The Confidence Shortcut with Niki Sterner

#7: Micah Caldwell | From Law to Laughter | The Leap into a Creative Life

• Niki Sterner • Season 1 • Episode 7

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What happens when you've spent decades building a successful career only to realize it's not the life you want? Micah Caldwell faced this question head-on when, after nearly twenty years as a high-powered telecommunications lawyer in Washington DC, she hit a breaking point. Managing multi-billion-dollar government programs during the pandemic had pushed her to her limits, and when asked to rebuild an entire program from scratch, something inside her simply said: enough.

This conversation takes us through Micah's courageous decision to walk away from everything she had built—her career, community, and the identity she had cultivated for two decades. With remarkable candor, she shares the uncomfortable truth that she had been living according to others' expectations rather than her own desires. Her journey of rediscovery led her first to Asheville, North Carolina, where she reconnected with creative pursuits that had brought her joy before adult responsibilities and parental expectations redirected her path.

The heart of Micah's story reveals how she transformed from burned-out lawyer to thriving voice actor and comedian in Atlanta's creative community. She offers practical wisdom about managing the persistent inner critic that tries to sabotage creative ambitions, sharing her three-step process: stop the negative thought, reframe it through the lens of what you'd tell a friend, and verbalize the positive alternative aloud. This practice acknowledges that our inner critics often represent internalized external feedback rather than our authentic selves.

Perhaps most inspiring is Micah's evolving relationship with possibility. After years of limiting her dreams to what seemed "practical," she's learning to envision bigger goals and actively invite opportunities through specific requests and public commitments. Her story reminds us that confidence isn't about fearlessness but about consistently doing things that scare you, whether that's performing stand-up comedy or completely reinventing your professional identity.

Ready to question whether your current path truly reflects your deepest values? This conversation offers both inspiration and practical tools for those considering their own creative transitions, demonstrating that it's never too late to reclaim your voice and build a life aligned with your authentic self.


You can follow Micah on: 

Instagram: @micahonmic

Facebook: Micah Caldwell

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Niki Sterner:

Welcome to the Confidence Shortcut. I'm your host, Niki Sterner. Today's guest is Micah Caldwell, my really good friend. She's an Atlanta-based female voice talent with experience in commercials, political ads, narration and more. Before her life in voiceover. Micah was a lawyer and policy advocate for nearly two decades. Now she uses her voice and passion for storytelling to help clients connect with audiences. As a creative, her commitment to communication runs deep, shaped by a childhood speech impediment and a lifetime of adapting to hearing loss. Those early challenges ignited her drive to connect with audiences in a powerful way. Now, nothing brings her more joy than bringing a script to life and truly engaging listeners. When she's not in her professional home voiceover studio, you can find Micah lighting up the stage in Atlanta's comedy scene, performing stand-up improv and sketch, so I'm so happy that you're here today, micah. Thank you so much for being here.

Micah Caldwell:

I'm so excited to be here too. That is a great bio. Like I said, you know, send me what you came up with. I'll put it on my website because you make me sound great. I love it. Yes, excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Niki Sterner:

Well, you are great and I'm so happy to share your story with our listeners because I think it's really inspirational and can help a lot of people, definitely. So I would love to go into your story. If you want to take me back, you can take me back to as a lawyer, or you could take me back even further, wherever you want to start, micah.

Micah Caldwell:

Okay, all right. Well, just to give you a quick snapshot of me and what I'm passionate about. So currently, as Niki mentioned, I am a voice actor and I do stand-up comedy as well, and I also working on producing a podcast, separately from all that, as well as a creative project more than anything else. So before this, before I became a voice actor, which was a few years ago, I was a lawyer for 20 years in Washington DC. That's where I went to law school and that was intentional. I wanted to work in politics, I wanted to be inside the Beltway, I wanted to be in the thick. I wanted to be inside the beltway, I wanted to be in the thick of things and I worked on telecom policy. So, part of my career, I worked for telecom companies and then, towards the end of my career, I went into the government and I worked for the Federal Communications Commission and before I left, I was working on one of the I don't know if flagship's the right word, but it was one of the Biden administration's pet projects on expanding broadband.

Micah Caldwell:

During COVID it was an emergency relief program that was set up by Congress. Several billion dollars given to us I think it was like $14 billion given to us and I was in charge of implementing that program and it was a lot of work. It was a lot of work so my career had been building up to that point. I kept doing more, moving up, getting promoted, doing more, bigger and bigger things, becoming more and more visible, more well-respected in the community. I spent a lot of my time with my colleagues and I volunteered for my bar association. It was a tech bar association. It was very involved. It was on the executive committee. I organized lots of volunteers to do charity work and a scholarship program and there were just. That was, and had become my identity and my existence. And so during COVID, when I was setting up this huge program, it had to be done in record time. The deadlines were completely ridiculous, the requests were totally unreasonable and I was managing hundreds of people, essentially, and it got to be too much. At one point, I mean, I managed to pull it off. Everybody was amazed, like Micah, you did an amazing job. You know we launched. It was successful. Towards the end of the program, there were more than 20 million consumers low-income consumers that were benefiting from it. So amazing, right.

