Jazzercise founder and chief executive Judi Sheppard Missett calls it the “little exercise girl” syndrome.
Years ago, the dance fitness entrepreneur walked into a regional bank to ask for a loan.
“There were a whole bunch of good old boys sitting around the table,” she recalled. “And they looked at me and said, ‘Honey, this exercise thing for women, we just don’t know if that’s gonna work.’
“I was the little exercise girl,” she said. “It wasn’t that I was smart or that I had built a business. Well, today they are out of business and I did $93 million (in sales) last year.”
Exercise fads come and go, but the class Missett started in 1969 in Evanston, Ill., boasts 7,500 instructors teaching 32,000 classes a week in 50 states and 32 countries.
“Last year was the best year we’ve ever had,” she said.
I ran into Missett on Wednesday, one day after her 65th birthday, at a meeting of the Association for Corporate Growth at the Inverness Hotel in Arapahoe County.
She gave a peppy motivational speech, the kind I usually hate, and got a few hundred attendees in business suits doing dance moves — the kind of thing I hate even more.
Missett has danced off so much of her body mass that not even her black leather pants can hug her waist.
Her mother put her in dance class at age 2. At age 11, her mom helped her open a studio that attracted about 100 students the first three months in tiny Red Oak, Iowa.
Missett was a professional dancer at 14 and danced on Broadway and television.
She taught at a recreation center in San Diego and was a huge hit, but the parks and rec director refused to pay her. He eventually did.
“I was making too much money,” Missett said. “He was embarrassed to cut the check.”
The San Diego area was perfect to grow her business. Many of her students were associated with the military. They took Jazzercise with them when they moved.
With the advent of the VCR, her husband, a journalist, produced videotapes demonstrating the dance moves.
Jazzercise stretched out like a conga line and found its place among the nation’s top-ranked franchising companies.
“Money follows ideas,” Missett said. “It’s not the other way around. . . . I never went into this for the money. ”
Her daughter, Shanna Missett Nelson, is her executive vice president. Even a grandchild is involved: “My 6-year-old (grandchild) teaches a class in kindergarten.”
And Jazzercise keeps growing amid the worst recession its customers have seen.
“A lot of our customers view us as health care,” Missett explained. “They view us as preventative measures so that they don’t get sick. They’re not going to stop taking classes.”
And if they can’t pay?
“We’ll figure something out. And if it’s free, it’s free,” she said. “In these times, it’s about people helping one another.”
Jazzercise isn’t buried in debt. When the good old boys denied Missett, they taught her to grow on operating revenue.
“I never had a business plan,” she said. “I never had a blueprint. And I never got a loan.”
Amid the economic collapse, the little exercise girl dances on: “I’m going to keep doing this until I’m a little puddle on the floor.”
Al Lewis: 201-938-5266 or al.lewis@dowjones.com
