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Saying Yes to opportunities in front of you is the key.
Dina Sherman is a voice-over actress and the official announcer for the Annie Awards. She emphasizes the importance of storytelling, authenticity and the constant learning she gained through her extensive experience in animation, anime, commercials, radio, TV, and film.
Her creative career started in elementary school with prank phone calls with impressions and continued with National awards for speaking. The transition from TV and stage to voice-overs was pivotal for her career. Her work in charity and helping underprivileged groups is a way to get back to the community and world for having a great and interesting job she adores. Dina’s focus is on literacy so her charity work in reading to kids and adults transformed towards digital format during COVID through her YouTube channel for kids.
Women are usually pressured with all kinds of ‘shoulds’ and Dina shares how she is balancing this pressure from outside but also created within. As women go through different stages of life, exploring and enjoying all stages of wisdom and experience gained, is the road to happiness and a fulfilled life.
Notes:
👧 In times when Rolodex was in your brain: Dina’s prank phone calls with all sorts of impressions. 03:49
🎭 Humorous and dramatic interpretation in high school: UCLA and first work on voiceovers. 05:11
😍 Charity work, donations, working with kids and adults: reading and literacy is important for all groups. 10:14
😇 COVID shut down the world but created creatives blossom: Dina’s readings for kids and teachers on YouTube channel. 14:27
🤓 Being criticized and ashamed: don’t shoot yourself but appreciate your windows of opportunity. 22:00
🌺 Women have stages in their lives and we are growing differently in each: adolescence and middle-essence discoveries. 26:45
👂 Constant learning and the right approach to connection: hearing people and proper introduction. 31:49
Links:
Notes:
👧 In times when Rolodex was in your brain: Dina’s prank phone calls with all sorts of impressions. 03:49
🎭 Humorous and dramatic interpretation in high school: UCLA and first work on voiceovers. 05:11
😍 Charity work, donations, working with kids and adults: reading and literacy is important for all groups. 10:14
😇 COVID shut down the world but created creatives blossom: Dina’s readings for kids and teachers on YouTube channel. 14:27
🤓 Being criticized and ashamed: don’t shoot yourself but appreciate your windows of opportunity. 22:00
🌺 Women have stages in their lives and we are growing differently in each: adolescence and middle-essence discoveries. 26:45
👂 Constant learning and the right approach to connection: hearing people and proper introduction. 31:49
Links:
Listen to podcasts for women by women on the She Leads Podcast Network: https://www.sheleadspodcasts.com
>> "I love ❤️ Adrienne and The She Leads™ Podcast!” If that thought crossed your mind at any time while listening to our special show, can I ask you to please take a moment and give our podcast some love? To do so, simply Rate, Review & Follow Us on Apple Podcasts & Spotify. Taking this simple action helps my team and I to spread the word about all the incredible guests of The She Leads Podcast and contributes overall to helping women leaders and entrepreneurs everywhere! 🗺️ Also, if you haven’t done so already, please +follow the podcast so you never miss an episode. Thank you so much!! XO -Adrienne <<
>> "I love ❤️ Adrienne and The She Leads™ Podcast!” If that thought crossed your mind at any time while listening to our special show, can I ask you to please take a moment and give our podcast some love? To do so, simply Rate, Review & Follow Us on Apple Podcasts & Spotify. Taking this simple action helps my team and I to spread the word about all the incredible guests of The She Leads Podcast and contributes overall to helping women leaders and entrepreneurs everywhere! 🗺️ Also, if you haven’t done so already, please +follow the podcast so you never miss an episode. Thank you so much!! XO -Adrienne <<
Creators & Guests
What is The She Leads Podcast: Real Conversations with Women Entrepreneurs?
The She Leads Podcast, hosted by Adrienne Garland, is the podcast for women leaders and women entrepreneurs who are sick of sugar coating what they say and how they say it. Each week, Adrienne explores entrepreneurial stories, businesses, and challenges that women entrepreneurs face with a wide range of guests who are open to sharing their authentic stories in a refreshing and real way. For far too long, women have been sugar coating our voices, thoughts, and opinions, but that stops here and now! The She Leads Podcast, formerly Sugar Coated, is the place where women leaders can express their brilliance without sugar-coating anything. This podcast offers a platform for super-practical, actionable advice for women to overcome challenges and to make a significant impact on our families, our communities, and our world. Adrienne Garland, CEO of She Leads Media - entrepreneur, media producer, and adjunct professor rejects the notion that women must be deferential to those currently in power and pull back our opinions. Join Adrienne as she dives into raw conversations with brilliant women leaders and entrepreneurs - sans Sugar Coating!
