Climate Policy, Entrepreneurship, and Triathlons with Chris Moyer

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Chris Moyer, founder and president of Echo Communications Advisors about Climate Policy, Entrepreneurship, and Triathlons. Read his full bio below.

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Showtimes: 
1:52 - Can getting fired be a good thing?
11:07 - Interview with Chris Moyer begins 
16:36 - Communications in the Climate Space
29:10- Working with Clients 
38:09 - Field Notes with Chris!

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Chris Moyer at https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrismoyerecho/

Guest Bio:
Chris has spent nearly two decades advising high-profile leaders and shaping federal and state policies through strategic communications.

With deep experience across the electoral, legislative, and regulatory landscape, Chris has advised top-tier presidential, U.S. Senate, and gubernatorial campaigns advancing forward-thinking climate policies. He has worked with state attorneys general fighting harmful federal climate rollbacks and supported advocacy organizations accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels.

Chris served as a communications advisor to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, helping to communicate about the implementation of more than $90 billion in renewable energy programs. He has also guided clients seeking inclusion of their priority policies in major federal climate legislation, including the Inflation Reduction Act, and led strategic communications efforts that helped secure a highly competitive $5 billion EPA grant.

Chris has worked for three U.S. Senators, most recently leading communications for Senator Cory Booker’s presidential campaign in New Hampshire before launching Echo Communications Advisors, formerly Moyer Strategies, in 2020. Chris was named one of Washingtonian’s 500 Most Influential People of 2025 for shaping climate and environment policy. His insights on climate and energy policy developments have been featured in Politico, Axios, Bloomberg, E&E News, Heatmap News, Reuters, Inside Climate News, and elsewhere.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental enthusiasts, Nic and Laura.

On today's episode, Laura and I talk about whether you can get fired and it'd be a good thing. We interview Chris Moyer about climate policy, entrepreneurialship, and triathlons. Speaking of, and finally, triathlons come from the Greek word meaning 3 and contest, which doesn't sound nearly as cool as triathlons, so I get why they call it that. Triathletes themselves can burn up to 10,000 calories in a single race, and the oldest triathlete to compete. was Arthur Gilbert who was doing it at the ripe old age of 93, so there you go, no excuses. Get out to the gym. I don't know that I have 10,000 calories to burn. I yeah, that sounds daunting, to say the least, but kudos to anyone that's done it. That's really cool. 

Yeah, hit that music. 

NAEP just completed a pop-up webinar titled Quick Hit Reactions to Supreme Court's ruling in Seven County Infrastructure, which was given by our very own Fred Wagner and Jeh Johnson on the Supreme Court ruling that just came down. If you missed it live, you could listen to it for free if you're an NAP member. The court's decision appears to shape the scope of NEA compliance for years to come, so please check out the webinar at www.NEAP.org. 

Let's get to our segment. 

You guys have anything you want us to talk about? Anything that's on your mind? Dead silence? What do you? And your entire um coaching staff is fired, uh, that I was gonna say I don't want it to be like a breach of privacy, but there is something to say about having pride and not sitting in an organization that's like corrupt, because like you shouldn't feel down. I don't know, like sometimes I think you can get fired for good reasons. Yes. Oh wow, that's a really cool one. Or quit for good, well, yeah. Or quit for or yeah, like if that's a symbol of something. Well, I mean, getting fired or quitting your job in general, many times I would say it's almost universally just not a good fit one way or the other, right? It may be that culture doesn't fit you, or you don't fit the culture there. I mean, it's almost universally the case. I think not every company is gonna be in a great place for you specifically. Some people like a lot of structure, some people like a lot of independence, and, you know, if you go the opposite direction and you're in a place that's heavily structured and you love being independent, it's super hard. And I don't know, Laura, you're the epitome of independence, I would say. Um, so I mean, like, what was that like being in organizations that were really rigid because you were working for the government as well, which typically has that stereotype of being very rigid on what you do. 

