FOR EVAN SPURLOCK · FOUNDER, BULLY BOYS BAKERY
A demand and lifecycle infrastructure proposal for Bully Boys Bakery — Redlands, California, prepared by AYMI. June 2026.
TL;DR · BULLY BOYS BAKERY × AYMI
Twenty-one sections. ~14-18 minutes to read end-to-end. Sections 02 and 03 are the read-or-bounce gates — if you only have ninety seconds, read those.
Pre-revenue is not pre-product. It's pre-distribution. The recipe works. The recipe has worked for sixteen years. What's missing is the system between the recipe and the dog parents who would pay for it on autopilot.
CURRENT STATE · TODAY
90-DAY HORIZON · WHERE WE GO
Functional pet wellness is, by design, a recurring-purchase category. A bag of treats lasts ~3 weeks. A daily ritual lasts a lifetime. The single highest-leverage move for Bully Boys Bakery is converting Tug's Achy Bones (and Sully's Snacks) from a one-off purchase into a subscription, and building the lifecycle infrastructure around it.
The Method (§08) governs the build. The next ninety days (§17) are the sprint that takes you from "two food SKUs and a Shopify store" to "a recurring-revenue engine with a creator network and a content cadence." None of this is paid-acquisition-first. The paid lever comes in by Day 45 only after the demand spine is real — because spending against a leaky funnel is the single most expensive mistake a pre-revenue DTC brand can make.
The brand asset that makes this work is your founder voice — Tug, sixteen years, "Always for the Underdogs." That story is the moat. We don't manufacture it. We just build the system that lets it scale.
Persona-led, not vertical-led. A dog parent worried about their senior's mobility shops differently from a rescue advocate evangelizing a bully-breed brand. Both buy from you — for different reasons, with different LTV ceilings, and through different first touches.
PERSONA 01 · PRIMARY
"My dog is slowing down. The vet said it's just age. I'm looking for anything I can do at home."
40 – 65, suburban, household income $90K+, dog 7+ years old. Already buying joint supplements but distrusts the powders. Shops on intent — Googles "anti-inflammatory dog treats" and reads ingredient lists.
PERSONA 02 · BRAND-EVANGELIST
"I have three rescues. Two are seniors. I want a brand that gives back and isn't a corporate dog-food machine."
28 – 50, urban / suburban, deeply integrated in rescue community, follows @outofstep.art and similar artist-activists, buys based on values as much as product. Highest social-amplification ratio.
PERSONA 03 · CATEGORY GROWTH
"If I won't eat it, I won't feed it to him. Human-grade or nothing."
28 – 45, applies their own clean-label logic to their dog, reads labels, distrusts byproducts and "natural flavors." Cross-shops with The Farmer's Dog, Just Food For Dogs, Open Farm. Brand-promiscuous until something earns the slot.
The Method is AYMI's operating framework — the same five steps run every engagement, regardless of vertical. For Bully Boys Bakery, here is exactly what it looks like.
I · DISCOVERY
Audit your three personas against the actual quiz, purchase, and engagement data. Confirm the senior-dog buyer is your highest-LTV cohort and price-test against it.
II · STRATEGY
Subscribe & Save first. Lifecycle email second. Organic content third. Creator program fourth. Paid acquisition fifth. Each layer pays for the next.
III · CREATIVE
Founder POV (Evan + Tug origin). Product-led still life (Bon Appétit register). Rescue community storytelling. All claim-clean, all in your existing brand voice.
IV · LAUNCH
Subscribe & Save live by Day 30. Five lifecycle flows shipped by Day 60. First creator wave + first paid test by Day 90. All measured, all attributable.
V · OPTIMIZE
The KPI that matters is not cost-per-acquisition. It's cost-per-active-subscriber-after-month-three. Everything else is vanity. We govern to that.
You declared Meta on the growth quiz. The Meta Page exists. Zero active ads are running. That's a signal, not a failure — paid social is the wrong first lever for a pre-revenue DTC brand without a Subscribe & Save spine.
WHAT WE SEE IN THE WILD
Page is live, ads are not. The Bully Boys Bakery Meta Page exists, but the Meta Ad Library returns zero active ads as of this proposal date.