Adrienne Garland (00:02.286)
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the She Leads Podcast. This episode is brought to you by the She Leads Podcast Network. It's the podcast network for women by women. And today, I'd like to welcome Dina Sherman to the She Leads Podcast. Dina has a passion and commitment to storytelling through portraying unique and authentic characters. As a professional,
actress and voiceover artist for decades. Her credits include stage, TV, and film, as well as animation, anime, video games, and commercials, and the voice of the Annie Awards since 2005. Dina now has a YouTube channel for kids where she brings amazing stories to children all over the world. I cannot wait to hear about this. Welcome to the She Leads Podcast, Dina.
Dina Sherman (00:58.287)
Hey, thank you so much for having me. That was a lovely introduction. Your voice is lovely. I love it. You could talk to me all day.
Adrienne Garland (01:04.11)
Oh, thank you. Well, that you know what, that is a huge compliment coming from a voice over actress. So thank you so much. I really appreciate that. It's maybe it's an alter ego or maybe it's a, you know, a side gig for me at some point. So let's dive in. I'm so excited to talk to you. We don't often talk to.
Actresses, although actually we have been talking to so many creative people lately. So I just love it. You know, I, well, I love women. I love everything that we do. I think that we're incredibly creative and I just want to hear a little bit about your background, how you got into doing what you're doing and then how did you transition from doing some of those things into what you're doing today? So let's go way back. How did you get into acting and where did that passion come from?
Dina Sherman (02:02.543)
Well, I guess it started in high school or before that. Actually, ooh, actually started before that. Way back before the turn of the century, we did not have caller ID. It was, we had corded phones and if you call people, you could crank call them. So I did. I would do Mervyn the immersion. I would do like all the cartoons. Yeah, yeah.
Adrienne Garland (02:12.302)
Hahaha.
Adrienne Garland (02:21.934)
Oh my god, yes. Oh my god, I love it. Oh, I would have been... I totally would have been friends with you. Yup.
Dina Sherman (02:32.591)
I would be like, hi, this is the local bowling alley. No, no, what would he do? Sorry, I got it backwards. I would be like, hi, I'm calling the local bowling alley. Do you guys carry 10 pound balls? How do you walk? Is your refrigerator running? You might want to catch it, whatever. Just crazy stuff. And apparently I found out later that some of my friends in elementary knew it was me. They figured it out.
Adrienne Garland (02:44.302)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Adrienne Garland (02:50.286)
So funny.
Dina Sherman (03:01.647)
but they were so funny, they just would let it go, you know? And just let me call and do that. Yeah, that was back in the day where your Rolodex was in your brain of all your friends' phone numbers. We still lost that.
Adrienne Garland (03:04.718)
I love that.
Adrienne Garland (03:10.542)
Mm -hmm.
Adrienne Garland (03:14.606)
Oh yeah. Let me tell you, is it still there? I have burned in my brain my best friend's telephone number from, you know, middle school, high school. I know the numbers still. Yeah, so funny.
Dina Sherman (03:28.111)
Yeah, yeah. It's so, it's so, um, yeah, it's, it's so funny how now it's like, Oh God, I don't even know my husband's new phone number. You know, like, Oh, he's been at this company for two years. I still don't know it. But it also had area codes because we never had area codes outside of our own because that was a collect call or what was it where you called pretending to call collect. So your parents would call you back.
Adrienne Garland (03:38.798)
Hahaha.
Adrienne Garland (03:43.726)
No.
Adrienne Garland (03:54.286)
Oh yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Dina Sherman (03:56.815)
so you didn't pay for it, they did. Anyway, back then I did funny stuff and, you know, like silly voices. I loved cartoons. In high school, I was on the speech and debate team, but I did humorous and dramatic interpretation where I did a 10 minute piece, either a comedy for humorous or a dramatic for drama, whatever. And it was a published piece. So like my first one was Diary of Anne Frank and it was 10 minutes excerpt.
Adrienne Garland (04:10.574)
Mm.
Hmm.
Adrienne Garland (04:24.942)
Oh wow.
Dina Sherman (04:26.095)
and I competed and ended up going to nationals, state nationals with every year. I got really, I would do a lot of character voices. I had a knack back then and I won a lot. It was just fun. And then I went to UCLA. I went to college and learned how to learn. And then after college got involved in front of the camera, behind the camera on TV and film and then on camera.
Adrienne Garland (04:47.758)
Mm -hmm.
Dina Sherman (04:56.143)
And at a casting director workshop, a casting director in front of the whole group, it was like, Dana, call my office tomorrow. And everyone was like, I swear, you know, every eyeball shot to me, you know, the other actors. And so I called the next day and he goes, yeah, you got a great voice. You've got a great, you know, you're great. I think you need to do voiceover. Basically back then, a little mermaid had just come out and animation was dying. So he was basically telling me I had the perfect voiceover.
