“The only thing that could be below you is to not have a job”: Glenn offers 7 steps to get people back to work

by Wilson

During an interview with Ellen DeGeneres last week, Ashton Kutcher made a bold declaration about the entitlement culture in America saying, “The only thing that can be below you is to not have a job.” On radio this morning, Glenn further elaborated on that very point, using the words of Kutcher, the lessons of Mike Rowe, and his own experience differentiate between finding work and creating it.

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“Ashton Kutcher said, ‘I believe the only thing that could be below you is to not have a job.’ Amen,” Glenn said. “Do you have anybody that you know that is a recent college graduate, or are you a college graduate? And you’re having a really hard time finding a job? Do you know anybody who’s telling you there are just no jobs out there? I would tell you that Mike Rowe would disagree with you. There are millions of jobs that are available right now, but are they below you?”

Glenn offered seven steps for finding a job right now:

1. You find a leafless yard
2. Go find a rake
3. Take pictures before and after you’ve raked
4. Post the pictures
5. Put them in a flier and take them around your neighborhood
6. Tell yourself every day: ‘I’m going to do the very best.’
7. Ask yourself at the end of the day: ‘Can I do better tomorrow?’

“Got a bunch of leaves in your yard? Take pictures of all of the leaves in your yard, or maybe if you don’t have a yard, go find someplace else. Go find a park if you have to. Find somebody in your neighborhood that has a whole bunch of leaves and take a picture of all the leaves. Then go find a rake and rake all the leaves. I mean every single leaf. Do the best job of raking you’ve ever seen anybody do – I mean every single leaf – and bag it. Make it into an art. Find your joy in raking those leaves,” Glenn explained. “Find the worst lawn you could possibly find and take all the pictures of it before, and then do the best job you possibly can and show all of the pictures afterwards. Then post those photos on Facebook and tweet them with the following caption: ‘I will do the best job of raking leaves you’ve ever seen. Reply and I’ll quote you a rate.’ If you don’t want to do that on Facebook or Twitter, just take the pictures of what you do and what you’ve done and go door to door and say, ‘I’m going to give you a great rate because I’ve got to work. I can’t sit around all day. It’s driving me out of my mind.’”

“Every day when you leave your home to rake leaves say this to yourself: ‘I’m going to do the very best job I possibly can.’ Step 7, return home after you’re finished and ask yourself, ‘Did I do my very best?’ That’s it. Could be raking leaves, could be anything, but leaves is where I would suggest you start today,” he continued. “Every journey begins with a first step. And I’m telling you: Hard workers are hard to find. People who are dedicated, people who will do any job, it is hard to find them. Everybody has some sort of an elitist attitude. Everybody has this attitude of: That job is beneath me. No job is beneath you. No job is beneath you.”

As Glenn explained this morning, the current economy requires one to create work, not simply find it.

“It’s tough to find a job right now. But it is not tough to create a job right now,” Glenn said definitively. “Find a problem and fix it. The problems are merely opportunities. And may I suggest that if you are in a job right now that you hate, why are you doing it? I’m really convinced that most of us, the reason why we have so many problems in our world is because we are not doing the thing that we’re supposed to be doing.”

Glenn explained he is still not totally sure he is doing what he is supposed to be doing. But he recognizes that he is evolving and changing. “I really feel like I’m not the guy that I was 13 years ago. I’m not the guy that I was six years ago. I don’t even know if I’m the guy that I was a year ago. I’m changing… I’m still paying for the mistakes that I made… I have a different consciousness. I understand things differently now,” he explained. “How do I let go of that past because it’s the world that I’ve now created for myself? Well, I’ve done it before; why can’t I do it again? Well, because I’m not quite ready yet. I’m not really sure where I’m headed yet. I don’t know. But I know that it will be better than it is today because I know I’m willing to put in the hard work.”

Recognizing that you are evolving and changing, and understanding that what you find fulfilling today, may or may not be what you find fulfilling a year from now is part of life. And Glenn contends this growing experience all starts with work.

“There’s nothing better than work. There is nothing more fulfilling than work… If your child says or you’re saying the economy stinks, this isn’t a good time to start a business, what is the economy? Can you explain it to me,” Glenn asked. “Maybe I’ll invite the economy out to lunch and tell him to stop preventing people from doing work. There is only one economy that matters: Your economy. And your economy starts with two hands and the talent that you were born with. Everyone was born with exactly every tool you need.”

“Listen to me carefully. People say this to me all the time: Glenn, but if I could just get you to talk about… No! You were born with everything you need,” he concluded. “All in due time. All in God’s way. But know this: Everything that you need, you have right now. What is it you were sent here to do? Pick up a rake. Pick up a rake and start finding it.”