Tracking infrastructure is unverified — pixel may or may not be installed, server-side CAPI is almost certainly not wired up, custom conversions for "Subscribed" (vs. "Purchased") are not in place.
Creative library: zero production paid social assets in circulation. The product photography exists; the campaign system around it does not.
WHAT WE CHANGE
Build the infrastructure before we run a dollar. Pixel + CAPI + Subscribe-event custom conversion + UTM hygiene + a clean campaign naming convention. Two weeks of build before the first $1 of spend.
Creative system: three concept lanes, each with a 4:5 feed master plus 9:16 story plus 1:1 fan-out. Three to start, fanned out from approved winners.
Daily budget approach: start at $50/day, structured to read the persona-channel-creative read in two weeks, never break it open without explicit founder approval.
THE FIRST 90 DAYS
Days 1-30: Pixel + CAPI verification, custom-conversion build, UTM passthrough audit, first creative concept built.
Days 31-60: First $50/day Meta test against the Senior Dog Parent persona. Tug's Achy Bones is the hero. CAC measured against Subscribe & Save start rate, not raw purchase.
Days 61-90: Read the test. If working, fan to Sully's Snacks creative against the Clean-Ingredient persona. If not, the lever moves to creator-led until we have data.
The single most underpriced intent signal in DTC pet right now is the senior-dog query. People searching "anti-inflammatory dog treats" or "natural joint support for dogs" are exactly Tug's Achy Bones buyers — and they are not seeing Bully Boys Bakery in the results.
WHAT WE SEE IN THE WILD
Brand-name search returns the storefront. Category search does not. "Bully Boys Bakery" surfaces the homepage and Shopify product pages. "Anti-inflammatory dog treats" does not.
No brand-defense Google Ads campaign on the brand name — exposes you to competitor bidding on your traffic.
The "Feed Them Like Family" ebook is buried as a $7.99 line item. It should be the lead magnet of the entire SEO play.
WHAT WE CHANGE
Brand-defense Ads first. $5/day on the Bully Boys Bakery brand-name query. Defends against any competitor (or affiliate) bidding their way onto your traffic. Cheapest insurance in DTC.
Cornerstone content cluster: six articles covering anti-inflammatory dog treats, senior dog joint health, hip pain in older dogs, etc. Each ends in the ebook lead magnet.
Product page SEO: schema markup, real-world ingredient terms, anti-inflammatory query coverage on the Tug's Achy Bones page specifically.
THE FIRST 90 DAYS
Days 1-30: Keyword research, brand-defense Ads live, schema markup deployed.
Days 31-60: First three cornerstone articles published. Ebook converted to gated lead magnet on the homepage.
Days 61-90: Remaining three articles + on-page optimization of the two food SKU pages. First organic rankings start landing for senior-dog keywords.
Zero TikTok presence on a brand built for video. Founder voice + rescue stories + Tug + bully breeds is the exact content TikTok's dog-parent audience converts on. This is your highest-leverage organic build — and the cheapest.
WHAT WE SEE IN THE WILD
No TikTok handle. Reels presence is intermittent. The brand voice on Instagram already reads as native-to-vertical-video — it just isn't there yet.
The content lanes that would work — founder-and-dog kitchen videos, rescue community storytelling, ingredient transparency — are unbuilt and unused.
Competitor analysis on TikTok in the dog-treat space shows the highest-engagement accounts are founder-led, not brand-led.
WHAT WE CHANGE
Three content lanes, locked. Founder POV (Evan + Tug origin, Sully day-in-the-life, ingredient walks). Rescue stories (real Bully Boys customers, real rescue dogs, before-and-after-style "what changed" features). Product process (the kitchen, the ingredients, the why).
Cadence: 3 posts/week on TikTok, mirror to Reels. No fancy production — vertical phone video, founder voice, real product. The "Feed Them Like Family" tone in motion.
Repurpose engine: every TikTok cuts into a 1:1 feed post, a 9:16 story, and a still frame for the website.
THE FIRST 90 DAYS
Days 1-30: Handle claimed, content calendar locked, first 12 videos shot in a single founder session.
Days 31-60: Daily posting cadence live. Read which lane is engaging — founder, rescue, or process. Double down.
Days 61-90: First creator collabs in the rescue lane go live. Build the network.
