Okay. Hi everybody. Welcome back to the channel. We're here in Dubai in Daniel Odowski's Very nice Dubai condominium right here. Daniel is a 23 year old Israeli E-commerce entrepreneur. So thank you Daniel for your time and thank you for being so generous. Yeah, okay No worries. So I mean first of all People who are watching this video this could be anybody in the world business owners Whoever it is could you give an introduction of yourself as well as what do you do? Who is the people yourself and yeah in general your business? Yeah for sure. So as you said, I'm Danny on 23 My main businesses are in the e-commerce field. I've played around like since I was 1617 I think I got into the field had a like hard time succeeding in dropshipping, but like I tried for a bunch of you like couple years till I got the hang of it Then I branched into like more of branded products rather than dropshipping Which that did pretty pretty well And we're growing every year very nice. I also do like on the side I have a podcast back in Israel also like YouTube channel, which grew nicely But my main focus is just to try to grow my business as much as I can and also like document and do the fun stuff because I like doing Like the I like doing content just like you yeah, and and yeah, I like it. So that's me Okay, great. So I mean take me back 16 years old. Thank you. You've been business for seven years. Yeah, so you are technically a veteran Yeah, why would a 16 year old Israeli child or high schooler start doing business? I mean kind of think about it on Like I've always been competitive And also I grew up in an area that is like my parents are like business people Like where I live like it's like people wire. It's near Tel Aviv.  So an Interesting fact I learned is like the number one If you want to find out if someone will become richer or not like the number one thing you need to know like statistically Is the zip code where you were born? So I think like Growing in an area where you see the big houses that cost millions and millions and you see the nice cars and you see everything and Like everyone has it from your perspective because you live there. So like why can't I or like what they're not special? Like you get to know the people there are the parents of my friends stuff like this They're not special. They're not smarter than me. They're not anything So you understand that it's possible and also I'm very competitive. So ever since I was young like I was Whatever I did I tried to be good at it like But when I was younger, I wasn't like physically fit like I tried sports up like this, but I wasn't Later I discovered gym and I got bigger and stuff. So so that was nice But like I couldn't compete there. And so I got into gaming And there like I found like you only need a brain and like instincts and you don't have to be strong and whatever So I got into it. I got very good It's like shoot FPS games and at fortnight and then clash Royale I was a professional player like signed in a team flew to Competitions like one there the regional one like and got into London like lost in a quarter finals of the world championship So I did pretty well with that and I think at one point like I also documented everything on YouTube I have I don't know if you know, I have a gaming channel like 100,000 stops there, but I got tired of it and then I was like, okay, what's next? And I want a little bit of money like as a 16 year old I think I want like 20 25 thousand dollars doing the entire thing or 30,000 use almost the entire thing to buy a car But then like you get the hang of it. All right If you make money you can buy stuff and then it's nice And then I was like, all right, how can I make more of it? Talk to a friend who did affiliate marketing at the time He's now probably my best friend But he did like at the time like 20,000 a month and profit or something like this I was like, listen, I heard about drop shipping. What do you think of that? He's like, I don't know But like yeah, give it a try and that's where I got into the stuff. I mean it was I wasn't driven by by like I Don't want material stuff like I mean, it's nice that just now we were over a figure And I just bought a Rolex for like good Entry it's the entry level because When you get here like people look at you they look at how you dress it what you have and then they like determine Is this guy worth talking to or not? So I had to do this but like always I look at it as a competition I don't really care about the the money But just like all right if I get if I make more money then I get further and further down in the Up in the leaderboards. No, so this is how I look at it And I think I got sucked into the business game as a game So this is why I liked it and you know, this game has many many many many levels to it and I'm Way way way below the top. I'm not even here. So yeah, I'm here to play and I'm trying to get to the top That's really interesting. But the thing is I get it when you and your zip code and stuff like that, right? Yeah, but if you talk to your parents, right? I'm pretty sure your parents don't do e-commerce, right? Yeah, they don't do it. Okay, so like why isn't it that you didn't follow in their footsteps or learn what they are doing. I think They're dealing like with like Mostly real estate and stuff like this which is stuff that either requires a lot of time Like you buy stuff you wait 10 20 years It appreciates you sell like you have profit stuff like this or a lot of capital and for me I have not much like and and I don't want it to do anything Asking my parents can I borrow money and like I wanted to do stuff to start from zero And I heard a lot of stuff obviously I got the ads for people in Lamborghini's like I got it from dropshipping stuff like this I fell into the trap believing that this this is like a Way to make millions and millions without too much effort obviously I was young but like Once I saw enough people I dove into it and I saw enough people that are successful I was like I think I'm smarter than the average guy And I think I have capabilities and I think that if someone was able to figure it out And this is my mindset until today if someone can figure it out then I can figure it out I can work if they're smarter. I'll work harder if they're not as smart. I'll manage So this was my mindset like I saw that people were successful there. It's just by luck I didn't like do a lot of research. I got a few ads for dropshipping got into it And once I start something I rarely quit like I really try to make it work unless I'm like all right It's it's not possible like for me For example sports. I was like, okay, all of my friends weighed 50 60 kilos I was like 35 40 kilos at the time. I was like I cannot I cannot Push them or get into this but yeah, I mean this was possible and so I got into it and Honestly luck, that's that's why okay the next Question I have is like the most logical steps like you're good at gaming You signed a professional team. Yeah, you're getting stopped You're getting attention getting popularity and stuff right there right the most logical steps to come streamer slash whatever right? Yeah, so why why didn't you I mean 25,000 maybe the streaming market and advertising markets not as much work back then But that could have been yeah at the time at the time. I think it was before streaming was Before the 18 roses. Yeah way before way before it was before ninja even It was just like Clash Royale was the hide before fortnight So like right as Clash Royale died down for a night started to pick up and Like at the time was like, okay, do I want to and I was really good at fortnight as well Do I want to get into this path or no? And honestly, I think I was sick of like to be at the top of anything you need to put Your everything into it like at one point. I think Clash Royale had to 20 million active players That was something something like this and I was like top 10 and to be at this percent or top 10 Literally top Yeah, I think in the world tournament and like number one in the Region like the five regions and the top two of each region regions were flew to London for the world championship And so I was literally top 10 and in order to do that I had to play every day all all day and learn and you you if you don't do anything for a week You lose your muscle memory and stuff. And so I was kind of tired of it And I just wanted, you know to do whatever I want to and I'm like this today if if I don't feel like doing something Yeah, I'm like, all right. This is I'll take three days off. I'll think about what I want to do but I want to create a life where I can Do whatever I enjoy and also make money doing it And I think I figured I figured out money in a way like how it works and how I can hit both my goals and also The lifestyle I want to have And yeah, this is a nice insight like we can get into that but yeah, that's that's fantastic here Did you go to university? No, right? No, no, no, and even I like kind of dropped out of high school like kind Okay, so you're already dabbling in that. Okay. Yeah, got it. How okay, so Met your friend now your best friend affiliate marketer and stuff like that Started dropshipping and stuff. Tell me the journey there. Yeah, so I try to dropship I remember this and there was this guy everyone knows him like Gabriel send your main. No Ojibra He I saw his youtube Yeah, and he like killed it. He showed like 5,000 10,000 a day 15,000 a day dollars I was like, what how is this possible? But his court this actually It was actually a good course But I thought hmm. He revealed his product. He sold up poster correctors Why don't I sell the exact same thing with the exact same ads and the exact same copy because he works for him Not understanding that maybe 5,000 other people bought the same course and have tried the same thing And so I tried this didn't work. He suggested in the course that like you should do uh, Dark colors tried that they don't work. I spent like as I said, I saved I think was 25 30 thousand dollars I had like more money from youtube and stuff. So let's say I had total 40,000 Used 28 to buy a car then the rest like on drop shipping whatever I could and I like I remember First month, I think I lost 2,000 second month another 2,000 like and I spent 1,000 and got like 100 in sales And I was like, okay people are buying it must be working Maybe I need to let the a lot of people said at the time you need to let the algorithm optimize So it's like, all right. I just need to spend more and over time it's going to work Which is not the case. Um, and even today like looking back at it It was a lot of like bad experience Yeah, it's experience taught me that You know, algorithm is not going to fix uh, uh, you know one to literally you spend 10 dollars to get one back It's not going to fix that if you spend 10 and get 13 back Then maybe if you let it run for a couple more days, you can get to One or two, but like it's not going to do this crazy thing. Um, So there was a lot of guidance that I needed that was lacking and also information um But yeah, I mean I kept on trying until I literally ran out of money almost and then um I stopped and I was like or what's going on. I talked to my friend. He was like, listen, I think What you're doing right now is you're copying other people all the time You you look for winning products you copy you copy you're doing Why don't you start from scratch like think and do it because this is what he did And I was like, no, I don't think so because all of these people say that's how it works And you need to find a winning product that that just means I need to test and test and test Finally i'm gonna hit um, and I kept on trying lost more money And eventually I was like, all right, something something's not right. Um, I don't really Remember exactly how it was, but I remember I started to dive a bit deeper into marketing psychology to understand why people buy How it works like instead of like copying get into like the the base of it before there was facebook ads Before there was anything like how did people sell? um, then you get into like the og copywriters gary helbert or Eugene Schwartz and and I got into the whole entire thing Also an amazing amazing book is called cash appetizing. I don't know if you're