Micah Caldwell:

But somewhere along the way, as COVID was, you know, kind of waning out a little bit. Congress decided that they wanted to renew the program outside of COVID, but they wanted to change a bunch of the rules Things like who could qualify and how much of the benefit are they going to get Like make all these little different tweaks to a program that I spent many months setting up and establishing. And when I learned that they wanted me to do it, it basically required me to start all over again, and I was like I don't have that to give. I can't do that again. I poured myself into getting it set up right the first time and having it be a success, and I guess I I didn't. That's what is it. What did they say about how the reward for hard work is more work? Yeah, so that was very much what it felt like. It was like. This is, this is your reward. You did such a great job. Now do it again, only better and more and faster. I'm like no, I can't, I can't.

Micah Caldwell:

So, I really hit a wall and you know that was also a time when I think a lot of us were reflecting on our lives and you know where we wanted to live, who we wanted to be, what we wanted to do for a living, how we wanted to spend our time. And hitting this wall career-wise, and then having that be the context in which it was happening, I got very reflective too and I realized that, whatever it was that I was doing, everything that I'd been building, everything I was working for, the way that I was spending my time and my energy and my resources was actually not what I wanted. This was not the life that I wanted for myself. It was not what I wanted to do or be. And did I know what I wanted to do or what I wanted to be or how I wanted to live my life?

Micah Caldwell:

No, I had no clue, no idea, but I just knew that it was not working anymore. So, with the help of my life coach that I've worked with for, I think, a dozen years now and has seen me through major, major life transitions, we decided or I decided, I guess, but with his encouragement and help to leave, to start over, to figure out what it was that I wanted for myself. And it was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made, because it was like gambling you just keep putting more and more money into it and even if you reach a point of diminishing returns, you're like but I'll win it back, but I'll win it back. Like I had invested so much in myself and in my career and into that identity that it was really, really hard to let go of. But I did, I did. It took a little while, it took several months to like ease myself out of that. But I decided if I'm going to make this change, if I'm going to make the shift, if I'm going to figure out who I am and who I want to be and how I want to live in this world, I need to get out of this completely. Like I had to leave DC, I left, you know, my friends, my colleagues, just like I'm out, see ya. In some cases I didn't even say goodbye, it's just like I'm done. I'm done and I moved to.

Micah Caldwell:

So I left my job and very quickly after that I moved to Asheville, north Carolina, and the point in doing that was to reset, to recalibrate, to go back to my roots, the things that I knew would bring me joy, the things that brought me joy when I was young, mostly creative things, like I got involved in music again. I started playing the drums again. I started singing with the help of an instructor. I started playing the piano again. I took any opportunity I could to go listen to live music, which there's a ton of opportunities to do that.

Micah Caldwell:

In Asheville I kayaked six or seven sections of the French Broad River, went away. It was kind of like I was in vacation mode. But it was different this time because you know, usually when we're all working really hard, we go on vacation and it's like a one-week thing or a two-week thing usually at most, and it's a hassle to even get out of town in the first place and then at some point along the way you're already thinking about all the stuff you have to do when you get back. So the whole point of vacation for me, at least up until that point, was to detach, to disconnect, to get away. But this was a little bit different. Yes, it was leaving what I did behind, but it was gone Like I was just pushing it out beyond the periphery, not even really thinking about it anymore, and I was opening myself up to new opportunities, which is not something a lot of people do when they're on vacation because they don't have the luxury to do that. And I did so. I spent a few months in Asheville having a grand old time enjoying myself and enjoying music, and at some point I got to thinking about okay, you know, what am I going to do with my life? What am I going to do next? Because I can't live like this forever.

Micah Caldwell:

School I worked in radio and television for a company that had radio and television stations, and I was an on-air talent for radio. But I also often got the opportunity to go into the booth and record commercials and promos for the station's advertising clients and for the station's television programming, because it was a small market and they didn't have the resources to hire a professional voice actor, and I always had a ball when I was doing that, you'd stick me in a booth with a microphone and padding on the walls and I was having a good old time. Like it was great. It was so much fun. It was an opportunity to perform which I think I'd kind of lost. Well, I definitely lost track of.

Micah Caldwell:

While I lived in DC, I wasn't doing anything related to the performing arts. Lobbying government officials is performative, but it's not. It doesn't like feed your soul like your own creativity does. Creativity does. So I was like you know what? That was. So much fun, I had so much. Like I had a ball doing that. I wonder what that's about. I wonder if there's anything to that, if that's something that I could pursue.

Micah Caldwell:

And so I started doing the research and I started talking to people who were in the industry and I reached out to a woman who lived in Nashville for a period of time but now lives in Atlanta, like I do, and she'd been teaching a class and I asked her like I'd love to take your class about voiceover, are you going to be offering it again soon? And she goes no, I've since moved to Atlanta, but I highly recommend that you reach out to the folks at Atlanta VoiceOver Studio and I did, and I looked at all their programming and everything, all the opportunities and resources they had available. And I talked to the owners. They're fabulous people Mike Stout and Heidi Rue, they're wonderful and it seems like this could actually potentially be a career. I had no idea people could make a career doing that and I sometimes wonder if I had realized that then would my life be like 100% different now, because I certainly don't think I would have gone to law school if my parents hadn't wanted it. I've been living my life up to that point based on other people's expectations of me and not really what I wanted to do. So, anyway, I started training in voiceover and I thought the most effective way to do that would be to move to Atlanta to do that stuff in person and really immerse myself in these opportunities for learning. So I did.

