The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 17 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Missett: Jazzercise is the only fitness brand from its era still thriving
“The reason we're the only fitness company that started way back when that's still thriving is because we've made good choices. We have Change through the decades. We've never stayed the same.”
Sheppard Missett: Jazzercise stayed apolitical while empowering female business owners
“I have always tried to keep Jazzercise apolitical, areligious, you know, all of those things, but on my own, I was always vocal about women's rights, and I was always proud that I was helping Women become business people, and to build a business that they coul…”
Missett: Celebrity fitness trends relied on single personalities, lacking Jazzercise's scale
“It never really bothered me because I felt like the people who were celebrities, and of course we have Richard Simmons as well, you know, all getting into it just gave people more awareness, and then they could pick what they wanted to do, but I don't consider…”
Missett: In the 1980s, the two biggest franchises were Jazzercise and Domino's
“And in fact, in the eighties, there were two big franchises. Us and Domino's Pizza.”
Missett: I pioneered the use of wearable microphones for fitness instructors
“And as I trained instructors, they all got microphones like that, so I really believe I was certainly the pioneer of all that.”
Latham: Jazzercise and early dance aerobics were unscientific fads
“Then they started to get a little bit more organized when Jazzercise started pulling together kind of dance aerobics in more of a structured format, but nothing ever based on science. You know, it really was this kind of trendy fad type of stuff, particularly …”
Missett: Jazzercise lost zero instructors during its early 1980s franchise transition
“So we turned it around, and we made it into a franchise, and I didn't lose one instructor That I can remember.”
Missett: A La Jolla YMCA student coined the name 'Jazzercise'
“I had a customer in the La Jolla Y, where I was teaching, and she said to me one day, you need a name for this, and I said, well, what have you got in mind? And she said, why don't you call it jazzercise, because it's exercise, but it's also jazz dance”
Missett: Initial Jazzercise Class Grew from 15 to 60 Within Three Weeks
“When I did the second class, I had 30 people, because each of the 15 brought a friend. And then, the next week, I had 60 people, and the room wouldn't hold any more people.”
Missett: Early Jazzercise cost five dollars for eight monthly classes
“Well, not a class, a month for eight classes.”
Missett: Jazzercise startup franchise fee remains $1,250 today
“Exactly, and even today our startup fee is only 12 50, you know, 1250 dollars”
Missett: I taught around 30 Jazzercise classes weekly by 1977
“By 19, around 1977, I was teaching about 30 classes a week.”
Missett: The bank that rejected our credit line failed seven years later
“That bank went out of business like seven years after I had talked to that guy.”
Sheppard Missett: Jazzercise never needed outside investors or loans
“Well, we were doing fine. We never really had to do that”
Missett: I ran a basement dance studio with 100 students at 13
“So I was 13, and my parents fixed up the basement of our home and made it into a dance studio, and
Yeah, and about, gosh, three months, I had a hundred little dancers, little students.”
Sheppard Missett: Jazzercise operates roughly 1,000 brick-and-mortar locations
“Yeah, I think there's about a thousand.”
Missett: Fitness dance turns passive spectators into active participants
“The neat thing about what I do today is that my audience is an active one, and when I was dancing in the theater, I had a passive audience. You know, they were watching, but not doing. Now today, I'm dancing on the stage, and the people in front of me are danc…”