Adrienne Garland (05:19.374)
God.
Oh yeah.
Oh my God, that's hysterical. Thanks.
Dina Sherman (05:26.319)
And I was like, ouch. And you know, like, yeah, you have a great place for radio. Woohoo. It was the same thing. Radio is voiceover. Oh, in case your listeners don't know what voiceover is, let me take a look.
Adrienne Garland (05:32.686)
Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (05:41.166)
Mm -hmm. Yes, please. Take us down that path.
Dina Sherman (05:47.215)
So voiceovers is anything, anytime you hear a human voice, but you don't see a person. So on the radio, that's obviously voiceover. On TV, if you hear, like you see the images like the Nike ads or the Gatorade ads, and you hear the person talking in the background, like under a picture, that's a voiceover. That's just a commercial. At the very end, when you hear, when you hear, in terms and conditions, don't apply, please, you know, they do it really fast. That's a tag.
Adrienne Garland (06:06.446)
Mm -hmm.
Dina Sherman (06:17.135)
but it's still a voiceover. Animation. You see things, inanimate objects, talk, dogs, tools, the kitchen sink. We can make anything talk as long as it's animated or you have the right apps. That's voiceover. Another thing that's voiceover is when you, if you ever watch a TV show or a movie being filmed, it's always quiet on the set, quiet on the set.
Adrienne Garland (06:18.19)
Yeah.
Dina Sherman (06:45.103)
And the only people you hear talking are the main actors who are mic'd. And it's perfectly quiet. And then when you watch the TV show or film, you hear all these people talking in the background. You hear the hubbub of the restaurant. You hear, you know, conversations or in a hospital, you'll hear the PA system or the airport, the PA system, the white load. The white zone is for loading and unloading of vehicles only. The red zone. That's all put in later.
Adrienne Garland (07:15.054)
Yeah.
Dina Sherman (07:15.727)
That's all called voiceover, it's ADR, audio dialogue replacement. So there was no dialogue when it was originally recorded or filmed, but later as actors, we go in and lay all that down for you. And if the show is in another country, then they get foreign actors with the local dialogue or dialect laying down backgrounds so that it's authentic. So that's.
Adrienne Garland (07:37.838)
Mm -hmm.
Dina Sherman (07:42.799)
pretty much the basics of voiceover. Anytime you hear a human voice but you don't see the person.
Adrienne Garland (07:50.894)
Yeah. No, I mean, it's in everything that we do. It's in everything that we see. So it's a very lucrative and busy field, I would imagine. Even, you know, my husband has a small business and the recordings that when, you know, you reach his office, those are voiceover actors who read those different scripts. And, you know, you get to...
Dina Sherman (07:52.879)
Um.
Adrienne Garland (08:20.526)
we have, we use a service and we get to choose who the voiceover people are. So it's not just even in entertainment, it's also for business purposes as well.
Dina Sherman (08:34.479)
Yes.
Adrienne Garland (08:36.366)
So how did, so when you, uh huh.
Dina Sherman (08:37.231)
I actually didn't find my phone. Sorry.
Adrienne Garland (08:41.838)
No, that's OK. So yeah, so how did you sort of go from debate and winning all of the nationals and all of that? How did you sort of get into film and TV? And then you are also the voice of the Annie Awards since 2005, which is amazing. And then you have now started a YouTube channel for kids. So sort of take us through that journey.
Dina Sherman (09:12.911)
Ooh, well, that's okay. In a nutshell, it's a lot of years. So...
After college, I mean, I loved, it's funny, I'm not an outgoing person, but I'm not super outgoing. I don't like to be the center of attention or the star of the room. That's not my thing, but I love playing characters. I've always loved comedy. And so I liked being on camera. I liked doing more TV and film than stage so much, although I've done a lot of stage and I did enjoy it.
But I love to play, I love improv. And so I did get into that field and I got lucky to go from on camera to voiceover at a time that it was a good time to do it. During that time, I had an agent. He's actually a misogynist, I learned the word.
Dina Sherman (10:19.695)
But the one thing I am grateful to him for is one, taking me on in the agency. But he also yelled at me and said, okay, so you're in this business. What are you doing for others? I'm like, what? You know, I'm young in my 20s and he's like, what do you do for other people? What charities do you have? How are you giving back? What's wrong with you? He didn't do it in the nicest of ways. But he made a good point.
Adrienne Garland (10:43.374)
Wow. Yeah.