Micah Caldwell:

I moved to Atlanta and that was in fall of 2022. And I haven't really looked back. I still work with the Atlanta Voice Over Studio folks. Yeah, I see them all the time and they foster this really great community and I've been building a great community through not only voiceover but through acting and comedy and stand up, and there are so many creatives in Atlanta and a lot of opportunities for creatives in Atlanta move here. If you'd asked me five years ago, would you ever live in Atlanta? I'm like there's no politics in Atlanta, right, not like in DC, not like in DC anyway. There's plenty of politics here, but it's it's a little removed from the big action. And I love it here. It's beautiful, it's a thriving community and building a life here that I really like life here that I really like.

Niki Sterner:

So that is a huge transition from politics in DC to a creative life in Atlanta. I mean, I'm just wondering how you've been able to transition your mindset, because they're just totally. Are they totally different? I should ask you are they totally different, or are there similarities in your life from what you did then and what you do now?

Micah Caldwell:

Well, there's a little bit of crossover. Some of the skills that I learned when I was a lawyer and most of what I did towards the end of my career was not like quote unquote practicing law. I was doing a lot of project management, overseeing these big projects for the government. So the things that I did in DC versus the things that I do here completely different, completely different mindset. Being a voice actor is owning your own business and you're the product. So to the extent that I had learned skills to manage things and launch programs and advertise them and brand them and advocate, a lot of those skills transferred to the business side, running my own voiceover business.

Micah Caldwell:

But in terms of the performance side I think I said this before to some extent, when you're a lawyer, you're performing. When you're advocating for an issue or a cause or a company or the government, and it's often to an end that's not really. I don't know, it's for somebody else, it's entirely for somebody else. And me doing voice acting even though I'm doing advertising and commercials for clients and it's to sell their products or to get brand recognition for their products I get to bring myself to it. That's actually what books me jobs, is my personality, my unique take on things, my interpretation of what those words are supposed to mean and how I deliver that message to an audience, and it's much more creative and I feel like I have much more ownership of the end product than I did before.

Micah Caldwell:

Also, running your own business is very different from having a nine to five salary job with a W-2, tax withholdings and showing up to work every day and knowing exactly what you need to do and usually having a lot of people around you as part of a team that you're working with. You don't have that as a voice actor or a comedian. Yes, you have the, your friends in the community you build, but what you do on a day-to-day basis is up to you. So, yeah, that was different in being responsible for myself and taking action for me as opposed to some other entity, it was a very different mindset.

Niki Sterner:

I've heard people say before if you promise someone else that you would show up, it's much easier to do that, versus you promise yourself you're going to show up and do something.

Micah Caldwell:

It's like oh, we'll see if it happens or I'll try to make it.

Niki Sterner:

I'll do my best, but yeah.

Micah Caldwell:

Yeah, that sounds like it's so true. I think we often prioritize other things over ourselves sometimes, or it's easy to do that and maybe not good for us, but I think we all tend to do that from time to time, if not always.

Niki Sterner:

So, yeah, I could see that I love how you are so good.

Niki Sterner:

I can tell that you're really great at project management because I turned to Micah when I was struggling to start this podcast, actually, and I was like, um, can you help me? Because she is so good at just organizing things in a way that makes sense and pulling the specific details that matter and that the listener might want or whoever is going to see the project. You're just so good at those things and that's the 20 years of experience, or however many years that you've had in organizing projects and putting together stuff that matters and makes sense. So I mean that's truly a gift that you come to the creative world with already, and so I love your passion and your drive for taking classes and developing on a consistent basis your voiceover work and your comedian work and your improv and sketch, and you've tried it all, like I, swear like you, just keep on adding tools to your tool belt and discovering what you love, because sometimes we don't know, we just, like you said, you just moved on, not quite knowing.

Niki Sterner:

And that was a big move. It had to be uncomfortable, it had to be like I don't know, it had to be that low point, like I don't know what I'm going to do. But it cannot be this anymore. I love how you talked about it being like a vacation, like I remember going on vacation last year and just feeling like such a relief, such a just in flow with everything around me and not feeling tied down to deadlines and other people's schedules, and just being in the moment, being so present, which is such a gift.

Niki Sterner:

And I'm sure you probably felt that in Asheville just oh, I want to try the drums and I want to try the piano and I want to sing again, and there's such a freedom in that. And realizing that you can do it and taking ownership and feeling your power and making those choices, I think is such a big part of being confident. It's just saying I'm going to try it and it might not be great right away, but I'm going to see if I like it and if I do, I'm going to pursue it. I'm so in awe of everything that you're doing and I know I don't even know all of it because, like you said, you've been here, for it was is in September, it'll be three years. You've been Atlanta pursuing all of these creative opportunities. Yes, yeah, yeah. And so I'm just wondering, micah, maybe if you can tell us a little bit about what you've learned along the journey to figuring out what you want to do and what you love doing. What have been some of the stops along the way?

Micah Caldwell:

Sure, yeah, happy to you touched on it a little bit that it started out as just, and still is, to some extent, a time of exploration. I didn't know, I had no idea what I was going to do, and so I just let myself be open to the things that I thought would bring me joy. I tried it all, except for clowning. I haven't tried clowning yet. I know you want me to, yes yes, I do.

Micah Caldwell:

So the last touchstone that I had for my creative self from like the gap from the broadcasting days to three years ago was I played percussion, and actually professionally for a period of time and a couple of orchestras in Oklahoma, yeah, and then I was. I was in band. I was a band geek, so I played all the instruments, including lead snare. Yes, I'm going to toot my own horn, yeah it was a badass.

