Powills Applies a Simple Formula to Challenge Readers to Unpack Their Personal Story to Accomplish Their Goals
Nick Powills, the CEO and founder of No Limit Agency and 1851 Franchise, has written his debut book, “Sticks & Stones: Building Entrepreneurial Success from Life’s Struggles.” The book is published by Inc. Magazine and available for purchase on March 5, 2019 on Amazon and at 200 airports and Barnes & Noble bookstores.
“Sticks & Stones” disrupts traditional genre categorization. Part memoir, part personal development book, Powills’ book blends personal experience and earned business acumen to empower readers to connect their story with their vision. Tracing a lifelong struggle with weight to bullying from his peers to rejection from coaches, professors, bosses and a professional baseball player he admired, Powills turns his painful memories into fuel and unlocks accessible formulas that allow readers to apply his insight to their own lives.
Building from his opening formula, “Foundation + Momentum = Velocity,” Powills defines each component and showcases both its manifestation in his own life and how it led to entrepreneurial success. Powills blends his own experiences with guided writing exercises throughout that challenge readers to reflect on their own struggles, or ‘fuel,’ and reframe their pain points into an adaptive plan to achieve their ‘velocity,’ or passion.
The book’s adaptive framework notably departs from oft-repeated platitudes about success and failure: instead of finding a “unicorn” idea, Powills encourages entrepreneurs and goal setters to embrace their ‘one inch of difference’; instead of writing off ideas when the data shows they’re not viable, Powills advises readers to revise by adding to their ‘foundation’ or strengthening their ‘momentum’. Embracing the truism that everyone who has achieved something great has battled through adversity, “Sticks and Stones” offers readers the tools to unpack their stories in service of their potential.
“In a given moment, especially painful ones, I often couldn’t see how my struggles could possibly help me in the long run,” Powills said. “It’s only been over time, as I’ve realized the power of my support system, or ‘foundation,’ and gained the confidence that’s propelled my ‘momentum’ that I’ve realized that each stage was a building block moving me toward something special. Hearing ‘no’ happened early and often, but eventually made complete sense to me: I needed to hear ‘no’ so I could engineer a plan to execute my vision on my terms.”
Powills’ ability to “connect the silos”—to see how childhood bullying equipped him to carve out a unique career path and become an industry innovator—makes “Sticks & Stones: Building Entrepreneurial Success from Life’s Struggles” a useful guide to anyone looking to define their purpose and connect their story to their vision.
No Limit Agency Founder & CEO Nick Powills was an early fan and adopter of social media. In the days when MySpace was really the only game in town, Powills—who was working at the time for a public relations agency—developed a business plan and approached his boss with the idea of creating a social media department to leverage this emerging way to tell brands’ stories. His boss laughed at him, called social media “a fad,” and ultimately rejected the young entrepreneur’s vision. Undeterred, Powills followed his gut instinct that social media was the wave of the future and ventured out on his own, determined to create a social media agency that also provided PR services to clients. Even while colleagues, friends and family echoed his former boss’s contention that social media was a flash in the pan, Powills created MySpace pages for brands and added a dimension to their digital presence. His vision was validated after early success, and Powills has grown No Limit Agency (and sister content marketing company, 1851 Franchise) into multi-million dollar businesses and 5-time Inc. 5000 honoree that now operate out of the historic Prudential building in downtown Chicago.
