Judi Sheppard Missett: Founder Of Jazzercise Shares Her Leadership Secrets [Episode 468]

Judi Sheppard Missett, Founder and Executive Chair of Jazzercise, is a youthful, inspiring fitness and business role model. With $2 billion in sales and over 8,000 franchises worldwide, she has built a successful empire focused on improving bodies and lives while empowering others to create their own businesses.

She states, “It’s important to surround yourself with the best people, including those who are more talented than you, and to watch for signs and signals in your life about where to go next.”

In this episode, Dr. Karen highlights the remarkable life, achievements, and innovations of this visionary leader. She also shares Judi Sheppard Missett’s 10 success lessons, her bonus “3 G’s,” and more. Key lessons include living out your passion, embracing change, evolving, and being ingenious.

Tune in to uncover all the leadership secrets and strategies shared in this inspiring episode.

Special thanks to Sandra Yancey of eWomen Network for interviewing Judi Sheppard Missett at a recent eWomen CEO conference.

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Judi Sheppard Missett: Founder Of Jazzercise Shares Her Leadership Secrets [Episode 468]

Judi Sheppard Missett’s Early Journey With Jazzercise

I have attended a business conference for women CEOs sponsored by Sandra Yancey, the Founder and CEO of eWomen Network. At the conference, Sandra Yancy interviewed Judi Sheppard Missett, the Founder and Executive Chair of Jazzercise. Let me tell you, Judi is an amazing inspiration. First of all, she is youthful and beautiful and can still dance with the best of them, including those 30 or more years younger than she is. She’s an excellent role model for her product, Jazzercise.

I didn’t realize it, but Judi started Jazzercise several years ago in 1969. The company now has more than $2 billion in sales, more than 8,000 global franchises all over the world, 32,000 classes a week, and a strong online presence. They even have a licensee company in Japan, which started several years ago and has more than 1,000 instructors.

They create and teach fitness classes that transform your body and your life. They also believe you can create a stronger, healthier, and happier life through fitness. Judi’s been dancing since she was two and a half years old. Her mother was a strong supporter and practiced with her, and at fourteen years old, she got her first professional role in West Side Story.

Her passion for dance has fueled her business. Judi says, “Passion can fuel everything for you, and no one can stop you.” She says, “I was an artist and dancer, and I let it evolve and decided to keep it going and to go big.” From a business perspective, Judi says Jazzercise shouldn’t even be here. She didn’t have a master plan or a blueprint for the business when she was a college student at Northwestern University and working on her BS degree in Theater and Dance.

Judi was also a part of a professional dance studio where she taught dance classes. She noticed that her students would come for a while and then drop out, so she started to inquire about their goals and objectives. Although Judi was a serious student and practitioner of dance, her students wanted to look like professional dancers without being one. I’d say this was her first foray into marketing research and finding out what her clients wanted.

How Jazzercise Started And Attracted Hundreds Of Students

She got a new idea for making bodies better and asked the dance studio owner if she could use an empty studio to try out a new class. The new class was Jazz Dance for Fun and Fitness. The first week she had 15 students. The next week she had 30 students, and the week after that she had 60 students. People were telling their friends, and the class expanded by word of mouth. Judi would say they built joy, camaraderie, and community. Judi says there are always signs and signals in your life about where to go next. She ultimately moved from Chicago to Southern California and kept teaching so many classes that she lost her voice after she developed nodules on her vocal cords.

Like Moses in the Bible, who got sound advice from his father-in-law Jethro, she got sound advice to train others who could also teach the classes. This way, she could expand her reach without burning herself out. That is a lesson that Moses learned when he trained other people to also be judges in Israel. She selected five women in her classes who had dance backgrounds and trained them. Jazzercise is about creating stronger, healthier lives, and she always believed that it would work. That’s one of her keys to success: her belief in her business and making it work. She would say to us, “Believe in your business, your success, and that you can make it work.”

Believe in your business, your success, and that you can make it work. Click To Tweet

Judi also said it’s important to surround yourself with the best people, including those who are more talented than you are. Another key to success is innovation. Jazzercise constantly changes and innovates. They don’t get stuck in what they did yesterday. Although the company started based on jazz dance techniques, they added cardio, then strength training, stretch and strike classes, and High-Intensity Intervals known as HIIT classes. The common thread in all of it is dance.

They also went from video classes to streaming the content as technology changed. Her model in creating Jazzercise was to create a mechanism for women to own their businesses. In the 1980s, the top franchises were Jazzercise and Domino’s Pizza. She believes her business influenced the feminist movement.