Micah Caldwell:

I was a badass, it was a badass in those days. But I eventually quit that too, because my parents made it really too hard, in a way, like they just were not invested in that. They never came to see me perform. Occasionally they would come to a concert but, like when I would play on Friday nights at the football games, they never came to the football games. They never came to the football games. Sometimes they never came to watch me play sports either, like they just were not engaged. So I got the message that that was not important, that was not valued and that's not what they wanted from me. So that's kind of how I. The reason I mentioned that is because that's how I got started on this other path. Well, if that's not what I'm meant to do, then you know, maybe I'm meant to do something else and let's do something that they think is cool. And that was Because you want the approval of your parents.

Niki Sterner:

You want them to be proud of you. Yeah, everyone does, that's normal.

Micah Caldwell:

Yeah. So the other touch point from early in my life where creativity was extremely important to me was one of my earliest memories. It's when I was five years old and I used to get out the 33s and 45 records and put them on the record player and play them and sing and dance around the living room. And my favorite song was Islands in the Stream, the duet with Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, and I would sing that I was seeing everything. But that was the one that I went back to over and over and over because I wanted to be Dolly Parton. But when you're in your early forties and you're starting over in your life and you have had no creative outlet for years and years and years being Dolly Parton, the five-year-old dream is unattainable, or it seems unattainable. So you have to start somewhere and I had to figure out like, well, if that's obviously not going to be a path for me anymore, but what can I do? That I love. But you started by asking me, like, what did I learn when I was doing all this, making these adjustments, making these changes, trying to be open to new opportunities and teaching myself new things? It goes back to what we were talking about before, where I'd been sent a clear signal most of my life that being creative as a profession was not something that I was allowed to do, and I internalized it as meaning I'm not good at it because my way of thinking was I wasn't allowed to, I wasn't capable of it. That was not something that was meant for me. That's how I internalized it. But I'd also come from a world where if you get education and you teach yourself or you learn these things or you learn from other people, then you can do some stuff. So I think that's part of the reason why I took so many classes, because I was just trying to soak up as much knowledge as I could. But one of the things I learned along the way is that was a safe place for me. I'd gone to school I've done lots of schooling in my life and that was a very comfortable place for me to stay.

Micah Caldwell:

And when it came time for me to take what I was learning and put it into practice and actually put myself out there as a creative, there have been lots of moments where I've held myself back because I didn't feel ready.

Micah Caldwell:

I've always had this notion that you need to be ready before you do certain things, and I don't think that's true anymore, but it's still very hard to implement or to tell myself, yes, you can do this.

Micah Caldwell:

So my idea of waiting till you're ready was just a form of self-sabotage. It was a form of holding myself back because deep down, I was believing that I couldn't do it or that I wasn't worthy, that I wasn't good enough, which is very self-defeating. So that was one of the big lessons I learned along the way is that a creative career is not for everybody, and for me, I was the biggest obstacle in terms of standing in my own way, and you have to stay on top of that every single day to not fall back into those old patterns and beliefs and limiting yourself when I've proven, there are signs, there is empirical evidence that I can do this, like I book jobs. There's still that part of me, that that inner critic that's in my head, that wants to be the thief of my joy, and I have to stay on top of that all the time to make sure that I'm doing everything that I can to make this work and holding myself back in any way.

Niki Sterner:

What do you tell yourself when you hear that inner critic? Can you recognize it and what does it sound like?

Micah Caldwell:

Yes, yes, I definitely recognize it. I don't know how other people experience their inner critics, but for me it is my own voice. It is I hear my voice in my head saying all the things, all the negative things, and for the longest time I never really questioned that. And it wasn't until I really started working on myself and making some shifts and trying to figure out who I am and what my values are, that I realized that that voice, even though it sounds like me, is really just an amalgamation of feedback from other people, from external sources, that I, especially my family, like my immediate family that, as I internalized it, I came to believe was my own personal narrative and I hear it in my head as me.

Micah Caldwell:

But when I hear that voice of negativity and self-doubt in my head, the first thing I do now is tell myself to stop. Number one stop. And I have to remind myself those thoughts are harmful. That you know what I'm wired to believe is true. That you know what I'm wired to believe is true, most likely isn't true, and it's largely rooted in value systems that are not my own. They're somebody else's value system. So the second step I take is to reframe those thoughts. I think or ask myself, what would I say to a friend in the exact same situation? Because we're all, hopefully, very kind to our friends and a lot more, give a lot more grace to other people than we do ourselves, especially our close friends. And so I think, what would I say to a friend in this situation? And then the third step is to express it, to say it out loud, if I can, if it makes sense, like you're not always in a circumstance where you can talk to yourself.

Niki Sterner:

Hold on just a second.

Micah Caldwell:

Yeah, let me just talk to myself for a second, because there was this negative thought going on in my head and I need to quash it.

Niki Sterner:

I'm going to clear this out real quick, hold on.

Micah Caldwell:

But if I can, if I have the ability and if I'm by myself or something, I will actually verbalize it, make myself say the things, because that's an additional way to receive it and to bring it home to yourself. So not just think it, but to actually say it out loud.

Niki Sterner:

So that's the new thought. I love that because then you're active, you're doing an action, you're speaking what you actually want. I love that so much, so you first you hear it, you say stop, you correct it and you're verbalizing your new thought.

Micah Caldwell:

Yes.

Niki Sterner:

Yeah, and.