Dina Sherman (10:49.455)
He really, really did. And it's like, I am lucky. I get to do something I absolutely love and I get paid occasionally for it. I don't get paid for auditions. And I don't get, it is not quite lucrative, except unless you're the one, you know, the little percentage and you're on a lot of series or you book those national commercials. It is not that lucrative. Just why I, it's a lot of work. Business -wise, we can go into business side of things.
because I know I'm talking to a lot of entrepreneurs and business people and there are some things that I think do correlate but he made me look at things outside of myself not just personally, professionally and so I got involved with charity organizations for a while because I wasn't making a ton of money I had a campaign that I did for a year and I carried it on for a few years afterwards.
where as I made money, I wanted to donate it. Since I didn't have enough savings to donate a lump sum, I wanted to make a difference, put my money where my mouth was. That was my campaign. And I said, I wanna make a difference, and I want it to be substantial. So I, for that year, said, if you hire me, 50 % of what you hire, of my fee, you know what?
Adrienne Garland (11:57.166)
Mm -hmm.
Dina Sherman (12:13.935)
you hire me for, I mean there's union, whatever rates. 50 % of it I will donate straight to the Alzheimer's Association. So as I earned it, I donated. World is weird. People said, well, if you're gonna do that, why can't I just hire you for half the amount? That's not the point. The point is let's make a difference together. So the campaign was kind of a mediocre, you know, the economy was doing weird things and people, you know, it's just weird.
Adrienne Garland (12:30.35)
No. Yeah. Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (12:36.75)
Yeah.
Dina Sherman (12:43.887)
And then as people after after that I had it on my business cards people like are you serious you would really do this and I said if you ask me to if you hire me and you want me to still this was years afterwards I'm happy to I Went from the Alzheimer's Association. I did charity events with my son. We did a bunch of different organizations But throughout that a whole time the one thing that was always really important to me was literacy I'm reading stories
Adrienne Garland (12:56.43)
Mm -hmm.
Dina Sherman (13:14.415)
Open your mind, open your world. And for children, being able to have a story read to you or reading fairy tales or reading books and reading these things take you beyond your world. It spurs your imagination, it fills your empathy and your understanding of others. There's just so much reading can do. So I was always in schools reading. Before I had kids, I actually worked.
Adrienne Garland (13:14.478)
Mm -hmm.
Dina Sherman (13:42.319)
I had to quit because I'm like, hi, I can't come in. I'm actually in labor. I was working at a, it's called TLC, the Learning Center. It's for adults with severe learning disabilities, blind, and a lot of other issues. Deaf didn't fit in so well because I read to them, but they had a lot of severe issues.
Adrienne Garland (13:59.79)
Mm -hmm.
Adrienne Garland (14:08.334)
here.
Dina Sherman (14:10.959)
And I read there and then at the schools, at underprivileged schools, and then at my kids' schools. And this went all the way up until March of 2020, when the world shut down.
Adrienne Garland (14:23.182)
Mm -hmm.
Dina Sherman (14:24.751)
And the teachers were like, could you just send us videos? And I'm like, no, I can't. The video size is too large to send in. You can't send a video of a book of reading. And so I created within a week, I created my YouTube channel. And for the next year and a half, I had teachers and my neighbors, because the world was shut down.
Adrienne Garland (14:47.694)
Hmm.
Dina Sherman (14:54.255)
put books out and I would collect, you know, books from everybody and I would just read. I read one or two a week and I was also creating content, telling little puppet shows with my hands or making jokes, whatever it was, to put out content because people were locked down and they needed stories and the teachers had books that were part of their curriculum that I read. I then put out on Facebook and all social media.
Adrienne Garland (14:54.606)
Mm -hmm.
Adrienne Garland (15:12.494)
Yeah.
Dina Sherman (15:19.599)
So that I was doing this in my channel. And so I got authors from all over the world who were trying to get their stories out. I put them on my channel as well. And it was amazing. It was an amazing time, an amazing experience. I had to learn two different editing softwares. I mean, my learning curve went from I know nothing tech to, oh! So much. But I did it. I did it. And...
Adrienne Garland (15:27.214)
Wow.
That's wonderful.
Adrienne Garland (15:43.438)
Yeah.
Dina Sherman (15:49.231)
and I love what I've created and I love some of the stuff that I created and on my channel and actually one of the more recent things I did I found an app that I use where I had these eggs so last Halloween I had the unexpected spooky stories and I mean these little DIY eggs that I decorated with little kids handcraft stuff I had in the house and glue and I put it on my app and they have them tell spooky stories you know five little eggs.
Adrienne Garland (16:06.542)
Nice.
Adrienne Garland (16:16.75)
Oh, that's so cool.
Dina Sherman (16:18.095)
All of them have something different. And a friend of mine who's a producer said, Dina, you've got something with this. Let's go, let's create something. So I'm in the process of doing something with my eggs and it's adult animation. It's not for my channel. It's not for kids. It's very raunchy. It's very funny. Super inappropriate. You know, it's, you know.
Adrienne Garland (16:33.742)
Oh.
