Meller Notes

About Meller Notes

Personal and professional development for people who want to grow in their careers, become more visible, lead better, and manage work and life with clarity. Meller Notes is here, curating content on career, leadership, and management for your personal and professional development

Publisher

William Meller

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

16 Feb 2026

Latest episode

7 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

30 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   7 Sept 2026

   #030 - Moving Abroad for Work: How to Transform a Dream Into Reality

   This episode is different. No news, no study, no three topics. It is my own story of how a Brazilian ended up in Sweden, and it is here for one reason: if you want to take your career abroad, what separates the people who do it from the people who keep talking about it is not luck, it is preparation. I start with the difference between a wish and a choice. Saying you would like to live abroad is a wish, and a wish asks nothing from you. Saying you will build a career that takes you abroad is a choice, and a choice makes you organize your present around a future that does not exist yet. Then I talk about the quiet work nobody sees. Focus on English, networking done long before I needed it, and the work of understanding my options and my own career portfolio. None of that looks like much on its own. Together it is the difference between being able to say yes and having to say you are not ready. I also talk about the one thing that breaks the whole plan and that almost nobody mentions: if you have a family, this move is not only yours. Many people decide alone and try to convince the people next to them later. In my case the alignment with my wife was built over time, it was a shared goal, and that is why the answer did not depend only on me when the moment came. Then I tell you how the moment arrived. Pandemic, remote work, English all day long, a referral, a consulting company in Sweden, and a direct question at the end of the process: can you land here as soon as the visa is approved? A few weeks to pack a whole life. The answer was yes, and it was not bravery. Finally, the half that the international career story hides. Distance from family, a silent grief, starting from zero after you already built a lot, a country with another language, another weather, another culture and another way of relating to people. Being ready is also knowing what you are saying no to when you say yes. More than four years and a daughter born here later, what I want to leave you with is not the story, it is the logic behind it. If your answer today is "not yet", that is not failure, that is a diagnosis. No external sources in this episode. Everything here is personal experience.

2. 

   31 Aug 2026

   #029 - Your First Week at a New Job Matters More Than You Think

   You got the offer, you signed the contract, and now comes the part nobody prepares you for. Your first week at a new job is not about delivering results, it is about being read for the first time. And the read people make of you in those first days is much harder to change later than we tend to think. In this episode I talk about three things that shape that first week. The first is listening before you show up. Wanting to prove your value right away is natural, but nobody expects you to fix anything on day one. What they expect is that you learn how things work in there, and that includes noticing the gap between the way the company says it works and the way it actually works. The second is that relationships come before skill. In those first days nobody has seen you work yet, so what sticks is how you treat people. Learning names, treating the person who seems less important well, accepting a coffee. That builds more than any deliverable, and it is exactly what saves you when you need help a month from now. The third is the fine line between confidence and arrogance. Arriving confident is good, arriving ready to teach everyone is the fastest way to get rejected. Every company has a reason for doing things its way, even when it looks wrong. Humility here is not shrinking yourself, it is recognizing that you don't have the full map yet. If you are starting somewhere new, or you lead someone who is, this episode is about what really matters in those first days. No data, no studies, just the basics almost everyone forgets.

3. 

   24 Aug 2026

   #028 - The Philosopher CEO: The Books Every Leader Needs to Read

   You have read the strategy books. Maybe even the good ones. And you have probably noticed something almost nobody says out loud: the people who read the most business books are not necessarily the best leaders in practice. In this special episode I talk about something I have been thinking about for a while, how to read better, which means reading the right things, in the right order.Business books teach the craft. How to price, how to compete, how to organize a team. That matters, but it does not teach what is underneath the craft, how power actually behaves, what people do under pressure, how to decide when the data runs out and you are alone with the call. That part was written a long time ago, by people who watched empires rise and fall, and it does not sit on the business shelf at the bookstore.The idea in this episode is not to trade one library for the other, it is to put both together in a deliberate order. On one side, professional formation, how an enterprise is actually run. On the other, human formation, the civilizational library that shapes judgment itself. I walk through how this system is organized, the numbers behind it, and I use six books as a practical example of weaving the two tracks together, three classics and three essential business books.The goal is not finishing a giant book list. It is reaching the moment when the data runs out and you are alone with the decision, and having something formed inside you to hold up that moment.Access now: https://mellernotes.substack.com/p/the-philosopher-ceo

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