Micah Caldwell:

I learned that through therapy because, yeah, I didn't always have that ability Like it. Just that narrative controlled everything, that voice controlled everything and I don't know. I guess I just didn't have the wherewithal to even think about changing it until several years ago. And there's more than I could do. There's definitely more than I could do. That's like a first step and it's a process Like to be more accepting of yourself and to give yourself grace. You have to be constantly vigilant, or I do, but it's gotten easier over time and as I continue to grow.

Micah Caldwell:

I want to be, as a second step, let's up the ante here. Let's really be doing things that are going to help us. I want to be more proactive in rewiring negative thought patterns, like through affirmations and other tools, so that those limiting beliefs, they're replaced by a much kinder and hopefully more accurate narrative by default. I don't have to go through the exercise of oh, there's the thought. You know that's not right. Let's reframe it, let's verbalize that the voice hopefully, over time, will not be that. It'll be replaced by something that's kinder and truer. So that's the goal that we're all works in progress and in the meantime I've got some tools to deal with that inner critic in a healthy way. You know, though, it's really important. This is the second thing. This is about that process that I was talking about, the three steps. It's really important to approach it from a place of like, not negativity, because, believe it or not, I would actually criticize myself about how I was dealing with my inner critic.

Niki Sterner:

Oh no.

Micah Caldwell:

Yes, like I would get down on myself for, like what Don't listen to her. Like when you find yourself criticizing the critic, oh no, when you're trying to correct a mean voice, to be more mean, to be meaner to yourself, so anyway. So try not to do that because it can be a vicious cycle and it's really counterproductive.

Niki Sterner:

Like you, would approach her with love, like thank you for trying to protect me.

Micah Caldwell:

Yes, yeah, absolutely. You have that 100% right. It's don't get mad at the inner critic. Approach the inner critic with love and not negativity, or positivity and not negativity, and understand that it comes from a certain place and it's probably a really good reason why you feel that way. Or you've learned to believe those things because they did protect you when you were younger and I'm sure when I was young, I thought I got to do everything my parents want me to do and by shutting all this stuff down and telling myself that that's not for me and being really mean to myself about it, was my way of shutting those things down so that I could focus on the things that they wanted. In a way, that was survival, that was approval, that was whatever. It's just a very immature way of thinking, but we all go through that development where we get wired. Yeah, don't they?

Niki Sterner:

say that you establish your beliefs in the first, like seven or eight years of your life. So it makes sense that they do feel a little bit immature or from a younger point of view perspective and like now, if you stop and reflect back on them, you're like that doesn't even make sense in my life right now, like why do I do that? But we don't know if we haven't stopped to reflect back what you've done and realized, oh, those aren't actually mine. I just absorbed the beliefs of the people around me who programmed me and raised me to believe that creativity was not actually important to me, but it really is. And you realized it because you were I don't know if you were sad, depressed, overworked, just unhappy in what you were doing. But you realized, nope, this just isn't it anymore. It doesn't make me happy and I am not living for them anymore. I'm going to live my life for me in a powerful way that feels good. And do you feel like you are getting to that place where what you're doing feels good?

Micah Caldwell:

Or do you?

Niki Sterner:

feel like you're still working through some things.

Micah Caldwell:

A few years ago, when I talked about becoming a voice actor, I don't know if I actually believed that I could do it, and now obviously I'm doing it. So I'm a lot more comfortable with it and, yeah, I do feel like I'm living for me, even though that inner critic is still there. I don't know if she'll ever go away completely, but having the tools to deal with her is helpful.

Niki Sterner:

So, Micah, the three things again. Will you repeat them for me, for dealing with your inner critic.

Micah Caldwell:

Okay, first is to stop, second is to reframe or correct, and then third is to express it out loud or verbalize it, if you can Not just think it, but verbalize it.

Niki Sterner:

Perfect. That's what I had. I just wanted to make sure because I think that's a really great process, because a lot of us, as artists and creatives, have those thoughts of I'm not ready, I'm not good enough, my idea doesn't matter, my perspective isn't really important, all of those things that hold us back that we tell ourselves basically are I'm not worthy of expressing myself. But you're training yourself with this to express yourself, which is huge, like mind blown, like you're stopping your critic, you are reframing with a positive affirmation or whatever it is that you truly want and believe, and then you're taking action, you're expressing it right away. This is a beautiful habit to get in place for everyone, all of us creatives, even entrepreneurs and business owners getting in the habit of shutting down those negative beliefs and thoughts and retraining them. I love that reframe.

Micah Caldwell:

And then, over time, it becomes second nature, which is helpful, and you will start to believe those things without having to do that step.

Niki Sterner:

So if you're training your mind to already see that success like you're talking about, like I'm already doing VO, you've proven it to yourself. But maybe there's another thing that's coming up that you haven't yet and you're like I really want to do that. So maybe you start visualizing yourself doing it ahead of time and then showing up and and, like you said, your subconscious is like oh, I recognize this, this is cool, I can do this.

Micah Caldwell:

Well, along those lines I mean something that I learned today and I hope others are not guilty of this, but I still am because of where I came from and how deeply ingrained those defeating, limiting thoughts were. I realize today that I still don't dream big enough and that just breaks my heart. Somebody sent me an email today and they asked me to think about who would be my dream production company to work with, and I was like you know what? I've never thought about that and that seems insane, I don't know. It seems insane to me that I've been doing voice acting for three years and I've never thought who would I want to work with the most, who would I want to partner with?