right. Yeah, yeah incredible And I think there it's like the 80 20 of marketing if you read that book and I read that book and I was like, oh Oh, all right. I think I'm starting to get it And then I started to to uh, get things going a little bit um started to Suddenly, you know get to a thousand dollars a day with 300 dollar dollars profit, which is nice for me And over time it got more and more and more. Um, and I mean I wasn't I didn't get to crazy scale. I think my top was like 50 000 a month or something like this But it showed me that it was possible and at the time, um, I started I discovered like an opportunity to get into actual brands And I had enough experience and understanding and the bull was Was rolling. I was like, all right. I think I can put my skills into this and we started like this brand And um, I mean it basically took off from day one. Yeah, this is basically the the best sign possible It's a winner. Yeah. Yeah took off from day one. Um, like 2020 Right, right before COVID hit we started and then COVID hit and then like amazing performance obviously and 2021 Like we iOS uh 14 that that sucked but we we pulled through And we kept on going until now we're growing. I really want to um, I really want to make this like a multi nine figure brand. This is my Great thing right now. Yeah, and and I'm going to go hard into this. But yeah, thanks to drop shipping I like it's luck. I was I was persistent for two years Even though I I didn't make money and I lost money But I knew that the skills I'm gaining and over time I'm going to understand what it is and what the opportunity presented itself I had the skill set to take advantage of it. So I mean, yeah People get lucky, but if you're prepared, you're going to be able to capitalize on your luck and I was prepared Um, today I understand this but at the time it was a lot of luck Yeah, I understood what was the product that was doing 50k up a month that allow you to get that experience I mean, I it was like I had a few products. I think one was like a shark chain A shark change shark literally chain with a shark on it.  Yeah, okay, okay And I was like for people are passionate about shark show the world whatever something like this. Um That one did pretty well. Um, I did I don't remember I sold a lot of stuff like I think total I tested like 80 or 100 products. Um But I think there was not much in common like I tested a lot of things some works. I'm not I think there was a like Toy for cats to play with them like laser that moved automatically and I was like the angle I took is like Like when you leave your home your cat's alone and he's he's bored and it's not fair to him If you can get them Get them a playmate that's going to play with them when you're gone Then they're going to be feel better and like kind of kill them into buying that worked Um, so a lot of this stuff But I started to understand like how to get people to do what I want them with words Which is copywriting and then like obviously Another big mistake by the way to anyone who's watching and wants to get into e-commerce like I let Like in the ends do my my ads on fiber for five dollars The ad is like 80 of what's going to drive performance You cannot outsource this like you can outsource a lot of things customer service or right You can outsource the beginning a lot of stuff But like the ads the copy the script if you're going to outsource this you're not going to win And this is by the way like something a lot of gurus over time said yeah You just need to pay this editor on on fiber They're going to create this video and no it's not working like This is the part where you need to learn you need to be good at and once you can make good ads You can make money. Um, this is the number one thing and I think people don't don't talk about it much I mean today, maybe yeah Yeah, I'm sure I think a lot of products.  I've never seen a billion dollar shark chain company. So yeah, for sure Yeah Okay, so I mean you also mentioned that you encountered or got the opportunity to start the brand Yeah, um, how did opportunity go about and um, it makes sense to transition It's obviously risky in a short term or whatever you want to call it But how did you encounter that? Yeah, so without like Obviously, I want to keep it in stealth mode So I'm gonna think I can phrase it without without giving away too much. But like basically someone I know, um Someone I know has been working on like a specific product But they they didn't have any experience in the online field. Um, and so I thought there was a lot of potential to it like It wasn't going like it was doing It was selling like word of mouth and maybe some b2b sales, but like I don't know if like locally Yeah, just five five thousand dollars. I think a month something like this and then barely profitable obviously She was walking on it full-time And I was like, listen, I think I think we can do something here. Um, and so I We talked we we We were able to to understand how we want to go about this and then we started I'll be launched it online. I was Basically in charge of everything relating to online marketing growth. Whatever it became strictly online Quickly thereafter. Um, and we grew ever since and it was great. Like I'm not a product guy Obviously over time I learned I learned it as you get into it You don't need to understand like supply chain and working with suppliers in terms and like how this whole word Works, but I didn't have experience at the time. And so I think I thought it was a great. Um, it was a great Chance and opportunity to to use my skillset. Um, and and it paid off And I think that this is another thing like if you want to choose a partner You need to find one that has skills that compliment yours to a lot of people start partnerships just because I like the guy or like I mean, it's cool. Yeah, I like marketing. You like marketing. Let's do something together. No, like How can you compliment each other? I I mean, yeah partnerships only work when The like the sum of the two parts are greater than the like what they are separately Yep, understood.  I wouldn't say it was working because it wasn't $5,000 per month is still proof of concept. No, it's not It's it's really nothing. Yeah, at least people are buying the thing. I mean, yeah, you see that someone's buying it um But yeah, I didn't know but we were like we we were Going to know within a couple months. So it's like a test and it and it proved itself. So yeah Yeah, okay. So decided product looks great. Maybe price point a ov etc. Everything looks fantastic. Um, how did the First few you said it worked straight off the bed, right? So obviously it's a winner quite easy Yeah, uh, then you need to start building teams when you're scaling. Uh, tell us through that process. Yeah, so Well, we were far off from teams because I mean how was like first year I think first month was 50 000 then we grew Sorry, this is january 2020 We started like mid of april. I think we did like, I don't know 15k the first half and then the second half like 50k And then like 60 70 we grew each month. Um And yeah, there was no team basically it wasn't me and then We onboarded like at one point an agency which I was like in charge of managing This agency is like one person who's in charge of all the media buying Other person who's in charge of all the creative stuff and then I'm like in charge of making sure everything is Yes going. Um, and so we ran with them for a while, which I think is if you find a good agency Which is hard today. I don't know what happened. But like I think maybe it's all the the courses course Yeah, a lot of people start agencies without Being able to deliver they can sell but they cannot deliver which is very very bad But at the time it wasn't that bad. So I was able to find someone obviously question him I saw he had like content. Yeah, so I looked at his content. I was like, okay This guy knows his stuff talked to him so that he listens to the same people I listen to So so I was like, all right. I can trust the guy to to start I also Negotiated a deal where most agencies at the time also a lot of them today were based on Spent like a percentage of spent Yeah, and for me I was like, I don't like the the way the incentives don't align because his incentive is to spend as much as possible And there's no correlation to ROAS. Basically spend as much as possible Without us terminating the contracts of being on the edge of where we don't want it But like playing on the edge of that and then he gets the most money and I was like, I don't want to play that game Let's figure out some model where We're aligned on the incentives and so we Negotiated a performance model, which I think is why we got more attention Than other clients And also we grew so fast that it made sense and suddenly he was like, all right Yeah, and we were I think by far his biggest clients by far by far And so we grew a lot and at one point like I kept on learning. I never like Was okay. I'm managing him. I don't need to I learned I went to conferences I listened to podcasts at one point. I bought your course I I don't know if you remember I was like anything I can get my hands on business. I'm buying. I'm buying. I'm learning And at one point I was like looking at what he did and I was like, I think I'm I think now I'm better I can do it myself started to offer some stuff. He didn't have the capacity to test everything And I was like, all right, I think I'm gonna take over and so like this is I think start of 2021 I took over and then I always Yeah, I always hit like I had a few months before which thinks when like the moment I took over like 200 growth that month And then we kept on growing But yeah, then there was iOS 14 and then like it's not like I was managing anyone It was like I'm making the creatives a lot of the time until we're I think at the time 200 k a month ish Um, I was making the creatives a lot of the time I was on the ad account I was writing the copy. I was changing the website. I was doing pretty much everything um Because it didn't make sense for me, you know like out of 200k usually like 25 margins that that that is what makes sense 25 30 and then you have to pay salaries And I mean if you're a big company you make like 10 20 30 millions then sure like it's going to be 3 So you're going to end up with 25 or 22 or whatever And there like all right, I need to pay a salary. I don't know 10 k 20 k It's like almost half my my profit and so I was like, I don't think we're ready for someone else yet Yeah, I'm going to keep on growing it to the point where it makes sense to bring someone in um, and so I think all throughout 2021 till mid 20 or start to mid 2022 I was on my own then we brought in some juniors like I was I don't want to pay, uh, 10 k Uh, 10 k a month for someone who's uh experience Let me let me pay like 4 k no 3.5 k to someone who has little experience and I'm going to teach them um, and I started doing that brought one brought another one um, and in hindsight it was a mistake because when your brand grows that much and The brand is reliant on your or your skill um, you cannot you don't have the luxury of like taking the time off and explaining how to do stuff and juniors are going to make mistakes and then they make mistakes and then it affects the business Um, and this is like a lesson I learned like if you have a fast growing business you want to grow fast Pay I don't mind if I'm gonna like right now if I find someone good enough I'll pay the 100 k 150 k because I know that like we're right I'm gonna not make my money within back within two months But once he settles in I get all my time back Plus I get an employee that has experience that is going to grow the business. Um And net net it's positive but at the time I didn't have that mindset Um, and so yeah, we started growing the team. I started writing SOPs dove into this like how you run the ads How you uh making like how how you optimize how you think about writing scripts all of this stuff, which was nice Um, but as I said, didn't work then we uh, again after a few months fired everyone back wait what? Everyone okay literally like I hired to I mean Yeah, it was two guys like I hired two guys to be the juniors Um, and then like after a few months I was like this is not working out. Yeah, let's