Exploring the Idea of a VS Code Plugin and the Importance of Automatic Income

Show notes:
Links:
Garrett Dimon
Minitest Heat
Heat Map Reporter for Minitest
Review
Starting & Sustaining
Sifter App

Automated transcript (only about 70% accurate)
Ben
 
Welcome to FounderQuest, this has been Today, I'm interviewing Garrett Diamond Star and josh are taking the day off and I get a chat with Garrett, who's a longtime friend of mine and fantastic entrepreneur and all around great person in the world, so I'm excited to have you here. Gary, Thanks, 

Garrett
 
thanks for having me. 

Ben
 
It's always fun catching up with you. I think the last time we chatted was business of software a few years ago, wasn't it? 

Garrett
 
Yeah, not frequently enough, 

Ben
 
so that was, yeah, definitely not frequent enough. One thing I most remember about that business of software was that was when the hurricane was coming through and so I was standing out there in boston with all the wind and the 

Garrett
 
right, having grown 

Ben
 
up in the south, that was kind of ironic that I was there in the northeast and getting a hurricane. Mhm. So have you been 

Garrett
 
three, so just uh probably about the same as everybody else man, you know, just kinda one day at a time and keeping it going um and yeah, I just kind of dabbling and exploring and for once the last year just kind of let myself be undirected and just kind of followed what was interesting and pulled on threads and uh a little unnerving but also kind of nice and refreshing, I don't know, you know, so kind of bouncing around like a ping pong ball. 

Ben
 
Well, that's, that sounds pretty cool. Well, let's talk about that in a minute. I want to catch people up so I'm sure most people know you, but just for those who don't. So Garrett again, it's been a long time entrepreneur I think. I think I first bumped into you with doing sifter, your, your, your app from a few years ago, you built that from scratch solo entrepreneur and then you sold that. Then you're, you're at post uh, postmark for awhile for that. Right. 

Garrett
 
Well, wild bit at large, but primarily on postmark. Yeah. 

Ben
 
Okay. Right. Right. So you're a while, but for a while and then I guess it was a couple of years ago now that you've left wild. 

Garrett
 
Yeah, it's been about . years, I guess. No. Okay. 

Ben
 
Yeah. And so I guess also during that time you kind of did the starting and sustaining books slash video series slash thing. That was cool. 

Garrett
 
Yeah, I've been dabbling in all that, trying to share my battle wounds so that other people can maybe avoid them or less than them. 

Ben
 
Yeah, that's awesome. I remember, I remember buying that. It's good, good stuff. So also linked in the show notes. Maybe we'll get a sailor to uh, you spoke, you spoke at Microsoft a few times or at least once that I can remember 

Garrett
 
I can't even keep track now. Microsoft spoke once attended a couple of times. Yeah. 

Ben
 
And so now you're doing some, some interesting stuff. So I remember, remember when you left a wild bit, you were, you're really interested in getting started on helping amputees have a community and so you started adapted, right? So, we're gonna talk about that for a second, and then we can talk about, you know, how that plan kind of changed for you with the passage? 

Garrett
 
Um, I mean, so I'm a left below knee amputee. And when I was trying to make that decision, I couldn't find any information on what life is really like as an amputee, um, let alone specific information about, can I play basketball still, if so, how does that work? Or what other activities can I do? And there's just not a lot of detailed information, and with disability, even just within amputees, the range is incredible, like above me and bologna makes a complete difference in how you function and your body mechanics, and so I just couldn't find this information out there. And so that kind of planted the seed that obviously it's not out there and, you know, it's woefully under informed, which at first was kind of scary, it's like, oh, I guess nobody does any of this stuff 

Garrett
 
and for me, the whole, ironically, the whole point of amputating was so that I could get back to doing things because of my ankle fusion was horrible and all that, it's just hurt and was miserable and through the whole thing, I was blogging about it, and what would happen is people would email me because they'd go on google and search for amputation, ankle fusion, that kind of thing, and then they'd ask me like, I'm, because I was the only person that came up and I would get these emails, you know, it kind of varies and go ebbs and flows, you know, to a month, once a week, you know, so frequently enough. Um, and uh, one uh, young woman that reached out to me, she actually amputated and then just won a couple of gold medals in the paralympics and like, 

Garrett
 
it just blew my mind is like, how do you find the answers to this stuff? And uh, after being an amputee now about five years and trying stuff and just kind of figuring it out. Uh, my hope was originally, I was like, well, I'm a software developer, I'll build a platform so people can share that information, um, you know, and I figured I was really optimistic about that specifically, because, well I built sifter and rails has gotten way better and I learned a ton from sifters, it'll be way easier this time around, but I didn't really account for was now I've got a family and I'm  years older, uh and so it's been more challenging at the end of the day, I'm just tapped on software because I'm doing that all day and my brain is fried. 

Garrett
 
Um, but I've been doing videos kind of explaining this stuff to people about how legs work and the logistics of like how they change your body mechanics and um, how to do things like go to the beach and deal with sand in your foot and that kind of stuff. Uh, and I did that more is like an exploratory whimsical thing because that was the kind of content I hope people would create and put on the platform. So then you could filter and say, here's my disability, here's the activity I want to do. Give me all the information about that specific thing. Um, but I did it and it just kind of left it for a year, but it just kept going and then more people have been contacting me and so now what I'm doing is kind of 

Garrett
 
stepping back from the software side of it and I'm just gonna keep recording videos for the next short term, um, and having them produced and that kind of stuff and hopefully increasing the quality and the depth and then doing interviews with other amputees and really kind of getting into more stuff, um, and then eventually circling back to building a platform to help people find the right things that meet their needs and that kind of thing. Um, so, you know, it's, it's, it's been tough. I think the toughest thing is realizing that nonprofit side projects are the hardest thing to make time for, um because it's never going to offset my income or anything. And so like 

Garrett
 
now I've kind of been thinking, I guess I need to build...