Micah Caldwell:

And you know, it's been so limited. In a way it's very linear. It's like I take this step, I do this thing, got to get ready and building on top, but not necessarily having the end goal like the big dream, the big idea to to work towards. So it's almost like I just keep doing this, but I haven't really thought much about this. Up here we're going.

Niki Sterner:

Yeah, where am I going? What's?

Micah Caldwell:

my, where am I going? Yeah, where am.

Niki Sterner:

I going, these steps should be aligned with that, and once you know that, then when it gets hard, you're like oh, but I know where I'm going, so I can keep going. You're why that's kind of like your end all be. I do the same thing for, like, if I want to become a TV showrunner, there's all these different steps that are along the path, and sometimes I don't want to do all of them, but I'm like no, this actually makes sense, even though it's not what I pictured the path to be. It's like, oh, yep, this is going to happen too.

Micah Caldwell:

It's not necessarily just my, why I was looking at it very generically, very broadly. I want to be a voice actor full time. I want to pay my bills that way, but if you can think about, within that sphere, the things, the special things that you want to achieve, to work towards, the things that really have meaning to you, that you can reach for, I think that helps. Like you said, keep you focused in your eye on the prize. It's like I want to work towards this, I want to work towards this, and I feel like the more specific you can be in those things, the better and I think that might be why vision boards are so helpful for some people is you actually take the time to sit down and think about what are these things, these specific things that I want in my life, in the next going forward or in the future? And when I did one this year for the first time ever and oh gosh, there's a saying about this, too that I can't remember, but it's like if you can see it, you can achieve it. Or if you're looking for good things and for opportunities, you will see them and they will come to you. And I think it's true because it's like when an example that I read the other day if you tell yourself that you want to pick out all the yellow things in a room, all of a sudden everything you see all this yellow stuff. Or you see yellow cars when you're out driving around yellow fingernails, the beautiful hostess here today. And I think it's the same way with what's coming to you in real life. If you're focused on seeing negative things or being upset about stuff or frustrated by things, or this isn't working or that isn't working, or I think you'll see that and you'll experience that. But if you're focused on positive things, you'll start to see those things too, because you're looking for them.

Micah Caldwell:

So one of the things I put on my vision board was that I wanted to do a political ad for a specific candidate and one of the jobs that I booked earlier this year was not for that candidate. But I like to do a meeting with my new clients, like a Zoom meeting, like 15 to 20 minutes, to get to know them and so they can get to know me, because everything we do is remote and you don't really get to connect in person and I found that that's really valuable in building my business. And I asked him. I was like, do you guys ever do any work for such and such campaign? And they said yes. And I said, oh, I would love to do ads for this candidate. And he said like, oh well, I'm going to keep that in mind when things start heating up again.

Micah Caldwell:

And he started asking me like, what do I want? Like, what is it that I want to do? What kind of what do I want? Like, what is it that I want to do? What kind of ads do I want to do? What kind of candidates do I want to support?

Micah Caldwell:

Because political ads are hugely important to me because of my background, and it's a way that I can continue to use my voice to advance things that I believe in, that are meaningful to me. So, anyway, it hasn't happened yet, but I have a feeling it's going to, and now I'm thinking about that and I have an avenue for that, and then you'll just have to re-interview me after November and see if it actually came true. But if I hadn't been thinking about that, if I hadn't been willing to ask for it or ask about it, I was being appropriate Like, I wasn't like, can I do this, can I? No, that's a little too much, but to just to put that into the universe and to discuss it with this person. That makes it all the more likely that it could happen, and if you don't ask, it's never going to happen. So there you go.

Niki Sterner:

I love that so much, micah, that you actually were open to the possibilities and that you had the courage to actually bring up the conversation and ask for what you want in a way that made sense. But you, you're educating those clients on what you want to do and then they have an awareness of what Micah does and you're just calling it into your life and I'm so excited to have another conversation in December and find out what you've been doing.

Micah Caldwell:

Yeah, see how it went. Yeah, I need more of those opportunities, though, because I'm still not working as much, or I guess I'm not getting as many opportunities as I'd like to yet. Still, I want more agent representation. I want to establish more relationships with producers and consultants so that more and more opportunities are coming in and I can have more conversations like that, and that's just up to me. I got to be better at marketing myself.

Niki Sterner:

So I know you, Micah, you're going to create a spreadsheet that's going to have all of your people that you want oh, you already have one All the people that you want to get in touch with and then, like when you reach out and then follow up, and then all the different, you know information. I know that you're going to have that all organized and that's your next project. Yeah, just reach out and creating these opportunities for yourself. I bet that's how your VO business is going to blow up yourself.

Micah Caldwell:

I bet that's how your VO business is going to blow up. Yeah, that's the hope, that's the strategy, just need to be more proactive about that?

Niki Sterner:

You will. I wanted to touch briefly on your social media presence because I feel like you do a really great job of sharing with people what you're doing online, and can you just tell me a little bit about that?

Micah Caldwell:

Yes, yeah, so I was. I'm a reluctant social media user and I don't post as prolifically as I could, but one of the things that I have found is really helpful to me is to use my social media as a tool in my business, or basically an accountability tool. So there's this thing that if you talk about it, it's a dream, if you envision it it's a possibility, but if you schedule it, it's real. So I use that in my day to day, so I schedule things and I put them on my calendar, and that holds me accountable. In that respect, accountable is to use social media for that, and I've done that with my comedy, because comedy as you've done it too is a grind.

