Lucas Vigilante wants to make you wealthy.
Not in a vague, motivational-poster sort of way. Specifically, deliberately and on a timetable. His stated ambition is to help create a new business-owner multi-millionaire every quarter for the next five years. And the measure isn’t a sale – it’s personal net worth. Which matters enormously when you’re coaching family businesses that have been trading for several generations and intend to keep going for several more.
That kind of clarity about outcomes doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from watching, up close, what extraordinary business growth actually looks like.
The education that changed everything
Before joining ActionCOACH, Vigilante worked for a man named Richard Thompson – whose business journey began selling ice creams on a beach in the South of France, moved on to telephone answering machines sold from the boot of a car, and eventually became a multinational telecoms operation.
“That became an extraordinary telecommunications business,” says Vigilante. “Initially backed by the Malayan royal family, providing payphones throughout the UK – remember those? The business went through three venture capital management buyouts, a listing on London’s AIM market, a subsequent de-listing, and finally a trade sale to a multinational competitor.”
Vigilante watched that business grow from four people to 135, with annual turnover climbing into eight figures. The problem was, he assumed that kind of growth was normal.
“It wasn’t until I joined ActionCOACH that I realised businesses like Richard’s are the exception, not the rule. And that’s exactly why coaching matters.”
Why ActionCOACH – and why local
When Vigilante started looking at ActionCOACH seriously, he asked every question he could think of. What convinced him wasn’t just the business model – it was the culture and the system behind it.
“I was immediately attracted by the idea that you could help business owners in your local area consistently outperform their competitors by following what is now known as the ActionCOACH Business Operating System – ABOS.”
He also wanted to keep working alongside people like Richard Thompson – entrepreneurs with boundless ambition and a relentless focus on profitable growth. Reading ActionCOACH’s 14 Points of Culture sealed it.
“It convinced me this was a global organisation I’d genuinely enjoy being part of.” He even set himself a practical test for what ‘local’ meant. “I wanted to find a business I could cycle to without breaking into a sweat. That, in my world, defines local.”
The origin story of ActionCOACH itself landed with him too – Brad Sugars starting the business from the back bedroom of his parents’ home in Brisbane at just 19 years old. “Entrepreneurs building entrepreneurs – that story resonated with me immediately.”
He joined in 2010. Sixteen years on, he’s in the ActionCOACH Hall of Fame.
The obstacle nobody warns you about
The biggest barrier to his early success wasn’t the market, the training or the business model. It was himself.
“For almost two years I struggled to reconcile my own identity with everyone referring to me as ‘Coach’.”
What shifted things was a fellow ActionCOACH franchise owner, Peter Boolkah, who gave him an afternoon of his time – unprompted and with nothing to gain.
“Peter Boolkah had absolutely nothing to gain by giving me half a day of his time. In fact, he probably knew it was going to be a challenging afternoon. That’s one of the things that has always stood out to me about ActionCOACH – people willingly help each other simply because that’s the culture. Sometimes you’ll receive support from people you haven’t even asked.”
Almost immediately after that conversation, Vigilante began enjoying the work more. His results improved too.
Support, training and knowing what to ignore
ActionCOACH’s training and support calendar is extensive enough that Vigilante sometimes shows it to clients during Zoom sessions – and they use it as a benchmark when building their own development programmes.
But he’s candid about the risk of overdoing it.
“Compared with 16 years ago, there’s almost too much support available. If you attended every training session and every support meeting, you’d probably struggle to find time to coach your clients.”
His advice to new coaches is consistent: “Experience everything first, then refine it down to the support that’s most valuable to you at that stage of your journey.”
He’s equally direct about what ActionCOACH has become versus what he expected when he joined.
“Today, ActionCOACH is the organisation I thought I was joining 16 years ago. It has continually evolved and improved. It wasn’t everything I naively imagined when I first joined – but today it genuinely embodies the values expressed in our 14 Points of Culture.”
The work itself
Vigilante specialises in two types of client. Family businesses navigating a generational transition. And entrepreneurs who want to build something they can eventually sell.
In both cases, the foundation is the same.
“Over the years I’ve found that when people know you genuinely care about helping them succeed, trust grows naturally. Strong relationships almost always lead to stronger long-term business outcomes.”
That care, he says, is not a technique. It’s a prerequisite.
Designing the life around the work
Ask Vigilante about the future and he doesn’t hesitate.
“I love working with entrepreneurs, and I honestly can’t imagine a future where I wouldn’t want to continue doing that. So for now, I fully expect I’ll always be an ActionCOACH.”
What he’s built isn’t just a business. It’s a deliberately designed life – one where the people, experiences and activities that matter most happen every day, every week, every month and every year.
The Hall of Fame, he says, was never the target. “The Hall of Fame became an unexpected consequence of focusing on the mission – what Buckminster Fuller described as a ‘precessional effect’, where significant outcomes emerge indirectly from pursuing a worthwhile purpose.”
Every day he tries to become the best version of himself he can be. “The difference today is that I now know how to coach myself back on track when I’m not at my best.”
How to choose the right franchise – Lucas Vigilante’s straight advice
Most people spend more time researching a holiday than they do a franchise. Don’t be most people.
Start with yourself, not the brochure.
Ask what situations bring out the very best in you – and what situations bring out the worst. A franchise that suits someone else’s strengths may be entirely wrong for yours.
Know where you want to be in ten years.
Then ask how many people inside that franchise have actually got there. Not how many claim to be heading there. How many have arrived.
Follow genuine interest, not projected income.
If you don’t love the work on a bad week, the money won’t be enough to keep you going. Find something you’d want to talk about even when it isn’t going well.
Ask what you dislike – and take the answer seriously.
Every franchise has aspects that suit some people and grate on others. Find out what those are before you sign anything.
Do your own due diligence. All of it.
Talk to existing franchisees, not just the ones the franchisor introduces you to. Ask the ones who left. The answers you get from people with nothing to sell you are the ones worth having.