Adrienne Garland (16:39.95)
Oh, I love this. Oh my gosh.
Adrienne Garland (16:47.022)
I love this. When will that be coming out?
Dina Sherman (16:48.079)
fart jokes, you know.
Dina Sherman (16:53.711)
So animation is not as easy as a YouTube channel. It takes a while to animate. To do, I asked one animator I was going to work with, I said, well, you know, how much can you do in a day? And he gives me about three seconds a day. I was like, what? And he wanted just to give you an idea, $50 an hour. And if his day is eight hours, that's 50 times eight.
Adrienne Garland (16:57.006)
No.
Yes.
Adrienne Garland (17:13.55)
Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (17:20.046)
Yeah.
Dina Sherman (17:22.863)
for three seconds. That's unaffordable. So I'm in the process of figuring out money and finding a different way of doing it, which I think I might've found. And yeah, I'm very excited. I don't have, I have my, it's called fat eggs. I do have it up on YouTube as a placeholder, so you can see it. It's EGGZ, the Z at the end.
Adrienne Garland (17:25.134)
Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Adrienne Garland (17:47.95)
I love it. Yeah. Yeah.
Dina Sherman (17:52.303)
Bad eggs. And you can subscribe before it even launches just to be there and know when it actually launches. But it takes a while. Animation, I know the thing I did when I started to get into voiceovers is I wanted to learn about it. I wanted to learn about animation. So I went, I called people and I, all right. Yeah, well, I, people I knew and I said, can you teach me what you do? Can I come to your studio? You need to show me, show me what.
And animatic is, show me how you animate. What's the difference between 2D and CG or 3D? So I understand the process. And I remember them saying for a TV show, 30 minute, 26 minute TV show to go from concept recording, so the voices are recorded first in America, to you see it on TV is seven months. Seven months to animate, just a short. So it is a process.
Adrienne Garland (18:27.79)
Mm -hmm.
Adrienne Garland (18:46.286)
Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Of course. Yeah.
Dina Sherman (18:50.831)
There's my long answer to trying to be short. Uh, sorry, go ahead. What do you want to know? I'll stop talking.
Adrienne Garland (18:55.662)
Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (18:59.534)
No, that's terrific. No, no, no. Yeah, so it's such an interesting story. And I think the part that's interesting for the audience, of course, is just your journey, right? And we were talking a little bit before we started recording about how sometimes as we move through life, our where we're going doesn't necessarily.
look like we thought it might look when we first started out. Sometimes we approach our lives and try to build our professions with some type of identity that we have in mind and we work so hard at it. And if it's not the thing that we wanna keep pursuing,
there's a little bit of guilt that, you know, hey, we've put so much time and energy into this one area of our lives and, you know, maybe it just lost its sparkle at some point. And, you know, I'm not saying that, you know, the acting or the voiceover lost its sparkle for you, but it definitely morphed into something different. And it's so funny that you told the story about the, the,
the person, the misogynist who yelled at you about what are you doing to help people because that's very, very judgmental. And I would have turned around and said to him, what are you doing to help people before you tell me what I need to do? And how did he even know who you are and what you do? So that was very bold and emblazoned of him, which is absolutely ridiculous. And I also, I just want to say one other thing.
Dina Sherman (20:47.503)
It's a part of who he was.
Adrienne Garland (20:52.142)
I want to say one other thing. I also, you know, that was him projecting himself onto you. And I think it's awful that somebody put their beliefs and values onto someone else and it shamed you into doing something that's good, which is a good outcome.
But what you're doing now is with the children's stories and reading to them and everything you did during COVID and everything, that is a beautiful thing because that's an alignment with who you are. And not that what you were doing before wasn't in alignment, but the fact that you said like, oh, yeah, it didn't really hit. Well, you know what? Yeah, I can see why it didn't hit because someone shoved it down your throat and shamed you into...
you know, into forcing yourself to pick something versus it just emerging organically, which is where you've come to in your life. So maybe he put the idea in your head, but he absolutely went about it the wrong way. And I think that that is terrible. But anyway, yeah, so I just kind of want to communicate to the audience that, you know, we can...
Dina Sherman (22:07.087)
Thank you.
Adrienne Garland (22:14.51)
have so many different talents and skills and all of it. And sometimes we don't know where it's going to lead. And I think we have to be open to allowing our lives to also pull us through and go after different opportunities. And I love, Deena, I love the fact that, you know, you're obviously not, you know, 19 or 20 just starting your career out. You're in another phase of your career.
and you're just getting started, right, with this next chapter. I think that's so exciting.
Dina Sherman (22:46.255)
Hehehehe!
