100% Disabled Veteran · USAF AFSOC

J.D. Forrest

Rated 100% permanent and total on a VA claim I ran myself. The free playbook is below.

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The VA playbook

  1. Lesson 01The VA Claim Industrial Complex (and Why You DIY)Why the whole paid-help economy around VA claims exists, who the players are, and why the one person who should run your claim is you.
  2. Lesson 02Pick Your AI and Build the WorkspaceChoose Claude or ChatGPT, build one persistent workspace, redact your SSN, and load your documents so every session starts with context.
  3. Lesson 03The System Prompt That Turns a Chatbot Into a RaterPaste one block of instructions into your workspace and a general chatbot becomes a claims strategist that never forgets the plan.
  4. Lesson 04VA Math: The Combined Rating Formula That's Quietly Robbing YouThe VA combined rating formula most vets get wrong, the bilateral factor the VA sometimes skips, and a five-category map for your claims.
  5. Lesson 05Intent-to-File, Secondaries, and PresumptivesThe one-page form that protects a year of back pay, the most underfiled play in the system, and the claims the VA presumes for you.
All 10 lessons

Writing

  1. Why I tore the CMS out and went staticWhy I pulled WordPress out and went static: the design tax and the maintenance tax, and what one person gets back by building plain pages instead.
  2. The paste-and-publish loopThe whole publishing workflow in four steps: write in plain markdown, drop it in a folder, the build runs, the page is live in the site design.

The rest of it

Does Joe Forrest have a newsletter?

One Machine. No schedule. It shows up when I have something worth your time. You get a confirm link first, and nothing starts until you tap it.

I publish several letters on the Niche of One network. This one's mine. The rest have their own subjects. See the other letters

How do I get in touch with Joe Forrest?

Work, a VA question, or something I wrote. It all comes to me. Or email hello@joeforrest.com.