Chadia Mathurin

EMPIRE STATE OF MIND (Excerpt) by Chadia Mathurin I’m a 25 year old Afro-Caribbean woman. It’s possible that you already know this because you’ve read one of my New York Times Bestsellers, you’ve read a ton of articles about me and the power house companies - Caribbean and African Entrepreneur - that my friends and I have built, I sang at your church, you follow my blog, you think I’m cute or it’s very likely that you’ve never heard of me. Either way, keep in mind that I am not rich; at least at the point of me writing this. As a matter of fact if we are to calculate my net worth it would be probably at minus $10,000 or something like that; at least at the point that I’m writing this. I’m broke and I have debt. But tomorrow marks a month since my arrival in New York (my eyes lit up). So why are you in New York? Did you gain American citizenship? Did you come in for vacation? Vacation? Uh… Nah! Way too broke to even think of buying a ticket to go anywhere. Did you come in on business? The answer is no to all of the above. I’m here completely by divine orchestration. Luck. Chance. Or whatever you want to call it. Three years after completing a degree in International Relations the good Lord finally saw it fit to allow me to actually use the degree. I’m here to complete an internship in diplomacy and human rights. But I also came with a mind that was years dreaming about what I would do if I ever found myself anywhere in the United States for an extended period of time. The time had come. I walked out of JFK International, a blast of cold air hitting my face and cutting my nose. I didn’t have the song on my almost-ready-to-disassemble Blu Life Pure but I was definitely thinking Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ anthem. New York… Anyways, at about the 2nd week in, the stipend given to me had dwindled significantly. Of course, I had no plans of living on $500 US a month in Manhattan. I had plans; big plans. Still, the money had dwindled rather quickly. Who knew that warm clothing could be so expensive? But I was saying… I had plans. I had plans to launch my publishing company the following year, amongst a few other possibly high grossing projects, and I was hoping that some web design and development projects that I had been courting for months would come through. But these things did not provide me with the immediate influx in cash flow that I was looking for and they were not guaranteed. The realization that I could make money right away hit me quite by accident. It was about to be that time: Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I was looking to purchase a compact bridge camera to begin my Facebook Vlogging journey. Being the nerd that I am, I decided that before I made a purchase that I would need a full education on the virtues and cons of bridge cameras. I watched a few videos, I read a few articles and I was doing this cyclically until I came across snapsport.com. Thank you Snapsport! Anyways, I was saying…There, I fell headfirst into comparing cameras based on their specifications and based on the prices that I was seeing on eBay. I really wanted a Sony RX-10 but I finally settled on a Fujifilm Finepix S1 compact bridge camera for $167. I purchased it, with a heavy heart, but I decided that I could always resell and get the one I really wanted when I could afford to get it. But before I dive head first into telling you how I opened an eBay Business, let me share with you some of the things that you’ll need to make money in New York. Things That You’ll Need The things that you need come in two categories: Things That Money Can Buy and Things That Money Cannot Buy. So let’s start with the things that money can get you. 1. An International Debit Card 2. A Paypal or Stripe Account 3. An Internet Connection 4. A Laptop/Desktop or Phone From Which You Can Make Online Transactions 5. Directions to A Post Office 6. Confidence 7. Grit 8. Ambition 9. The Ability to Network This is an extract from a newly started book called, Empire State of Mind: How I Made Money in New York. The book attempts to share money-making ideas with native New Yorkers or those just passing through. But differently; not in the Do This, Do That fashion so often characteristic of these types of books. Instead I use storytelling, humor, fun, fiction and fact to create an engaging How-To-Guide. The content of this is loosely based on my now, 5 month experience in New York.