  • Mike

    Thats what I did in my early teens(younger than 14), Before I could get working papers. In the winter I carried a snow shovel and walked through the whole village cleaning sidewalks and porches and driveways. Don’t forget to ask for referrals..

  • diarev

    Finding and doing odd jobs is not difficult. Those jobs usually don’t pay enough to make a living in America, though. But Glenn is correct that there’s no excuse to sit and do nothing, and no job is beneath one.

  • David Foster

    I love the simplicity in the concept. Only problem is that one wouldn’t rake a yard unless there are leaves or other things needing to be raked. So maybe it would be best to find a leaf (full) yard. ;)

  • Milo

    A rake, a camera, and now I am in the hole even further! Do you even know what it takes to make a decent living in this screwed up country Glenn? I am a big fan of yours but you and Ashton have no clue anymore. Multimillionaires encouraging people to go rake! Wake up my man and stop this ridiculous writing!

    • David Joyner

      Not having a rake or a camera is no reason to not make money this way. Ask the homeowner if you can borrow their rake. Since you are borrowing their rake you will need to charge less to complete the job. Since you have no camera, they will need to accept your word that you will do an awesome job. Eventually you can buy your own rake. Reinvest in a push lawnmower. Upgrade to a riding lawnmower. Next, buy vehicle decals and business cards. There is usually a way to get around the difficulties life has placed in your path. If you do a better job than your competition at a fair rate, you can make money. The key is to be persistent. Personal experience.

      • David Joyner

        To everyone who is saying these jobs don’t pay enough, they hardly ever do in the beginning! Work. Build a customer base and one day you will be hiring people to do the job you are sweating at right now. It is called working your way up the proverbial ladder. I am a successful bread distributor right now. I bought my bread route 14 years ago. Before that I had to do things that didn’t make nearly as much money. I waited tables. I sold water softeners. I PICKED UP GARBAGE THAT HAD BLOWN INTO THE SURROUNDING WOODS AT THE LOCAL DUMP, BAGGED IT, AND BROUGHT IT BACK TO THE DUMP! Really disgusting. No job should ever be beneath you.

    • Alex

      Wow Milo, thats like saying attractive people don’t have a clue about diet and exercise cause they already are healthy. If you can’t find a rake and camera (as it seems to be in your case) you have absolutely no creativity or drive. How worthless.

  • Lora Fox

    Sounds good. Buy the problem is many of the illegals are doing those jobs and you cannot compete. My oldest son was able to have a few yards. By the time my youngest came along no one wanted to hire the teenager any more to do their yards. The illegals are doing the. Same with the handy man. Cannot compete with them.

    • Anonymous

      When I need stuff done around the house (yard work, cleaning help, packing away things for storage/pulling things out of storage, moving furniture around, etc.) I ALWAYS hire a neighborhood kid first, and an adult neighbor next if no teenagers are around and/or willing. ALWAYS. Over the summer, my lawn was maintained by an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old. They did a better job than the 40-year-old landscaper I had hired previously, and they charged so much less, that they always left with what they saw as a HUGE bonus (I paid them the same $30 I’d have paid the adult, since they worked much harder than he did).

  • Anonymous

    My life is a testimony to this idea. Everyone has a calling from God. As we move, god will move with us. Even if we are just raking, we may end up in someone’s yard who has a job in their company, or invests in our dream, that God was directing us to find.

    That happened to me years ago. I was in music school. One of the people who taught was Abby Rockefeller. She led a women’s group. I met her. At the same time, I was also a temp typist. One day I got sent to an organic compost toilet company. In walked Abby ,who owned it. Some time later I saw her in a restaurant and had the thought to ask her to help me put out an lp of my music. A voice said “ASK HER”. I called her months later, she said yes and I almost fell off my chair. She was the first non-relative to support my music; my grandma used to send me money to record it, but it was not until a non-relative did this that I recognized that it was GOD using her to support me since it was my real calling. God also used my family, but it had not been clear to me then – I thought they just did it cos they loved me. God uses everyone – our families, friends, strangers. This thing with Abby ,I recognized later was ALSO a precursor of my later calling as a writer. After I became a CHristian in l990, God sent me into the mental health system to be a witness against it and write a book exposing their atheism and genocide. Since Freud the father of psychiatry, they have been falsely calling Christians and anyone with spiritual beliefs and experiences schizophrenic, a nonsense label. The Nazis killed mental patients in the t4 euthanasia program, with Psych drugs. This genocide has continued worldwide since, using mental health as a cover. The t4 genocide was a SNEAK genocide of Christians, since they used atheist psychiatry to falsely call them mentally ill. God had me write a book, Manual for Transformational Healing-God’s Answer to Psychiatry FREE on my website http://www.1prophetspeaks.com It also tells how to heal mental and physical illness thru prayer. I called Abby when I was there and told her, and she said “I KNOW ALL ABOUT PSYCHIATRY’> she was running to catch a boat so I didn’t have time to ask her WHAT she knew, but the AsK HER from years before was something that had a 2nd meaning. I should have asked her later to tell me what she knew – I ended up doing 10 years of research that she could have saved me the time. Her family are the foremost illuminati bloodline social engineering family in the country. They funded Hitler, and the Nazi institute for psychiatry. I am sure she knew. It came to me recently that her toilet company was something God is using as a prophetic warning that her family is social engineering the country down the toilet! They supported the whole pharmaceutical industry, suppressing holistic health cures instead, they funded education which was also used to dumb down the population in a variety of ways. At the same time they fund hospitals, foundations, education. At Brown I studied in the ROckefeller Library.