Yeah, I mean, it's exactly right. You either like that structure or you don't, and so it is part of the culture. To have to get any idea, run up the chain to 17 different people to have one person out of that 17 turn it down and go, oh no, that's a no. So, you know, if, if you have ideas, your idea person may not be the best place. Not all governments are not one size fits all, not all private or one size fits all. A lot of people I talked to are, I worked in consulting. I'm never doing that again. Well, that doesn't mean they're all bad. That's true. It is true. And you know, and like I say, we, we talked to a lot of entrepreneurs on the show, and we, we have one today with Chris, and it's always great when we do, because I think you get, I'm not saying you get extra excited by any means, but like, you're in the same wavelength as these entrepreneurs we interview. So, I mean, we've done a few of them. I mean, like, I don't know what the challenge is to doing something like that. To me it seems extremely daunting to be like, I'm out here on my own doing everything by myself. I just completed like a two hour HR training that made me never want to open a business of any kind. So like, we talk a lot about, we ask that question, how do you start this? and but really it's like, is it always a mentality thing are all entrepreneurs have the same free spirit mentality? You say they're a little different and but what about entrepreneurs? Well, back to uh. Marley's question about can you quit or get fired for good reason, um, your own personal good reasons. Yes. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs start that way. 

They work in some sort of structure and environment and then they go, uh, I think I'd rather do this myself. Or I see everything that's happening around me and go, I could do this too. And some of those people discover that, no, you can't do all those things too, and some people discover, yeah, I like, this is hard and it's challenging. I'm just reading the subtle art of not giving a F again. And, uh, one of the concepts I really love is just like, and it's, it's not a new concept, but I like the way he describes it, is just, you have control of your life by deciding which problem, which set of problems you want to solve. So working in a corporate environment, you have the problem of watching 2 hour HR videos, and you have the problem of doing what your bosses say, and you have the problem of saying yes when you really want to say no. And then when you are an entrepreneur, you have problems of not knowing when you have a paycheck coming sometimes or making sure you're feeding and paying other people before you pay yourself. But those are the problems I want to have. Whereas you're like, uh, baby, I don't want those problems. Yeah, that's a great point because it's not for everybody, but it does seem like There's days where it seems amazing. It's like, uh, no one can tell me no. That's interesting. What an interesting concept that could be. But then there's other days where I'm like, you know, it's probably best to some guardrails. I honestly think that that's one thing. Almost if people are thinking like, maybe I want to do entrepreneurship. 

Just try it, because at least you'll know if you didn't succeed at or didn't like it, you can stop complaining about your corporate job. Because, because that company, however good or bad they treat you, has taken on all the risk of securing the funds, paying your paycheck, getting the insurance, telling you what to do. So if you know that like, I want my paycheck, I want to do a job, you gotta understand too that how much work goes into owning and running a business to set this up for you to have a job. So I'm not saying everyone should take whatever they have to take. Yeah there's lots of jobs, go get a new one if they don't treat you right. But you know what I'm saying, like, if you're not sure, try the entrepreneur thing, find out you don't like it, and then be more happy with collecting a paycheck from someone else. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that is fair. It's like, what is it like, oh yeah, why don't you try it, you know, it's kind of. Maybe we got the comedy world you talk about that, right? Someone's like, oh, that joke wasn't very good. It's like, OK, go on stage and tell a joke then, you know, like, right there, yeah, it's, it's easy to criticize from the bleachers kind of thing. That's interesting. So yes, everyone start a business is what I heard Laura say. Give a try. Yeah, give it a try. Only if you're having that like, should I, should I not? Some people are dead no like when Friday comes, it's vacation I'm on the weekend, like, if you like that, don't try because you will, you will not succeed. Yeah, and like, you know, we talked a little bit too about like vision, like what is the vision for your business? Like when you're starting something on your own, I think that's like, you don't necessarily have to have a plan. It scares me to not have a plan of what you would do and the things that you would go after and the experiences that you want to chase, but that's not always the case. 