For DTC pet wellness, lifecycle email typically delivers 25-40% of revenue once the program is mature. Bully Boys Bakery is shipping with the Shopify default. That entire revenue line is unbuilt.
WHAT WE SEE IN THE WILD
Capture form is live, flows are not. The storefront has the Shopify default newsletter capture. No visible welcome flow, no abandoned-cart sequence, no replenishment trigger, no post-purchase nurture.
ESP is presumed Klaviyo (Shopify default) or similar — needs confirmation on the scoping call.
Subscribe & Save is not running, which means even the replenishment-trigger flow has nothing to fire against. The lifecycle build and the S&S build are joined at the hip.
WHAT WE CHANGE
Five flows in the first 60 days. Welcome (3-email Tug origin + ingredient story + first-order discount). Browse-abandoned. Cart-abandoned. Post-purchase (3-email "how to use" + rescue community invite). Replenishment (day 18 + day 22 for the senior-dog cohort).
Broadcast cadence: 1 founder-voice broadcast / week (no discount-led promotions — the brand voice is built for the long way home, not Black Friday).
S&S onboarding sequence: 4-email "your dog's first month" nurture that lands the second order on autopilot.
THE FIRST 90 DAYS
Days 1-30: ESP audit + Welcome + Cart-abandoned flows shipped.
Days 31-60: Browse-abandoned + Post-purchase + Replenishment flows live. First S&S onboarding sequence wired.
Days 61-90: Founder-voice broadcast cadence locked. Measure: email-driven revenue as % of total. Target 20%+ by Day 90.
"Feed Them Like Family — The Anti-Inflammatory Blueprint That Changed My Dog's Life" is sitting on the storefront for $7.99. That is the single most underpriced asset in the entire business. It should be giving away revenue, not capturing it. As a lead magnet, it's worth ten times more.
WHAT WE SEE IN THE WILD
The ebook is a hidden gem in a paid line item. "Feed Them Like Family" tells the Tug story, walks the anti-inflammatory blueprint, and would be the perfect funnel-top capture mechanism. Right now it's a $7.99 SKU buried at the bottom of the catalog.
Blog or "Journal" surface unbuilt on the storefront. No cornerstone-content cluster, no editorial cadence.
Schema and structured data minimal on the food SKU pages — invisible to Google in the way it matters.
WHAT WE CHANGE
The ebook becomes the funnel entry. Free download in exchange for email. The capture wires into a 5-email nurture sequence that ends in the first Subscribe & Save offer. Conversion math: ebook downloaders should be 3-5× more likely to subscribe than cold buyers.
Six cornerstone articles over 90 days: anti-inflammatory dog treats, senior dog joint pain, when to switch to wellness treats, why human-grade matters, what's actually in dog treats, the Tug story.
Product page rewrites for SEO: schema, structured ingredient data, FAQ blocks on each food SKU page.
THE FIRST 90 DAYS
Days 1-30: Ebook converted to lead magnet. Capture form deployed homepage + footer. Nurture sequence wired.
Days 31-60: First three cornerstone articles published. Schema rolled out across product pages.
Days 61-90: Remaining three articles + on-page optimization. First organic rankings start coming in.
"Always for the Underdogs" is the kind of brand line that competitors can't replicate. The rescue community is the largest, most engaged, most photogenic dog-parent network in the country — and it's the natural fit for Bully Boys Bakery. Zero current presence here is the largest community arbitrage opportunity in the business.
WHAT WE SEE IN THE WILD
Zero structured creator program. The brand voice and the rescue community angle are perfectly aligned — but there is no creator partnership, no ambassador framework, no rescue-organization affiliate program in motion.
The Rescue Squad tee (limited pre-order with @outofstep.art artwork) signals that the founder gets this lane. The infrastructure to scale it doesn't exist yet.
Bully-breed and rescue micro-creator landscape on Instagram and TikTok has hundreds of accounts in the 5K-50K follower range — under-monetized, highly aligned.
WHAT WE CHANGE
Three-tier creator program. Tier 1: 20 micro-creators (5K-20K) gifted product + a Bully Boys Rescue Squad affiliate code that gives them a kickback AND donates to their local rescue. Tier 2: 5 mid-tier creators (20K-100K) on a paid partnership for ad-usage-rights creative. Tier 3: 1-2 large rescue-advocate voices (100K+) on a story-driven exclusive.
