Feras Khouri

We built MANSSION from an idea to 8-figures in 3 years without taking outside money. And now we’re repeating that with 3 other DTC companies. Here's the formula we followed, and the lessons we've learned:

I'm endlessly grateful to all the people who have provided me with their time and thoughtful advice over the years. There's too many to name but the amount of very busy, very influential founders and CEOs who have taken time out of their day to give me perspective has never been lost on me. I still have a long runway ahead of me and a lot of milestones left to achieve but I have had some success in a few realms of my life. So I do my best to help others who are in different parts of their journey, and I urge you to do the same. There's always someone out there who could benefit from your experiences.

Owning an agency has given me an incredibly unique perspective into the inner workings of some of the biggest brands in DTC. We have, and currently work with, several of the largest ecom brands in the world. You would be shocked how some of them operate. I've been brand side and it's easy to romanticize a company that's bigger than you and copy every single thing they do. Many of the multi nine-figure brands we work with are just as chaotic as the low eight-figure brands we work with. Being agency side gives you a front row seat to all of this and it's fascinating to see the differences in company culture and how they impact team performance and efficiency.

Coming from an immigrant family, with an 81 year old father who is a 2-time war refugee, I was hardwired as a child to be conservative and adopt a scarcity mindset. This is not the right way to approach life or business, but when harnessed and controlled, it can instill a healthy level of paranoia. That feeling that I'm always behind or that everything can disappear will never go away, but it fuels me to be extreme in my scenario mapping and bias towards action. One of the most powerful things experience teaches you is that it's incredibly important to know yourself. If you can't clearly identify your strengths, weaknesses, and biases, then the marketplace (and life) will.

@rocpilon @MehtabKarta Same here. Tech job

@MehtabKarta I worked a job for 6 years before I went full time.

Phil Knight wasn't able to quit his main job and do Nike full time for 8 years. He just...kept going.

@colindougherty @ecommcowboy @colindougherty done deal brother where do I sign up?

@Ferastotle come on @ecommcowboy and talk bout itttttttt

Don't hire us if you want execution only. Our team is world-class at executing. But that's not why 8-10 figure DTC brands hire us. They hire us because of the impact we make to their P&L. Whether that takes 20 deliverables or 40 in a given month is irrelevant. What matters is what moves in the business. If you come to us with your strategy already decided and just need someone to point at the work, there are significantly cheaper agencies for that. We are not the right fit and we'll tell you that upfront. The clients who get the most from us are the ones who want a strategic partner that happens to execute at a world-class level, not an execution shop that occasionally has an opinion. Those are different things and the distinction matters from the first conversation. The fit conversation has to happen before the contract. Not after.

Month-to-month contracts are how brands tell you they don't trust you. We're not the kind of agency you hire to crank out a few emails in 30 days. We're a retention partner that works as an extension of your team, diving deep into your data, understanding your cohorts, and solving complex business problems that don't have a 30-day solution. Month-to-month contracts attract a certain kind of client relationship. One where the brand is hedging, keeping their options open, treating the engagement like a trial rather than a partnership. We understand the impulse, but it's incompatible with the way we actually do the work. Real retention strategy takes time. Yes there’s usually quick wins, but there’s also a lot of compounding over time. If you're evaluating us at 30 days you're measuring us at the wrong moment and we're both going to be frustrated. If you're looking for someone to create a few emails quickly, there are better and cheaper options. If you're looking for a senior team to get deep into your retention channels and build something that actually compounds, that's what we do. They're not the same engagement and they shouldn't be priced or structured the same way.

We care more about some of our clients' retention revenue than they do. That's not a criticism. It's just what happens when you go deeper into a channel than the brand has the bandwidth to go themselves. Most brands obsess over their acquisition forecasts. They project spend/CAC, model out contribution margin, build detailed plans around every dollar of ad spend. Their retention channels maybe get a revenue target and not much else. We come in and identify the cohort analysis, the flow revenue benchmarks, the expected lift from testing, the 90-day and 180-day LTV projections, the expected churn reduction. Things most brands have never seen modeled out for their retention program specifically. At some point in almost every engagement there's a moment where we know more about what their retention channel should be producing than they do. And we're more invested in hitting those numbers because retention is all we do. If you can't honestly say you care more about your clients' results in your channel than they do, you've lost the plot. That obsession is what separates agencies that produce outcomes from agencies that produce reports.