In this business model, the company provides new choreography every ten weeks. Judi says, “Choreography is the core of what we do.” They provide programs and they also provide a business plan to profitability. There is a system of business advisors that helps those in the field with their businesses. They hold franchise conferences, Zoom meetings, weekly member calls, road shows, and the use of multiple platforms to get the education and expertise disseminated.

Class owners are the ones who run the business and they hire instructor associates to teach the classes. The work Judi says is gratifying and rewarding because of the giving back to health and wellness, even if it’s not the highest-paying career out there. To stay top of mind with customers, Jazzercise focuses on excellence and they are good at what they do. Judi shifts her business model as she expands, and again, that’s her innovation at work.

She says, “You look forward to where you want to go, more than behind you to see who’s gaining on you.” She says, go for it. Keep moving to keep going. This point is extremely important because so many people are so focused on competitors that in my words, they forget their creative advantage, and you know when you are looking backward over your shoulder, that slows you down from moving forward and getting to your creative advantage where you are doing something better than anyone else can because of how you’ve been gifted by God in order to succeed.

Jazzercise also has a family connection. She’s got a 55-year-old daughter, Shanna Missett Nelson, who’s the company President and CEO. Her daughter did solo Jazzercise performances in the 1984 Olympics. While she was studying journalism and English literature in college, her daughter took the instructor training and it had looked initially like the daughter wasn’t going to come into the business, but somehow she got the bug to also be in the Jazzercise business.

Judi’s oldest granddaughter also is in the business she did her instructor training online and she created a new branch of the business called REVEL Dance Fitness. There are also two nieces who are executives in the company. Judi would say that there are people in place to carry the business forward. In other words, she has a working succession plan.

Judi further says, “Surround yourself with people who lift you. A great and positive group around you, believe in and invest in your purpose, and also attract people who believe in and invest in your purpose.” She says it’s never about one person but rather a village. Bring in new people. Like all the rest of us, Judi has also had employee challenges and she says it’s all part of the journey of life. Learn from the situations and move on.

Believe and invest in your purpose. Attract people who do the same. Click To Tweet

About her business life, Judi says, “I have loved this journey.” Her mother advised her to use her gift and not take anything for granted. Judi discovered that she had a head for both financial figures and the body figure, so I would say she’s into double figures or figures, take it to the second power, although at the outset she did not see her financial figure acumen or her business acumen.

In her years of running Jazzercise, Judi has raised more than $33 million for charities. I would say that’s pretty profound and awesome. Also, her 1981 Jazzercise LP was certified gold in 1982. She’s also on the advisory board for Enterprising Women and she’s in multiple Hall of Fame inductions and has too many honors and awards to even name. In this particular show. Judi is also the author of three books, Jazzercise: Rhythmic Jazz Dance-Exercise: A Fun Way to Fitness, which was written by Dona Meilach in 1983. Her second book, Jazzercise Workout Book: Your Customized Fitness Program–For Life. Her latest book, which is of particular interest to you and also to me is Building a Business with a Beat: Leadership Lessons from Jazzercise―An Empire Built on Passion, Purpose, and Heart, and that book came out in 2019.

Key Leadership Lessons From Judi Sheppard Missett

Judi also has some additional success lessons that she would share with you, and those are, 1) Live out your passion. 2) Change, evolve, and be ingenious. 3) Make your mind, body, spirit, and connection, work. Have a focused mind. Take care of your body. 4) Learn something new every day. 5) Feed your spirit. 6) Use your gifts. 7) Give back, including mentoring other people. Judi’s husband of 57 years is recovering from alcoholism and has been sober for 29 years and he says that giving back helps him with his sobriety. 8) Listen to your gut. 9) Think with your head. 10) Follow your heart. Judi has a bonus of 3 Gs, and the 3 Gs are guts, grit, and gumption. She says with those three, it’s go, baby. Go. There’s no stopping you when you have all three of those together.

I want to give a special shout-out and thanks to Sandra Yancey, Founder and CEO of eWomen Network, for her wonderful interview of Judi Sheppard Missett at that women’s CEO event that I attended, and I got introduced to the founder of Jazzercise, Judi Sheppard Missett and I’m so thankful for that, someone new to be inspired by, and I hope that you too are inspired by Judi’s life and the leadership lessons, which I shared with you from her.

