Why Cannabis Laws Are a Mess: The Politics and Bureaucracy with Jeff Guillot

Listen Now

Bryan Fields: What's up guys, welcome back to another episode of The Dime. I'm Bryan Fields, with me as always, Kellen, and this week we've got a very special guest, Jeff Guillot, management partner at MAD Global Strategy. Jeff, thanks for taking the time. How are you doing today? Jeff Guillot: I'm awesome, good to be with you guys. This is going to be fun. Bryan Fields: Yeah, we're stoked to have you here. My mic just fell over, sorry about that. Kellen, how are you doing? Kellen: I'm doing good, my mic is standing up. I'm excited to talk operations — I've walked into some sophisticated stuff here, I can tell. I'm excited to talk to Jeff and dive into politics and government affairs associated with cannabis, which is always one of the best topics, especially recently. How are you doing, Bryan? Bryan Fields: Yeah, given the state of the world and all the things Trump is signing off on — maybe as we're recording — we're going to put Jeff on the hot seat and try to make sense of it all, and then maybe dive into some fun, really local stories here for New York and all the things going on. So Jeff, before we get started, I know you're one of the founding members of the Long Island Cannabis Dads community, but it's important to put you on the record on the East Coast/West Coast battle — where does your allegiance lie? Jeff Guillot: You know, I'm a Long Island guy, born and raised. While I have a great deal of love for all things West Coast, it's lovely to visit, but home is here, and I'm a proud charter member of the Long Island Cannabis Dads Lunch Club. The requirements for that are very simple: you have to live on Long Island, have reproduced, and work somewhere in cannabis, and you're in. It's been a really fun networking group, which is how I got to meet Bryan and what brings me in front of the millions and millions of listeners who'll be consuming this content. Bryan Fields: Yeah, shout out to Jordan for that sport and D. So Jeff, before we dive in, can you give a little background about yourself and how you found your way to the cannabis space? Jeff Guillot: Yeah, sure. So for the last twelve years I ran a government affairs, public affairs, and political campaign firm called Millennial Strategies, with offices on Long Island and in Manhattan. That was a great ride. In August, my partner Alex V. and I decided to sell that company to a larger national firm called MAD Global Strategy, and I now run their New York government affairs and public affairs practice. Now we've reached across the country — we're looking at projects in the cannabis space and outside of it. As far as how I started doing weed stuff, we got hired by the Drug Policy Alliance through a mutual friend during one of the failed attempts to legalize recreational cannabis in New York, and one thing led to another, as it often does in this business. When you're a lobbyist, you don't advertise your services in the Penny Saver or anywhere, really — it's 90% referrals and word of mouth. That's what happened here: the Drug Policy Alliance led us to working for Eaze, which led us to working for PAX, which led us to working for some of the beverage guys and some of the early movers in the agricultural space. And now, here in 2025, here we are — regretting only some of it. Kellen: Love it. So for some of the clients you work with, is it a consistent, ongoing effort to achieve certain goals, or is it more that once you achieve that goal, it's about continuing growth in certain areas? Walk us through how that works and give us a breakdown of some of the current clients you're working with. Jeff Guillot: Yeah, so the joke in this business is, "Congratulations, you won — now you're fired." Sometimes we're engaged for a set period to achieve a specific result, and we have other clients who have ongoing needs and want representation on retainer at all times. It's really twofold — we get calls from guys in a total crisis who need help right now, and we get hired by smarter people who see a crisis coming six months out and want to prepare for that moment. Bryan Fields: That's probably the perfect balance — understanding that if you see the problem coming now, that's the best approach. But I'd assume most people don't have the wherewithal, financially or otherwise, to say "I see a problem in six months, I need to hire Jeff now." Jeff Guillot: Oh yeah, for sure. We try to be honest with people. I got a call from a guy last year describing his problem — he represented a transportation company that was about to be put out of business by a proposed law. I asked him the status, and he said it was heading to the governor's desk, she was going to act on it in ten days. I said, where was this phone call three weeks ago, three months ago? I could have helped you then, but now you're dead, because you waited too long and you were cheap. There's a delicate balance, and you see that a lot in cannabis, where folks wait until their license is about to expire or the crop is about to die before they hire somebody. It's the same as having a lawyer or a good accountant on standby — you should be able to utilize us in any circumstance, not just when your hair's on fire. Bryan Fields: Do your services apply universally across every jurisdiction and state? For instance, if you help someone in New York with a cultivation problem, and someone else has a similar cultivation issue in a different state with different regulations, do you deploy the same playbook? Jeff Guillot: Yes, we can do work in any state, and we've done work in different municipalities too — doing