Dina Sherman (22:50.863)
Thank you. You know, it's interesting. You said so many things. I want to see if I can address them quickly. People say things to us, especially actors, but I think as women in general, we get judged on. I used to say, your opinions are showing. You've been, you're opinionating on me, you know? Okay, that's your opinion. And it hurts. I do not deny that a lot of times what people say to us,
hurts and depending who says it, we have our shields, we have our walls up and sometimes we can deflect and sometimes it comes straight in and it hurts and it can hurt for days. But then look at it, which is what I did with this agent. What's the point? The point is I should be doing something different. You know, I should figure out how to help others. Okay, F him.
and how he told me and how he made me feel. But maybe I should look at this. Then there's the thing you said about being ashamed of not achieving what we need to achieve. There's something that happened along my journey. I have two kids and as women who try to juggle so freaking much between children and work and husbands and...
you know, our resumes should really say a lot more than they do. I found myself one day when my kids were young with a two -hour window in the middle of the day and I went to the library and I checked out, okay, I checked out a romance novel, just a piece of, you know, bubble gum, right? Just, you know, trash. I'm like, and I went to this beautiful little restaurant across the street and I sat down and I had ordered myself an iced tea and a salad and
Adrienne Garland (24:24.078)
Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (24:30.766)
Hahaha.
Adrienne Garland (24:37.422)
Ha ha ha.
Adrienne Garland (24:41.166)
Yeah.
Dina Sherman (24:47.951)
I started to read the book and I'm thinking, crap, I really have to do this. I should be doing this. I should be doing that. I should be, I was shoulding all over myself. I should be, and I knew my time was up and I had to go back and pick up the kids and get through the rest of my day and get my auditions done and da da da da da da da da da, right? By the way, my inner, you know, we all have our inner song. My inner song was Barnum and Bailey. Yeah, da da da da da da da da da. That was my, that was my internal monologue song.
Adrienne Garland (24:57.39)
Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (25:10.254)
Hmm.
Oh yeah.
Dina Sherman (25:18.031)
So anyway, I felt bad. I didn't, I did not feel refreshed after my beautiful little lunch, whatever. And so I decided, you know, whatever, right? It was three months before I got that opportunity again, three months. And all of a sudden I found myself with a two hour window and I went, I took myself back to the library, got another book, went back to that restaurant.
Adrienne Garland (25:37.006)
Oh my god.
Dina Sherman (25:47.503)
ordered my salad, ordered my iced tea, and went, I will never should on myself again. Whenever I get an opportunity to find that moment, to be with me or to be with a friend that you don't get to see and you get to catch up with, I do not should on myself anymore. There's a speaker used to say, don't should on yourself and don't masturbate. I must do this, I must do that, you're masturbating.
Adrienne Garland (25:54.222)
Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (26:02.798)
Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (26:07.712)
No.
Adrienne Garland (26:12.398)
Master. I've never heard that.
Dina Sherman (26:16.431)
I was really young and this is, isn't that great? So no shitting on yourself and no masturbating. If you find yourself, well, you know, don't, obviously don't procrastinate too much. Don't put everything off till tomorrow. But when you find you have that little window of opportunity, embrace it and see where it takes you. The other thing I learned is, you know, from, from Jim Carrey, yes, man. The reason I have a YouTube channel is because I said yes.
Adrienne Garland (26:17.966)
That's a good one.
Adrienne Garland (26:23.63)
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Adrienne Garland (26:36.173)
Yeah.
Dina Sherman (26:45.647)
I can do this. Somebody show me. Yes, I can edit. Yes, send me your books. Yes. I said yes to everything I possibly could. It was hard. It was really hard. I was a team of me. There was nobody else. We were locked down. It was just me doing all of it and I did burn out. I'm not doing as much now for it, but my path is changing a little bit. By the way, I still do have my career. I still...
Adrienne Garland (26:47.054)
Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (26:55.598)
Yeah. Of course.
Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (27:07.502)
Yeah.
Dina Sherman (27:13.839)
audition to 10 and I still work. I still, I mean, I have, oh crap, I have a, I forgot I have to record tomorrow and I need to go over this stuff with the woman. We're always, I'm, you know, so I am still working. But I heard something else on the radio I want to share because I don't know if your audience, I'm assuming your audience is a range of young college girls all the way up to, you know, mature women who have.
life experience that we can say F off. We get to a point where like you're full of it and I don't need to do that anymore. You know, we know who we are. Not that we know who you're women. We know as a woman, I know who I am and what I will put up with and what I won't. And it's beautiful to get to this age and I wish we hadn't, we were 20. But I wish I had that skin of my 20 year old, but.
Adrienne Garland (27:46.254)
That's right.
Adrienne Garland (28:02.862)
Ah me too.
Adrienne Garland (28:07.694)
Who cares? Seriously? Like, really? Like, who cares? Right? You're beautiful. I mean, come on.
