Husband-and-Wife Team Brings Experience and Passion for Helping Patients to Florida-Based Physical Therapy Franchise

Before joining the FYZICAL family in 2015, Brian and Melinda Sganga were owners of their own private practice in Lake City. Since joining Sarasota-based FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers, the nation’s fastest-growing physical therapy franchise with 400-plus locations, their business has grown steadily, even amid the pandemic.

The duo has seen tremendous success at their Lake City clinic, and they opened their second clinic in September 2019 in Gainesville. The Gainesville clinic thrived amid the pandemic and was 67 percent more profitable in February 2021 than in February 2020. 

1851 Franchise: Tell me your story — what did you do before franchising?

Brian Sganga: "Saving the world, one person at a time"? is a motto my wife Melinda and I have adhered to most of our lives. It guided my work during the 20 years I spent as an attorney. When that role lost its allure, I had the opportunity to help run our physical therapy business, Pro Motion Therapy of Lake City, Florida, with Melinda in 2012. After managing the business for a short while, I missed the human element, and Melinda supported me in my decision to return to college to obtain a Physical Therapist Assistant degree. 

I treated and helped Melinda manage until 2019 when our constant, rapid growth required I turn to full-time management. Today we continue doing what we love under the name FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Center. We still offer what physicians say is the best physical therapy in the area, but we've added a state-of-the-art falls risk and balance center to serve the local population and surrounding communities better. We offer the area's only No Fear/No Fall ceiling rail support system and other highly specialized equipment to keep our patients on their feet. Even better, our therapists are trained by some of the country’s leading therapists and physicians in treating complex balance disorders. We are passionate about what we do, and the results we achieve show it.

Melinda Sganga: I’ve worked in the physical therapy industry for almost 25 years now. I attended the University of Miami and graduated with my Master of Science in Physical Therapy degree in 1996. Since then, I spent the first half of my career in private practice and went on to open my own practice in 2007 in Lake City. When I opened my own practice, it was because I wanted to operate in a better way than other companies I previously worked for. The business started as myself and another person at the front desk, and we grew the business significantly. There were eight competitors in Lake City, which at the time was a town of 20,000 people. We won a small business of the year award for the county, which was really exciting.

1851 Franchise: How did you initially find out about franchising, and why did you pick FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers?

Brian Sganga: Much of the outreach we received from FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers was via info flyers in the mail. One of the founders, Terry Nicholson, reached out by telephone and invited us to check out one of their opportunities. After visiting, we made the decision to stick with our own private practice. However, FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers did a great job of keeping in touch, which made us feel wanted. We went to Orlando, where the brand was hosting a conference, and it was at that time we saw just how helpful FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers could be for our current business and desired lifestyle. Through their expertise and leadership as a franchise, we realized how they could positively impact our business and improve our family’s lifestyle in the process. Melinda was the first to recognize the significance of the opportunity. It took me some more time, but the “wow” finally came to me. Simplistically, Melinda and I made a handshake deal to go “all-in.” A couple of months later, we met at their corporate office in Sarasota in 2015 and became franchisees.

Melinda Sganga: I saw the change coming in the future of health care and legislation, which reinforced that I needed to learn how to run the business more efficiently. My biggest question was how to sustain my success in the long term, as I had no real exit strategy. I knew there were people out there that were better and faster than me when it comes to operations. Insert FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers. When this opportunity came up, I was initially unsure, as it was a franchise, and I didn’t see how that type of model could help. I am glad to say that I was completely wrong. We talked to their team and realized that the major benefit of joining them would be the strength of a franchise system regarding clinical excellence, automation, relationship building and operational efficiencies that we never had access to as a private practice.

1851 Franchise: How did you decide you wanted to pursue this opportunity?

Brian Sganga: After six months of working with Melinda, I had to admit to Melinda and myself that I did not have the necessary knowledge in the physical therapy industry to be successful. There was a lot of terminology that I lacked, and I knew I would have to fast-track my education if I wanted to make this a career. I attended Florida Gateway College for their Physical Therapist Assistant program and graduated in 2013. Both of us still needed management and accounting skills to run an effective business. Besides the awesome vestibular training, FYZICAL provided a fast-track opportunity in business and personnel management.  In a matter of months, we were provided the same clinical and operational education it would have taken a decade to acquire by ourselves.

Melinda Sganga: The biggest thing for us was the whole new set of resources and tools to run our business, which allowed us to be committed to excellent patient care. By joining FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers, we came to learn that you have to have clinical and business excellence to thrive in the industry, and I was missing the business expertise when I was practicing on my own. By joining FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers, we were not sacrificing the quality of our patient care, but we efficiently implemented FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers' business practices to maximize operational excellence. We knew that joining this franchise would make us better business owners and more savvy physical therapists.

1851 Franchise: What excited you most about the brand’s potential?

Brian Sganga: One of the biggest concepts we’ve learned in this business is you can’t have a successful practice until you have clinical and operational excellence. Being able to accomplish that with both clinics shows me that the growth potential is unlimited with FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers. As a business director, I am passionate about sharing my story with others and inspiring them to join our franchise system.