    See articles, free books at http://www.1prophetspeaks.com see ARTICLES BY CATEGORY page

    my book in progress has more about all this:

    ADVENTURES IN PRAYER – testimony of a prophet-intercessor

    Abby Rockefeller’s toilet company and Rockefeller social engineering

    http://www.1prophetspeaks.blogspot.com/2013/10/abby-rockefellers-toilet-company.html

    Illuminati mind control in psych drugs, music and education

    http://www.1prophetspeaks.blogspot.com/2012/04/illuminati-mind-control-in-psych-drugs.html

    Everyone has a calling from God

    http://www.1prophetspeaks.blogspot.com/2013/05/everyone-has-calling-from-god.html

    Your name is often a sign of the call on your life by God

    http://www.1prophetspeaks.blogspot.com/2012/10/your-name-is-often-sign-of-call-on-your.html

    Anyone named after a prophet is called to be a prophet. Anyone named Christopher is called to bear witness to Jesus. It means Christ-bearer.

    Musicians are all called to serve God with their music. God told me this explicitly as I was writing a book for Musicians.

    WHAT KIND OF MUSICIAN ARE YOU GOING TO BE? GOD’S CALL TO MUSICIANS. Musicians are called to be prophets, intercessors and healers.

    http://www.1prophetspeaks.com/WHAT%20KIND%20OF%20MUSICIAN%20ARE%20YOU%20GOING%20TO%20BE.docx

  • Terri K

    When I was laid off years ago in NJ..I was desperate for a job ..my car broke down too. I started walking around the neighborhood..saw a dry cleaners and a fast food place. I walked into the dry cleaners, told them I was looking for a job and they hired me part time. I worked at a different store every day. I took the train to the other stores. They had several in the area. I had never done this work before, but learned how their business was run. I was behind the counter and worked in the plant. I made some friends and it helped me keep my sanity to be working. Every job I have ever had has been a learning experience and what I have learned on one job helps me on others. Sometimes you have to work 3 jobs to keep your head above water. I have don’t that and so have many of my friends. The best jobs I have gotten were being at the right place at the right time and through friends. Most people I know these days all have two jobs.

    • John Desmond

      As a former janitor, garbage man, ditch digger… I am, now, the owner of my own company. I keep about 8 people employed and I provide affordable housing to low income people.

      I attempt to help others start their own businesses by allowing them to use some of my equipment to get started. I, also, build websites for them for free, provide hosting services for free and offer my advice for free.

      One of the best suggestions I made to a guy that was making minimum wage (he could not read or write) was the following:

      Find a place where you want to work and go to the owner/boss and OFFER TO WORK FOR FREE.

      He did that and went from minimum wage to OVER TWO TIMES his income!

      The owner said – “Anyone that would offer to work for free – deserves a chance.”

  • Jaamoose

    Somebody needs to pick up a rake and hit Beck over the head with it…it’s not below the government to help, either, righties. Why isn’t Beck saying start major infrastructure upgrades? That would actually put money in workers pockets, and yes- they would be working for it! Oh, I know, it’s a “progressive” idea.

    • Mike Nelson

      Which crony businesses would you want to tap for the money to start those infrastructure projects? Could we take the money that goes to gay advocacy groups? FEMA? Maybe pare down the budget of the DoE (which produces none)?

      Why is it so hard to accept that the “infrastructure” that matters most is damaged by government interference in ANY market, EVERY time?

      If Beck instead talked about starting a production studio or being a radio host, would that be a better starting point (since everyone clearly has the ability to take those steps, whereas raking leaves might be too comprehensive a starting point for for some cerebrals)?