Affiliate program built on top of the Shopify backend with rescue-tied incentives. Donation matching ties dollars to the brand's existing community-give ethos.
UGC bank: every Tier 1 creator contractually contributes 2-3 pieces of content per month — fuels the Meta paid program (§09), the email broadcasts (§12), and the website social-proof rail.
THE FIRST 90 DAYS
Days 1-30: Outreach to first 50 candidates. Affiliate infrastructure built on Shopify.
Days 31-60: First 20 Tier 1 creators activated. First UGC starts landing in the bank.
Days 61-90: First 2-3 Tier 2 paid partnerships go live. UGC starts powering the email and Meta lanes.
If we change one thing about the storefront, it's adding Subscribe & Save. If we change a second thing, it's adding bundles. These two moves alone raise AOV and turn a one-off business into a recurring one — and they are prerequisites for every other channel investment.
Specific moves in the first 90 days:
Three engagement shapes. The recommended star is Foundation — the right size for a pre-revenue founder-led DTC where the brief is "build the engine." Growth System fits once Subscribe & Save and lifecycle are live and paid acquisition becomes the lever. Full Pet OS fits at scale with multiple SKUs, retail expansion, and an executive-authority engine.
★ FOR BULLY BOYS BAKERY · TODAY
Best fit for a pre-revenue founder-led DTC where the bottleneck is strategy and demand infrastructure, not paid budget.
FOR BULLY BOYS · POST-S&S
Best fit once Subscribe & Save is live and the lifecycle program has a baseline. Paid scales what already works.
AT SCALE · NEW SKU + RETAIL
Best fit at $1M+ revenue, multiple SKUs, retail conversations starting. The full system.
The investment for each shape is held for the scoping call. We'd rather decide together what's in scope first, then price it once the answer is real.
The Foundation shape, sequenced. By Day 30 we have a recurring-revenue spine. By Day 60 we have an organic engine. By Day 90 we have a creator network and the first paid acquisition signal.
PHASE I · DAYS 1-30 · FOUNDATION
PHASE II · DAYS 31-60 · CADENCE
PHASE III · DAYS 61-90 · READ
Verified AYMI case studies, matched to Bully Boys Bakery on motion (subscription, premium DTC), audience (story-led brand), or mechanic (creator-led organic growth). Real numbers, real engagements — not adjacent claims.
NUTRAFOL
+320% recurring revenue · +58% retention · 4.2× marketing ROI
Closest mechanical match. Functional wellness DTC, founder-story-led, subscribe-and-save spine. The exact playbook we run on Bully Boys.
PROVEN SKINCARE
+480% subscription revenue · −65% CAC · 3.7× ROAS
Quiz-led personalization + CAC discipline. Maps to the homepage quiz routing and the persona-led acquisition plan.
EIGHT SLEEP
+580% direct sales · −42% CPA · 3.9× conversion
Premium DTC, story-led, founder-authority brand. Maps to the Tug-origin and "Always for the Underdogs" positioning.
SUGARBEARHAIR
+1,200% social conversions · +380% influencer ROI · +75% repeat purchase
UGC and community amplification at scale. Maps directly to the Rescue Squad creator network play.
For a pre-revenue founder-led DTC where the named bottleneck is strategy and clarity, the Foundation shape is the right starting point.
The brief you wrote on the growth quiz — "build brand & demand," "organic & lifecycle," "creative & content," strategy as the named blocker — is exactly what Foundation is built for. We don't recommend leading with paid acquisition for Bully Boys Bakery in Q3 2026. The math doesn't work — the Subscribe & Save spine has to exist first, the lifecycle program has to exist first, the organic content cadence has to exist first.
Once those three are real (by Day 60), Growth System becomes the obvious next step — paid acquisition has something to scale against. Until then, Foundation is the honest answer.
The investment figure is held for the scoping call. We'd rather decide together what's in scope first.
Six questions, each genuinely unknown, each answerable in five minutes on the call. These tighten the scope before any commitment is made.
Foundation ★ Recommended. 90-day sprint to a Subscribe & Save engine, a lifecycle program, and a creator network. Investment held for the call. The rest is a conversation.