Founder's Story - From Teenage Dream to $60M Impact Empire: How Peter Khoury’s Give Kindly is Redefining Charitable Giving | S2 Ep. 80

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

In this inspiring episode of Founder's Story, host Daniel Robbins interviews Peter Khoury, a successful entrepreneur and founder of Give Kindly. Peter shares his journey from a young dreamer at 13 to the head of R2B Group, valued at over $60 million. This episode delves into Peter's mission-driven approach to business and how Give Kindly aims to revolutionize charitable giving by empowering consumers to give back through everyday purchases.Key Discussion Points:Founding GiveKindly: Peter reflects on his long-standing desire to impact, which began in his teens. After years of building a successful business, he returned to Give Kindly with a renewed focus on purpose-driven work.The Founder’s Dilemma & Finding Purpose Beyond Profit: Daniel and Peter discuss many entrepreneurs' challenges—finding fulfillment beyond financial success. Peter highlights the importance of purpose and how service to others drives his happiness.Give Kindly's Mission: Give Kindly is designed to let charities focus on their mission while consumers support causes through purchases. By focusing on women’s clothing and accessories, Give Kindly allows customers to choose charities they want to support with a portion of each sale.Globalization and Expansion: Peter explains how the digital age enables companies to expand globally. With Give Kindly’s US launch set for November, Peter chose the US market for its strong community spirit and desire for impact.Entrepreneurial Challenges & Lessons Learned: Peter shares insights on overcoming hurdles in his journey with R2B Group and why persistence is crucial. His candid discussion highlights the ongoing challenges in business growth and maintaining focus on impact.Navigating the Nonprofit Sector: Peter discusses charities' complexities in generating revenue and how Give Kindly seeks to alleviate this burden. By leveraging profitable, revenue-generating businesses, he believes entrepreneurs can better support causes without the financial strain typical in nonprofit models.Noteworthy Quotes:"Success isn't just about money; it's about what we do beyond ourselves.""I believe it's a founder’s duty to create impact with the resources they’ve been given.""Entrepreneurship is like building the plane as you fly—it’s challenging, but worth every lesson."Launch Announcement:Give Kindly will officially launch in the US on November 4th, with an introductory offer of 40% off all items, allowing users to experience the platform fully. Customers can find GiveKindly at givekindly.com and on the Give Kindly app, available on Android and iOS.Connect with GiveKindly:Website: givekindly.comApp: Available on Android and iOS (search for "GiveKindly")Our Sponsors:* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Vanta: https://vanta.com/FOUNDERSAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey everyone, welcome back to Founder's Story. Today we have Peter Khoury. I love what you're doing Peter because you are the founder of GiveKindly and I am all about impact. It was like a few years ago for me where my journey was like you need to focus on impact and everything I do is all around that. I know you are super successful with your group holding company of R2B. I think you're at a valuation of like 60 something million dollars. And this is, I believe you mentioned it's something from 24 years ago. That was an idea that's coming to fruition. Now let's talk about that.

Why did you launch give kindly right now? And why are you so focused on impact? Absolutely, thank you so much for having me. In business in general, I've always felt it's about the why. And I believe every founder's journey kind of gets to a point where financially accrual doesn't make any more sense. There's nothing else you can buy. There's nothing else you can do.

So for me, it's always been about the purpose. Why am I doing what I can do? Why am I doing what I do? And by that, I mean I'm striving for something every single day, but it has to be beyond myself because essentially there's nothing left to buy. It's all about how do I make a difference in this world with the gifts I've been given. The question of why now? Simply put, I've tried before. So as you said, 24 years ago, age 13, I registered GiftKindly, gave it a good shot, but obviously a 13 year old doesn't have the tools

or skills to do it and needs to do orders at the capital. I launched it again when I was 17, 18 here in Australia. And again, didn't have the capital behind it. My budget was $4,000 and just again not the experience. And now having gone off and built my own business sort of empire in Australia, I've always come back to the point of what am I doing this for? What's the purpose and now that I've accrued what I need to to recruit? I need to put it all behind the mission, which is doing something beyond myself and creating a difference in this world.

We want to see. I think there's this founder's dilemma and I know there's a few different dilemmas, but the one specifically I'm thinking is happiness. It's like you go into business most of the time in the beginning because you want to make money. You want to make, you know, freedom of making unlimited money. You don't want to make money. You want to make, you know, freedom of making unlimited money. You don't want to be held back by a job where, you know, they tell you how much to make, but then you buy what you want. You get to travel,

you get to do the things. And then you're kind of left with this dilemma of what's going to make me happy. Next. Did you ever find yourself in there? And then, then what brings you happiness now? Yes. That's, that's a funny thing you mentioned. I remember working in the cinemas when I was a young guy and I'd recruit like two or three weeks for the pay packets and I had $400 in my account.

