From Teenage Dream to $60M Empire and Impact: How Peter Khoury’s Give Kindly is Redefining Charitable Giving | Ep. 146
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HBCUs, they're more than just schools, right? They're where we learn, grow, and build. It's a place where we're free to be ourselves, innovate, and live our best lives while chasing those dreams, and yes, securing that bag. But the journey to success is not always easy. That's why Walmart is here for you every step of the way, from late night study sessions to game day celebration.

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We're all about empowering you with the spark to keep pushing forward. So let's get to it together. Learn more about how we are amplifying your story at walmart.com slash black and unlimited. It's your journey and we're proud to be a part of it. Hey everyone, welcome back to Founders 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 GiveKindly 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 it

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 gift kindly, gave it a good shot. But obviously a 13 year old doesn't have the tools or skills to do it. It needs to do more to have the capital. I launched 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, you know, 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 accrue, I need to put 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 freedom of making unlimited money. You don't want to be held back by a job where 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 what brings you happiness now? Yes, it's a funny thing you mentioned. I remember working in the cinemas when I was a lot younger. And I'd recruit like two or three weeks for the pay packets. And I had $400 in my account. And I said, I want to go buy something. And I went through the shops, all by aisle, department store after department store. And at a very young age of 14, I learned that

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. Uh, we, we live a decent lifestyle. We've got our kids in school, but again, it's not that I'm excessively wealthy. Uh, 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, what, what makes me happy is being impactful for what I achieve. Uh,

As you probably may be aware, 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 left 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 going to make this mission global? Absolutely. Thank you. So,

GiveKindly 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 and 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 going to 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 plot of a 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, Dan, you've put money in there. You're going to 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 a 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's just not fair as well. They shouldn't be asked questions.

to constantly have 50% of their proceeds going to generating more revenue because that's the difficult part of this whole process, not the almsgiving that they wish to do. Yeah, 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 wanted 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, you know, some other country, right. Or some other continent. And I'm,

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, I was saying that the smaller the world gets, 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 GiveKindly where the people 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...

And I could see what you're saying about the U.S. 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, X, Y, Z. 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 R2B Group Holdings, which has got a significant valuation, is growing a million miles an hour.

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uh and with your business in general it's exactly like you said the challenges are just consistent and i think the uh founder of the video said at best is people will never tell you how hard it is right and that's why you're never creating the video again right he's always said it was that bloody hard and i think that's the connection that's 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. 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, because 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, but it's been really great today. I'm super inspired by what you're doing. I really, really love

the impact. 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 to 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 GiveKindly app. Again, our focus right now is female clothing and accessories to start the ballgame. We've had some great responses so far in our soft launch. But as of 4th of November, you can go hell for leather, choose your charities, do what it takes. We're going to basically fund a loss to make sure you can experience the

the gift kindly 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. Great conversation today. Really inspired. 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 now,

24 years later, like that is incredible. Like most people would have given up and just said, you know, that idea 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 joining us today on Founder Story. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it, Daniel.

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HBCUs, they're more than just schools, right? They're where we learn, grow, and build. It's a place where we're free to be ourselves, innovate, and live our best lives while chasing those dreams. And yes, securing that bag. But the journey to success is not always easy. That's why Walmart is here for you every step of the way. From late night study sessions to game day celebration, Walmart's got your back, helping you manifest those big, audacious dreams.

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