work on Long Island is very different from doing work in the five boroughs of New York City, which is very different from doing work in Jersey City. That said, anyone who rolls out the same playbook every time is destined to fail. Every state, every engagement, is a forensic exercise unto itself — there's a different bespoke strategy, because at the end of the day you're selling ideas and convincing people to do something they probably wouldn't otherwise want to do. The message you use to move an issue should change all the time, and frankly should be inherently iterative, because as we've found out since January 20th, government can be unpredictable, and folks have to learn to adapt. Bryan Fields: Jeff, if I have a problem, or see one coming, but I'm unsure if you can help or if it's even achievable — how much uncertainty is too much uncertainty for you? Jeff Guillot: The joke with political campaigns is that fifty percent of the outcome of any election is based on what you do, and the other half is complete trivia — it's based on where the national headwinds are going. We definitely work in a world where you have to accept a certain amount of uncertainty and mitigate risk accordingly. But I've been doing this long enough, and I don't need your money badly enough, that I'm going to blow smoke up your ass. Some of my favorite conversations — and maybe this makes me dark and cynical after all this time — are when I get to tell someone no, that's a fanciful pie-in-the-sky bongwater idea and I'm not going to do it. I'm sure if you call ten more people you'll find someone who will take your money, but I'm not going to, because we have a reputation, and I can't go to state senators, members of Congress, and mayors with batshit crazy ideas. It's not going to work. So we try to stay grounded in reality. Kellen: If it's in that gray area, will you go test the waters and then report back on whether it's actually crazy or if there's real traction? Jeff Guillot: Yeah, we've done that. We've had companies say, "We need help moving person X on issue Y, can you do it?" and I've gone so far as to call the chief of staff and ask if there's any movement. If the answer is no, they're not changing, I'll tell the potential client to find someone else who'll take their money — I'm not going to spin my wheels, make a little money, and leave you unhappy so you don't use me again when something real happens. You always have to mitigate risk and be honest with who you're working with. No one has ever been upset with me for telling them I don't know the answer to something. My mentor, a guy named Richard Brodsky, a former member of the State Assembly I worked for before going into the private sector, once told me after numerous attempts to give him a BS answer, "I don't know is a perfectly acceptable answer in any serious conversation." I've taken that with me throughout my career. I was on a call with a client an hour ago explaining that we're trying to do something regulatory that no one has ever done, so I can't give a reasonable timeline. I'm eighty percent of the way to achieving their goal, but the last twenty percent, I really don't know how long it'll take. And on the local level, especially in places like Long Island, things take forever — you have to have patience, and patience equals dollars. Bryan Fields: I don't want to derail us, so we'll get into the Long Island stuff, but I wanted to stay on this — the "I don't know" answer makes total sense. The biggest challenge has to be going back to a client and saying, given the current state of the world, we're just not going to be able to accomplish this in the timeframe we hoped. Those must be extremely challenging conversations. Jeff Guillot: There are a lot of challenging conversations in this line of work. I've taken some of the most bone-chilling, mind-numbing vetoes from three different governors over the years. I had a client whose bill would have probably saved the lives of infants born with a certain genetic disorder if signed, and Governor Hochul vetoed it on Christmas Eve. So on Christmas Eve, I had to call my client and tell them, after an entire year of work, they got screwed. It made my Christmas ham taste pretty lousy, but that's the business. Bryan Fields: In that instance, was there an understanding that things could change at the last minute, or did someone come in and persuade her differently? Why do things change at the last minute like that? Jeff Guillot: In that instance, yes — we thought we were on track. The governor had signed a similar bill into law for the same client two years previously, so we were fairly confident. Then a national advocacy organization that deals with these issues stepped in two days before Christmas — they apparently had nothing else to do — and advised the governor to veto the bill, which she did. She did me the favor of mentioning in her veto message on whose behest she was acting. That was a fun conversation in the new year. Bryan Fields: Do you think that's a small sample of how things work broadly in cannabis, or does cannabis operate completely differently? Jeff Guillot: Cannabis is a bit different, because in most states legalization has happened one of two ways: either an act of the legislature, like in New York where Governor Cuomo got strong-armed into signing it, or a public ballot vote, like in Maine and Nevada, after which the state has to figure out how to make as poorly regulated a market as possible — that tends to be how it goes. With cannabis, you have a state regulator created either by the people or the legislature, and they make most of the rules. There isn't a ton of legislating