@thinkcartology You learn more from a tool breaking once in production than from ten polished demos.

@Ferastotle The best recommendations usually come from operators who already tested the downside before recommending the upside.

We don't take money to recommend tools. Every tech partnership with New Standard has come from the same process: We assess the tool internally. We test the tool on a couple of client accounts with their consent. If our team liked it, if our clients saw results from it, and if we like the people building it, then we'd consider a formal relationship. Not before. Most of the tool recommendations you see in this industry are paid placements dressed up as endorsements. Someone gets a referral fee and suddenly a tool they've never used inside a real account becomes their top recommendation. When we do partner with a company, two things come with it: usually free trials, significantly better pricing for our clients and white glove service they wouldn't get on their own. And yes, in some cases we receive a referral fee, and we're transparent about that. But the fee is never why we partner. It's a byproduct of a relationship that already proved itself in the work. If we recommend something, we've used it, and it works for clients. That's the only standard we operate by.

@_umair_sheikh Recommending software you’ve never actually touched inside a live account is basically borrowing trust you didn’t earn.

Very common and very unethical. I see this from brand owners too. There's a few times I've seen a brand owner recommend a tool. Then I check on storeleads and they don't even use it themselves. Most agencies take commissions to recommend tools including myself but they should always use the tool first before officially partnering and accepting a %.

@Campaign_Create Thank you.

@Ferastotle Exactly! 🫡

@owoldestiny True!

@Ferastotle that's the hard part nobody wants to do though

When you hire a new person in-house, do you expect them to walk in on day one and immediately change everything? No- you trust that their intentions are right, that they're smart enough to do the job, and that they'll figure out the specifics over time. You give them support and space to ramp. The same logic needs to apply when you hire an agency and it almost never does. Brands will spend weeks vetting an agency, sign a contract based on trust in their expertise, and then spend month one trying to dictate the strategy. The agency that was hired for their judgment is immediately being told what to do with it. That's not a partnership, that’s an expensive and inefficient way to execute your own ideas. The brands we do our best work for are the ones who hire us the way they'd hire a great internal leader. They're clear on the outcome they want, they give us the context we need, and then they let us work. They don't disappear, they're engaged and collaborative. They support us the way they'd support someone they brought in-house and trusted to do a job. That trust is what separates a good agency relationship from a frustrating one, and it has to come from both sides.

@jacob_posel @pc_barnes Appreciate you @jacob_posel! Patrick what’s up man good connecting again

@pc_barnes @Ferastotle

Who are the best Retention Marketers in LA? Either internal or Agency?

@TomCochrane At some point the reputation becomes the business.

@Ferastotle reputation compounds quietly until one day it becomes the whole business

Our entire team knows never to speak negatively about a client or a person externally. Ever. Some clients curse or yell and some don't pay their bills. None of that leaves the building. What happens between businesses stays between businesses and we handle it internally, professionally, and without commentary to the outside world. This isn't just a values position. It's a business decision. Reputation in a service business is everything and it compounds the same way revenue does. Ours is strong in the market and it's going to stay that way. If anything threatens that, we address it. This applies everywhere, not just service businesses. SaaS and brands too. For brands, people will still try to work with you even if you have a bad reputation because they need something. But the best agencies, clients, partners, and talent… they have options. And good people want to work with good people. Everything we do at New Standard comes back to two things: do great work and don't be an a*hole. That's the playbook and it’s shocking how many people don’t abide by it.

@thinkcartology Reputation pays dividends longer than any campaign does.

@Ferastotle A strong reputation compounds quietly until it becomes one of the biggest advantages in the business.

@AfriatJason Professionalism only counts when things stop being easy.

@Ferastotle Strong reputations are usually built through restraint during difficult moments. Professionalism shows up clearest once emotions enter the room.

@TheGeoMethod Industry gets real small once you’ve been around long enough.

@Ferastotle Every industry I've ever worked in was smaller than it looked. Word travels fast, and the people worth working with always find out who talks and who doesn't long before you'd expect them to.