I can do this and I will do this and I will do this. This is what I tell myself each day.

Times are tough these days. All you have to do is turn on the news to find out.

Sure that will trigger the next financial meltdown. I'm not here to talk about plans to deal with this until 2017.

I'm saying we've got a real problem.

Debt is crushing us with an average American household

owing $15,000 on the credit card,

$33,000 in student loans.

The number of people who work their whole lives and still retire

with debt is skyrocketing. People don't even think it's possible to be upwardly mobile anymore.

That's the American dream. They think it's dead. You probably know someone that feels the same way.

But my friend, they are wrong.

History shows us that people have always faced adversity

and have overcome obstacles.

So can you.

And for me, I know your choice matters. Because of racial segregation, I wasn't even allowed to use the front door of the bank in Greenville, Mississippi.

I remember the back door, but I refused to let that slight cause me to fail.

Without the idea of family setting and making a living in the cotton fields of the

Delta, I shifted my thinking, and so can you. I imagined possibilities that did not even

exist at the moment, but they eventually became my reality. I became a Pulitzer-nominated author, an

entrepreneur who helped to introduce Stair Master

Exercise System to the world.

Now the president and CEO of two small businesses and one of the owners of a bank that 50

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