Micah Caldwell:

It's open mics, it's showing up, it's spending way too much time waiting to do your thing and it's so easy to be like, okay, I'm going to stay home tonight, I don't have time for this, I don't have energy for this, because it is extremely time consuming and very resource intensive.

Micah Caldwell:

So I will force myself to post on my social media the four or five or however many performances that I'm going to be doing in a month, and there it is.

Micah Caldwell:

It's public. If you post it, it's real in this in the sense that, yes, we all know a lot of people post things on social media that are not necessarily real, but what I'm talking about is like, in terms of accountability, I've posted that I'm going to perform on these dates in these venues and I have to show up. Like it forces me to show up. So that has been very valuable for comedy, and I want to apply that to voiceover as well. In terms of how can I use my social media content to give me those concrete goals to work towards and put it out there so that I know other people could be aware, even if they're not reading my posts. I feel like it's enough to just put it out there and I'm like I've said this, so now I've got to do it. So that's been a very helpful tool for me and hopefully will continue to be in all aspects of my creative endeavors.

Niki Sterner:

Will you share the quote with me one more time?

Micah Caldwell:

It was if you talk about it, it's a dream. If you envision it, it's a possibility. If you schedule it, it's a possibility If you schedule it it's real. So yes, in my case adding to that, and if you post it, it's real in the sense that you know you need to follow through, or?

Niki Sterner:

it helps me follow through. Yeah, yes, for sure. Oh, you do a great job of that, and so, in fact, a lot of times I'll see it and I'll be like, oh, I should post, Micah posted, it's time.

Micah Caldwell:

Now, today is the opposite. You've already posted about our performance tonight, yeah, and I don't know where this is going to air, but we have a performance the night of this interview and like I haven't posted yet, can I, can I get out of it? No, no, nikki won't let me. She will not let me that's right.

Niki Sterner:

That's right, I guess that's another tool.

Micah Caldwell:

Have an accountability buddy or a friend that's going to hold your feet to the fire Like we're doing this. We're in this together and I actually do think that's helped a lot in some of the open mics that we've done, that we've even though it's so hard to schedule to do the same ones, and I feel like, okay, I'm going to do this one, I'm going to do this one, can you join me? Can you join me? Knowing that the other person is going to be there and showing up for each other is great too.

Niki Sterner:

Yeah, having that connection with a community of artists that you can meet up with and support each other has made a huge difference, I think, in both of our lives, because there's just this camaraderie. It's like a team effort because a comedian, you get up on stage by yourself and it can feel lonely at times. I think we've both enjoyed taking classes because of that community building aspect of it and makes it so much more fun. Then when you're watching your friends on stage, it's like watching your family on stage. You want the best for them, you laugh harder for them because it's just, it's really fun and it's really funny at the same time, yeah, you get invested in their success too, and that's really cool.

Micah Caldwell:

That's a really cool feeling.

Niki Sterner:

I think that's the coolest part about it, honestly, is having our community, like we have a group of people that are going to be performing tonight and it's going to be probably one of the best nights of our comedy so far. I'm so excited about it.

Micah Caldwell:

Me too. Me too. Okay, yes, you talked me into it. Sure, I just need to go do some preparation after this interview so that I feel ready. Same, same.

Niki Sterner:

Okay, thank you, micah, I want to do. Our third part of the conversation is the confidence quickfire round. Okay, and so I asked the same five questions to every guest on the podcast, and so I want to ask you the first one is can you please define what confidence is for you?

Micah Caldwell:

Okay To me, confidence is an innate belief in yourself. It's knowing who you are and what you're about and embracing that unapologetically as you move through the world.

Niki Sterner:

I love that. Okay. The second question is what's one bold move you made before you felt ready?

Micah Caldwell:

One of the boldest moves I've ever made was leaving behind a career that I had spent two decades building, having absolutely no idea what I was going to do next.

Micah Caldwell:

So, fortunately, I was in a position to do that, like I had enough money saved, I was single and didn't have a family, that didn't really have any ties that were holding me back, and as a planner, as you've mentioned, as an organizer who always knows their next move and has a backup plan for that, it's probably the biggest leap of faith I've ever taken, and it was in myself.

Niki Sterner:

Finally, right, yeah, yeah, oh, I love that, Okay. The third question is how do you quiet your inner critic? And you've talked about this as well, but please take us through it one more time.

Micah Caldwell:

Okay, sure, yes. So, as I mentioned before, I hear my inner critic as my own voice, even though what it really is is like this amalgamation of external feedback, voices from other people that I've heard throughout my life, mainly through my, from my immediate family and my formative years, that I've internalized and it's become my own narrative. And when I start hearing that voice, knowing it's just my inner critic first I stop that voice, say nope, those thoughts are harmful, they're not helpful, they're counterproductive. And I remember those are not necessarily my values. And what I'm hearing in my head that I believe is true is not necessarily true. And if those thoughts are rooted in somebody else's value system and not my own.

Micah Caldwell:

And then step two is to reframe that thought, usually relying on asking myself what would I tell a friend in this situation? Because we're so nice to our friends, we're not always as nice to ourselves. And so I reframe that thought in my head. And then the third step is, if I can, I will also verbalize it and say the reframed thought out loud to really get it to hit home and bring it full circle. And that's how I deal with my inner critic, and she's ever present, but I can handle her. Yeah, you're retraining her.