done outside of state regulators, though there are some cannabis bills that modify the structure — for instance, the governor recently signed a bill extending the Cannabis Farmers Market program, which they should never have stopped in the first place. So most cannabis-related lobbying, not just in New York but in most states, is lobbying either the governor's office or the regulators directly, which in New York is a special kind of time. Kellen: So how does one facilitate change within these governing bodies? Is it conversations within organizations with the right people? Walk us through the process. Jeff Guillot: You have to present empirical data as to why they should change their regulations from X to Y. For a while, New York was saying no to a lot of out-of-state inputs into cannabis — saying terpenes from other states weren't welcome. That's parochial. If you're brewing beer, why wouldn't you use hops from another state? If you're making wine, why not use grapes from elsewhere? If you're making a delicious blueberry ale, the best blueberries come from New Jersey — go get them, it's perfectly legal. Why can't you do that with weed products? It makes no sense. They've softened on that a bit. Bryan Fields: Do you think the original intention was to create a robust, self-sufficient industry solely in New York? Jeff Guillot: Oh yeah — New York's ethos is that New York does everything better than everyone else, so we can prop up an entire multi-billion-dollar industry without caring what the other 49 states do. This isn't unique to cannabis — you have to tread lightly with regulators in New York. The dumbest thing you can do as a lobbyist, on any issue, in any department in New York, is say "California does this, so we should do this." That's a great way to get your issue to go nowhere. Bryan Fields: Probably because we're so alike in a lot of ways, we're just dismissive of anything that works on the West Coast? Jeff Guillot: That's a fantastic question. I think the history of the world is written by people warring with each other not because they're so different, but because they're alike, save for one thing. There's a reason people on Long Island are raised with a deep disdain for Staten Island — I don't know why I hate Staten Island, I was just raised that way. Those biases exist everywhere. It's like the joke about Ohio State and Michigan — people hate each other because they're so similar. Bryan Fields: Have you actually been in a room when someone said "California does that" and watched it backfire in real time? Jeff Guillot: Oh yeah, God. We were working with a housing client on some really common-sense housing legislation that went absolutely nowhere because — and we could talk about how badly New York and specifically Long Island build housing another day — my client didn't listen to me. I told him, do not mention that this legislation works in California. Three minutes into the meeting, he says, "Well, it works in California." Now, all of a sudden, they're not listening to you anymore — they're counting the minutes until you leave the office. Bryan Fields: I'm assuming a meeting like that is one you had to clear through staffers to even get in the room. Jeff Guillot: Yep. Scheduling these meetings is half the battle. I have a longtime staffer named Jenny Kate — I believe you've met her, Bryan — who's done most of our scheduling for the last six years, and she's a ninja at landing hard-to-get meetings. It's an art form to convince someone who doesn't want to speak with you that they have to, and that often involves using other people to influence someone else to get you your meeting. Bryan Fields: How does that work in practice? Jeff Guillot: For example, in the early days of cannabis, we were trying to get a meeting with the Department of Health, and they had zero interest in talking to us. So we went to the Assembly health chairperson, who was sympathetic to our cause, and had their office call and say, "Hey, meet with these people." They begrudgingly gave us the meeting. Scoring the meeting can be half the battle. Yesterday, for example, myself, my staffer, and my client did about twenty meetings in Albany in one day, mostly on the same issue — packing all that into one day and executing the follow-up is an art form unto itself. Kellen: So when you get a hard no on a meeting, do you sit down and whiteboard out a list of the best alternative approaches, and then just start working the phones? Jeff Guillot: Sometimes, but it's often more bespoke than that. There have been times we say, "There are two people on planet Earth with enough gravitas to make this person talk to us," and one of them probably hates us. And by the way, if I lean on the governor's staff to get me a meeting with an executive department, guess who now owes a favor to the governor's staff — me. So when they're having trouble getting someone to talk to another client, I get the phone call. That's how the world works. Bryan Fields: How do you handle a situation like the one you described earlier, where you tell a client not to say "California" and they say it anyway? What's that conversation like afterward? Jeff Guillot: I tell them, you just set us back four months — I have to totally recalibrate strategy and find a new way to do this, because that person in that agency now thinks you're an idiot. We've had problems like that, or when someone brings up subject matter the person we're meeting isn't prepared to discuss. This happens at the local level all the time, and it happens in cannabis all the time — you have the state's cannabis regulators allowing localities to opt in or out, as in New