Meet Shanda Matieshin
Trading MasterClass is proud to have Shanda representing the club! She's inspiring, strong, wise, and is the perfect role model for those just starting out. Shanda and her husband Kendall (also a TMC member), trade side-by-side in Calgary, Canada, and are just weeks away from welcoming their first-born child into the world! Shanda said she looks forward to 'empowering her children to discover their own destiny and listen to the call of their heart.' Check out the full interview TMC recently conducted with Shanda below…
When did your trading journey first begin?
My trading journey began many years ago. As a young person in my teens and early twenties I was always fascinated with investing and what it meant to earn money through non-traditional means. I first heard about stock trading at a seminar my husband and I attended about 7 years ago. The gentleman running the course was talking about how his son was earning crazy returns investing in stocks and he was only a teenager. Naturally I was intrigued. Somehow I got connected with this guy's son and got involved in weekly google hangout calls which was my first introduction to technical analysis. I had no idea recognizing chart patterns was called technical analysis at the time but I truly loved what I was learning. There have been some ups and downs since that first introduction to trading but I would say I started to get serious about trading as a career when I heard about IP about 3 years ago. When Irek launched Trading MasterClass in 2018 I jumped on board right away.
What was it that made you want to pursue full-time (or part-time) trading?
At first I wanted to pursue full time trading to get out of the traditional lifestyle that everyone tells you is right. Go to university to get a good job, get married have kids and retire when you are 65 then start living. That idea of life never sat well with me. I looked at the people around me that I was working with who had gone down that route and it seriously scared me! I knew I did not want that life. I wanted freedom. My parents were able to be there for my sisters and I at any moment in time not having ‘work’ as an excuse and I wanted that life for my future family.
While I still feel inspired by what I mentioned above, my reason for pursuing trading and investing as a career has developed and become stronger. As I talked about in the last question, ever since I was in high school I wanted to learn how to invest. I have just been drawn to the idea of putting money into something and seeing it grow. This is what fascinated me with trading. Watching something grow. Growth. To see a seed planted and with consistent watering, watching it grow. My trading is now centered around growth. I want to grow my wealth and my impact on others through trading. I have been inspired by the idea of wealth creation and how people grow their assets from small amounts into millions. Through careful planning and wise decision making people are able to build wealth. I have realized that true wealth is not made in a few years but it is made in the long term. The reason to pursue trading has now become more than leaving my job and has become centred around wealth creation. If I focus on wealth creation, the things I initially wanted from trading will happen by default.
"My trading is now centered around growth. I want to grow my wealth and my impact on others through trading."
What is something unexpected that you love about trading?
You learn how to control your emotions. What a valuable life skill that can be applied anywhere! To not become emotionally affected by circumstance is so critical in every area of life not just trading. If you were to always let outside forces impact your happiness you would be miserable. Yet so many people live this way. Ebbing and flowing with circumstance, never looking outside the bubble of their own perception. Trading has taught me to look outside of myself and what might be happening in the physical world and search for the answers inside myself. You only have yourself to work on in trading.
What are one to three books that have profoundly impacted your trading journey / life in general? Why?
The Untethered Soul - This book seriously changed the way I viewed the world. I have read a lot of personal development books and what I would find is many of them were the same concepts just written in a different way based on the author’s viewpoints. When I read the Untethered Soul it was like nothing I had read before. It taught me to separate myself from my circumstances and see the things happening around me objectively. I became the observer of life rather than someone consumed by circumstance. The things that happen to you do not have to affect you the way they do. How you have chosen to interpret that situation makes all the difference. There are many ways to view life and looking at yourself from a neutral perspective is just what you need to make the right decision for you going forward.
Wishes Fulfilled - Be the person you want to be right now in the present moment. This book taught me the power of feeling like the person you want to become right now. So many books teach us to think differently. Obviously this is important but I think it is really only the first step. Changing your thoughts leads to changing how you feel and that is what this book taught me. Using my feelings to become and feel like the person I want to be right now. By being that person in the present moment you can’t help but attract to yourself! There is a really good quote from the book that I have written on my white board to remind me to feel as if I am already the investor and trader I want to be, "By literally feeling the reality of the state you seek, which is firmly in your imagination. You have the means of creating miracles."
What new belief, behaviour, or habit has helped you gain the most forward momentum since becoming a trader?
Realizing that trading is dedicating yourself to the long game. I came into trading hoping to solve the temporary pain of leaving my job as fast as possible. Over the last couple years I have realized that my soul purpose behind trading cannot be to just leave my job. It has to be bigger than that. When I dedicated myself to the long game and wealth creation I saw and experienced a major shift in the way I viewed life and the things that I was doing. I realized that actually… maybe mine and my husband's ‘good’ paying jobs were helping us get to our goals quicker because we could save so much money to dump into trading and investing. I began to take the focus off what my life ‘should’ look like and started to just live in a way that made me happy.
