The new book, August 2026
Who’s Steering?
Face your fears, free what they’re holding back, and become your fullest self in the age of AI.
You, or your fears?
21 fears · 21 systems · 21 napkins
Also in Albanian: Kush po drejton?
Face your fears, free what they’re holding back, and become your fullest self in the age of AI.
You, or your fears?
21 fears · 21 systems · 21 napkins
Also in Albanian: Kush po drejton?
Fear is a fact. It rode with me through bread lines in Elbasan at eleven, through the 1997 pyramid collapse that ate my country’s savings, through a one-way ticket to America at seventeen, and through the night in 2017 when I parked an RV in a campground and decided to build a fiduciary practice from it. Fear never got out. It never will. Pretending otherwise is how smart people drive straight into walls.
So this is not a book about becoming fearless. It is a book about taking the wheel back. Twenty-one fears, named plainly. Twenty-one systems, one for each, that let you move while the fear is still in the car. Twenty-one napkins, hand-drawn, because if an idea does not fit on a napkin it is probably not an idea yet. It is about money where money is the problem, and about everything else where it is not.
Every chapter follows the same shape: here is the fear, here is why it is not stupid, here is the system that lets you act anyway, here is the napkin you can redraw on your own. The systems are tools, not pep talks. You can run them tomorrow morning.
| The fear | The system |
|---|---|
| Running in place, the fear you’re stuck inside a system you can’t see | The Map. Sketch the system holding you: you in the center, the forces, the exits, the heading. You can’t steer what you can’t see. |
| Fear is lying to you about timing | The Fear Journal. Log every fear, dated. Review in 90 days against what actually happened. Your own data beats fear’s forecasts. |
| The plan you’re afraid to trust | The Pre-Decision. Write the rule when you’re calm; follow it when you’re not. The plan predates the panic. |
| Everyone else is getting rich | The Denominator. Before acting on someone’s win, ask where the denominator is: how did everyone who ran this play do? The feed shows numerators only. |
| The Monday morning phone call | The Crisis Script. Pre-write your response to the crisis you know is coming. Rehearse the behavior, not the event. |
| Keep it in the corner | The Weather Rule. You don’t conquer fear; you read it, build shelter, and keep steering. Fear in the corner, hands on the wheel. |
The other fifteen are in the book. The Field Manual at the back lists all twenty-one systems on two pages, so you can find yours fast when a fear shows up at 2 a.m.
Born in communist Albania. Bread lines at eleven. Watched the 1997 pyramid schemes take the country’s savings. Came to the US at seventeen, about thirty years ago. Spent less than a year inside the insurance machine, then walked out and has been fee-only for roughly twenty years. Never worked at a wirehouse, which is why he can write about them.
Built StandUP Advisors from an RV in 2017 and 2018, and never went back to a desk. Draws money on napkins: thirty-one of them hang on the Napkin Wall. Built thirteen free calculators, the Da Vinci Index, and The Besa Standard. Filed a patent application in 2026 (pending; the examiner has not said yes, and he will not pretend otherwise). Writes Field Notes once a month.
The book that came out of the RV trip: fifteen months, 48 states, thousands of miles, and one recurring question from every person I met. “I have the money. Now what?”
It is not a personal finance book, although the personal finance is in there (budgeting, net worth, retirement, investing, insurance, taxes, estate). It is a book about what money is actually for, and why getting that answer right changes everything else. Part road trip, part financial philosophy, part honest account of what it looks like to walk away from a career, a lifestyle, and a set of assumptions about what success means.
If Who’s Steering? is about the passenger, STANDUP is about the road.
Everything below is free, no email gate. The book is the map; these are the instruments.