      Rather than criticize, do you instead have a suggestion that the unemployed and destitute could do RIGHT NOW (i.e., raking leaves), or is it always ONLY about “hitting Beck [and his following] over the head”?

      Why does it have always to be about the gov’t spending money? WHy can’t you even advocate for a private concern doing something, rather than gov’t?

      When you follow a progressive agenda, you acknowledge that quagmire is the social and economic condition that you support, because to so empower the Daddy State is to disempower the individual.

      There’s no such thing as giving someone dignity, but there certainly is such a thing as enforcing a lack thereof through manufactured and bureaucratized co-dependence and failure to understand one’s own potential to EARN and prosper.

      • Jaamoose

        It’s blowing fairy dust out of your backside to suggest that raking leaves solves anything. Sure, there are some business opportunities in landscape care, but it’s a competitive and fairly saturated market. An area where people can pick up money is in agriculture. About 1/4 of the pear crop here went unpicked for lack of workers due to (you won’t like this part) much lower counts of migrant workers under Obama’s immigration crackdowns. But tell me, are you really so poisoned in the mind that you can’t see building roads, bridges, etc..take work and those who do that work aren’t the lazy bums you suggest? Or do think our bridges and all are just fine right now?

        • Mike Nelson

          You’re only half right about why the pear crop went unpicked; part of it is that Americans haven’t been retained to do that work. Why? Because they have never, in the past, need be. This is a fundamental truth of economics, and I am unsurprised, but unimpressed with your cerebral considerations when it seems you cannot apply the same considerations to the economics of bridge building.

          Are you really saying that you think that building bridges and roads is what will bring us out of the economic malaise that has taken hold of the country?

          Government is incapable of generating money that is not either taken from the tax levies, or gained through corrupt means.

          In both cases, the money is taken from the people either directly (taxes) or indirectly (lost opportunities, high tariffs on imported goods, lacking entrepreneurial opportunities, etc).

          Who is poisoned in the mind to think that taking money from people who don’t want the things you’re asking for is a good idea?

          What is your plan for after we’ve repaired/rebuilt/built anew? Or is it just an ongoing process of progression toward…? And if that is the case, at what point can we say NO, we don’t need that road anymore? Given your leanings, it would seem that anytime we need to give more free stuff (like wages for work that is not worth any value), we should just build roads and infrastructure… but we can see right now in CHina that this is not a viable solution.

          Private enterprise is the only business that matters, and without it, government itself becomes an ephemeral entity to be avoided, cheated, and worked around, until it becomes a real life nightmare and comes after you for doing exactly that.

  • RealRep

    Wow! Glenn Beck you are a fucking idiot. And/or an absolutely clueless asshole.
    This is your solution???!?
    First of all, someone who needs a job that desperately probably doesn’t live in an area that even has yards much less ‘leafless’ ones to rake and post pictures of.
    And you’re trying to tell me that you would hire some guy off the street rather than a professional service? You’re trying to tell me you would even let some homeless, jobless guy IN your neighborhood? And that his problem is all his own?
    Fuck you.

    • Anonymous

      When I need yard work done, I literally hire the first person to show up in my yard with a lawn mower and a good rate. Usually that’s a neighborhood kid, but sometimes it’s a homeless guy off the street.

  • Watch it

    I was surprised to read the comments here, that no one seemed to “get” what Beck was saying. He is saying to take the initiative and work hard. It isn’t about raking leaves for a living.

  • Tim Jensen

    Wow! Sad to see this many literalists in one article. Get a clue people. Glenn is speaking allegorically, and the rake is a symbol. Find a problem you can fix and go fix it, simple. Whatever your tools, too many people are sitting around waiting for their unemployment to run out, then “try” looking for a job. You have abilities and strengths you didn’t even know you had. But it is up to YOU, not the government. Go take some crap job and every day look for better. Day labor is better than loafing waiting for handouts. It’s pretty damn sad that one of the things we have killed off in this country is shame. Have some self-motivation and get out there doing something.

    • Jaamoose

      You are giving Beck far too much credit. This piece was meant to be a dig at working people who are struggling and those looking for work. Day labor is an option, and something I’ve done between jobs before. I took a week and a half with a shovel and turned it into a foreman position on a cable crew. However, in this kind of market it’s competitive and those hiring are looking to exploit you as much as possible. It’s not an industry we should want to see grow. From your keyboard it’s easy to say “get out there and do something” instead of acknowledging most people out of work are doing just that. Also, only a fool would go to day labor if they had unemployment benefits. It’s a program set up to help workers get back to where they were economically, or close, not to step downward. There’s no “shame” in taking it, that’s what it’s for, and you have to be qualified to get it, which means losing a job through no fault of your own.