"I began to take the focus off what my life ‘should’ look like and started to just live in a way that made me happy."
When I first started trading and back in the days when I did network marketing you are sold the dream life and that essentially the only way to be happy is to quit your job and work online. While that is still very much what I want, I had to detach myself from this idea of ‘only when I achieve this lifestyle’ can I feel like I have achieved something and call myself successful. That has actually been my biggest mental hurdle over the last number of years and I feel like I have almost finally gotten over it :) (it still creeps in every now and then but I am getting much better at getting rid of the thought). When I dropped this idea of what my life has to be like before I feel like I have accomplished anything I felt so much more confident in my trading, investments and sharing my own personal finance wisdom. I felt so good just being me and being happy with where I am at in my journey as I continue to strive toward my goals. It made the process so much more fun and I no longer felt a heavy weight of needing to constantly ‘do’ things to feel like I am getting somewhere. I can just BE the perfect person I am right now and that is enough! I know what I love to do which is being involved in financial markets and I needed to realize that I was already on the path of creating wealth and the things I am doing on a daily basis are contributing to my purpose of creating wealth for myself and helping others do the same. That is a very long answer and may be off topic but it came from the heart as it was something I really struggled with the last few years that will hopefully touch someone reading.
What advice would you give to an inspired, driven individual about to step into the trading world?
Commit to the long game. Trading is not something that will get you out of a troubling situation in a few months. If you want to escape your current reality quickly it might be wiser to find another job or start a side hustle. Develop a longer term vision for your life and see how trading can help you get there. You can build long term wealth through trading and the TMC team is evidence of that. It didn’t happen in a few months but took years of dedication. From a mindset perspective, having a long term vision will help you not get down on yourself when you have a bad month, few months or even a year from trading. As you know that the long term vision is wealth creation and true wealth and prosperity is not an overnight fantasy.
How has Trading MasterClass assisted your evolution?
TMC has helped me see trading as more than a means to an end. The team at TMC focuses on building a lifestyle of abundance rather than just trading. I really see this community as a flagship to help you progress in all areas of life and to just live the best life you can live and have trading help you get there! TMC has taught me to always be learning and refining my approach. The markets evolve over time so you have to be able to adapt to new and changing conditions. They way you trade today might not be the way you trade 1 year from now. Being okay with growth will ensure that you continue to keep moving forward and being the best trader you can be.
I have been in other trading groups before and I do just want to say that TMC is seriously dedicated to student success. There is so much content to help you understand how to analyze a chart, technical patterns and the strategies it is seriously crazy. It is has got to be one of the most comprehensive trading courses out there.
What is your next immediate trading goal?
My next immediate trading goal is more centered around making sure I am in peak performance to make the best trading and investment decisions. I have a routine that I am enjoying which has helped me find peace in the process and I have identified the characteristics of a successful trader/investor that I work to be each day. My goal is to become that person right now so that by default I attract the results I am after. In terms of a tangible goal, I am working toward levelling up my living environment and living fully off of my investments and trading performance. My husband and I have a pretty good lifestyle already but living off of our investments and trading rather than the job income is the next level up. I am working on first replacing my income and then my husband's after that. Working a couple extra years for us means we are able to save a significant portion of our income to put towards trading and investing to level up our lifestyle that much quicker. I am looking forward to the next year as I balance being a new mom with my current trading/investing routine. Though I am sure it may be challenging at times I look forward to having my baby at my desk watching me look at trading and investing ideas. :)
"I am looking forward to the next year as I balance being a new mom with my current trading/investing routine."
Any final words of wisdom?
Waking up to the beauty that is my life in this moment. I spent so much time and energy comparing myself to others earlier on and it made me very discouraged with my own progress to the point where I couldn’t even see that I made progress in many areas of my life. By staying in my own lane and realizing that I am already doing the things and taking the actions required to build the life I want I became much more empowered. I feel myself making progress now and it feels really good. My husband and I are expecting our first baby in a few short weeks and although my routine will be thrown upside down, I look forward to empowering my children to discover their own destiny and listen to the call of their heart. Something that I somewhat ignored until the last year or two!
How can we keep up with you?
My personal instagram is @shandamatieshin. I have recently started a business instagram sharing my personal finance and wealth building journey. My goal is to assist others with their journey of wealth creation. That instagram is @steptowardfreedom.