that's clear the the thing Like obviously we're quite of a big team there We had like a few customer support um that we have a logistics manager and then we had like the marketing We had an agency but like um, yeah in-house. I was like no no for juniors Ever since then we were looking for Seniors recently I found one so it took us almost a year to find someone who's competent like every month I did like two three interviews with uh headhunters trying to find the right people And just a few months ago. We were able to hire my uh head of growth, which I'm very happy with Nice nice guys super smart. Um, super like good vibes And yeah, this is my experience with building the team. I think this is what we're doing right now We're also expanding internationally like I'm taking like All international under myself and like international meaning outside your core market. Yeah, okay all international like I'm doing right now Um, and like the core market I gave to someone else. I'm supervising I'm giving him money to build out the team obviously with interviewing people together Um, I understand what kind of structure I need for that to run And at the same time I'm doing what I have done in 2021 like being a one-man show there But like now I'm doing it internationally, which obviously is much bigger And the opportunity is much bigger and I I think like I don't I don't believe there are many people at the scale of what we're doing with Basically one person on on the team. It's crazy. But um, I understood that this is how it should go like I crack how it should work. How it should go The angles the the creatives that work the the positioning the offer of this stuff once I know what's going on All right, let's let's bring people it's put systems, but you don't want to rush it. Yep. Yep Very smart very wise for 23. Oh My question is um Yeah, I've seen brands was obviously skilled on seven eight figures, right? And then uh, there's a part of me also where it's like if you scale hard and fast You get the revenue you get the cash flow in then you run the entire ship on break even So you get maybe 20 like you said 15 20 percent margins, right? You take all of that dumping into salary, but then again because you're brand you need to buy inventory and stock What's your opinion on that concept of okay? I don't care about making money at all Like I'm good, right? I got my Rolex out. Whatever it is. I got my whatever I got enough cash flow to survive I'm just gonna go minimalist and then run entire thing and break even so that we can scale like super super fast or Take some money Cash for yourself like protect yourself.  Yeah, so it really depends on why why your goals are right because um, I think For people who are not insane. I'm not normal and this like yeah nine figures Yeah, if you want to go for that, like there's no reason right? You have 50 million 80 million 200 million You can either on the jet or like rent the jet like it doesn't really matter at this point um But as I said, like it's a game and I want to win the game because it's I want to win games Yeah, because yeah the money competitive exactly and so if you want to play like this I feel like you have to take risks that are um, that are not necessarily logical for someone who's thinking about their their life like space checks are gonna be exactly. Um and so From my experience at least like I didn't want to take out salaries until basically end of 2022 I didn't touch the money. Everything goes into the business. Um, obviously like I always manage to to like If I wanted to In 2022 I started doing content and stuff it worked and then you get some money from this like from the side Yeah, side quests exactly. And so I figured out like this is something I did in 2021 I think end of 2021. I was like, all right. I have an audience Let me open a drop shipping store take it from zero to all like Whatever I can in 30 days and then like make a case study of it and sell it on the side And it's just gonna be a fun experience did that um was zero to like 80k in like 50 days something like this. Um And then I sold it and then this is something that like it covers Whatever I need like it's it's being sold. I don't push it. I don't around ads or something But just because of one it provides value So a lot of word of mouth and second of all like, um, I have my my youtube which runs it gets like I don't know 100 000 views a month On its own. So this is being sold and now I'm like, all right. I have my basic needs covered. I don't need more money. I don't want to be Cash rich at this point. I want to build equity value I want to build a brand and I understand that in order to do that I have to give up some stuff So if I'm going to take from the business it's going to slow the growth Obviously, I don't want to be break even at all. I don't think it's it was the mindset for 2020 2021 but right now, um People have changed like and and they understand a lot of people that ran on break even. Um, basically But I I feel a lot of the people who ran on break even is because they were forced to like the business in general Just not profitable enough I mean, sure That's right for a lot of cases, but a lot of other cases like people were like I mean, sure I could be profitable doing 10 million But like let me break even or lose a little bit and do 20 million next year The LTV won't make and then you find out next year that didn't forecast LTV, right? And then you're you're Nothing's gonna work. Um, and so people were prioritizing growth 2020 2021 and I think 2022 2023 people are starting to understand the profit is important. Now, obviously if you're growing Two three four hundred percent a year. You're not going to be able to to show Profit at all or maybe you're going to be able to but not as much That makes sense. Um, but if you're not growing as much, I mean you should be profitable Um, and it's really a decision thing and for me, I I do want to be profitable I don't want to be 20 30 40 percent that that doesn't make sense for me That means I'm leaving growth on the table But I don't want to be at zero because I don't I don't think that's smart either. Um, And yeah, I mean I I have A mentor I mean we're doing like calls every other week And he owns I think the biggest Shopify store like fastest growing right now, maybe the top three biggest Um, and he's like listen, we grew 200 percent like from nine figures the multi multi nine figures Um, it's like and we're gonna profit about 20 25 percent. So I mean it's if you need to profit Don't don't tell me the these stuff figure it out. And I was like, okay, I'll figure it out and we did so Yeah, I mean Don't don't break even if you're not growing super super super fast and also be mindful of that But it's it's a decision if you want to if you want to be nine figure multi eight figures And you want to do it two three four years You have to to not think of right now and today and I need the Rolex now and I need the the car or whatever Understood. Um, personally for me. I'm 26 this year Uh, I realized like I actually realized that concept quite late into the game I mean, I've only been entrepreneurship for like four and a half years. I'm not as exposed I'm actually not as exposed to you Yeah, so my learning curve is like really really like compressed insane, right? So I only realized that concept probably in year three which which is like In my mind I was like, okay, what the hell am I doing? Like I should actually be doing this like from the get go, right? But obviously when you don't have money then you you think like that. Um, My question is how how did you find out that? So quickly, you know, I think from the get go and understood How can I like I don't know why but from When I started I was like I didn't think I guess how Normal people would think like I want to make my first million. I want to whatever I was like I want to do a five hundred million dollar exit. Why I don't know that's how that's how I Found the get go. Okay. Okay. You're insane I was like, this is what I want to do I mean, maybe it's because as I said, I grew up in a place where where like having a house that is like 10 million dollars It's it's a thing and so you get desensitized. You don't you don't understand and so I don't think I've ever had Was at the point.  I didn't Understand what money is now You know, I see the numbers. I was like, all right. I heard this exit that exit especially in israel like They're sorry. The tech exists. I mean, yeah, it's insane every year two three companies and israel is small Two three companies selling for 500 a billion two billion like there's one that was I think Validate 11 million right now insane stuff and then you're like, all right, then 500 is not that much But it is It is and so I went into it with the get go and so in my mind When we hit records, I'm like, okay, we're 10 of the way there five percent of the way there and I don't think oh Wow, we've achieved Um, and and it's a curse because you don't enjoy a lot of the stuff because in your mind you've You've already in my mind when I hit a milestone. I was like It was supposed to happen But it's not my end goal and I don't get to enjoy it as much But I think it's it's a prerequisite to be able to get to these if you don't dream About being a billionaire or hitting a 500 million or billion valuation You're not going to be able to make it to 100 because you need to dream big in order to get there No one plans to make 10 million and accidentally makes a billion. It doesn't happen. Yeah, yeah, I understood uh, if I was uh Jewish for example I'm not Jewish, but if I was Jewish and I live in israel or whatever And then I see, you know, daniel was like, oh the guy looks like me I could potentially be him right inspired by him and I'm pretty sure a lot of your audience feels the same way Right, but then uh, they could come to you and say Hey, but then you'll live in a good zip code, right? Then you had a good upbringing, whatever it is Right to those people like what what do you have to say to them in terms of yeah? I mean, it's true like in life you have I mean A lot of people Know that life is in a fair game, right?  I've had a lot of stuff that I didn't learn that I don't know um, and I think that For example, I just heard of a company that does 500 million dollars a year And they're basically doing services for a basement like cleaning your basement stuff like this in the us and I was like Someone didn't They didn't know anything about technology. They didn't get access to computer They didn't know anything they knew how to literally clean basements, but they had the the Courage and the understanding all right, I can make a business of it and make it happen I mean they were good enough to get clients They were good enough to create enough margin to bring someone else to work under them And then have the margin to to profit off of it and then bring more employees and grow it and like he said It took me 20 30 years But now it's making I don't know 500 a year and I don't know how much of it is profit Probably quite a bit 500 mil still 500 mil. So yeah, so it's it's I mean for me There are a lot of things that I didn't know that I still don't know And there are a lot of disadvantages. There are advantages obviously Maybe for this specific game. I've had more advantages but If you think about it like I'm thinking about people who are in my age group or in my classes like my And me and my friend are the only ones that I know that are like anywhere near like this Revenue or level um and the other people have basically the same advantages. So why Why is that not happening and you can say if you have money then you don't feel a lack of money So why would you go out of your way to work eight ten hours a day?  