Dina Sherman (28:11.439)
No, I do, I do, I do, I miss, I miss, I miss sticky brain. I miss sticky brain, because as a 20 year old, I remembered everything. Now, meh, not so much. And I don't have, and I don't like having to apply so much makeup when I go out. I wish, I was like, oh, but, I'm still an actor, sometimes I have to. But the thing I heard on the radio, the thing I heard on the radio that I want to share, that I thought was,
Adrienne Garland (28:20.366)
Yeah. Eh, who cares?
Adrienne Garland (28:27.726)
So just don't wear makeup. Don't wear makeup.
Adrienne Garland (28:34.862)
Oh, true, true, true. Yeah.
Dina Sherman (28:40.399)
Brilliant that I want to share with all my fellow women out there was There's we have different stages in our lives, right? We have our zero to 25 You know, which is like you have your adolescence goes through there then you've got 25 through 50 And there's an age run there and then you've got 50 to 75 75 to 100 What this woman said was from 50 to 75
has become middle essence. It's not adolescence anymore. We're not discovering who we are, what we want to do with our life. We've now hit a stage where from 25 to 50, we're doing it. We're doing what we want with our life because we figured it out in our adolescence and we struggled, you know, we're struggling through it and we're going on that journey. But 50 to 75, it's like we've done it. We've achieved some of it. We've achieved what we wanted to from it or not at all. And we're...
Adrienne Garland (29:14.094)
Yeah.
Dina Sherman (29:38.831)
now taking a turn, we're rediscovering who we are and what we can do. And we're making a new change. And I was like, ah, that is so true in middle -essence. We can now go, right? It's like.
Adrienne Garland (29:45.166)
Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (29:49.134)
That's good. Yeah.
I love this.
That's why we should name this episode, Middlesense.
Dina Sherman (29:59.567)
I took it from somebody else and I wished I could credit her. It's like, you know, when you drive and you hear something brilliant on NPR and you're like, who is this? And then you get to your destination and you never figure it out. And it's just, but it sticks with you. If you're hearing this, whoever you are that came up with this, please, please let me chat to Adrienne and get on and she leads and talk about this. But it is so, it is so empowering.
Adrienne Garland (30:06.414)
Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (30:17.006)
Let us know.
Adrienne Garland (30:22.318)
Yeah, yes! Oh my gosh, yes.
Dina Sherman (30:29.454)
to think that, yeah, we are now in a place that we can read. If you want to learn gardening, garden. If you want to do gardening, write a book, do both, you know? And it doesn't have to be a book about gardening. It can be a trashy novel that some mom gets to read under two hour window.
Adrienne Garland (30:36.494)
Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (30:40.686)
Do it. Yes. No. No.
Adrienne Garland (30:48.142)
That's right.
Oh my gosh, I think we could like write those out like Stephen King writes his books, right?
Dina Sherman (30:58.159)
We all need to embrace all those things. And when we fail and when we don't do what we set out to achieve, because I've tried to produce cartoons and they're not working. OK, so they're still there. Am I going to let it go? Maybe. Am I going to make it into a book? Possibly. Or am I going to wait until it gets another opportunity? There's not.
Adrienne Garland (30:59.118)
Oh my gosh.
Adrienne Garland (31:16.43)
Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (31:21.326)
Maybe. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Dina Sherman (31:26.127)
There's not necessarily a giving up directing.
In my mind, that's me.
Adrienne Garland (31:31.47)
Yeah, it's a redirection. I like that a lot. Yeah, that's terrific. Dina, I love this so much. Yeah, I love that. And I think that's sort of the message for this whole entire conversation and one that we'll wrap on because we do have so much collective wisdom. We have so many...
Dina Sherman (31:36.271)
What else can I do to prove my soul?
Adrienne Garland (31:57.774)
you know, friends and relationships that over the years have, you know, professional, personal that have come and gone and some have, you know, stuck around.
Dina Sherman (32:02.255)
Oops, sorry.
Adrienne Garland (32:09.102)
And all of it, all of it informs exactly who we are and where we are. And I do think we need to take a look at it. We need to take stock sometimes and say, is this where we want to keep moving toward? And if not, that's OK. You can redirect. We have the power to redirect. We've always had the power to redirect. But.
Dina Sherman (32:29.903)
Mm -hmm.
Adrienne Garland (32:36.462)
I think that as we sort of get a little bit older, a little bit more mature, we realize that we actually do have the power. Because we, as I think in our sort of generation that had the corded phones that you wrapped from the kitchen all the way upstairs into your bedroom to talk to your friends for seven hours. I did that. You know, I think that.
Dina Sherman (32:52.399)
me.
