The age of twelve is usually a phase for fundamental self-discovery – exploring your passions, understanding your body, learning more about the world, and of course, playing video games for a third of the entire day. Not many 12-year-olds would be concerned with building Instagram pages or learning how to scale follower counts as a fun activity, but Grant Golestan-Parast was never a regular kid.
Born in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Grant is an American entrepreneur, digital consultant, and social media growth expert. He is the founder and CEO of GGPMedia, a social media consulting company focused on increasing digital presence and boosting profits by growing business pages across LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. With over 884,000 followers on Instagram and more than 300 million views across social media, Grant is a viral consultant with solid networks and strategies, bringing fresh value and unique insights to the branding industry.
Raised in Laguna Beach, California, Grant was only 12 when he first started building Instagram pages. It started as an activity he enjoyed for no reason, but after growing his first page to over 80,000 followers within five months, Grant knew he had to explore this new-found flair with more commitment.
He said: “My quick growth on the platform gave me the itch to dive deeper into consultant as I realized it could become the backbone for business. To me, it was almost a replacement for online games as this became the new achievement – how many followers could I gain on an Instagram account as opposed to how many times can I level up.”
High-flying visions
The following year, at the age of 13, inspired by his own passions and his cousin’s upcoming branding agency, Grant launched his social media growth company. He was excited to land his first client and after an impressive job, referrals followed. In the past 7 years, under Grant’s leadership, the company has spread its wings to include consulting operations on other social media platforms, especially LinkedIn and just recently, Facebook.
GGP Media (coined from Grant’s initials) now focuses on full-scale targeted growth on LinkedIn and Instagram, Facebook and Instagram account management, content creation, copywriting, graphic design, and all-round promotion. They work with a unique combination of organic growth strategies to scale business pages up to hundreds of thousands of followers within a few months. GGPMedia has been able to increase client revenue from 7 to 8 figures in 9 months, boasting an overall 95% success rate.
The company became a full social media consulting agency following Grant’s observation of a certain lack of strategy in the field. He observed that a lot of the time, growing follower counts massively would have no significant positive effect on a brand’s sales records or their overall ROI. These factors constitute real value to the client and most times, the regular and overused methods of consulting do not favor actual business growth – they merely focus on padding social media pages.
Grant said: “I formed GGPMedia to be focused on ROI consulting strategies to not only increase the follower base and visibility of a client’s social pages, but also the sales. Since sales are the life force of all businesses, I realized that if we can deliver an increase in revenue, our clients will be extremely happy. This eventually leads to more business for GGPMedia in the long run.”
Starting a company at the age of 13 is no small feat, and over time, Grant has faced his fair share of entrepreneurial struggles. He explains that the biggest stumbling block was his slow realization that the company’s staff could not be as small as he’d imagined.
He said: “The biggest struggle we experienced was while expanding our business. At first, we thought we could run everything with just 3 team members. Then we quickly realized you need to have a person to handle each responsibility for the business. That way, every single cog is running smoothly.
Grant is dedicated to becoming a top innovator in the digital consulting industry. With over 200 clients and more than 150 Instagram pages under his company’s management, he is fully committed to helping as many brands and firms as possible in navigating the intimidating reality of thriving on social media.
His five-year plan for his company is simple and yet very powerful: “I see GGPMedia being the leader in the LinkedIn consulting space. We are investing heavily each month in R&D for new consulting strategies.”