THIRD GENERATION JOINS THE JAZZERCISE FAMILY BUSINESS
Founder Judi Sheppard Missett’s daughter, and now her granddaughter, committed to global exercise company
When Shanna Missett Nelson turned 18 in 1987, she surprised her mom by getting certified as a fitness instructor for Jazzercise. Thirtythree years later, Nelson’s daughter, Skyla, has followed in her mother’s footsteps and recently earned her Jazzercise certification at 18, too.
But Nelson and her daughter were doing more than getting fit.
They were joining the family business launched 51 years ago by Shanna’s mom, Judi Sheppard Missett, who founded Jazzercise in 1969 and still serves as CEO of the Carlsbad company that now has 8,500 franchises in 25 countries.
Now 76, Missett is still teaching at least one Jazzercise class a week, and she’s thrilled that both her daughter, who has been company president since 2010, and her granddaughter want to carry on the torch whenever
— or if ever — she decides to retire.
“It’s heaven, beyond any kind of words I can come up with,” said the famously upbeat Missett. “I’m so grateful and humbled by the fact that Skyla came on board and that I’ve had Shanna here with me for 33 years. It wasn’t something that I kept on them about. Shanna and Skyla decided on their own to come on board and it’s fabulous.”
The Nelsons both say joining the company was always something they thought about, since Jazzercise has been a part of their lives since birth. As a grade-schooler, Nelson said she thought everyone’s mom ran out of the house every morning in tights and a leotard with a record player tucked under their arm. And Skyla said she thought nothing of walking into the kitchen of their family’s Carlsbad home every morning to find her mom practicing pushups and planking exer
cises on the f loor.
“I’ve been going to Jazzercise forever,” Skyla said. “It started in the babysitting room when my mom would take my sister and me to her class at 9:30 a.m. and we would watch her (teaching) through the window. I always wanted to dance with them. I now realize I want to be part of Jazzercise for the rest of my life.”
This has been a challenging year for Jazzercise, since the pandemic has shuttered exercise centers around the world. Fortunately, the company launched an “on demand” app for home workouts in September 2019. That allowed Jazzercise instructors to quickly transition clients to virtual classes when stay-at-home orders descended in the San Diego, the U.S. and overseas markets.
“Since we’re an international company, we knew Europe had shut down before the U.S., so it wasn’t as big a shock for us,” Nelson said. “And we’re a small company so we could get our information out really quickly.”
Nelson, 51, said she knew the company had an adaptable and loyal customer base who would stick it out during the pandemic after she hosted a free exercise class on Facebook Live on March 25 that drew more than 11,000 viewers.
Missett said she’s never experienced anything like the disruption caused by the pandemic since she started Jazzercise in Chicago in 1969.
“We’ve had our peaks and valleys, but this is totally different,” Missett said. “But the thing that is so great about it is we’ve all grown. We reached down deep inside and pulled out what we need to be able to help one another.”
The pandemic also played a role in Skyla getting her certification this fall. Since last spring, the
Carlsbad High School senior has been doing all of her schoolwork from home, as well as her personal Jazzercise workouts. When Jazzercise moved its six-week certification process for new instructors online this year, Skyla decided to give it a go, since she’d always planned to teach someday. She also had the time, since she hasn’t been able to participate in the national dance contests she competed in for the past 10 years. Now Sienna, her 15-year-old sister and fellow dance competitor, wants to certify when she turns 18, too.
Missett, who lives in Vista, said Jazzercise really took off after she moved to San Diego in 1972, where “body beautiful-conscious” customers packed her music- and dance-filled exercise classes. It became a business when she started training other women to teach Jazzercise. As these new instructors, many of them military wives, moved away, they took Jazzercise with them. By the 1980s, it was a nationwide hit.
Jazzercisers were featured in the opening ceremonies at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. In 1989,
one outdoor Jazzercise class in Chicago drew 6,000 participants. And in 1991, Missett and Nelson were invited by President George H.W. Bush to lead a Great American Workout on the White House lawn. In the years since, the company has continued to keep up with changing fitness trends, Nelson said. Today it offers 10 different classes that feature kickboxing, high-intensity interval training and strength training, among others.
Growing up, Nelson said she didn’t realize how big Jazzercise was until her classmates at El Camino High School in Carlsbad began shouting out questions about her mom. She was starting her sophomore year at the University of Arizona, Tucson, when she decided to become a Jazzercise instructor. Afraid she’d fail the course, she didn’t tell her mom until after she had earned her certificate. She hasn’t looked back since.
“It’s been nothing but a positive environment to be around and grow up among lots of strong and very successful women,” Nelson said.
Working together with family can be difficult, but Nelson said her mother has been a wonderful company leader and she fostered a family-first and f lexible work environment that has allowed her to travel frequently to her daughters’ dance competitions.
“She is always so positive and always helping people be their best selves,” Nelson said of Missett. “I admire her creativity and her knowing when to make a change and trust her gut.”
Missett said she admires her daughter’s intelligence, fortitude and work ethic: “She has everything anyone would want in the president of a company. She’s a leader, people respect her, and I’m in awe of her.”
Missett said she still gets so much joy out of teaching and being around the “family” of 40 or so employees at the Carlsbad headquarters that she’s not eager to retire. But she is very happy that now a third generation of her family will be there to carry on her vision many years in the future.
“Skyla is wise beyond her years and has a kindness about her that comes from deep within her soul,” Missett said. “That’s something you can’t teach anybody.”