Anne Marie Heinrichs

CEO of Please Take My Card

“I started my first business because I thought I would be able to go to a matinee movie during the week if I owned my own business, and I could take a vacation whenever I felt like it. Nobody told me you had to work five times as hard, with longer hours and less pay. Over a decade later I’ve had business success, business failure, even a near bankruptcy. It’s been a wild ride!” Anne Marie Heinrichs is a Toronto, Canada native but has spent her career as a small business consultant working in Canada, USA and United Kingdom. She is a serial entrepreneur and has thrived in the entrepreneurial market.

Anne Marie has an Honours degree in Philosophy from the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. A “truly useless degree, unless, of course, you need to think one day about how someone else might see a situation”. Her unbiased thinking and straight to the heart of the matter style, has made Anne Marie a favourite workshop leader and consultant for many small businesses who were looking for real answers to their questions, not really expensive answers. Her client experience has crossed many market sectors, from computing to hospitals, furniture manufacturing and children’s clothing, quality management and publishing.

Anne Marie enjoys giving workshops for small business owners and entrepreneurs whom she describes as “the loneliest people in the world”. “I love working with fellow entrepreneurs. We ‘get’ each other. No one else does or can. It takes a special breed of person to jump over the entrepreneurial cliff. We don’t offer a parachute – that would mean you’re heading down. I like to think of it as giving people a glider – each small business professional is truly the master of their own destiny, and will get where they want to go, but it is a-ok to get a helping hand to create the flight plan along the way. It is all about trust. We’re peers, and our peers can be our best friends and teachers, but often the small business owner is left so alone. I would love to see all small business people truly connected to each other in a meaningful way. I believe it means the difference between success and failure.”

From an early age, Anne Marie experienced success as a published author and speaker. While her passion lies in one on one experience with her clientele, she can often be found at local and international business networking events with a group of business owners, happily sharing her expertise. “There is nothing better to me than giving someone an ‘a-ha’ moment. John and I have spent a lot of time and money learning from the best of the best. We want to share that expertise with anyone willing to listen. Our aim is to bring the teachers we have learned from to our market, in a way that is economical enough for everyone, without sacrificing the unbelievable knowledge that is available. Looking at it practically – would any one of us make the same decision 6 months ago if we knew then what we know now? There are a lot of people who have paid heavy prices to gain their expertise. We should all learn from them!”

John Bannan

CMO of Please Take My Card

John Bannan brings extensive experience in sales and marketing, providing strategic insight, analysis and in-store execution for some of the world’s leading manufacturers, including Nestle, Pepsico and Unilever in the UK and Ireland.

John’s background enables him to be responsible for the development, design, operation, and improvement of the marketing systems that create and deliver Please Take My Card products and services to the end users.

He has a Retail Management degree from Glasgow-Caledonia University and is the co-founder of Please Take My Card.