Jersey, California, and Colorado, and the problem is the state doesn't communicate with the municipalities who ultimately have to zone and allow cannabis businesses to operate. When talking to local elected officials about any new industry, not just cannabis, you have to understand there's a learning curve — new information and change scare people, so your job becomes making them comfortable, and for a lot of people, selling drugs isn't inherently comfortable. Bryan Fields: The D.A.R.E. program exists for a reason, right, Jeff? Jeff Guillot: Yes, obviously we all listened very intently, and D.A.R.E. worked out great for a whole generation of Millennials who stayed off drugs — what a smashing success that was. Bryan Fields: Let's talk about the local municipalities on Long Island — a ton of towns opted out, and because delivery still exists, those residents can technically still get product. Do you think there was confusion about that, or something else? Jeff Guillot: I think there was ignorance across the board. The Civic associations and PTA moms of the world think that if cannabis is allowed into their community, their children will become addicted to heroin, insurance costs will rise, and their guns will be taken away — all framed in ignorance. Years ago, the former Nassau County Executive asked me to sit on the advisory panel on cannabis legalization — I don't even live in Nassau County — and the level of profound stupidity expressed by law enforcement, civic association members, chambers of commerce, and PTAs about what this actually means culturally, economically, and from a public safety perspective was mind-blowing. The most informed and second-most pro-cannabis voices in the room were the cops. That's still the case now, even in opt-in towns. Right now on Long Island, you can have a dispensary in parts of Babylon, Brookhaven, Southampton, and Riverhead, and even in those places, people haven't been educated by the state as to what this is or isn't, leading to profound confusion. I remember the Babylon town supervisor telling me the governor's office was encouraging him to push other towns to opt in because they're making a lot of money — the highest-selling dispensaries per capita in New York State are in Babylon — and he said he wouldn't wish this agency's incompetence on any of his colleagues, Democrat or Republican. That tells you where this is all headed. Bryan Fields: Do you think that's partly him wanting to keep all the tax revenue for himself, and whose job is it to educate the people? Jeff Guillot: I'll answer the second part first — the job of educating people falls on the state agency created to govern this stuff. The DMV explains how to get a license and not to drink and drive. The Board of Elections explains how and when to vote. The Department of Health told you where to get your COVID vaccine. It's the state's job to engage with people, and we're still figuring out how to do that with cannabis. And it's not just a New York problem — the same level of profound municipal stupidity exists in New Jersey, Michigan, and Ohio. Bryan Fields: What's the relationship between the department that regulates alcohol and the Department of Health? Is there a historic relationship there that just hasn't been established yet with cannabis? Jeff Guillot: I think you're right — those relationships either don't exist or haven't been fortified in a meaningful way, and they should be. The Department of Health works with the DMV to encourage organ donation — when you renew your license, you get prompted to opt in. Of course that system doesn't fully work either, since New York has the lowest donor designation rate in the country, around 20%. That level of education is so necessary. The OCM's number from last week is that 56% of municipalities in New York State have opted out. Some of the smart ones, like the Village of Saddle Rock in Nassau County — which is basically three blocks of palaces — opted in because they get a piece of the state's tax revenue even with no commercial activity, since you couldn't put a weed store there if you wanted to. Meanwhile, villages like Kensington or Hempstead opted out. Wild stuff. Bryan Fields: The delivery aspect blows my mind — even if a town opts out, delivery can still exist for residents of that town. Jeff Guillot: Oh yeah, for sure. We joke that some very smart person is going to open a dispensary in Little Neck, Queens, so North Hempstead moms can get their medicine — and I happen to know that guy, he's making a lot of money. Bryan Fields: That was free advice. So we've got to pivot gears — with January 20th happening and Trump signing an enormous number of executive orders, did you have to slow down some of your efforts early in the year in anticipation of the unknown? Jeff Guillot: We knew there'd be a flurry of activity, but it's Trump, and he's unpredictable. Trying to take partisan politics out of it, he's threatened things and then immediately pivoted — look at the tariffs with Mexico, 15% one day, zero the next. We weren't sure how much was bluster. We did tell clients in renewable energy that he's coming after offshore wind, he'd been clear about that, so don't act surprised. We joked he'd probably lift the prohibition on whaling given how anti-environment he is, and folks in renewable energy were still shocked. If you couldn't see that coming, maybe you should go manage the Gap. The one advocacy constituency that did see this coming was the immigration space — they'd put safeguards in place to do their level best to protect people, because I think folks in immigration are sick of hoping someone's better angels prevail. Bryan Fields: With