Um And obviously my parents did a great job. They didn't give me whatever I want They they really today I understand but like they were really over Like, you know a thousand dollars If you look at a grand scheme of things It wasn't a lot of money to them But when I wanted something that cost a thousand dollars when I was young I don't know a car they ran automatically I could go into it. You're like that's so expensive Why would you you don't need it something this and every time I grew up like everyone got an iphone They said no, you're you're ten. You don't need an iphone um stuff like this and over time I mean, I wasn't I wasn't spoiled. I did have some kind of understanding that if I want to be independent I'm going to need money but but still I think that uh when you when you grow up or when you understand you want to Become something you need to look at yourself. You need to say all right. Where are my advantages? Um and and for a lot of people I know they came from nothing and this was their advantage like they I didn't have anything and I'm going to work as hard as I can to get something And I think a lot of them are working harder than me because they had it comes from a lack And this is something that's hard to replicate And there are benefits and and definitely um stuff that It could be a benefit. It could not be a benefit, but it depends on how you take it So a lot of working on yourself and understanding. Yeah, I'm just great parents. You're not out of touch You still understand pain Yeah, I get understand um We transition more to congratulations on breaking eight figures. Thank you That's number one. The second thing is that uh I mean, I helped a company scale that before also I understand that the challenges at three to four mil very very different for me Yeah, right three four is you're just trying to crack front end acquisition get enough traffic ads conversion rate, etc What are the challenges that you face now that you didn't expect? Come yeah Now like After the scale, uh, yeah, like do the scale. Okay. You're like, okay. You're at this revenue stage tons of inventory. I'm guessing Yeah, uh, yeah, what is the challenge that you didn't expect? Um, yeah, I mean Like the one of the biggest challenges challenges this year were cash flow Um, once you understand the cash flow is a reality like all right when you when we're doing I don't know one million year then Sure. Oh, we're pacing for that. All right. You can put down another 300 400k uh for inventory and and It's all right. And once you get to to a certain point, um, then it's not It's a lot. It's very scary. It's a lot of money to put down Yep And especially when you go open a new market What if that market is not going to warn it like it's much bigger But if it's not going to buy it then what am I going to do with this inventory? I can throw it away And so there was a lot of balance there where you need to like I learned how important it is to forecast like This is the first year I actually had to forecast and I actually felt the pressure All right, we're not gonna freaking hit the forecast. This is bad. We're gonna be uh minus on the cash flow and people don't understand You can be profitable and still Have no cash in the negative cash flow And you can like don't have money to pay people even though you're profitable because a lot of money is Basically sitting there as inventory and once you get to this point This is basically because you forecasted incorrectly and you bought more inventory than you needed And at this point you have two options either the bank agrees to To loan you money against your inventory because they have Faith that you are gonna sell this inventory eventually and you're gonna pay Interest and obviously it's gonna hurt Or they're not gonna be able to do this and then basically you don't have money So you you're pretty much if you don't have outside money like from yourself or an investor or something You're basically screwed and and you you lose the business and so We had a very very aggressive forecast this year because of me aggressive meaning We bought we bought a lot of a lot and and like I had I started figuring out the the um the acquisition strategy And and I remember we grew like from march to april like 300 percent and we grow another 30 percent On may and I was like all right. I got it. We're gonna keep on growing 50 percent every month until the end of the year Then we next month minus 20 percent next month minus 30 percent I was like, oh, no, we bought a lot of inventory for q4 And then I had so much pressure to figure it out and to make it work The international market it was literally if I'm not gonna figure it out I'm gonna literally lose the business and so I was like I must figure it out and Eventually I did but it was super stressful and and today like I understand that this was an unnecessary risk to take For year one where you don't know the trends. You don't know that like Specific markets behave differently that for some reason they don't have a specific holiday or whatever There some months are gonna be crazy good And you don't really know why unless you you're into that market and some months are gonna suck And I got kind of lucky and also overworked like I definitely I've never been as stressed in my life ever But yeah, I mean we we pulled through eventually like we Sold out before the end of the year, which is great We we hit the four yes and more This also brought a lot of a lot of a lot of stress to us. But I mean, yeah, this is the game This is the game Okay, who I'm guessing our accountant is helping you forecast as well, right?  In terms of what like cash flow management and forecasting. I mean, um My partner has like Finance kind of a fun like not actual but like she learned it Um, so there's that Obviously, I I spoke to people like there's the mentor like I told him this and we're having trouble forecasting is like listen Me too He said like until I feel it's like in 50 or 100 million a year We were doing it with excel and this is how it is like this is the hard part figure it out But but like obviously he shared like the templates and also I talked to someone else who has worked with a VC backed Um, ecom company. Yeah, so they sold a lot. I don't know how profitable they were But he had he's really like really a shark when it comes to finance. So he helped us a lot But eventually a lot of it is based on me because I need to say I think that this month We're going to sell 1.3 x the regular month and this month is going to be actually pretty bad because we don't have Father's day or mother's day or whatever So a lot of this and it's a lot of a guessing thing. It's a guessing game Basically, it's not a lot of it. It's basically what it is But you get better at it. Um, and I think next year is going to be interesting Okay, technically because you are the guy you're the main man in the international markets So you're just you're seeing the rest first. So you're feeling the data much faster than the rest, right? Yeah, so that you're forecasting based on that Yeah, based on that based on obviously I look at like the performance of what's been going on for these months I try to account for like whatever holidays or whatever There is a specific region, but But yeah, basically I'm saying I think here we're going to sell 150 percent more. All right, let's yeah, this is how it is Okay, it sounds like you don't have data. It's here. You need to start spending to get the data in the first place.  The reason okay the reason why I say that right it's because in the last 12 months or so I learned SEO other than amazon ads So like I realized that it's or I learned PR or so.  That's just completely non-reliant on Paying money to the platforms. Yeah, so any thoughts on that for sure. I think I am I think we it happened to us We were like over the spend limit Like on november we hit our spend limit like we work with facebook on credit lines talking about cash flow like the 30 day Yeah, I'm paying them 30 days after Because obviously I want to I want to be able to cash flow. I don't want to yeah So so a lot of people don't know this but at a certain point you just go to facebook and say hey listen I want to pay 30 days after and they're like if they trust you you have a good like History with them. They're gonna allow you to do that Um, and so we've done that but they give you a certain credit line Like they're not going to be able they're not going to let you spend 20 million dollars and and just not paying them We don't yeah, so yeah, they give you a limit and so for us like I told my rep. Hey raise my limit I think I'm gonna scale by a lot soon He said it happened But it didn't happen and then someday I just see I wake up in the morning and we're like 80 percent down from yesterday and I was like what's going on and then the spend all the revenue revenue and because I wake up I open the Shopify store. See what's up Go and then I see they were not spending and I was like, hey, what's going on? Then I see they're like we can literally do anything and it's Saturday and What can what can happen? So it screwed us I screwed like optimization for a couple of days We figured it out eventually but like a screwed up optimization cost us I think so 10s of thousands of dollars Which sucks But but yeah that that brought me to the understanding also I thought about it before how reliant we are on paid advertising, but also I think at some point You should be reliant and I think that you need to understand like what At what point in time does it make sense to to spread out and not be um as As reliant on a single platform And I think that at this time Facebook is so much better than any other platform in terms of like how The royal stability royal stability and scale all of these That it makes sense to like if I want to grow as fast as I can as hard as I can I cannot think how can I build a business that has like the maximum chances of surviving throughout 10 years No, I need to get to to 50 a year. Then I'm going to revise and see all right I have so-and-so customers existing customers. I can get more revenue per customers over time How can I expand to tick tock? How can I expand to Google? But I think a lot of people go multi multi-channel too early And they don't understand like for me. I just This year proved to me how much scale you can have when you Focus on one channel and you just go as hard as you can And I think Facebook by far is the biggest and and yeah, it's a risk. I'm willing to take Understood. So now your single product single channel So kind of yeah, kind of okay. Yeah, and Uh, why can't you hire someone else to figure another platform out? Or is it just a trust like, you know, uh bandwidth? Yeah, it's it's definitely a bandwidth thing. Um for amazon like for example The my mentor told me like first of all, he said you need to get into amazon We're doing that. We talked to the the the guys who set up their amazon We're gonna start with this pretty soon And he said like listen It's money on the table because for us 20 25 percent of the revenue comes from amazon And he said like I think even if you're don't gonna run ads on amazon You're spending a ton on facebook people. It's like google people go and search for your brand on amazon and so you said like All right, you're doing 100k days. You could have gotten like 20k extra from amazon so I mean that that's that's a new learning. I wasn't aware of this Also, uh for this to happen. You need more inventory. You need to send inventory to fba stuff like this and this year we were Apparently short on inventory. So Next year we're gonna prepare. We're gonna do this and when it comes to seo It's a bit of a I don't know how it was. I didn't dive deep into it But I said that it's still a long-term thing like you're gonna see the results of what you do today in six 12 months. Um, and I cannot think in these timelines that rather like find out a way I can Like do stuff that affects me today And at a certain point I can get someone to do this for me so that You know, it's just a prioritization thing. Yeah, I understood I think I know your business sort of I think I know your product. Uh, let me guess, uh Is there any uh in terms of ugc creators or like creative production in general? How do you run that ship? Because Super rely on facebook and I'm pretty sure your search volumes on google are not so high for that specific product Could you share with us how you Ah creative It was a hard thing to crack. Um What I have done to begin with I was like, all right, I'm gonna get like 50 creators 30 50 whatever Send them a product pay for like a ugc. Give them sort of like some sort of guideline Get a lot of content. I have a content library now Then I can get some editor or like a creative strategist. I I trust I tell him. Hey, we have