As we close, I want to close with a couple of Bible verses that relate to what we have been talking about, and these come from 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” That’s profound. It fits with what Judi said about the mind, body, and spirit connection, and when we are doing the right things with our minds, with our bodies, and with our spirit, we then also glorify God. To your health, to your fitness, and the glory of God, have a blessed, healthy, and fit day.

When we are doing the right things with our minds, with our bodies, and with our spirit, we then also glorify God. Click To Tweet

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How Dr. Clarence Shuler Builds Strong Marriages Globally

Dr. Clarence Shuler is the president and CEO of Building Lasting Relationships and his wife Brenda Shuler, the two of them together, were speakers of the year for the Family Life Marriage Conferences. They know a lot about marriage as at the time of this recording, they have been married for many years. I have Dr. Clarence Shuler with me. Dr. Shuler, what’s the word on marriage? What would you like to tell people?

Thanks so much for this introduction. I would like to tell them that in our nonprofit, Building Lasting Relationships, we get wounded people in God’s word into wounded people, primarily by memorizing scripture. Then we heal them, equip them, and empower them to become reproductive disciples who do the same for others.

One of those venues that we do is use marriage, and we have done marriage ministry all around the globe, we refer people to our resource, which is Keeping Your Wife Your Best Friend, which is written for husbands, but also their wives, so they can go through the book together. There are questions in the back. Whether they have a tune-up or their marriage is in crisis, we feel this resource can change their life forever and they can use it to help change other people’s lives. We love marriage. We think marriage is designed to be for a lifetime, and no matter where your marriage is, there’s hope for your marriage. It can be better than it’s ever been if you put some work into it. We love marriages, and marriages put a smile on God’s face.

Marriages put a smile on God's face. Click To Tweet

Amen to that, and if you keep your wife your best friend, you have an even greater chance of being married for the long haul. If you would like to know more about the ministry, please go to Clarence Schuler and you can give a donation there or you can sign up for a marriage experience yourself.

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Terence Chatmon’s Mission To Transform Families

I’m here with Terence Chatmon, who is the President and CEO of Victorious Family, and also the author of Do Your Children Believe?. Victorious Family has a goal of reaching 9.2 million families by 2030. Terence, tell us, how far along are you on that goal?

We are very excited. We reached 133,800 families and prior to that, we were right on around the 400,000 family mark towards our 9.2 million goal in the second. We are extremely excited.

That is very exciting news, and I know there are many new initiatives that help you to reach even more families. Tell us what’s new in the ministry.

What’s exciting, on December 7th, 2023, we had a national newspaper cover Victorious Family, and it went throughout the country, and that has exposed us to over 30 million families in the US From that, we have received a great deal of responses, and one of those responses is a new partnership that we are forming with Hampton University to come alongside them and work in eight counties in the Hampton Roads area. We are excited about that. Millions of families will be exposed to what it looks like to have family transformation taking place in their homes.

How can people reach you, and how can they reach your weekly resource that you have as well?

They can reach us at Victorious Family. Our resources are there, and we are excited because we have a brand-new resource that came out. It’s our weekly rhythms guide. It gives the parent and individual a day-to-day rhythm and how they might walk in Christ, so we would encourage them to get a copy of our weekly rhythms guide for parents and individuals.

Thank you so much, Terence. I’m so glad that you are here with me, and to you out there in the audience, please go to Victorious Family, donate to the ministry, get the weekly rhythms guide, and see what else is new in the ministry. See you next time.

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Celebrating The Global Impact Of The Bible League

I’m here to celebrate the work of the Bible League, which is a global ministry that provides Bibles, ministry study materials, and through activities like Project Philip, also teaches and trains local people on how to share the word of God. The President and CEO of the Bible League, Jos Snoep, is with me to share a little bit more about what the Bible League is doing.

The beauty of the local church is that it is the body of Christ, and it is the Holy Spirit that is calling the local church to be engaged in the Great Commission. Click To Tweet

The beauty of the local church is that it is the body of Christ, and it is the Holy Spirit that is calling the local church to be engaged in the Great Commission. As a Bible League, we come alongside those local pastors. I met a pastor. His name is Rolando, in the Amazon, and he has this great vision to reach 200 communities with the word of God, we were able to come alongside them and help them with Bibles and resources.

Thank you so much, Jos. We are all partners together. You, the Bible League, are the hands and feet to the local people on the ground, and there are partners and donors out there who can be hands and feet to you as you also share with others. Those of you who are reading, if you want to be part of this ministry, I invite you to be a part of it. I’m a part of it. Go to Bible League, see more about the ministry, and see how you can participate and donate.