Like I think you were saying that you kind of started your business and have evolved into what it is now. And I guess that's true of any business really, but what was your plan when you started? Yeah, it is true of any business. Google started as an email platform you had to get invited into, if you recall. Uh, you might not recall. Yes, I don't. It was, yes, there was a point in time where the only thing Google had was Gmail and you had to be invited to use it. So yeah, so people think that like companies in whatever form they exist in now have always been that, but this is not true. I mean, remember Facebook just started as it was a page, it was a competition to MySpace like it just. was this little thing. It wasn't something that we ran ads on and all of this stuff like that's evolution. If you're not evolving, you're not growing, you're not a company, you will sink and fail. So that's another part too is you, you do always, you don't have to go from an email thing to what Google is today. You don't have to have that as your vision, but you do have to always be thinking forward and evolving to what cause you, you will think you have a certain client and a certain problem to solve, and then you will find through trial and error and practice that couple of things. Your clients will tell you, I also want these other things and you have to decide whether you want to deliver those, or they'll say I like this, but I don't like that, or you'll find out your expertise doesn't align exactly where you were and you either can pick up those skills or not. But you're also gonna find what you do and don't like doing. I thought that I wanted to do business consulting for environmental firms and for management and for I wanted to, I wanted to come in and like fix all this bad leadership nonsense. 

But let me tell you, if people don't still want an old man in a tie to come and do all their leadership stuff, they don't want me, they don't want fresh ideas, and it's not that they don't want me or fresh ideas, they want Proven and stamp of certification and that stuff is so like if that stuff was working, we wouldn't be in the same or worse situation we were 20 years ago with management and leadership. So yeah, I don't even remember your original question, but it evolves over time when you figure out what your clients like, what you like, and you know, and eventually you find a groove and you start really like, this is what I do and this is who I do it for, and then you start running with it. Yeah, and that's kind of like, uh, it's quite fun, right? It kind of seems like there's a sense of high drama to it, um, you know, and, and, in a really real way. I've known plenty of entrepreneurs, you know, and it's always kind of like the, uh, well, you know, I gave it a shot, and here we are. I guess maybe we need to find someone who started a business and it didn't work out. And then because I think those are important things. I think sometimes all we talk about is the success. Like there isn't a series of failures that lines up that success too, and That's true I think of almost anybody. And one of my, speaking of to wrap it back up, to bring it back to you, can you get fired and it be a good thing. 

One of my mentors at my first company told a story about how he lied about a project that he was working on, saying it was basically fine when it was very much not fine because he thought he could fix the problem before anyone found out. That didn't happen. He was fired and he said that that truly derailed my career. I had to look in the mirror. I had to reassess what was important to me, why this happened. And he's talking to me from the C-suite of a 10,000 person company. So it did work out for him and it was a life lesson. He had to learn that lesson, but it was a good thing that happened to him. So there you go. I think that's kind of a yeah absolutely good spot to end on. So I like that we actually brought this one back around. Yeah, look at that. Yeah, let's get to our interview. Hello and welcome back to EPR. Today we have Chris Moyer with us. Chris is the founder and president of Echo Communications Advisors, a policy first climate and energy communications firm based in Washington DC. Chris, great to have you here. Great to be here. Thanks for having me on the show. Absolutely, absolutely. So you've worked across politics, law, and gaming, which is exciting, but today you run a firm fully focused on climate and energy. How did you find yourself in this space? Well, I have always been in some way involved in climate energy from various jobs going back to the beginning of my career, and I can kind of walk through some of that, but it was only in the last few years that it really became a larger part of my daily focus and our work. And we reached the point where we wanted to specialize. I started my firm 5 years ago, and we really thought we could go deeper and be smarter and provide better guidance and advice to our clients by honing in. And this seemed like the right area to focus on. We made this decision before the election of last year, and so some might say the election, great timing for going all. On climate, but but I'm still bullish, even if there are some hurdles in the meantime. And honestly, the work that we do, communication strategy and messaging and earned media and things of that nature, is just as important, if not more important now, when we're playing defense, and we've seen that with Congress, with the House passing. 