uh, these, uh, ugc's there We have uh product, uh footage. We have recorder Studio or or even myself like I go and I film sometimes All right create mashups and then they start creating versions and then like You understand that like from these 50 videos and maybe 50 other videos of the product You make with your iphone or a studio or whatever you can suddenly make a thousand two thousand creatives I think last month we produced 400 or 500 unique creatives 400. Yeah, something like this Okay, yeah, it's like 10 10 show for the basically. Yeah. Yeah, something like this I you spent two hours just uploading it to to facebook because So buggy right now. But yeah, I mean It was crazy, but at a certain point you can make so many variations Um in and yeah, it was fantastic And it took us a while to figure it out like who our audience is In what type of creators are working and what type of editing style and all of this stuff And obviously every once in a while we're doing like a completely different thing because Sometimes that thing hits and then you have a completely new concept But but the way I like to do stuff is to how can I make something As scalable as possible without paying as much as I can like being bootstrapped This is what you have to do And so I found out that like getting a lot of content and having a content library and getting someone else to mash up And create a puzzle type of thing. It's the best way to do that. And so this is what we've done Okay, are you telling the creators here's a script here's the guideline Here are some b-roll shots I want shot one shot two shot three or like just do whatever it really depends So if they're like I I separate into multiple things first of all if there are agencies That are doing the entire thing for me. They take a markup I've had mixed experiences with both. They're way too expensive in my opinion. Um, but Some of them did work And and so this was nice for those that that I Sent basically no brief. These didn't come out as good Um, and then like there's the in the middle thing where like you either give them like a These are the bullet points you need to hit But do your thing or literally what you said like here's the visual one visual two visual three I find that for good creators Like you should give them more space and for people who are literally like They don't even consider themselves UGC creators. They're just like pay me money You know film something they have to be more specific, but but honestly For me like the best thing is just like go film yourself like this and let my edits hurt at B-rolls and then play with the edits and stuff and this is gonna this is gonna work Usually best unless they're very good creators. Okay. Okay. This will be our last Information specific question be respectful of your time. Um for yourself, right? I know your goals. I know where you want to go to Recurring or LTV is super important. Yeah, right kick super high very hard to acquire nowadays Um for your specific niche, which we won't say but for your specific niche, I guess, how do you plan to do that?  It's a good product. I know from Good experience on the first budget. So yeah, great experience great experience and also People like to because of how good the experience is and people like to talk about it and share it So I see a lot of association. I see a lot of word of mouth So I know that for each customer like, uh, I don't know point one point two people will come back. Um Other people which is very nice. Also like repeat is is pretty high on like This niche is people don't regularly buy Again before us because of like our unique positioning Um people do come back and also how good the product is and the experience We put a lot of emphasis on this especially me like i'm paying Usually what people pay on packaging I pay I think almost 10 times that Just to make the experience better And to make sure people people are happy when they get it because like How you get the product is almost more important than the product itself You can learn it from all the luxury brands like if you think like Rolex It comes in a nice big box and stuff and eventually like it's a watch if it came in a plastic bag You really you'd be like man. I mean Yeah, yeah, it doesn't cost a lot to to produce the Rolex, but still it's the experience and it's the the entire thing And so I wanted to to whatever i'm selling to give that experience of like, oh, wow, that's nice So they're maybe they'd be happy gifting it. Maybe they'd be happy buying it again because they had a nice experience um, and so I don't know it's because again, we're early with international but from My other market. I know that we have a pretty high repeat But still my thing is like and this also my mentor says like For us they they grew as I said like from nine figures to multi multi nine figures and he said like our cap went down How is this possible? He said that Once he hit a certain point First of all, you have a lot of unlocks once you have a lot of traffic coming through like see a row all of this stuff But more than that like at some points your brand starts to get like allure and people Recognition and you have less top of funnel because everyone has heard of you um, and and then like cac does go down And this is something that obviously we're not at that scale, but I think that over time cac Will be able to go down for us. And also I'm doing everything in my power power to be profitable on first purchase And this means that I'm very very like doing whatever I can lending page testing Doing like creative analysis to try to improve each creative like hook is 30% let's make it 40% of the same body all of this stuff Tests on the product pages all the time pricing tests if necessary like I'm doing everything I can to squeeze every bit of profit And yeah, I mean I hope it will work and keep on improving Okay, by the way, uh, I really think 30 minute vsl's will actually work for your product now that thing about really We'll talk about that later after this But I think it'll really work. Yeah, okay. So guys, thank you so much for your time. Uh, Daniel Do you have any final words? Oh, and also How do people find you and if you want to promote anything, please please just promote I don't have anything to promote because I mean if you speak Hebrew, you have my my uh, you can type my name on youtube Daniel Moldowski, you'll find my channel. Um, uh, we'll link the channel below. So yeah, I mean I have twitter So on twitter saying Daniel Moldowski m o l d a w s k y Um, and I mean that's it. I'm happy to to talk to a lot of people to Uh connect and and I mean, yeah This community is like so small But I mean you meet so many cool and interesting people and like I'm very happy to help people who are maybe the seven figure range that are Struggling without what I have struggled like in the past couple years If you're maybe like smaller big or whatever. I'm happy to answer questions and Yeah, and connect. All right. Thank you so much Daniel and thank you guys for your time. All right That was nice


Hello everybody as all of you know one of the most important things in our businesses are our employees and In this video, I want to talk with you about seven different ways how we can find a virtual assistant It's called VA for your eBay dropshipping business or for your e-commerce business at all So I'm your posing. I'm owner of zero photo DS and let's start with the first one So the first one is upwork.com Upwork.com is a site of freelancers of many many many different niches and many many different types of works The good things with upwork is that they have a time tracker and the screen recording Software so when you work with someone from upwork, it's very easy to give your VA The option to work with you and to track the hours directly from upwork Also, all of the payments in this site are going to the upwork Which is very very comfortable and very easy to work on this way because it's very Automatic for you when your employee when your VA just put the hours in the site Once a week the money goes to him automatically. So it's great for us It saves us a lot of time and we have here the screen recording feature Some bad things about upwork The bad things here are that all of the money must go from upwork and that work takes very very very high fees for this The fees are going from two seventy five percent From us from the person who pay to a five percent up to twenty percent Which upwork takes from the freelancer, which means that it increased by around twenty five percent the prices So this is why the upwork is not the cheapest site to find a virtual assistant But still on this site we have tons of ways. I think that this is the biggest site of virtual assistants and of freelancers at all from very very different Places and different niches But still it's more Expensive and from the other side you can see that the employee that the virtual assistants are good How you can know it because in upwork they have like you can't see how much this virtual assistant already did Profits from upwork. So if someone did like ten thousand dollars and he have like he has like a 95% of positive feedbacks or something like this. So you can know that this Person this freelancer is a very very high quality and you want to work with someone like this The next site called Guru.com Guru.com is site which is very similar to upwork just much cheaper and has much less Freelancers, but you can search on both sites and check which of them you prefer I personally work only with upwork even if it's more expensive It still saves me a lot of time and this is why I'm using upwork. So this was the first two sites They pretty similar but now we will go to some other types of sites the next option is online jobs pH This site is only for Filipino Freelancers V8 and the good thing with this site is that the prices here are very very very cheap the reason for this that the prices are cheap is because The site Doesn't take any money from us for the payments We pay not from the site to pay directly to the freelancers. This way we need To pay them directly by paper and the minus here is that we need to purchase a time tracker Software like time clock wizard or hop stuff something like this. So The benefits of this site is that they have a lot of very very cheap Freelancers because they don't take any fees They have a lot of different freelancers who already worked with eBay and eBay dropshipping So you can find there are very high quality people, but you need to check their scores and feedbacks and reviews The problem with this site is that for the free subscription, let's go to the pricing first For the free subscription, you can't really check and contact the freelancers so if someone you can apply a job, but You can just see that people applied to your job and may offers, but you can't really check Who contacted you and you can't really contact this person? So this way actually it's not really practical to work with this site Without paying them any subscription while up or can the other side are free on this side the subscription the minimum subscription which can really work for you costs $70 per month $69 per month Sometimes it worth it I know that a lot of big dropshippers like this site and work only with this site because they just purchase a subscription one time finding their Employees and then they just close the subscription on the site. So you can work with this site You can work with Apple Apple is easier, but cost more money for the long term for the sorry for the for the Short term but for the long term this Site the owner jobs is much better because they pay just one time to find the freelancer So here it's better for long term. Apple is better for a short term So this is the first three sites owner job Apple and guru.com Now we'll go to some other ways to find virtual assistants The first way is just go to Facebook Go to any Dropshipping group for example, you can go to the group of auto DS and just upload here a post about hey, please I'm searching for VA any VA available here now This method is very interesting because on this method you can find people who already worked for other people You maybe these people already know strategies, which you don't know I saw a lot of freelancers a lot of VAs who know a