a board member like Governor Christie, do you lean on his expertise or people around him to get a better understanding of what's likely to happen? Jeff Guillot: You're referencing the fact that Chris Christie sits on the board of MAD Global. That's the case because our CEO has a longtime relationship with the former governor of New Jersey, as does former New York Governor David Paterson, who also sits on the board. I think one of the firm's biggest accomplishments last year was our Ohio office being pivotal in sending JD Vance to the vice presidency. There are folks — not my clients, not people I'm directly involved with — but certainly the capacity exists within a national firm to do that kind of work. Bryan Fields: That's where the information becomes so valuable — similar to needing to tap other people for meetings, but here the information comes as an internal heads-up. Jeff Guillot: Oh, definitely. It's our job on the state level to say, "This is what we think the governor is going to say in the State of the State, and here's whether that's good or bad for you — let's find a way to get them to change what they're going to say if this policy is wrongheaded." There are folks in the K Street space who do the same thing federally — if we hear the State of the Union is going to include something we don't like, we find a way to lean on the White House to change the rhetoric. The same happens with governors' budget addresses, which lay out state budget priorities. Unlike the federal budget, state budgets are like social documents — all sorts of stuff gets shoved in there that affects a lot of people's lives. Bryan Fields: One area is the government giving away money — did I understand that correctly? Jeff Guillot: Yes, one of the governor's proposals in the State of the State is to use the state's surplus — New York is in the black — to defray costs for people at a certain income level. That requires State Legislature approval, so I don't know if it'll come to fruition, and there's ideological debate about whether more free money is a good thing; conservatives view things like paid family leave as an entitlement we shouldn't provide, a sentiment I don't agree with. This year's budget also includes proposed grant money for small businesses statewide, especially for workforce development, apprenticeship programs, and biotech/biomedical research — there's a real focus on incubating those businesses and keeping them here. The most lucrative fields on Long Island for people with and without college degrees are probably going to be renewable energy, once we get past this executive order kerfuffle, and plumbing — we just passed a ballot proposition in Suffolk County allowing billions in new sewer infrastructure, which should keep plumbers employed for a long time. When I was teaching community college, I joked with my students: if you want to make a hundred grand a year before your 30th birthday, pick up a wrench and learn to be a plumber. Bryan Fields: Going back to JD Vance — was there an opportunity to pick his brain lightly on cannabis, to gauge whether he'll be an ally? Jeff Guillot: Ohio, while Vance was a senator, passed a cannabis ballot proposition and is in the process of setting up a program. I'm unaware of any on-the-record comments he's made, and as vice president I don't think this is an issue area he'll be directly involved in. If you're interested in which actors will shape national cannabis policy, follow what happens with Bobby Kennedy — it looks like he'll get confirmed for HHS. Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana, himself a medical doctor, seems okay with him now, and it would take four Republican defections to kill the nomination given the current chamber structure, so it appears he'll go through. A lot of health policy will be determined by that agency. My gut is that national cannabis policy will be shaped by the fact that Missouri, Oklahoma, and Mississippi — red-state America — are making a lot of money on hemp, which is 50-state legal. The Farm Bill is going to get reauthorized, pretty uncontroversially. To the uneducated consumer, the difference between 50-state-legal hemp and THC products is nominal — one you can get at a bar in Texas, the other you have to get at a dispensary in New York or Massachusetts, but it's inherently the same plant. Red-state America is telling the White House: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Missouri made more money on cannabis than New York did last year — why turn that spigot off? Bryan Fields: Can't you accelerate that? Jeff Guillot: Sure, and I wouldn't be surprised if courts end up deciding this — you'll start to see interstate commerce between permissive states, like cannabis from California legally moving into Nevada or Oregon, or New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts doing business together on THC products. I think that's the next formative step. But also, be careful what you wish for — if this becomes the biggest agricultural product in the country, it's not going to get grown in New York. It'll get grown in places that used to grow tobacco, like Georgia and Virginia, which have a better climate for it. You'll have craft producers up here, but most of the business is probably going out of New York rather than into it. It's a lot more complicated than people make it out to be. I think advocates create this panacea that if the federal government does X, everything becomes copacetic in the industry and all our problems go away — we're just going to have new problems. Bryan Fields: We don't make oranges in all 50 states, though. Jeff Guillot: That's true, they come