in the face, and Judi plugs
into that moment,” says Shelly
McKenzie, fitness historian
and author of Getting Physical:
The Rise of Physical Fitness in
America. “If you look at what
was acceptable for women to do
during that time for exercise, it’s
not weights and jogging.”
Missett, her journalist hus-
band, and their 3-year-old
daughter, Shanna, soon moved
to Oceanside, Calif., and brought
Missett’s new “Jazz Dance” class
with her. She started teaching so
often at a Parks and Recreation
Center in Carlsbad that the man
who cut the checks withheld
her pay for four weeks, embar-
rassed that he was writing such
large sums to a woman. Missett
threatened to go to the press, but
she also saw an opportunity to
remove the bureaucratic hitch
entirely. She’d sign up and bill
participants herself, and cut the
rec center a percentage for rent.
This business agility—what
Illinois-born Missett calls her
Midwestern work ethic—would
prove key to the growth of
Jazzercise. By 1977, her sched-
ule of 25 classes per week
caused her to develop nodules
on her vocal cords. She real-
ized she needed to hire instruc-
tors but wondered how she’d
possibly train enough of them.
She turned to a new technol-
ogy: VHS cameras and players
were just arriving in the U.S.,
so Missett started using themto film her routines. In 1980,
still hoarse from teaching, she
implemented the first wireless
lapel microphones, and then,
in the 1990s, the first headset
mics, pioneering their use in the
fitness industry. Around that
time, Jazzercise started inte-
grating weights into the work-
out. (Today, a class promises a
cardio workout that integrates
strength training with free
weights and resistance bands.)
Jazzercise would become
a uniquely female story—
one that hinges on interper-
sonal networks, the realities of
child-rearing, and ingrained
resourcefulness. “Women are
the organizers of life,” says Mary
Wadsworth, who owns two
Jazzercise centers in Houston.
“So you put us in business and
we just do that.” From the begin-
ning, Missett offered free child-
care. “I thought if I need it, all
these moms need it, too,” she
says. (The service remains at
many centers today.) This helped
draw military wives from the
nearby Navy base in San Diego;then, when their husbands
would be transferred to a new
post, the wives would train as
Jazzercise instructors and open a
studio in their new hometowns.
By 1982, there were more
than 1,000 certified instructors
teaching classes in almost every
state. This raised red flags with
tax attorneys who knew the IRS
would not look kindly on the
fact that Missett treated her far-
flung instructors as indepen-
dent contractors. So Jazzercise
made two decisions that would
come to determine its future.
First, it converted all those
instructors into franchisees.
Then, to maintain Jazzercise’s
low barrier to entry, Missett
set minuscule startup fees for
future franchisees. That kept
the door wide open for women
of all kinds, and, perhaps as a
result, Jazzercise and Missett
became widely beloved and
world-famous. She led a perfor-
mance at the 1984 Olympics,
danced at the Statue of Liberty
rededication ceremony in
1986, and was featured at the1991 Great American Workout
alongside Barbara Bush and
Arnold Schwarzenegger.
This low barrier to entry has
helped Jazzercise survive in an
era of change. Its fee now is only
$1,250—plus whatever costs
might be incurred from renting
a space, securing liability insur-
ance, buying a microphone and
possibly a sound system, and
paying for songs. By contrast,
building out a Pure Barre studio
requires initial costs of between
$198,650 and $446,250.
Anytime Fitness, considered a
relatively inexpensive gym brand,
will set you back at least $78,012.
For plenty of women who want
to run their own fitness business,
most brands just aren’t available
to them. Jazzercise is.
That means Jazzercise fran-
chises are a varied swath of
class sizes, prices, locations, and
ambitions. Some classes are
held in YMCAs or school gyms,
and some in dedicated cen-
ters with nine classes a day. For
many franchisees, Jazzercise is
a side hustle. Natalie Feilland,Fitness
74 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / September 2019
→ DANCING QUEENS
(From left) The first Jazzercise
International Instructors’
Convention in Carlsbad, Calif., in
1982; a 1982 Jazzercise album
cover featuring Missett.I NEVER DOUBTED MYSELF, BUT I KNEW I HAD THIS
INCREDIBLE GROUP OF PEOPLE AROUND ME. YOU NEED
PEOPLE WHO LIFT YOU UP, WHO ARE POSITIVE, SMARTER
THAN YOU, AND BELIEVE IN WHAT YOU’RE DOING.”