lot about dropshipping and they have really interesting strategies and ways of work so In many cases this way may be the best way because first of all, it's free The second thing is that these people will be very experienced. So if you upload a job in auto DS It's a very high chance that this VA already worked with auto DS And then you can just contact them and it will be much easier to start the next thing is sites not sites or groups in Facebook like This one virtual assistant network Philippines This option is also a free option But it's a bit dangerous because you don't really know the feedbacks You don't really know the experience of the people who you will find here So if you go from this way, you just need to Make a very long interview and to ask your virtual assistant a lot of questions So this way you can really know that when you work with someone with this VA He will be really as suitable for your needs Otherwise, if you don't ask him a questions and you don't do any trial and very long interview You can really have a problem in your business because you don't know who will come from this group From groups like auto DS, for example, you know that the person already worked for someone else in auto DS You can ask me you can ask the other guy and you can check how was this a virtual assistant So this was about the Facebook group So we had two types of Facebook groups one of companies of drop-shipping tools One actually can be also just general groups like I don't know eBay drop shipping mastermind For example, you can go to this group. This group is huge So we can just go to this group and upload a poll there And there are also many many many different other big groups So you can just use them and you can be sure that people there already doing drop shipping and just make an interview and chat them So one is general drop shipping group. The second one is virtual assistant groups We have three different sites also like guru, upward and Online jobs ph The next option of how to Is a site which called talent? Dot hub stuff talent of hub stuff com Hub stuff is a program where you can't like your the time of your employees So what hub stuff did they just added an option to find virtual assistant here. It's very very cheap here Actually, I think it's almost I think it's free actually this site I never used it, but I just checked it and I saw that you have here a lot of freelancers You can write just right here you a drop-shipping and you will find many many very cheap and very experienced eBay Virtual assistants you can see here for three dollars per hour another one two dollars. It's amazing Usually prices for a virtual assistant will be between two dollars and five dollars So just search for something in this Prices lenses The next option and this is option number seven and this one actually I don't like personally because I Like when my virtual assistant the people who work with me are working with me and not that someone else So the option is virtual assistant training companies There are third-party companies who just just taking a lot of virtual assistant They put them in the office or they are doing a remote a training They teach them and then you can just go to these companies and ask for a virtual assistant I don't have this option because one thing is that the These people this virtual assistant are working for this company. They don't really work for you So first of all the prices are higher and the second thing is that they will work on the ways that the company teach them So you you want to teach your virtual assistant for your methods because the methods which this company is usually Teach I don't say that all of these companies, but most of them are very generic and not really working anymore It's like all the methods which they just teach them in the past and then this virtual assistant like always working with these ways I prefer And I suggest you to learn how to teach the virtual assistants and I will also create in another videos about this And then just work with them and directly. I hope that you like this video This was my seven tips about how to find virtual assistant Write in the comments If you like this video if you already have virtual assistant And if you find it with one of these ways or do you have any other way and please subscribe to our YouTube channel to Be updated with the next videos. See you in the next videos. Bye. Bye


The next item of business is a statement by Shirley-Anne Somerville on closing the poverty-related attainment gap, the future Scottish attainment challenge. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of our statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions, and I call on the cabinet secretary for around 10 minutes please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I'm pleased to provide this statement to Parliament today on our plans for the next phase of the Scottish attainment challenge. I'd like to thank leaders in local government for their support in developing and agreeing the plans that I will now set out. This government is unwavering in its commitment to tackling the impact of poverty on children and young people's lives. Since its launch in 2015, the attainment challenge has played a key role in our strategy to improve outcomes for young people. Building on that and in the light of the pandemic, it is right that we take this opportunity to ensure that the challenge is designed to maximise progress. Education continues to be absolutely central to how we can improve the life chances of our young people. That has not changed. We also recognise the disproportionate impact that Covid-19 has had on the most disadvantaged in our society. Schools, teachers and those working in partnership with them all play a vital role in the wellbeing and life chances of our children and young people. As we continue to navigate the challenges that are presented by the pandemic, we will learn more about its impact on children and young people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. In the primary school achievement of curriculum for excellence levels data that we will publish in December, I anticipate that we may see evidence of the impact of the pandemic on educational attainment. It is not for me to presume what that evidence will show, however, given the evidence from our own equity audit, we may well see the proportion of young people achieving the relevant level in nursery and literacy reduce in comparison to previous years, as well as an impact on the poverty-related attainment gap. Let me be clear about this. We have a moral imperative to focus our resources on supporting the educational attainment and life chances of our children and young people most impacted by poverty. We are also determined to reduce the variability in the outcomes of children and young people achieve in different parts of the country. That is exactly why we are rising to this challenge by increasing our investment in the attainment Scotland fund from £750 million during the last parliament to now investing £1 billion in targeted funding over the course of this parliament to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap and support education recovery through the Scottish attainment challenge, with up to £200 million to be distributed in 2022-23. That has already begun, through our delivery of our first 100 days target, to issue the first instalment of that £1 billion commitment this year, alongside a £20 million pupil equity funding premium to further mitigate the impact of Covid-19. Of course, children's lives are hugely influenced by what they experience in school, but it is not only school that affects their wellbeing, the readiness to learn and their educational outcomes. The refreshed Scottish attainment challenge will have a new mission. From next year, that mission will be to use education to improve outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty with a focus on tackling the poverty-related attainment gap. That embeds SAC funding in our wider national mission to tackle child poverty. We will, of course, maintain our focus on educational attainment, but, at the same time, take account of the findings of the recent Audit Scotland and OECD reports, we will look beyond those traditional metrics of success to take account of other skills and achievements. I do not expect schools to do that alone. Indeed, teachers and education leaders have been clear with me that schools cannot do that alone, so schools and education servitude must reach out across services and sectors and into their communities to draw on the wealth of resources, assets and experience available across the country to achieve their aims and make their contribution to our targets to reduce child poverty. We know that many schools and authorities already do that well, supporting children and young people through, for example, family link workers, and there are already lots of good practice out there to build on. Although progress has been made in tackling the poverty-related attainment gap, I am clear that the pace of progress must recover from the disruption caused by the pandemic and it must increase. We are therefore working with partners across education to develop a framework for recovery and accelerated progress, which we will publish in the new year. That will see greater support and challenge for all those who contribute to the mission. I have no desire to see teachers and headteachers tied up in bureaucracy when they should be doing what they do best—teaching. Indeed, I wish to work with headteachers to reduce the burden that is placed upon them. I see that as a key consideration as we work with colleagues to develop a framework for recovery and accelerated progress. Therefore, planning and reporting will be streamlined and will include the identification of local stretch aims for closing the gap based on their local knowledge and their professional expertise. That will enable us to understand what schools and local authorities expect to achieve and by when. That is an approach that is already being used very effectively in some schools and in local authorities. In Government, we will work with our local partners to develop that national picture in terms of pace of expected progress later in the year. Alongside that, Education Scotland will continue to provide a wealth of support to all local authorities via its senior regional advisers, attainment advisers, regional teams and, of course, national programmes of leadership and professional learning. Signposting of effective evidence-based approaches to closing the attainment gap via the national improvement hub and on-going development of the equity toolkit will also be an important development. A key priority for Education Scotland will be sharing learning from what has worked in the Scottish enchantment challenge to date and working with schools and local authorities to accelerate progress. That work also remains a central theme within the HMIE inspection frameworks. I am confident that our local authority partners, headteachers and teachers know their learners best. Since introduction of pupil equity funding in 2017-18, we have invested over £630 million in powering teachers to decide what approaches best support their pupils. I am delighted to announce that pupil equity funding will continue to be the central feature of the Scottish attainment challenge, providing headteachers directly with significant additional funding to reduce the poverty-related attainment gap in their school communities. Building on good existing practice, we want to continue to encourage headteachers to extend their work with partner services to reduce the poverty-related attainment gap and increase support for children impacted by poverty. To further enable that, I will announce PEF allocations for the next four years, providing headteachers with the clarity they need to plan their approaches and develop long-standing partnerships. I also want now to set out some important changes to the funding distribution for local authorities. Following extensive consultation across the education system, I fully recognise the impact of the pandemic and poverty on pupils in every local authority area in Scotland, reaching those impacted by poverty in urban and rural communities