Family Business Magazine honors 10 2025 Transformational Women in Family Business who are propelling their family enterprises into the future.
JUDI SHEPPARD MISSETT
Founder & Executive Chair | Jazzercise, Inc. | Carlsbad, Calif.
In 1969, Judi Sheppard Missett walked into a dance studio to teach a class and ended up starting a movement. What began with 15 women has grown into Jazzercise, Inc., a global dance-fitness brand with more than 32,000 classes a week in 16 countries, cumulative gross sales exceeding $2 billion and a reputation for making fitness fun. “I really had no master plan, no blueprint, no business plan,” Missett recalls. “I just did what I did out of love and out of passion. And then it evolved and it got bigger and bigger.”
From the beginning, Missett blended her professional dance training with the then-emerging science of exercise. She choreographed routines, taught classes, marketed the brand and managed the paperwork. “In the beginning I was kind of the multitasker,” she says. Eventually, she built a team. “I was able to bring other people in, which I think is really important — to surround yourself with really good people. People who are better than you are. People who make you light up.”
Challenges often turned into breakthroughs. For example, teaching too many classes early on strained her voice, forcing her to train other instructors. “That was the Aha moment. The obstacle became something that moved me along. And that was when I began using others to teach classes. And then other people wanted to train and … off we went.”
In the early 1980s, Jazzercise was faced with a choice: make its instructors either employees or franchisees. With a desire to allow her instructors to retain their sense of ownership, Judi chose the latter option. Becoming a franchise was daunting, but ultimately proved to be the right call. Not long after, “the two fastest growing, biggest franchises were Jazzercise and Domino’s Pizza,” she recalls. “And we’re both still here!”
About three decades later, however, the COVID-19 shutdown brought another major test. Fortunately, the company, with the guidance of Judi’s daughter Shanna Missett Nelson, launched Jazzercise On Demand just months earlier. “We were able to tell all our franchisees that their customers would be able to use that streaming platform until we got back to class. And it saved us.”
Today, Shanna is the company’s CEO. “My daughter wanted to join and be a part of this fun thing that we call Jazzercise,” Judi says. “And I’m proud of that because it was never something I ever mentioned to her. She just decided to do it on her own.”
The pattern repeated with the next generation when Shanna’s daughter, Skyla Nelson, came on board. Skyla is now Jazzercise’s program development specialist. “My granddaughter has joined forces with us and she is fantastic. And again, complete surprise. I never said, ‘You should be part of the company.’ Her mom really didn’t say that to her either, which I think is a better way to go.”
More than five decades later, Missett remains deeply involved and the ability to have three generations of her family working together is a huge source of pride. As founder and executive chair, she still teaches, contributes choreography and guides strategy. She has also developed adjacent businesses, including Jazzercise Apparel and JM DigitalWorks, which produces award-winning video content. At the heart of it all is a simple mission. “The purpose behind what we do is so forceful — to make people feel the joy of dance and music and movement and to help them understand how important it is to be healthy and live in a healthy way for the rest of their lives.”