Nick Gallina has lived enough lives for three podcast episodes — skater kid in Northern Virginia, Marine Corps washout, Colorado snowboard bum, Full Sail film school grad, Amazon delivery service operations manager, and now a content agency owner and founder of a men's community called The Forge. Host Logan Lewis sat down with him at 216 Coworking for a conversation that started with lighting setups and wandered somewhere far more honest: divorce, isolation, and what it actually means to build a life on purpose. Nick explained why he walked away from a traditional networking group, how a rained-out fire pit hangout turned into a standing monthly gathering of two dozen guys, and why he thinks happiness is the wrong thing to chase in the first place.
President of the "Pregnant Chicks and Screw-Ups"
Nick was born in D.C. in 1978 and grew up in Northern Virginia, where he was, in his own words, one of the first kids put on Ritalin — leaving class to visit the nurse's office for his dose, hating how it made him feel. He flunked a grade, got sent to Catholic school to "straighten him out" (it didn't), and eventually got asked to leave public high school entirely, landing in a brand-new GED-accredited alternative program called Mountain View. "I used to tell everybody I was president of the pregnant chicks and screw-ups, which is pretty true, actually," he laughed. Outside of school, skateboarding gave him a scene that didn't require picking a lane — he was equal parts hip-hop kid and punk rock kid, riding the Metro into D.C. for hardcore shows, doing graffiti-adjacent art, and eventually getting swept up in a house party that got raided by Fairfax County police after a roommate's drug deal went sideways. Nick wasn't home when it happened, but he spent the next five days lying low anyway.
A Bag of Weed, a Marine Corps Discharge, and a Degree from Full Sail
After high school, Nick shipped out to Parris Island in February of 1998 with the Marine Corps — and got hurt mid-boot camp on top of old injuries he'd hidden to get in. His grandfather died while he was there, and he never got to go home for the funeral. He was sent home with a check and no plan, bounced through a stint in Aspen (fired from a Christmas-themed motel for skipping breakfast shifts to go drink with locals), then back to D.C. bartending. A stranger offered to trade him a Canon EOS DSLR for a bag of weed — "for literally like what would have cost me 150 bucks in weed, I got my first camera" — and that camera eventually pointed him toward Full Sail University's digital cinematography program. Full Sail sent him a Mac, a Sony camera, lights and mics as part of tuition, and by the time he landed in St. Petersburg, Florida, he'd launched Ghost Riot Media, then Ghost Riot Radio, a podcast built around local bands that national touring acts routinely skip because "Florida's a pain in the ass" to route through.
Amazon Vans, a Pandemic, and a Move to Georgia
Nick met his now ex-wife on Tinder, and things moved fast — engaged within months, pregnant by the time they'd been dating six, married in his living room. Then COVID hit and shut down his in-person podcast entirely. The family relocated to Colorado mid-pandemic, where Nick took what he thought would be an easy part-time gig as an Amazon delivery driver. It turned out to be an Amazon DSP franchise — and within a year he was running one hundred and eighty drivers and ninety vans as the company's operations manager, building it into the number-one DSP in the nation and earning them a second location in Hawaii. His video company, Dark Owl Creative, sat dormant for two years while he ran logistics instead. The eventual pull back to Georgia came from family: his stepson and daughter-in-law were finishing nursing school near Kennesaw and expecting a baby. "What do you think about Georgia?" Nick asked his wife on the drive home from a college football playoff game. They packed up on a whim and landed in Holly Springs, where — even through a divorce that followed — Nick has stayed close to his kids and built roots he doesn't plan on leaving.
Why He Started "Not Working" Instead of Joining Another Networking Group
Nick's frustration with traditional networking groups came to a head after a BNI-style group he belonged to hired a website developer from South Florida instead of referring the work to him — a member of their own group, sitting right there. When he pushed back, he got ghosted on a promised lunch meeting. A separate conversation with another group's marketing contact ended with her admitting she wouldn't share referral names unless he paid dues first. "I wasn't in it to make money. I just want authentic relationships. That's it," Nick said. So he started his own thing: Not Working, split into two formats — a buttoned-up morning meeting and a looser evening "meetup" at a bar with a golf simulator, an axe-throwing lane, and a cigar lounge. Calling it a meetup instead of a meeting, he explained, strips away the pressure of an agenda. "It just takes the edge off of it."
The Forge Started as a Rained-Out Fire Pit Hangout
The Forge, Nick's men's community, began even more casually. Going through a separation, Nick leaned on his friend Andy Robinson of Left Brain Mindset Consulting during a one-to-one lunch at Salt in Woodstock. Andy floated the idea of a fire pit hangout for a few guys; Nick — true to form — immediately posted it everywhere he could. Twenty guys showed up on day one, got rained out of the outdoor plan, and ended up crammed into a CrossFit garage across from Black Rifle Coffee instead. "It was the most interesting for sure, because it wasn't like we had an event planned," Nick said. Nearly two years later, The Forge draws twenty to twenty-five men on the first Wednesday of every month at JD's on Main in Woodstock, and Nick is now exploring nonprofit status and partnerships with mental health and sobriety resources — building, as he put it, "this community of people we can have in our pocket" for whenever someone needs help.
Contentment Over Happiness, and Why Manhood Feels Lonely
Business-wise, Nick has spent 2026 rebuilding Dark Owl Creative into a full social media content agency with three arms: management and marketing, Rise Highlights (highlight reels for young athletes built from existing game footage), and Frame One Academy, which now offers CE-certified content training for Georgia real estate agents. He's hired two full-time employees — including his daughter-in-law as head of client services — and picked up a business coach for a documented "60-day push to ten grand" in new revenue. But the conversation's realest moment came near the end, when Nick reflected on redefining purpose after divorce: "I think contentment is better [than happiness]. This whole life is like a video game — can you finish or not?" After the mics were supposed to be off, he circled back to something raw: manhood, he said, is a lonely place, often made lonelier by business and by how much is expected of men to hold it together without complaint. "You just have to decide that you also have value," he told Logan — which is, not coincidentally, exactly what The Forge exists to remind guys of.
Listen to the Full Conversation
This recap only scratches the surface. Nick also gets into his lightning-round picks — High Fidelity as his most-watched movie of all time, Evil Dead and The Conjuring as horror favorites, and a dream music festival lineup featuring Mobb Deep, A$AP Rock, and Chris Stapleton — plus a shout-out to JD's on Main's wings and a story about a paranormal investigation that got canceled because the haunted house in question turned into an active crime scene. Catch the full episode below.
Listen to Episode #517
Catch the full conversation with Nick Gallina on Your Morning Drive, wherever you listen.