alike. Therefore, all local authority areas, not just the nine challenge authorities funded under the challenge to date, will have an enhanced leadership and support role to play. All local authorities will now share the investment of £43 million to help tackle the poverty-related attainment gap and support education recovery. Allocations will be sent out for the next four years, and we will be writing to directors of education shortly to confirm those. That will further enable local authorities to set out strategic direction to use education to improve outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty, work collaboratively with their schools and school leaders to ensure approaches across the system are evidence-based and impactful and draw in broader local authority and other services to contribute to the work. It will also continue to provide targeted funding to local authorities to support care experience to children and young people and contribute to efforts across all services to keep the promise. Finally, a number of national programmes funded through the £1 billion attainment Scotland fund will be enhanced to strengthen work with third sector organisations and with a stronger focus on youth work, community learning and development, and family learning services. We know from the evidence of our analysis and audit Scotland's report earlier this year that we have solid foundations to build on, but we need to consolidate and accelerate the impact of the programme. Although we will build on those trends through the refresh Scottish attainment challenge, it will not be through that initiative alone that we make progress in tackling the poverty-related attainment gap and supporting education recovery. The Government continues to demonstrate its commitment to excellence, equity and education through a whole raft of significant policy initiatives. Those include investing over almost £500 million in education recovery initiatives and investing in teachers. A cornerstone to our recovery is ensuring that our schools have the highly skilled staff that they need. That is why, over the course of this parliamentary term, we will fund the recruitment of an additional three and a half thousand teachers and 500 classroom assistants and ensure more time for teachers to plan high-quality learning and teaching by reducing their class contact time by one and a half hours per week. We are also tackling the cost of the school day, ensuring that children have access to the same opportunities, including digital devices, school trips and school uniforms, making sure that no child is hungry in our classroom by providing free breakfasts and lunches to every pupil in Scotland's primary and state-funded special schools, providing 1140 hours of early learning and childcare, laying an excellent foundation for all children to progress into their school education and committing to the young person's guarantee to name but a few. To conclude, let me be clear that there is nothing more important than ensuring that every child and young person have the same opportunity to succeed in education regardless of their background. We can and must deliver that for our children and young people. This overall approach to the Refresh Scottish attainment challenge is designed to do just that and will see a broader recognition of children and young people's positive outcomes, continued empowerment of school leaders through the pupil equity funding, funding in a clearer role for local authorities, continued targeted resources to support care experience to children and young people and a clear framework setting out our expectations for recovery and accelerating progress, which will enable greater support, challenge and collaboration throughout the system. I am confident that, taken together, that will see significant and faster progress in delivering this Government's vision of excellence and equity in education and of closing the poverty-related attainment gap. The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in her statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes, after which we will need to move on to the next item of business, who is intending to ask a question. Please press the request to speak buttons, please. I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement. Nothing the SNP do to rehash the same failing initiatives can rewrite history. Nicola Sturgeon has broken her promise to close the attainment gap in the last Parliament and nothing the SNP have set out show any real ambition to do so in this one. Teachers, pupils, their parents and carers all know that simply throwing money around the system while ignoring the real challenges facing our schools is never going to work. What is missing is a credible plan to restore standards in our education system, one that ensures that pupils in every school get the education that they deserve. Only by refocusing our attention on teaching and learning can we hope to help those who start at a disadvantage close the attainment gap and give them a fighting chance. Continuing to lower our aspirations and plug the gap with well-meaning initiatives alone cannot deliver the equality of opportunity and the social mobility that we all want to see. Every day wasted sees those who need our education system the most continue to be let down. So, cabinet secretary, after 14 years, how can anyone trust the SNP Government to get things sorted when the only solutions that you offer is to double down on the same failed strategies? I would begin by fundamentally disagreeing with the premise of where Oliver Mundell is coming from. We have seen progress in tackling the attainment gap. We had a cross primary for example the attainment gap in literacy and numeracy were narrowing. Pre-pandemic we have seen an improvement in positive destinations for example and 90 per cent of head teachers reported an improvement in closing the attainment gap for health and wellbeing. I give an example of that. Some of the discussions I had with teachers this morning when I visited the Citadel Youth Centre in Leith, where they talked about the importance of pupil equity funding in allowing them to ensure that they, knowing what was right for their local community, were able to invest in that and to be able to work with children and their families to deliver results. Of course we want to see the pace of the programme increasing. Of course we want to ensure that we are assisting recovery from the pandemic and that is exactly why the money is increasing. I am sorry if Oliver Mundell thinks that we are throwing money away when what we are doing is investing in empowering teachers. I am proud to be in a Government that is empowering teachers to use that pupil equity funding in the way that results in better outcomes for the children and young people. I hope and expect that this will be something that will pay dividends for our young people as they continue to go through a very difficult time as we recover from the pandemic. The SNP is choosing this moment to make callous cuts to the education of the poorest children in our poorest communities is grotesque and intolerable and it almost defies belief. This policy decimates education funding for the poorest children in the nine poorest local authorities in Scotland. Those children have suffered most in the pandemic, they have seen their life chances weakened and so is the case again today. I will get to questions because we are short of time, which means I am also short of time to talk about the shameful and humiliating position on this from the SNP's green nationalist coalition partners. The cabinet secretary is presumably too ashamed to come to Parliament and set out the financial impact of those cuts. Will she tell us the funding allocations now or is she too embarrassed to do so? I spoke to one council leader this morning, one council leader of nine, who now has no money to pay for 120 front-line education staff paid for attainment challenge funding. What will she have to say to the many hundreds of teaching and front-line education staff in the poorest communities whose posts she has just cut? Deputy Presiding Officer, this is a betrayal of our most vulnerable children. They said that this was a sacred mission. They have just shown that nothing could be further from the truth. As I made clear at the beginning of my statement, we have worked very closely with local government, particularly on the issues of education. The change that we are making to local authorities is supported by COSLA. I presume that all the criticism that Michael Marra has just directed towards me is also directed towards COSLA leaders. For example, I quote from the press release that has come out today from the COSLA spokesperson from children and young people that says that councils are on the front line of her efforts to support children and young people in poverty every day. That is why we welcome the recognition that councils across Scotland will be pivotal in working to tackle the attainment gap. That is the response from COSLA from what has happened. We absolutely recognise, as do our colleagues in local government, that poverty exists in every local authority in Scotland. That is exactly why we have taken the decision that we have. We also know that that has been exacerbated by the pandemic, which is present in every local authority in Scotland. There will be a redistribution of funding. It will take place over four years to ensure that local authorities can work through that, particularly the nine challenges of local authorities. That has been something again that has been agreed by COSLA. It is very important that we do this to ensure that there is an equitable share of overall investment, that we do recognise where the concentration of poverty is in local authorities. I stress that that is again a decision that has been agreed by COSLA. As I said in my statement, we will be writing out to local authorities within the next few weeks with the distribution for local authorities and pupil equity funding, which should be coming out in the new year, as it usually does. I encourage back ventures and the front ventures to listen to the responses to the cabinet secretary. He may not agree necessarily with what she has to say, but I think that you are the courtesy of listening to the responses. I would like to ask the cabinet secretary what progress has already been made in tackling the poverty-related attainment gap and what lessons have been learned from the first iteration of the Scottish attainment challenge? Evidence shows that, over the first five years of the Scottish attainment challenge, we have seen almost all of our short and immediate terms outcomes achieved across primary schools. The attainment gap in literacy and numeracy narrowed in 2016-17 and 2018-19. We recently saw university acceptances, for example for the 20 per cent most deprived areas in Scotland, reaching a record high for SQA results day earlier this year. Importantly, 90 per cent of headteachers surveyed in 2020 to report an improvement in closing the gap and or health and wellbeing. I am quite right that we need to learn the lessons from what worked and what we need to improve on. One of the areas that specifically worked was around the empowerment of headteachers through the people equity funding, which means a very strong focus of what we are doing. Ensuring that we are picking up the pace in tackling that is why we are increasing the support and challenge within what we are doing to ensure that we are supporting teachers and local authorities to develop that at pace to ensure that we are tackling the impacts of the pandemic as well. I would like to draw members to my register of interests as I am a serving councillor in North Lanarkshire. Recent reports have outlined that the Scottish Government's pledge to revolutionise the care of children in Scotland is under threat as social work staff struggle to deliver services due to understaffing, underfunding and a lack of resources. Although the cabinet secretary has reaffirmed the commitment to provide targeted funding to local authorities to care-experienced young children and young people, the Scottish Government must do more to achieve the promise. Therefore, can the cabinet secretary outline if the Scottish Government will