Instagram influencer Polina Nioly was once a simple girl from a small town in Russia who worked in a fast-food chain. After quitting her fast-food job, Nioly, also known as Polina Pushkareva, moved to New York and became a millionaire. Now she is ready to tell her story to the world.
Nioly is an Instagram influencer, movie investor, producer and business owner. She was born in Kovrov in Vladimir Oblast, Russia, a city with a population of 132,417 people, according to City Population. “My childhood was more or less like everyone’s in a provincial town; something was always missing. Sometimes there were moments when there was no money at all. There was no traveling, there was literally nothing. However, I had a pretty good family with moral values that passed to me,” Nioly said.
While she was getting her bachelor’s degree at Saint Petersburg State University in Russia, Polina worked in a fast-food chain. In 2017, she flew to the United States for the first time — and that trip changed her worldview. “I realized that I would never be able to return to this country if I continued to work with a salary of $2 per hour. The only option for me then, as it seemed, was social media. I didn’t have any skills and this was the only opportunity to do something differently,” Nioly said.
She said she started promoting different commercial accounts of brands, restaurants, and beauty salons and later became an SMM manager of social media influencers. Along with promoting others, Polina started her own Instagram page. “I thought since I promote social networks for others, why can’t I make something out of myself?” Nioly stated.
By the year 2020, she already had 1 million subscribers.
She has been testing different PR strategies using her own account that she then recommends to clients, she said. She’s since developed her own promotion system that she says can be applied to any business account, whether it belongs to a company, person, or brand. The strategy paid off, and she started to see an increase in clients. That’s when she said she decided to open her own strategic agency on social media monetization, the Nioly Media Group.
Today, as Nioly continues to grow her business and her own brand, she continues to plan her next steps. “I feel great. I’m currently at five percent out of 100 that I plan to achieve in my life, so I can’t say that I’m sitting and analyzing how successful I am, how cool I am, how much I have achieved – no, this is a process and I’m at the very beginning of my career path,” Polina shared.
When asked about her main focus right now, she said she’s going to develop her talent agency, which currently has 32 clients. “We will grow it to the level that it will be the largest talent management agency in America; we will hire more people, we will open more businesses,” she said.
In addition to that, Nioly is dreaming of opening her own restaurant in the Financial District, where she currently resides. The date of the opening has yet to be announced. “I can’t promise any opening date for now, as I overestimated my capabilities and the possibilities of starting a business in America,” she said. “There is a big amount of bureaucracy, in particular.”
For now, the next endeavor that people can expect Nioly to take on is the launch of her own lingerie line. She is planning to debut a fashion couture show in Milan in February. And by May, Nioly expects to open stores in New York and Los Angeles. Additionally, she revealed that there is no secret to earning lots of money. She said it’s just about leveraging passion, dedication, and hard work. “The million [dollar] figure seems to be such a big deal to everyone, but in fact, it’s not as difficult [ to achieve it] as people imagine,” she said.
“And there is nothing surprising about my age,” she continued. “It’s not a question of age, it’s a question of finding what drives you and what you want to do. I found it a little earlier than others did.”
