Tax officials were stunned when a 12-year-old boy – a social media star named Jonathan Grosman –entered the offices of the Tax Authority in Jerusalem and asked to open a self-employment file. The young Grosman, who has been uploading videos for the past six months that receive hundreds of thousands of views every day, was rather serious and explained to the clerks who thought they had seen it all that "there are influencers who earn tens of thousands of shekels from creating content."
Now the young social media star, who also holds the title of the youngest business owner in Israel, is working on a business plan - one that will fit in between his studies, his work on social media, and the acting career he is currently pursuing.
If you've been active on social media for the past six months, there's no way that the videos of social media star Jonathan Grosman aren't popping up in your feed. The 12-year-old – who uploads entertaining, exciting interview videos every day, especially those that deal with finding love and relationships, and receives hundreds of thousands of views, comments and shares – realized at a very young age that the power he has on social media can be translated into money; so on Thursday he entered the offices of the Tax Authority in Jerusalem and told the surprised clerks: "I want to open my own business."
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Jonathan Grosman is the youngest business owner in Israel
(Photo: Courtesy of the family)
The much older Tax Authority clerks, who thought they had seen everything, were initially sure that it was a hoax. "It is impossible to open a business at such an age, you must be working to do this," they told the young star, who arrived at the offices accompanied by his father. "How do you intend to make money?" they asked, and discovered that business owners offer to pay large amounts of money for creative and targeted marketing on social media networks.
"I speak to the younger generation and the number of people up to the age of 30 who consume my content is huge," Jonathan explained. "After six months of creating content, the number of people who turn to me for business collaborations has increased greatly, and my parents, who manage my digital pages, decided that it would be appropriate to open a file with the tax authorities so that I could issue invoices to businesses like the big influencers do."
And the kid seems to understand what he is talking about. Last year, Goldman Sachs reported that the market called "the economy of content creators" is currently worth around $250 billion worldwide. According to their report, within three years, in 2027, the market is expected to almost double to a value estimated at approximately $480 billion dollars. The huge numbers from abroad have not yet completed their immigration to Israel, but experts in the field know that social media marketing in Israel takes a more significant share of the advertising pie with each passing year, when videos of leading influencers can cost Israeli advertisers tens of thousands of shekels.
Jonathan Grosman interviews a reserve soldier who tells him about his girlfriend
In light of the continuous rise in the number of views of the young star's videos, many business owners appear to have identified a new market segment. "Lots of small and large company owners and social media managers started contacting me in the last few weeks, asking me to upload Tiktok, Reels and YouTube stories and videos with a motif that combines their business in a way that speaks to my audience," said Jonathan. "The world of influencers has worked with content creators in their 20s, and the many referrals I receive probably stem from a desire to reach new audiences and new ages."
If you ask Jonatan what is the thing he would most like to experience, it is the world of acting. "Besides creating the content, studying and spending time with my friends, I am also taking initial steps in the world of acting and starting to experiment with auditions for series. I have the amazing Aviv from the Zohar Yakobson Agency, who is looking for charming roles for me in TV series, and I hope that soon you will be able to see me on the stage as well."
Isn't it strange that a boy your age is running a business?
"In my opinion, in every generation entrepreneurial children have tried to make money in original ways. My grandmother said that when she wanted to buy a bicycle, she opened a lemonade stand on the street in the middle of the summer. She found a central location and answered a need, so everyone stopped and bought lemonade from her. Entrepreneurship by young people is an amazing thing and technology today is simple, allowing us to do more things with the click of a button. When people talk negatively about the 'TikTok generation', they don't understand that digital platforms give children of this age endless tools and we need to use them wisely. Making money is not a bad thing, and I think we need to normalize the discourse around the issue and teach it in school along with marketing and entrepreneurship. The education system should give us financial tools so that we know how to integrate into the future job market. Math is important, but I guarantee you that if we are given real tips on how to make money, all the kids will want to spend 100 percent of their time in this class."
And how does a child get to the point where he bargains for percentages with CEOs of companies?
And we need to find interviewees who bring interest, emotion or value to my surfers, and then we also need to edit the videos and manipulate the pages. It's hard work. I consult my parents on everything and trust them 100 %, and together we decide how much to price each offer I receive."
Jonathan Grosman interviews Israeli singer Rami Kleinstein
Will you market any product?
"Absolutely not. First of all, the product or service should speak to me. The product should be relevant to my audience and the video should include the business or product in a way that does not scream 'advertisement', because at the end of the day it will not serve the business owner. The wisdom of marketing on social networks is when It's not aggressive and there's a drive for emotion alongside it. Many companies have approached us with various proposals for marketing clothing brands, footwear and even toys, and these days my parents and I are thinking with which companies we'll start working in cooperation."
His long-time followers have seen more than once that Jonathan supports small businesses in his story. "We are in the middle of a war, and from the beginning I wanted to help publicize small businesses and businesses managed by reservists, free of charge. At the end of the day, thanks to the sacrifice and dedication of women and men who left homes and families to fight for our security we have the possibility to continue living and we should cherish them and thank them every day. The videos I like the most are videos with IDF soldiers in reserve or regular service."