If you don’t recognize Nick Wolak’s name or face right off the bat, it’s likely because he’s not one to flaunt himself as a big mover and shaker in Columbus. Yet, he’s so busy moving and shaking that it’s a wonder he ever has time to stand still long enough for anyone to spot him. Wolak is the owner of the Evolved family of businesses, including its namesake tattoo shops, which has extended it reach into everything from bars to hair salons to charities. He is owner of bar and music venue KOBO (with partner Jacob Wooten), former owner of High Five (now Circus), co-organizer of fetish events Trauma and Drauma, co-founder of Dolls of Evolved, executive director of the Columbus Youth Guild and one of the minds that helped start the hair salon Rendezvous. On top of that, he’s been all over the world, seen about everything there is to see and learned several martial arts along the way. If the Most Interesting Man in The World from the Dos Equis commercials were a real person, Wolak would fit the bill. His unique, creative and collaborative business style has been a major shot in the arm to Columbus’ artistic community, a boon to its nightlife and champion of its generosity. He took some time out of his busy schedule to chat with (614) about how he does what he does, noting that he absolutely had to leave at 4:30 to teach his son’s Judo class.

Most would call you an entrepreneur, but do you feel that is a fair assessment of what you do?

I think the word entrepreneur is kind of weird to me. I don’t really consider myself an entrepreneur. I know that people do. I think that word has a lot of meanings, and I’m not sure where I fall into that definition. I simply make things happen. If I need something or want something, I figure out how to make that happen, and now that I’m a little older, I feel like part of my role is facilitating that with other people. People that are maybe 10 or 15 years younger than me, that have that same sort of mindset, I like to partner with them and give them the opportunity to make things happen. Whether or not it happens with them is another story, but I like doing that, and I’ve been doing that my whole life.

You could have started a business involving anything, done anything. How did you first get involved with tattooing?

I was traveling in Asia, and I got my first tattoo in Hong Kong, at a shop called Ricky’s Tattoo. It was kind of a famous sailor shop. I liked it. After you get your first one, it lets you know that it’s not that big of a deal. It’s not really that taboo. I was kind of floating and I ended up in Mexico, and I looked for a shop, and I couldn’t find one in Acapulco. There were a bunch of flea market stands, and I knew at least not to get a tattoo there. I was with a friend of mine, and we decided to relocate and live in Mexico, but we didn’t have the right paperwork at first to get a job, so we decided to open a business. We asked ourselves, what’s something that’s needed in this community that isn’t being offered? It was tattooing. In 1995, we started working with local artists, and Lars Johansson, Jen Marlatt and Iggy came down to Acapulco and trained our shop. I say shop … really it was me, one Mexican dude and my friend Andy Ringo in late 1995 or early 1996. I didn’t realize this, but Acapulco is a seasonal town, so the first year I was there in December, and April came and things started slowing down. May, it was like crickets. There weren’t tourists, so none of the bartenders had money. Anyone who worked in the tourist industry had no money, and the tourists who really fueled our business weren’t even around. We just sat there and looked at each other for about a week, and everyone told us there would be a weekend here or there through the year, but that we might as well go home until December. I took six months a year to go home or travel. One year I drove to Brazil. I did that for six years, until Jennifer and I got pregnant, and I moved back here. In 2000, we bought Viking studios from Lars, who’d trained us in ’95. It was above the old Used Kids.

And that was Evolved. You’ve used it as a jumping-off point for your other ventures, correct?

The whole concept behind Evolved was to create a home base, because I feel it needed to be created. A home from which I could travel, from which any one of our artists could travel anywhere in the world and know that they had somewhere to come home to. Having a home is a really important thing in your life, whether it’s your house or a family or a partner or a dog. We kind of all are out there a little bit, and we take our own journeys, but knowing you have something to come back to lets you go that much farther, each time. Evolved was also developed as a magnet to bring in other artists from all over the world that could learn from us and could show us things. We’ve had guys come in from Asia, South America, North America, Europe and Africa. As an artist, as a creator, as someone who needs a source of passion, it’s nice to be around other artists. Columbus is that home base.

You’ve traveled extensively throughout your life. How has that affected the way you approach the things that you do around town?