commit to additional funding for local government to tackle those issues? If Megan Gallacher will forgive me, it is not my place in the statement this afternoon to announce local government settlements for future years. That will be something that I am sure Kate Forbes will do so for the budget upcoming. I am sure that she looks forward to a productive relationship with the Scottish Conservatives as they continue to provide costed promises that they would wish to deliver if they were working in partnership with the Scottish Government, as we would be delighted to do so. I welcome the cabinet secretary's comments that planning and reporting will be streamlined, including the identification of local stretch aims for causing the poverty-related attainment gap. What reassurances can be provided that that will not add to the workload and bureaucracy for our teachers? That is a very important issue that we are determined to work with schools and local authorities and teacher unions on. We know that schools and local authorities already undertake improvement planning, for example, including their ambitions using local knowledge and expertise. What we are doing through the work that we are doing in the Scottish attainment challenge should not be an added and necessary burden. It needs to allow us to help to understand and accelerate the improvement, as I am sure all headteachers wish to do as well. We are working with the system to learn and build from the good practice that already exists out there. I am absolutely determined not to introduce new raft of bureaucracy on this. I absolutely take the health and wellbeing of our teachers exceptionally seriously. That is why, as we move forward with this part of the package, we will work with teachers to ensure that what we are doing is assisting them in supporting their children and young people, rather than adding to workload and bureaucracy. In October this year, the Government shared with others the changes to the funding streams that this paper sets out. Indeed, it encloses it in this. It did not form part of the statement today and has not been published. More importantly, when will teachers, when will parents and when will children find out how the changes to their school will be affected? To answer Ms Gallagher's question, I can tell you that, in 2022-23, care experience children and the young people fund will be reduced by 0.1 million pounds. I thank the member for that question. I highlight that he is picking one aspect of what is happening in the Scottish attainment challenge, which absolutely does not relate to what Meghan Gallagher spoke about, which is much wider as we ensure what happens with the promise. The context of the overall local government settlement, which is what I was asked about, is certainly something that we will come back to. We have had discussions with local authorities, of course, for many months about our proposals on this area. That is usually what we are asked to do. By members, quite rightly, right across the chamber, is to work in partnership with our colleagues in local government. None of those decisions are easy. There is no simple challenge that we can move forward with without ensuring that we are working with our local government colleagues to ensure that we are making the best decisions that we can. They have supported the work that is going on, they have worked with us on that and I thank them for the collaborative and constructive approach that they have taken on that issue. I think that that proves that national and local government can work together for the benefit of our children and young people. Pool equity funding makes a substantial contribution to helping schools across Meadhouse and Springburn to develop initiatives to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap. Can I ask the cabinet secretary whether the multi-year funding announced today will allow headteachers and local school communities together to spend strategically now to ensure that they can plan longer-term over a four-year period rather than year-to-year to best support young people in my constituency and across Scotland to reach their full potential? That ties in very much to the question that was raised by Co-Cab Stewart about the lessons learned. One of the lessons learned and came across very strongly from teachers and from local authorities was their wish to see a multi-year funding proposal coming forward so that they could know what to expect. Last year, for the first time, we confirmed pupil equity funding allocations over £250 million for two years, but knowing that schools know their learners best and ensuring that they have the ability to plan and to decision-make in short and longer terms, that was something that we wanted to develop still further. That is as responding absolutely as a Government to the consistent feedback from the system as part of our extensive stakeholder engagement. I hope that the multi-year funding package will provide much reassurance to aid the development of those longer-term strategic plans that Bob Doris mentioned in his question. Willie Rennie, who joins us remotely, to be followed by Ross Greer. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. This statement just paves the way for bad news to come, and you are already yawning poverty-related attainment gap. Years ago, the SNP Government promised to close it completely, but it is now set to get even wider. The SNP Government has lost its way on transforming Scotland's education. Fiddling around with the challenge fund is hardly the bold action that we need. If the Cabinet Secretary believes that those measures will make a difference, can she tell me by which year the poverty-related attainment gap will be closed completely? I will not rehearse the figures that I have given in previous answers around the improvements that have been made around tackling the poverty-related attainment gap, particularly pre-pandemic. However, we know that there is more to do, and we know that we need to increase the pace of change in assist recovery from the pandemic. That is exactly why we have increased the investment from £750 million to £1 billion over this parliamentary session. As I said in my statement, we are working with schools and with local authorities to work with them to deliver their stretch aims so that we can see the pace of change that they think that they can deliver. We expect that the pandemic will have had an impact on children and young people. We saw that in the analysis that we did previously. Again, I point to that. That is exactly why we are increasing funding in this, and that is why we will work with schools and with local authorities so that they can respond with their own stretch aims and we will be able to deliver the funding to support them on that. We have always said that tackling the poverty-related attainment gap is a long-term challenge. That has been recognised by the OECD, by the international education advisers, and we know that we have to pick up the pace of change of that, but it will be a challenge that we are certainly determined to deliver on. Unlike some others, I welcome the recognition in the statement that there are children living in poverty and the 23 authorities not previously supported by the challenge fund and that they are equally deserving of support. However, if there has been any survey work or consultation done with teachers in schools who have previously been supported by Education Scotland in how they deploy those funds to ascertain whether that support and advice was in fact useful. That is something that I am keen for Education Scotland to work with teachers and with schools on, because we have made a significant investment in Education Scotland with attainment advisers in every local authority, the regional teams that are there to assist them, but we need to ensure that what they are delivering is useful. I have spoken in my statement about some of the ways that they are doing that through the hub with information about what teachers think has worked within the first phase of the Scottish attainment challenge. That is one example of what we are trying to do, but I am very keen to hear directly from teachers to ensure that the support that they are getting from Education Scotland is the support that they need to be able to deliver on the challenge that we all have for the poverty-related attainment gap. I would, of course, be happy to hear from Mr Greer if he has particular suggestions about how Education Scotland should improve its offer. We have three questions in two and a half minutes. Emma Harper, to be followed by Pam Gull. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. To ask the Scottish Government what steps it has taken to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap in rural areas in the development of the refreshed Scottish attainment challenge. I recognise that poverty exists in all parts of the country, including local authorities covering rural and remote areas. All local authorities will, of course, now receive funding for the first time. The distribution of the funding is based on the Children and Low Incomes data. That is measuring directly the household income and therefore provides a precise count of children impacted by poverty that contrasts with SIMD, which does not always represent the needs in rural communities. The pupil equity funding, I would also add, continues to empower headteachers, with 97 per cent of schools receiving this funding this year. That programme will continue, so I hope that Emma Harper has reassured that we have adapted the policy to ensure that we are serving rural and remote Scotland well, both through attainment funding and through the pupil equity funding. Pam Gull, you will join us remotely to be followed by Marie MacNeill. Thank you, Presiding Officer. In my region of Western Bartonshire, there are 4,189 children living in poverty, an increase of 504 children from 2014 to 2015. The attainment challenge fund has had six years to make an impact in tackling the attainment gap. Does the cabinet secretary agree that, by diverting the attainment challenge fund away from the most deprived areas, it will take vital funds away from those that need it most? I have just read out to Emma Harper about how the funding is being distributed. It is to children in low-income families data that directly measures household income and therefore provides a precise count of children impacted on poverty. That is the distribution of funding that has been agreed with local government. That is what we will be moving forward with, because we recognise that there are children in poverty in urban, rural and remote areas, and the pandemic has been right across Scotland. We have to support children right across Scotland. It is unfortunate that it would appear that neither the Tories nor Labour think that we should be doing that. I thank the cabinet secretary for her statement. The cabinet secretary mentioned the cost of the school day. Does she agree that listening to parents and pupils has been at the heart of supporting families to deal with the cost of the school day at a time when Westminster welfare cuts have been hitting hardest? Is briefly as possible, cabinet secretary? I think that it is very important that we not just look at what happens within the classroom but obviously what is impacting on poverty right across society. That is exactly why we have broadened out. I am sorry that Mr Mundell is not interested in how we tackle poverty in Scotland. Perhaps, if he listened to what was going on, rather than hectoring from the sideline— We are already over time, please, cabinet secretary, and Oliver Mundell. We are determined as a Government to ensure that we are tackling child poverty in the round, not just within education. That is why we have been working with the work on protecting young people from the cost of the school day. One of the many ways we will protect children from poverty right across Scotland. Remiswm me not to note that I am an elected councillor in Dundee, one of the council areas that the cabinet secretary has just cut the budget for. That is on the record. Mr Mundell was my point of order. We now move to the next item of business. I will allow a short break for the front benches to change.