And I said, I wanna go buy something. And I went through the shops, all by aisle, you know, department store after department store. And at a very young age of 14, I learned that there's only so much things money can do and then as you grow up you get there I've got a house I've got a car we live a decent lifestyle we've got our kids in school but again it's not that I'm excessively wealthy but what I've learned is that

money isn't the key to it all and it comes down to service. You know essentially what makes me happy is being impactful for what I achieve as you probably may be aware you know success is a selfish pursuit. At times you neglect a lot of responsibilities to achieve certain tasks and I can't justify doing that purely for the sake of more money. So the only way I can justify the work and effort I put in is to actually have a go towards something beyond myself because then I can justify just putting that

little bit extra. So I've never had that real dilemma about how to push forward because the lesson was learned before I made my first dollar that you know The actual monetary piece of it can only go so far man. I love that It's great when you can learn these lessons early on because I think we know entrepreneurship is like all about lessons failures Right. It's like there's no real blueprint. I don't think you could really go to school and like learn entrepreneurship necessarily because it's like once you get into it, everything completely changes. Let's dive into the mission.

I am always fascinated with how as people grow, they really hyper-focus on this mission. So what led you into this specific mission and how are you gonna make this mission global So what led you into this specific mission and how are you going to make this mission global? Absolutely. Thank you. So, Gift Cardly is about letting charities do what they do best. It's an online platform where people buy what they're going to buy anyway. We're focusing on females, clothing, accessories right now. When they buy a percentage goes towards a charity of their choice. So we know humans, Americans, they want to give,

they want to be impactful just as I do, just as you do, but they don't often have the avenues to do it within their means. So we're saying if you're gonna buy clothes, buy clothes. A percentage of each purchase goes towards a charity of your choice, the charity that you want to impact, the mission that you want to impact. So not only am I empowering myself to make an impact, but I'm also empowering the consumer to make the impact that they want to make. And the ethos behind that's quite simple. The charities are so bogged down in generating recurring revenue, bringing more money in.

In fact, the whole plight of the charity is somewhat doomed. You raise $10 million, you spend $10 million, and you have to spend the $2 million making the next $10 million. They can't take risks like we can take risks. Right? And I believe that's why it's on the responsibility of the business owner to generate recurring revenues for charities. If a charity gets involved in investment, the investment goes south, and then you then you've put money in there you're gonna say why is my money going towards business endeavors? It should be going towards the cause. Everyone's always questioning you know how much of the money I put into that charity is actually going towards

that cause. So what I'm trying to say is it's necessary what they do they have to accrue money to make more of an impact but what I'm suggesting is it's not their responsibility to do so nor is it their skill set it's not what they do best it's what we as entrepreneurs do best so I'm establishing mechanisms to generate profitable revenue generating businesses that fund these endeavors because if I lose all my money tomorrow and not a single person will lose it to you for me no one will care and that's fine that's the job of an entrepreneur but if the charity does it they're in strife so we have to end this vicious cycle of raise money spend it raise money spend it because the

scrutiny they get it it's just not fair as well they shouldn't be asked to constantly have 50% of their proceeds going to generate more revenue because that's the difficult part of this whole process. Look at the arms giving that they wish to do. Yeah, I'm dabbling into the nonprofit space. I've come to realize it is very, very hard to run a nonprofit or charity. Like I don't think people understand how difficult it is having to constantly, like you said, raise money and bring in funds and not do what you want it to do, which is help people give back, like do these things. Instead, you're focused on always, you know, where's the next money coming in?

Otherwise it'll go out of business. So I appreciate what you're doing. And I'm really interested too in the whole like globalization of things, right? Like you could start a company in Australia, but maybe your client is in New Zealand or Iceland or some other country, right? Or some other continent. And it's very interesting now with obviously the internet and so many places have access to it that you can sell a product and service in a totally different place than 20 years ago

or 30 years ago. How's the experience for you when it goes to bringing your product and service to other countries? Yeah, so I mean, the world is so small, right? I think we had the conversation earlier, me and you were saying that the smaller the world gets them, you know, the more complicated on some levels, but also

the simpler on some levels. I'm not having this conversation with you live right now, and it's going out to all your supporters. The reality is things are exactly the same in terms of technology here than they are there. In fact, America specifically has got so many different opportunities that it's just substantially easier, less barriers of entry. But one of the main things I want to share is why I'm choosing the States as opposed

to launching this in Australia. And what I'm seeing through my many visits to America is the genuine community spirit en masse in the States. It is such a huge place compared to Australia. I mean, Australia's population is 24 million. We don't even, I think our GDP is one third the size of California, just as an example. But despite its ginormous state, It's really got a community feel. People are always there to lend a hand. I always found that that community aspect has been really embedded in to the American

psyche and I just thought what a place to launch GiveKiley where the people are really, you know, have really bought in to the idea of community and making a difference. It is interesting how different countries view, like you're saying, community, and just even business and entrepreneurship, or how they treat each other is very fascinating. And I could see what you're saying about the US being very community centric in the sense of like

