His Business Career

Gary had always had an interest in entertainment and having kept his hand in promoting events for many years, he bit the bullet and set up his own entertainment business in the mid-90’s. Not one for doing things by halves, Gary’s first gig was to put on the first open air classical music concert in the Peterborough area – an event that involved a large stately home and the 65 piece Royal Philharmonic orchestra, which was aired live on classic FM. This led him to the licence trade and to the ownership of a number of bars and clubs and restaurants between Leicester and London as well as a consultancy, advising large breweries on how best to get results.

A poor choice of business partner and a lack of an eye for detail led to that business going bust, leaving Gary with a lot of personal debt and so he ended up back in sales, this time B2B sales, which is where he came across business networking. He got involved with the national business network 4Networking, initially as an Area Leader and quickly became a Regional Leader before being promoted to National Leader, working alongside Network Director, Tamsen Garrie.

His Passion and Purpose

Realising his passion for helping people to grow and to be the best version of themselves and finding that he had a natural talent for picking leaders (often when they didn’t know it themselves!), Gary retrained in solution-focused hypnotherapy and set up Inspired To Change, initially his own practice and now the leading provider of solution-focused hypnotherapy services nationally.

Gary is also a senior lecturer for CPHT (The Clifton Practice Hypnotherapy School) in Peterborough and Birmingham where he teaches the most up to date neuro-science based hypnotherapeutic techniques to students from all over the country. He also runs Peterborough Does Business, Peterborough’s most prestigious business networking and growth platform in the region.

Having played a significant part in setting up the first enACT Accountability Group in Peterborough, Gary led that group for over two years before handing it over to Caroline Prout in October 2015. He also launched the second enACT group, also in Peterborough and still leads that group today.

The Secret to his Success

Asked what the secret is to his success, he says “I’m a very fast learner and so it doesn’t take me long to pick something new up and run with it, and because I am hugely driven and I don’t see obstacles where others might, I am very good at getting things started. I also see things that others don’t, which includes opportunities, but also values and attributes in people that have not been previously spotted. I get my biggest pleasure from seeing other people succeed and because I have an intuitive sense of a persons’ sense of purpose, I am able to help them maximise that”.

Why he is involved with enACT

When asked why he’s involved with enACT (in other words, what’s in it for him!), he says:

“enACT brings all of my values, skills and experience (both in life and business) together and enables me to utilise them to influence the growth of people and their businesses. I have also worked with Tamsen Garrie for many years now and I know that with her passion for personal and business growth and her talent for creating the conditions to enable that, combined with my natural ability to spot the right people and get things started, the enACT platform will make a significant difference to the small business community”.

What he get’s up to!

When not enabling people to be the best version of themselves, Gary can be found with his head in neuro-science books, watching football or rugby and spending time with his grandchildren.

How to get in touch with him

Twitter: garyjohannes
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GaryJohannes

And to contact him direct about being an enACT Leader yourself and starting your own group:

Email: gary@en-act.co.uk
Text/Call: 07780 592625