My father was with Ford Motor Company, and he started as a poor kid from Lorain, shoveling coal in the plants, and he worked his way up, and took every promotion that came to him, regardless of where he had to go. That was pretty cool. Looking back, we moved around a lot. We lived two years in Chihuahua, Mexico. I’ve been to about 40 countries. I think that’s fundamental for people. I wish more people would do that. It’s saved my life and changed my life, and blessed my life, all in the same breath. I’ve learned to trust people and to not trust people, and to be cautious and I’ve leaned to be generous. I’ve seen that sometimes people with the very least to give will give you the most, and the contrary. Sometimes people with the most won’t give you anything. It really puts into perspective for me how I want to be, so if my paradigm – my microcosm – were limited to just what I see up and down High Street on my way to work and home, that would be the only analogies I’d be able to draw from, but seeing so many cultures and people … I’ve seen kids die, and I’ve helped give birth. I’ve seen so many life-changing, life-altering things and experienced so much, that when I’m here, I think that it adds a certain depth to my decision making – how I spend my time, what things we support.

One of those things is Trauma. How did that get started?

Trauma’s been a lot of fun. One of the first years I was back, Shawn Lower was helping run a fetish ball. He put a lot of time and a lot of energy in it, and it probably brought in 200 people, but at the end of the night, they paid him almost nothing. He was really disappointed with the amount of money he was given, and for probably all of us, it’s the recognition, as much as the time and the money. He hadn’t been given recognition, didn’t get paid and had spent a lot of time, and he asked me if maybe I’d be interested in helping him with a different fetish ball. I said I would, under the condition that we blow it up into a crazy party and make it something that’s not being done in Columbus. I wanted to make sure that we introduced something new to Columbus when we did it. That was the beginning of it. In the first year, we had 600 people, which for some events is nothing, but for two guys on their first big party, we were really excited.

What’s your biggest project right now? What do you give most of your focus to?

If I were to pick one thing that I’m most excited about and most engaged in, it would be the Columbus Youth Guild. Together with a whole bunch of parents and members of the community, we formed a 501(c)(3). We do all sorts of activities for kids, and it’s better than free. They sell water at football games, they do a fundraiser at KOBO, they were the first kids to speak at Columbus Pecha Kucha, and they spoke at Comfest on the main stage. Besides the sports, they’re getting entrepreneurship and some public speaking. We started in a traveling league, and as far as I know, all the teams are pay-to-play. Your mom or dad writes a check for a couple hundred bucks, and that pays the coach and they get nice uniforms, and that’s cool. That’s American soccer, but what happens if you’ve got a group of kids or a cross section of the community that has those skills and can play at that level, but maybe their parents either don’t want to or don’t have the means to cut that check every month? That’s kind of messed up. For example, most of the best soccer playing countries in the world, a lot of the kids play soccer every day and they have lots of opportunity, regardless of their socioeconomic status. So we just started providing free everything. We’ve got free Judo, free soccer, free ceramics, free cross country, yoga, cross fit for kids, and we cross train, so we’ve got circus, boxing, street hockey, and it’s all through the Thompson Recreation Center in the Short North.

And they have the benefit of your expertise. After all, you are an international Judo competitor.

I’m retired. I don’t fight any more. It’s fun. We get to travel a whole lot. We have two kids in our program that are ranked. We have one boy who’s ranked No. 2 in the country and one boy who’s ranked No. 3. From a little neighborhood gym with no resources, to have ranked kids is really cool, so it’s fun for me too, because I get to travel. At one point in my career, I got to train at the Olympic training center, I fought in a couple U.S. Opens, I fought overseas and I was pretty active, so now I get to see former coaches and colleagues and competitors. I really like it. My son and daughter are also involved. That’s what I look forward to every day. In fact, I have practice after this. There are a lot of things in life that you make room for that you can be late to or make it up next time, but that just doesn’t happen with this kids’ group. That is my focus. Every day, I know what the practice is and I make sure that I’m there.

You’ve been very successful and you’ve managed to remain who you are, despite social pressures to look a certain way. Has that presented challenges?

Evolved does a ton of public speaking for free. Part of the Evolved mission is to also give back to the community, so we go to OSU, Otterbein, high schools, middle schools, elementary schools and we talk about everything from the history of what we’re doing now to stereotypes. I simply don’t have room for discrimination in my world. In that idea of how large I think things can be, that narrow-mindedness just doesn’t have any place. I travel a lot, and one time this lady at the check-in was like, “Oh my gosh! Why would you do that? What does your mother think about that?” I asked her if she was working right then. She said yes, and then I said, “I’m a paying customer” and asked her if this was how she was trained to deal with people who are different from her on a professional level. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to check in now.” Her jaw dropped. A month or two later, I came back to the airport and it was, “Hello, Mr. Wolak. Good to see you again.” It’s not allowing that. If I’d have just put my tail between my legs and not said anything or told her to go f**k herself, then it would have been different. Instead, I took 10 seconds, corrected her, and she was smart enough to realize it, and we went on our separate ways. I dress like this every day. I go to the bank; I go sign mortgage papers like this. For me, the focus is more on what I’m doing and not on how I look.