Niki Sterner:

You're retraining her. I love that. Okay, the fourth question what's one habit that's helped you build real confidence?

Micah Caldwell:

Oh goodness, it has been forcing myself to do things I'm afraid to do repeatedly, for instance, stand-up comedy. You know that's really scary. It's one of the scariest things I've ever done and I think it's scary for a lot of people. But getting up on stage and performing stand-up has given me a lot more confidence in performing in general. That translates to my booth. When I'm here in my recording booth it's like a mindset You're doing the thing. It's hard, you can do the hard thing, you're capable of it, you're confident about it and then it just. It transfers to other parts of your life as well.

Niki Sterner:

Okay. The fifth and final question is what is your favorite book or resource? That's changed how you think.

Micah Caldwell:

Okay, I love this question and I think my answer might be an unusual one. So this might not seem like an obvious choice, but the book that has changed me the most is the Body Keeps the Score by.

Niki Sterner:

Bessel van der Kolk, it's so good.

Micah Caldwell:

Yes, it is. It's hard to read because it's so technical, but I had to read it like two or three times and I get something new out of it every single time because it's so dense and it's complex, but it is, oh my gosh, it is so good and I'll explain why it was so good for me. So, all these shifts that I've made over the past few years, it was about more than just changing my career path. It was about discovering who I am and how I want to be in the world, so that I can pursue a career and hobbies and friendships and relationships that are consistent with my values, what I want for myself and how I want to live. And, of course, I've had the help with a therapist and a life coach.

Micah Caldwell:

But when I picked up that book and I read the Body Keeps the Score, it helped me fully understand that I had actually experienced very significant trauma in my life.

Micah Caldwell:

And I would read the case studies and I think, oh my gosh, this is me, this is how I felt, this is what happened, and it made me realize that those experiences were actually very, very bad and had shaped me in ways that I had never really acknowledged and it had such a deep impact on me and I know that sounds like why would you put yourself through that but it gave me a vocabulary, finally in my 40s, that I can use to process those experiences and the emotions related to them and the feelings and that I didn't have before, like I'd never really even acknowledged that pain or that it even was pain, and so, yeah, I mean, if I'm honest, it dredged up some things that were very difficult to deal with, but in my case, that was a crucial part of understanding myself and living in a world in a way that serves me better and my old coping mechanisms just aren't working anymore and allowing me to live more authentically too. I love that book.

Niki Sterner:

I love that you brought that book up because I had an audio version of it that I played in my car like a CD of it, that I played in my car like a CD or something that I played in my minivan for a long time, not when the kids were in the car, but like when I was by myself.

Niki Sterner:

I would listen to those stories and do like you're saying, like just had so many aha moments, wow Cause I don't know if you're the same as me but as a people pleaser, I just sugarcoated everything. Everything is good. I didn't have any problems and that's okay to a certain point. But I think just recognizing it and having a vocabulary, like you said, to know what it actually was and to recognize that and learn from it and grow through it, was super valuable for me and I could recognize and relate to other people and be a little bit more empathetic towards others because I thought, oh, maybe they have something like this going on too, because a lot of people do have uncovered trauma that is down there that we just don't or bring up until we're ready for it to heal. Right, right, yeah.

Niki Sterner:

So that was a beautiful share. I love that so much.

Micah Caldwell:

I'm glad it's so amazing to me that when you share these stories about yourself or I share stories about myself and we have all these similarities this is just a personal note that I always really appreciate because it feels it. I think I went through a lot of my life feeling that I didn't necessarily belong, and I think that happens when you're pretending to be somebody you're not, and that's what I was doing. And now that I'm embracing who I really am and people are coming into my life that are getting to know me as who I truly am, I finally feel like I have things in common with people. I have a community, I'm building a tribe and it's nice to not only feel less alone but to feel very connected too.

Niki Sterner:

That is the most beautiful thing that I've heard all day. I want to thank you for that. That is the perfect way to close out this conversation. That was such a vulnerable share and it's so true. I feel the same way. I feel like we have connected on a lot of different things, and I do feel like we're both on a similar path of experiencing vulnerability that we haven't had before, because we've been trying to please others and be someone who we're not, and it just I love how you said that, and I just want to close out the conversation with that, because it was just so heartfelt. Micah, thank you so much for that.

Micah Caldwell:

Thank you for having me and giving me an opportunity to share my perspective.

Niki Sterner:

I appreciate it, it's beautiful, and you gave us tools and all the stuff, so thank you, okay. Oh, before we close out, though, I do want you to share with people how they can follow you or connect with you on social media, or however they can.

Micah Caldwell:

Oh sure, yes, so follow me on Instagram. My handle is at Micah on Mike. That's my first name M-I-C-A-H on O-N and M-I-C for Mike. Yeah, so Micah on.

Micah Caldwell:

Mike, I think it's the same handle for all my social media. Like, I have a Facebook account because I have to Right, but I mainly use my Instagram, and then I also have a LinkedIn profile and that's my handle there too. So, however you want to follow, I love. I want to engage with more creatives and people in Atlanta in particular, so that I can continue to build my community.

Niki Sterner:

Yes, it's so important. It's so important. So, yes, definitely follow Micah on Instagram, at Micah on Mike, and Facebook and LinkedIn, and she's a fabulous friend and person, human being. I love her and I'm so happy that we got to share this conversation with all of you today. So, thank you so much, micah.