Adrienne Garland (33:03.63)
I don't even know where it was going with that because it was so funny. But we had the power back then, but I don't think that we realized it. But we do. So I love your story. I can't wait for this dirty eggs show to come out. What is it? Bad eggs, bad eggs. Yes, it reminds me of bad moms. Bad eggs, bad moms.
Dina Sherman (33:21.071)
That is. That is.
Adrienne Garland (33:31.726)
I can't wait to watch it. I know it's going to be so, so funny. And I just really appreciate you sharing your story with us here today on the She Leads podcast. And if people want to get in touch with you, if they want to learn more about you, if they want to watch the YouTube channel, how can they get in touch with you?
Dina Sherman (33:31.727)
So they're rad.
Dina Sherman (33:52.175)
Oh, I'm all over social media. So on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, I believe it's just Dina Sherman, D -I -N -A Sherman, S -H -E -R -M -A -N, like the tank, even though I'm a tiny thing. Sherman tank, and it's just at on TikTok, it's Dina Sherman 21. My website is just www .DinaSherman .com.
I'm on LinkedIn. Please find me on LinkedIn for all you business people. I would love to connect business -wise as well. I mean, and yes, I do need a following on social media. So if you follow me on Instagram and Facebook and X, please do because it, unfortunately, a lot of this business is popularity. So if it looks like I have a following, oh, I must be good. Not 30 years of experience. No, just popular. Yeah, welcome to my world.
Adrienne Garland (34:46.446)
Yes.
No. Yeah. Yeah.
Dina Sherman (34:51.311)
Um, and yeah, I'm on TikTok too, but I don't, I don't post as much there. Um, and for my YouTube channel for kids, and I'm hoping to start reading again, I'm actually in the process of trying to learn new, um, software, uh, for editing so that I can do a different way so that the books can come alive more as opposed to me reading, uh, it's, it's the stories. Um, yeah, so I have to learn stuff again. Uh, always learning, always learning. Um.
Adrienne Garland (35:14.606)
Oh wow.
Adrienne Garland (35:19.118)
good.
Dina Sherman (35:20.559)
And that's the stories are Dina Sherman stories and more. All one word Dina Sherman stories and more on YouTube. And that's my story channel. And bad eggs is bad EGGZ, but it's really a placeholder. There's nothing there yet, just an image. And yeah. And oh, there is one thing. Can I add one more thing for everyone? So I went to a couple of seminars.
Adrienne Garland (35:21.55)
Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (35:41.87)
That's awesome.
Adrienne Garland (35:46.734)
Sure. Yeah.
Dina Sherman (35:50.031)
And one of the things I was told that works better for other industries, but not as hard, it's harder for voiceover. It's really hard for what I do, but I still figured out a way to use it is asking yourself the question when you are networking, because networking is important when you're meeting people, asking yourself, what can I do to solve your problem? So figuring out what the other person is working on, what they're doing, what their project is. If you want to work with them,
Adrienne Garland (36:14.926)
Yeah.
Dina Sherman (36:19.119)
for them or work with them or you're looking for a job, don't ask for the job necessarily. If it's an opportunity, say, well, I hear that you need this. Do you know my company does X, Y, and Z? If there's a way we can help you achieve that, let me know. Here's my card. So being very specific and targeted. Yeah. I mean, you don't always have to, it's like, hey, let's exchange cards. I might have an idea to help you and you can do it another time too.
Adrienne Garland (36:39.502)
Mmm, that's great advice.
Yeah.
Dina Sherman (36:48.495)
But instead of saying, hey, hire me. I know what to do to help you. It's like saying, I hear you. I hear what you need. This is what I can do to solve your problem.
Adrienne Garland (36:48.622)
Mm. Yeah.
Adrienne Garland (36:59.375)
Mm, so good. That's really great advice. It's so relevant too. It's too bad that this episode is gonna come out in a couple of weeks because I teach at NYU at the Tisch Center for Hospitality. I teach entrepreneurship and the class tomorrow night. We are talking all about networking and the power of our networks. So I will definitely bring that up, but it would have been very cool to share the episode with my students, but I will share the golden nugget from this episode with them. Definitely will do that. Yeah. Yeah, awesome.
Dina Sherman (37:30.927)
Absolutely. You can always zoom me in. I will tell you what you want. I will talk to them, you know, and answer questions. I love to network because I love meeting people, but it's about meeting them and making a relationship and a connection first.
Adrienne Garland (37:42.51)
Awesome.
Adrienne Garland (37:49.262)
Exactly, exactly. Well, I love that so much. And so I'm happy that you and I have established a great relationship and had such a wonderful conversation. I love all of your stories, Dina, and I just love your energy. So thank you so much for spending time with me here today. And just thank you for being on the She Leads podcast, and we will talk to you soon.
Dina Sherman (37:54.639)
Yes
Dina Sherman (38:11.855)
Thank you and thank you for what you do.