Nick’s great-grandparents on his mother’s side immigrated to the US from Germany in the 1920s. His grandmother’s family lived in the northern part of New Jersey where his Great-Grandfather had a bakery. Fast Forward a generation when his grandfather had his own custom machine shop. Nick grew up going to see his parents and grandfather at the shop. This is where Nick feels he generated his love for curiosity. At a young age, Nick was always taking things apart and putting them back together. He would spend hours helping his grandfather tinker with things.

Nick often views himself as a “Lifestyle Entrepreneur or an Industriousness Entrepreneur,” having successfully started the technology club at his middle school, eventually selling thousands of dollars worth of fundraising fruit, wreaths, or cookie dough and even having a mobile device repair business throughout his high school career.

At age 6 Nick started “Nick’s Landscaping Co.” This venture was an opportunity for a young kid to earn some money in his neighborhood, from weeding to raking and even snow shoveling in the wintertime. The best part was, “I do everything…Pay whatever you want” were the two selling points. As Nick got older, he started to learn some tricks of the trade when it came to sales from his father. Nick’s father made a career out of being a salesman, whether it was for the family machine business or high-end fabrics for suits, or even later in his career marketing programs for pharmaceutical companies. Nick was always the top producer when it came to selling boxes of fruits or Christmas wreaths while he was in Boy Scouts, he even was the number one seller in the annual cookie dough sales for the 7th-grade class trip for his class. Nick was not always about being a salesman, he was an opportunist, during his 7th and 8th-grade years he was the lead for both the sound and lighting for the school plays. He assumed this role as there was no one person before him and the individuals that were in place prior did not really understand the full scope of the capabilities. So, he taught himself and upon graduation from middle school, he created the Tech Club, to teach others. This gave the students who wanted to learn an opportunity to do so. There were many different roles to assist in the successful production of the shows and created a pipeline of students for years to come.

When Nick was 16 years old, he was taking a computer programming class, when he was approached by his teacher and asked if he could run the boys’ varsity basketball team’s website. Out of a class of 15 students, Nick was the one selected; it was a job that excited him even though at the time he had not created a website before. Nick was able to enhance their online site and even integrated their Twitter and Facebook feeds into the site. No matter how small or large the project, many people turned to Nick because they could trust him, and they knew he would solve their problem. In addition to the involvement with the website, Nick also had the opportunity to be a sports announcer and coordinate the music programming at the games. After the success of the website and the basketball team’s website, Nick was approached by the founder of FindaBaller, Blake Hamilton. Findaballer is a local organization founded to provide our youth and community pathways to new opportunities by connecting them with the power of sports training. Blake and Nick grew a fast and mutually beneficial partnership. Nick was later brought on as the COO/CIO, where he led the operations of the business as well as all the technology. This was a fantastic opportunity to continue his personal development, as well as his network! Nick had started another venture at that time, and while in high school started his mobile repair business. Nick used to use his lunch hours fixing student’s and faculty's iPhones. He developed enough sales over the remainder of his high school career to pay for all the technology items he had wanted for college.

Upon graduating from high school in 2013, Nick decided to move away and attend UNC Charlotte. He was the first person from his high school to apply and attend this university. So needless to say, the first semester he was looking for opportunities to get involved. He was approached early on about starting up a new chapter of his fraternity on campus, Phi Delta Theta. Nick quickly joined and was named the first Vice President. He feels that part of his college career helped shape him into the leader he is today. Further, during his junior and senior years, he stepped up to help oversee all the fraternities on campus as the overall Vice President of the IFC. Nick was very involved while in school, he held many leadership roles, and was a part of many clubs and interest groups both internally and externally at the school.

One group he had the opportunity to join was OneGreek, he was the on-campus ambassador for this new Greek life application. That company quickly sold off, however, to another group where they specialized in organization’s promotional or group apparel, more specifically Greek life t-shirts. This is where Nick excelled. He quickly became the East Coast rep for all the accounts and the liaison for placing orders. This was not the first time he had been around promotional apparel before, in fact aside from hearing about it from his father when it was his career, he had been around it numerous other times. In high school, there were two instances, the first being when a local high-end clothing store asked for Nick to assist with their marketing strategy. This clothing store had asked Nick to help with the redesign of their website and to help develop a plan to roll out come the new year for marketing. The second was when a company came in to outfit the high school baseball team with new gear.  Nick took charge in developing the catalog and collecting all the orders.

Fast forward to the fall of 2019, Nick over the course of the next 2 years would help assist UNC Charlotte and his fraternity in fundraising efforts.  He would bring together a group of people that he felt would be good ambassadors for the cause he was trying to make a change for.  This all led to the creation of One Chaptr in August of 2021.

One Chaptr was created as a brand for individuals to get behind, for folks to hang their hats on.  Nick was tired of the ambassadors he was bringing on to say, “Yeah I am helping Nick Sulak with this initiative.”  He wanted them to feel like they were a part of something bigger.  So, it took Nick 6 months to come up with a name and a logo that he was proud of. The name One Chaptr is an acronym, each letter represents the 9 pillars that Nick feels embody not only himself but the people he surrounds himself with.  Additionally, the representation of the wolf howling at the moon is significant because the wolf represents loyalty, curiosity, fierceness, and togetherness and the moon represents that the work we are doing never stops and we are working all the time to get better!  Furthermore, when you read the name One Chaptr, even on a surface level we are striving to change people’s lives One Chaptr at a time. Let One Chaptr help write the next chapter of your life.

In January of 2022, Nick took One Chaptr to the next level.  He opened the merchandising service piece of the company.  He spun off the mental health and community impact pieces to the non-profit branch under One Movement, which also now included the social movement of the Check-in Movement.  The reasoning behind opening the merchandising service section of the business was there was a greater need to help businesses.  He had been doing research and discovered small businesses, colleges, and sports teams all share in the need for gear.  The current market had a ton of print shops, but the print shops fell short when providing a really good experience to the end customer.  Additionally, alumni of local schools were not happy with what the bigger retailers were providing for apparel.  So, Nick created One Chaptr Creative and One Campus Co. under the One Chaptr family of businesses. One Chaptr Creative looks to help organizations do bulk orders while providing an experience with a catalog of over 350,000 items to choose from. Whereas the One Campus Co. is an online retailer looking to bring academics, athletics, and alumni together! 

Nick is excited to see where the next few years have in stores and what doors are about to open!