Print Lord is a Hove-based print brokerage and the stage behind the Big Business Breakfast Club (BBBC), Jim Cunliffe’s monthly gathering of ~100–120 Brighton business leaders. AI Potential is July’s named sponsor; the 19 June “Agents Demystified” talk was delivered at the race course as agreed. The Friday 17 July BBBC at Sussex County Cricket Ground is three days away with all logistics confirmed. The next step is to show up, deliver the 60-second sponsor slot at 9am, and run the free AI taster session from ~10am.
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The July 17 BBBC sponsor event is three days away with logistics confirmed. Contact: Jim Cunliffe, owner of Print Lord and founder of the Big Business Breakfast Club. The 19 June “Agents Demystified” talk was delivered as agreed. Gareth has a ~60-second sponsor slot at 9am, then runs the free AI taster session after the breakfast (~10am); AV and parking are sorted. James Dempster is joining in Mary’s place; goal is newsletter sign-ups and course enquiries from the room.
Jim Cunliffe is a well-known Brighton/Hove networker who in 2024 turned 25+ years of print expertise into “Print Lord”, a print brokerage with a tongue-in-cheek royal persona. He also founds and runs the Big Business Breakfast Club (BBBC), a monthly leaders’ breakfast pulling ~100–120 people. On the call he was candid: it has been a hard year, he is “surviving”, and he is concentrating on the printing and the breakfast. Warm, local, peer-to-peer; Gareth had shown Steve Rackley similar material days earlier.
Fact AI Potential sponsors the July BBBC (Fri 17 July, the cricket ground). The June event (Fri 19 June, the race course) carries an 8-minute “Businessentials” AI talk from Gareth, deliberately separated from the paid slot. A free post-breakfast taster session lets attendees build an agent on the day. Charity: Ronald McDonald House.
“Is this about saving you time inside Print Lord, or about what you could bring back to your network?”
Answered on the call: both, but the network leads. Jim’s stage is the asset and he opened the sponsorship conversation himself. Print Lord’s own AI interest (agents, event automation, the 25k database, an anonymous chatbot enquiry he could not action) is a real but secondary thread.
Sponsorship as a pipeline seed, not a one-off. The sponsor month brands AI Potential to the room, the 19 June talk warms it, and the taster session converts curiosity into newsletter sign-ups (the primary goal, an easy ask) and course enquiries (secondary). Jim becomes a standing referral channel; Print Lord itself is a low-friction first course customer down the line. A lead magnet for the month is still to be devised.
Past: By Fri 12 June – taster wording sent. 19 June (race course) – “Agents Demystified” delivered.
Confidence: Fact sourced · Infer inference · Spec speculation. First-party items are from the 9 June call (highest confidence). Sources at the foot of this tab.
Fact Jim still sells print ~8 hours a day. New hire Nancy handles customers but is light on print knowledge and on limited hours, so capacity is thin. An anonymous chatbot enquiry he could not action and a 25,000-contact database he is slowly working are concrete drag points.
Fact Jim is concentrating on two things: printing and the breakfast. He tried a consultancy line for a couple of months and lost the client in April. The breakfast is run venue-by-venue and he wants to lock in sponsorship for the whole year rather than ad hoc.
Fact “A hard year”, “we’re surviving”; print is where the money is and repeat customers keep coming back. Breakfast monetises through sponsorship and is venue-cost sensitive (the August Saltdean Lido option was dropped on price). Spec Turnover not public.
Fact Genuinely AI-curious: a daily “ChatGPT friend”, site chatbots, AI imagery in the brand, and a plan to auto-build event web pages from a speakers-and-venues database (“not there yet, but the data’s there”). Has not built agents — the obvious next step.
Fact A print brokerage and consultancy: print and signage sourced across UK presses, with a strong design-and-marketing slant. Alongside it, Jim runs the Big Business Breakfast Club, which on the 9 June call was the centre of the conversation.
Grounding. The reads below are now substantially first-party, drawn from what Jim said on the 9 June call, not inference. Sourced background: founder of Print Lord; founder of the BBBC; ex-BNI Pavilion president, ex-FSB Sussex area leader; former Face Media Group director.
Fact To run a personality-led business at the centre of the Brighton network, with the breakfast locked in for the year and the admin off his plate. He explicitly wants the event operations automated and the year’s sponsorship sold up front.
Fact A hard year and being “knackered” — the solo ceiling. Eight hours a day on print sales leaves little time for everything else, and the consultancy line did not stick (lost the client in April).
Fact One person juggling print, the breakfast and marketing. Nancy helps with customers but is light on print and on hours. A 25k legacy database he cannot work through fast; an anonymous chatbot lead he could not follow up.
Infer A seasoned networker who has heard every pitch; responds to genuine, peer-to-peer, win-win conversation. On the call he repeatedly steered to “everybody wins”.
Keep it warm, local and win-win, the register Jim set on the call. Deliver fast on the things that unblock him (taster wording by Friday, the 19 June talk) so AI Potential is the easy, reliable sponsor. Treat him as a channel and advocate first; let his own AI curiosity pull Print Lord into a course in its own time.
SPIN read for the Print Lord / BBBC relationship, grounded in the 9 June call. The frame here is the channel play; the direct-to-Print-Lord course sits underneath it.