      • RealRep

        Actually, we’re all giving Beck too much credit.
        This is nothing more or less than him giving his kid a hard time. I feel bad for that boy. Around 3:25 you can start to notice. At about 4:12 he starts focusing strictly on kids albeit with a few references to ‘you’ as an afterthought.
        I especially like the reference to ‘unemployed children’ at 5:38 – ‘what have they done lately?’ – and then a nice, long pause. ‘And then your unemployed child will not be unemployed.’

        • RealRep

          Oh man, also check out his slip in
          The truth about President Obama’s approval rating
          video. @ 1:42-1:54 – out of the complete fucking blue, apropos of nothing, he says ‘you do not tell your 8 year child lies-are you lying to your mom and dad?’.
          Love it.

  • Anonymous

    My Dad used to say that no job should be beneath your dignity when you have a family to feed.

    • melissa

      or when you’ll do anything to not have to collect welfare.

  • Brad Barefoot

    I can’t really remember, who said it, I think it was Neal Boortz who said … get a job, any job. This should get you some breathing room while looking for another job you really want. You might even find out you really like what you found. But I’m a resident of “Realville”, and from inside the city limits there the future I’m ashamed to say looks pretty bleak. The rich liberals (accent rich) will tell you things are great, but when you’re rich it’s easy to be liberal. No worries, singing “joy to the world” all day long. Over the next few months tens of millions are projected to finish losing their healthcare, and hundreds of millions will see their insurance rates sky rocket. All due to those loving, caring, people called democrats. They claim to be the party of the little man. Well, fellow little people the heavy yoke of government is heavily upon the necks of the producers … while the moocher class reaps the benefits. This is one of the “little” people who has an escape plan, better start yours while your savings and retirement savings are still available to you. Why? Well Barry Soetoro, I mean Barrack Obama is in charge, and he’s only out for himself.

  • Rick

    If I owned a house, grew my own food, and rode a horse raking leaves might work. But I have to purchase things like housing, transportation and food in the open market and raking leaves won’t provide enough income to survive. It’s a noble thought, Glenn, but you need to go back to the drawing board on this one. I suggest you start with the concept of a “living wage”.

  • AAron

    Interesting concept Glenn, Get a rake. hummmm. I don’t like raking, I
    like playing in the dirt. There is stuff in the dirt, hazardous
    materials from bad mining practices, unstable arsenic from digging the
    dirt, Bad stuff indeed, not to mention hidden cat poo. There is also
    other stuff, money in cleaning that dirt so it can grow trees again and
    people can enjoy the out doors. Hummmm, Can I get paid to clean dirt???
    Why, Yes I can!! Can I create good paying jobs cleaning dirt??? Why,
    Yes I can.!! Can I make the process environmentally safe? Why, Yes I can!! 4 years into the project and a month from building the first mill and directly employing about 80 people with in the next year. From an unemployed construction worker to build a mill. Why Yes I can!! Ha. I’ll take your rake and raise you a shovel Glenn!

  • Robert Fox

    I started a tree and lawncare business 5 yrs ago and am now selling the lawncare end of things and focusing on the trees……harder work but, more money….I have tried to explain how easy it is to start this type of business and have even offered to pay the approximately $1100.00 to get things rolling(ie;..business name…insurance…dpt. of ag registration)…..And find people are not interested in physical labor of any sort!…….you can make a very very nice living….Part of me is grateful that people are either too lazy or too condescending…Endless work out there….Oh’ yeah……want to tell you before I forget….I was a glorified dishwasher at a local pizza establishment when I started this business($8.00/hr)…..Now average between $65.00- $200.00/hr

  • http://www.account4gaps.com/ account4gaps

    I get it. Hard work and making your own way are very valid and important points, but to suggest that the answer to our epidemic unemployment and underemployment challenges is to pick up a rake is simplistic and silly (not to mention it will lead to me becoming the “official crazy lady” who trespasses on other people’s property and rakes without permission”). I recently emailed you about the issue of unemployment and the jobless recovery, I appreciate your comments and sense of humor.

  • fire lion

    There are alot people working and not sitting around they are called drug dealers. They hate regulations and love their guns. But Liberals like Beck, try to make them feel like bad guys.

  • snappsw

    My father always told me that part of something is better than all of nothing. Its better to find a job and make money, even if its a little, than to set around and do nothing,

    • RobertMBailey

      part of something is better than all of nothing.
      my friend’s sister makes $70/hr on the internet. She has been laid off
      for 8 months but last month her payment was $13232 just working on the
      internet for a few hours. best site http://xurl.es/zeetm

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