wanting to give and giving back. I can't wait to try out the platform. I love the idea of the customization and transparency, which is something that is probably going to be everywhere in the future. Like we want to customize things. We want to give to the charities that we want versus you saying it has to go, you know, at XYZ. I'm curious though, when it comes to some personal things with you, business is not easy. Entrepreneurship is very challenging in my opinion. There's a lot of ups and downs. What's been a challenging time for you

and what is a lesson you learned? You hit the nail on the head, right? In any kind of business, it's always challenging, every aspect of it. So I look back at my existing journey here at R2D Group Holdings, just got a significant valuation that's growing a million miles an hour. Every single milestone we achieved was an overcoming of a challenge. Whether you're starting or scaling your company's security program, demonstrating top-notch security practices and establishing trust is more important than ever. Vanta automates compliance for ISO 27001, SOC, GDPR and more, saving you time and money while helping you build customer trust.

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to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com slash founders story. Just go to indeed.com slash founders story right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast. That's indeed.com slash founders story terms and conditions apply need to hire. You need indeed. So, I mean, just to give you some context about our business, if you've got two seconds, our company helps people buy properties in Australia with zero deposit. The property market in Australia is quite difficult to get into,

and there is somewhat of a housing crisis going on right here. So our whole goal was to basically fund deposits, which is not done in Australia, so that people can get into that market sooner. So to do that, we go, okay, we've got this concept. We need a fund element of deposit, how do we do that? So the first stage was, let's get them into an incubator and get them structured and organized. So we went through, got their credits sorted out.

We made sure everything was going well, their budgeting was fine. And the next step was, okay, now you've got that, Let's get their loan approved. Okay, this doesn't exist now. We have to create a loan product for the first mortgage that is. And then now we have to fund the second mortgage. How do we do that? Okay, we have to start making revenue to do that. So we can't just charge a said we got, okay, we have to get the real estate component. We developed the real estate land. Then we have to do the build component. Then we bought a law firm. So it became nine little small companies, all the profits feeding into our credit license or the bank licenses you might

refer to us, and that issues a deposit loan. If you think about every single stage for the last six years in building this, we would sprint towards a brick wall and literally bash our head against it until it cracked open and we can go to that next stage. And to give some context about the actual kind of growth aspect of this, we'd be up very profitable first year and then we'd make a massive loss. And then we go up next year and make a massive loss because we have to keep investing. And to give know, when that breakthrough period is, it's a lot of breakthrough, you know, five, six years, constant sort of progress for us. It was six years. And on July 1st this year, it was an explosion where we went from 3 million to 90 million.

And then we just signed two other massive deals, which unfortunately I can't disclose right now, but that goes to the next level as well. And with business in general, it's exactly like you said, the challenges are just consistent. And I think the founder of Nvidia said it best is people will never tell you how hard it is, right? And that's why you're never creating a video again, right? He's always said it was that bloody hard and I think that's the connection that entrepreneurs have is we know how hard it is. So we're not asking ourselves about the successes. We're going, that was tough, right? Yeah. I think that's super inspiring that even people at the level of your

success, you know, you can talk through what the challenges were. Um, because I think a lot of times the internet, everything looks great. Social media, everything is perfect. Man, this person is doing amazing. And then when you start to dig into it, they're living paycheck to paycheck. Cause like you said, they have to reinvest all the money back in, but they have to have this persona online. So, and it could be, I think very stressful mental health is can depreciate for a lot of people where they dive into business.

And we know many businesses fail within the first few years. But thank you for sharing that. I love it's like building the plane as you go or building the parachute. Like these are the realities of business. Uh, but it's been really great today. I'm super inspired by what you're doing. I really, really love the impact. Uh, I can't wait for you to launch in the US. So when are you launching in the US? Also, how can people find you? How can they look up the company? Absolutely.

So I believe by the time this airs, November will be live. And by November 5th, we're going live 40% off all the items on our website. So that's 40% of everything. That makes a loss on every product. I'm funding a loss for everyone all the way through December so people can actually experience the website all the way through to Christmas. So 4th of November we go live 40% off everything

you can find us on giftkindly.com and also you can download our app on Android and Apple Store the gift kindly app Again, our focus right now is female clothing and accessories to start the board game. We've had some great responses so far in our soft launch, but as of 4th of November, you can go health with our choosy charities, do what it takes. We're going to basically fund a loss to make sure you can experience the GiveKindly piece, and hopefully as a support of a charity also become a supporter of us. Well, Peter, thank you so much for all that you do to help.

I can't wait until November. Uh, great conversation today. Really inspired. Uh, I think a lot of people get some takeaways and just you're having this mission in life. I mean, from 13 years old an idea to 24 years later like that is incredible like most people would have given up and just said you know that idea was was dead 24 years ago but the fact that you've kept

through it I mean that's incredible and thank you so much for today on Founder's Story. My pleasure thank you so much for having me really appreciate it.