from Florida generally. But look at liquor — in most of the U.S., other than the county where Jack Daniels is distilled, you can pick up a bottle of bourbon, but that doesn't stop the industry from having a whole host of problems. You can buy cigarettes almost anywhere, and that industry has plenty of problems too. They're just going to be different problems if the structure changes. Kellen: Do you think there's ever a world where hemp and cannabis become the same industry, or do they stay two very different markets? Jeff Guillot: It would take a federal policy change, and the longer we go with this dichotomy, the more entrenched people become in their silos. We've had potential clients ask if we do work in hemp, and when we say yes, they say, "Oh, okay, we don't talk to those people." At cannabis conferences there's this Westside Story-type divide between hemp people and THC people, exacerbated by current problems. Even if you waved a magic bongwater wand and legalized THC everywhere, you'd still have people pointing out that hemp production is cheaper, labor standards are different — the cannabis industry in blue-state America is highly unionized, whereas hemp isn't. You could have a world where THC dispensary workers have to make a certain wage and have union rights, with labor peace agreements required to open a dispensary in New York, while hemp guys selling similar products — THC-infused chocolates and beverages — have none of those rules. Bryan Fields: To an uneducated consumer like myself, I'd have trouble knowing the difference, and the outcome would feel similar. Jeff Guillot: That's the problem — if the three of us can't figure out the difference, there's zero chance we can explain to a scared mother that it's the same plant regulated a little differently with similar effects. Her mind would be blown. The fact that the system has become so convoluted just makes education that much harder. Folks at the municipal level understand what a dispensary is — a store where you buy weed — but when you try to explain a micro-business, or the difference between cultivation, distribution, and processing, they have no idea what you're talking about. Here's a quick story: we were about to go in front of a town planning department to talk about a possible dispensary project. All municipalities ask the same questions — parking, jobs, fire code. We're going through the blueprint, and I ask my client what one section is, and he says, "Oh, that's where the consumption lounge is going to be." I told him, do not say the words "consumption lounge" in that meeting — they don't know what that is and it'll scare them. Three minutes into the actual meeting, after all the standard questions, he says it anyway — "that's going to be the consumption lounge" — and my staffer and I just put our heads in our hands. Now we have to start all over, because all the work we did to legitimize him in front of these people is in the toilet; they think he wants to build an opium den. And by the way, the state hasn't even issued regulations on consumption lounges — you couldn't build one if you wanted to, and they didn't know that either. Bryan Fields: But why should we cater to that fear-mongering, opium-den perspective when it's not accurate? Jeff Guillot: There should be a level of education where the state goes to municipalities that opted in and says, "Here's what we're allowing people to do and not do." That doesn't really happen, and new stuff generally doesn't go well without it. New York is about to issue three downstate casino licenses, joining New Jersey and Connecticut in having casinos in a major metro area — if it creates jobs, I'm all for it, though a casino on Long Island might hasten the end of my marriage. What the state should do, and what's actually happening with casinos differently than with cannabis, is that the Vegas-based casino companies are proactively educating communities about what's coming, what it means, and why they shouldn't be afraid of gambling addiction or crime spikes. Even well-funded cannabis companies didn't take the time to educate the public, and now you have a willfully ignorant public on this stuff. Bryan Fields: Last question — what question do you wish more people asked you? Jeff Guillot: Wow. The thing that always bothers me is that our worst clients are the ones who think they know how government operates better than we do. I wish more people would say, "I don't know, explain this to me, you're the expert," instead of assuming they know what to do because they watched an episode of Veep. I'm having my kitchen remodeled right now, and one thing I'm not going to do is march downstairs and tell the guy installing my cabinets how to do his job, because I have no clue. It's the equivalent of saying, "I watched some ER last night, I'm good to operate on myself," or "I've been watching UFC, I'm going to get in the cage and fight." I wish there weren't so many amateur experts on how this stuff works — this is a profession that requires a skill set. Bryan Fields: I love it. Jeff, for our listeners who want to get in touch, or explain to you how you should be doing your job, where can they find you? Jeff Guillot: My email is my last name, Guillot, at MADGlobalStrategy.com — or you can find me complaining about politics and baseball on Twitter, and for strictly professional stuff, I'm also on LinkedIn. I have strong thoughts about the Yankees' pitching rotation at all times, so if you're into that, I make a good follow. Bryan Fields: Awesome. We got in the show enough — thanks for taking the time, Jeff, this was a lot of fun. Jeff Guillot: This is awesome, thanks so much guys.