But their programs were built around an individual celebrity, while Jazzercise was built around our franchisees. Still, by the early '90s, some of those franchisees were starting to retire. Potential new franchisees had other options, like Pilates and yoga. The recession also hurt: was our first unprofitable year--our only one to date. We responded with a rebate program that rewarded instructors for signing up lots of students.
The money attracted many new franchisees and kept the veterans on board. Today, when you say "Jazzercise," people say, "Oh, are you still here? Are you still doing what you did in the '80s? We wouldn't have survived if we had kept doing what we did back then. We've updated our instructor communications with every shift in technology: from videotape to CDs to DVDs to streaming. We've developed all kinds of special classes, including high-intensity interval training, core, and fusion, which mixes cardio and strength training.
I still create and send to franchisees new choreography and new music every 10 weeks to keep things fresh and exciting. My daughter, Shanna Missett Nelson, became president of the business in We kind of run it together. I don't think of all these new fitness programs as competitors. I think of the couch as my competitor. More than 80 percent of all adults don't exercise enough, so there are plenty of potential new customers for all the fitness programs.
Any company getting people to move, in my opinion, is great. When we were starting out, I remember applying for a line of credit. We didn't need it, but I thought it would be good to have. The bank president looked at our numbers, and he looked at me, and he said, "I think this is a fad. You're just exercise girls. Top Stories. As the program continued to grow, Missett decided to seek a new line of credit at a bank.
She didn't really need it—the business was booming. But she thought it would be smart to have, just in case. Their local bank referred the couple to its main location in Los Angeles.
Yes, you're growing quickly, but that's going to be a fad. It's great that you're having fun and dancing around, but I just don't see it as something that will grow. That bank went out of business maybe five or six years later, and we're still thriving.
Missett credits her rapid, pre-social-media expansion to army wives and military women. San Diego was and is a military town, and a lot of her first clients were only temporarily deployed in the area. When those women would get transferred to other parts of the country, they'd want to bring Jazzercise with them. That really helped us grow on a national level. By there were more than 1, certified instructors teaching Jazzercise in almost all 50 states, plus some other countries.
Missett's lawyers advised her that it was time to franchise the company, a decision she was at first unsure of but now counts as one of her best bets. Financially, it paid off fast. For a time Jazzercise was the number-two most profitable franchise in the nation, right behind Domino's Pizza.
But the model also elped other women like Missett build their own businesses—women, Massett says, "who never thought they would do that, but discovered they had a talent for it. I recently did a beautiful song by India. Arie, and I let my body go and I just had a routine by the end of the song," Missett says. Jazzercise is now in its fifth decade and helped give rise to the boutique fitness revolution, one of the fastest-growing segments of the exercise industry today.
There are 8, Jazzercise franchises, across 25 countries. Together they hold approximately 32, classes per week, worldwide. And their C-suite is made up of all women. She loves the convenience of it. Edit Close.
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