FYZICAL opened up an entirely new field of study and expertise for us. For years before we aligned with FYZICAL, we noticed that repeat patients coming in with orthopedic injuries had one thing in common: They were getting injured by falling. We were already excellent at treating all of the orthopedic conditions that therapists usually treat but realized that we were not addressing the common cause of these injuries. Unfortunately, at that time, there was no single source for educating ourselves on balance and fall prevention. FYZICAL showed us how to treat a myriad of balance disorders and stop falls from occurring. We quickly became the most referred-to outpatient clinic in our hometown.

Melinda Sganga: With the training we have received through FYZICAL, I see the future of physical therapy being FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers. The reason I say that is because I don’t think there is another physical therapy service that offers such a high quality of care by a trained therapist in a clean and pleasant environment. The more physicians learn more about us, the more they begin to trust us. Outcomes from our work are far superior to that of our competitors. Since joining FYZICAL and seeing what they have built, Brian and I have come light years from when we joined just six years ago.

In the beginning, I was naive, but the corporate team is so great at promoting and supporting us. What I love is that everyone from client care to liaisons to staff physical therapists and regional directors is that we are all given opportunities for growth. The corporate team provides education training because they want people to grow in whatever capacity that might be. Everyone wants to help each other, and that is so encouraging to see on a daily basis.

1851 Franchise: What are your dreams with the business? What does the future look like?

Brian Sganga: FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers taught us that the numbers were essential in running a business, and so is taking care of your employees, which has been more important now than ever as a result of the pandemic. For me, I am always interacting with members of our team to make sure they are learning and growing on a daily basis. Since joining this industry, I have become incredibly passionate about helping others grow their careers, which has been a dream of mine since entering this field in 2012. However, the pandemic created a paradigm shift, and we had to look at doing things differently. We have a great brain trust with FYZICAL’s corporate team, and it did not take us long to start mapping out a new approach to running our business. In fact, we performed better in 2020 than in 2019.

Some people thought we were crazy to come into Gainesville, the land of the mega-PT facilities. It's highly competitive with a massive PT business on every street, or so it seemed when we were looking to open there. The decision was daunting, and the task of getting the trust of local physicians even more so. Gainesville and even occasionally Ocala physicians started referring their vestibular and balance disorder patients up to us in Columbia County. It was a long drive for their patients, but they saw that we got results where a lot of others could not. Several physicians asked us to open a facility in Gainesville. We did, and we worked with them and a lot of others, handling a variety of problems, but primarily complex vestibular and balance disorders. I knew that with Melinda’s skill-set as a therapist and teacher of therapists that our level of care would spread throughout any community we found ourselves in.

We are always looking to grow more in the Mid-Central Florida region. It’s an exciting time to be part of FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers.

Melinda Sganga: We have done a really great job growing our clinic in Lake City over time to the point where it is the premier physical therapy outpatient center in the region. We opened our Gainesville clinic in September 2019, and then COVID-19 hit just a few months later. However, we are 67% more profitable this month (February 2021) than we were in February 2020. Gainesville is an extremely competitive environment, and we knew that coming in, as the University of Florida has a large medical campus. As normal life begins to return to normal this year, we plan on getting involved in community events and getting FYZICAL in front of as many audiences as possible.

1851 Franchise: What types of success have you seen?

Brian Sganga: I do not like number-dropping, but I will say that we have been on a NASA-like trajectory since joining FYZICAL. We have experienced nearly 20% growth every year since joining, going from a $515,000 business to a $1.25 million business in five years. In our first year with FYZICAL, we were recognized as the fastest-growing franchise location in the nation, receiving FYZICAL’S Platinum Award for Growth. We opened our Gainesville Oaks clinic in September 2019 and performed well despite the impact of the pandemic. Our goal is to keep up with our growth and follow a similar trajectory with the Gainesville Oaks clinic.

1851 Franchise: What do you do in your personal time (hobbies, family, sports, etc.)

Brian Sganga: Melinda and I have one adult daughter and two minor daughters, 12 years and 9, so they keep us very busy! I enjoy backpacking and adventure motorcycling when given the opportunity, practicing rifle marksmanship, and spending time on the firing range a couple of times a week. In the evenings, I enjoy just hanging out with Melinda, cooking a family meal and spending family time. Pretty simple, really.

Melinda Sganga: As Brian mentioned, we enjoy spending time with our daughters. We also have two Italian Mastiffs. I like to go shooting with Brian, and we hope to do more traveling once the pandemic comes to an end.

About FYZICAL

FYZICAL is the fastest-growing physical therapy franchise in the United States and is headquartered in Sarasota, Florida. With more than 400 centers in 45 states, FYZICAL’s revolutionary business model is designed to optimize profitability and growth and offers comprehensive patient care through unique balance protocols and healthy lifestyle products and services. FYZICAL is a champion of patient choice and direct access and a leader in the future of health, wellness and preventative care.  For more information on joining the FYZICAL family,  visit FYZICALFranchise.com.