A bill recently to really got the clean energy tax credits, for example, the Senate is now in the midst of considering that legislation, and there's a real crucial moment here to try to shape that legislation through communications and certainly lobbying as well, but telling the stories of the workers and the jobs and the tax revenue and an industry that is having all these benefits in communities across the country. So was the plan to always be in DC? Are you, I mean, you know, like I said, I, I have a love-hate relationship with DC and I actually mostly love, truly, but did you start in DC? How are you connected to the city and talk a little bit more about what you do too? So I'll try to tell this as concisely as possible, because I think it's the best way to answer the question, but in college, I thought I was going to work in sports journalism, I was going to cover the Boston Red Sox. I went to school in in Boston. I grew up, I grew up in New Hampshire, so that was a big part of of life growing up. And I worked at a newspaper in Boston, and I worked in the sports department, and I realized this is not what I want to do. And so. I was able to, in my junior year at school, get an internship with former Senator Ted Kennedy in his office in Boston, and that just opened my eyes to the possibilities of coming down to DC and from that moment on, I, I thought it was, it was more meaningful and there was just more opportunity. And so that really sent me on a path to coming down to DC. After I graduated, I worked for the mayor of Boston for a few months while I could figure out how to make it down to DC. And fortunately, I have family in Olney, Maryland, who they had me stay with them. Um, this was 2010, and you might recall there was, there's some big snowstorms in The DC area that year, uh, Snowmageddon, and so I would, you know, I was searching for a full-time job while I was interning in the Senate, interns weren't paid back then. I'm glad that they are now, for the most part. So I was just trying for 6 weeks every day. It took me 6 weeks to figure out how to get a full-time job working in the Senate. 

The only caveat was that that job ended up being in Nevada, and I was working for former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. And he was facing re-election, a very difficult re-election in that year. And so I was 22 years old and was offered a job to live in Las Vegas, and I've never been to Las Vegas in my life. And so I fly out there, I land, and I get my rental car and I'm driving, approaching the strip and all the lights and glamour. And I just thought to myself, what in the world am I getting into here? And, um, so I I stayed at the MGM Grand for 10 days that I lived there while I found an apartment. And like my second day on the job, I was at an event with President Obama, and it was just like a really whirlwind experience, but that's a really long way of saying that. I did always intend to go to DC. I took a detour through Las Vegas. After that election, I did come back to DC and I worked for Senator Reid in the Capitol and um you know, that time was shortly after major legislation was passed on clean energy that was part of 2009 bill and a lot of the events that the senator would go to would go to, he'd go to solar arrays and go to geothermal companies and A huge real emphasis on clean energy, on how to make a more resilient Nevada, that's not just reliant on gaming and tourism, and building that clean energy economy and including transmission and getting energy in all parts of the state. So it's a really interesting time and a really a huge learning experience for me that set a foundation for a lot of the future work that I've done since and certainly for the work that our firm does today with clean energy clients. I love that you moved to DC and then Las Vegas, where you met the president. That's pretty funny. That's pretty funny. I mean, OK, so let's dive into it a little bit. Let's talk about, we are in a place now where I can say we're playing defense, right? What kind of communication challenges are you seeing in the climate and energy space and how do you deal with them? Well, there're manyfold, but I'll go into a couple. One is how we talk about these issues has changed and Some people don't want to change how they talk about them because they feel like they're giving in to the current administration and folks in control that in Washington. 

And so, I think a lot of the advising that we do is that look, it's not about changing your values, it's not about doing anything different necessarily in terms of what your business is doing, or from an advocacy point of view, we work with NGOs that are advocating for better policy, but it's just tweaking how you talk about it. So the president. loves to talk about American energy dominance, and we've seen that phrase be adopted by all sorts of folks who have never talked like that before, but it's wise to do that, and I don't think we're hearing as much about emissions reductions or the energy transition or addressing climate change, saying things like that, even though those are still the purposes of a lot of the policy that we're trying to get past or the businesses that are being built. We work with startups that are Really coming up with, you know, their climate tech startups and they're working on interesting solutions to all sorts of challenges that are in service of addressing climate change. And so, we just advise, you know, you can focus on reducing costs, reducing energy bills, having cleaner air and water, creating jobs, economic developments, supporting all types of communities, rural, urban, suburban, it's hitting on points that are, are more bipartisan in nature. And another, I did mention there's, there's a lot to talk about here, but another one I would emphasize is that just the uncertainty and the chaos of the first few months of the new administration has caused a lot of folks, certainly in the foundation world, philanthropy, to kind of take a pause and see where things are going, just because it was kind of a shock to the system, as it was intended to be. And I think a lot of organizations that rely on, on funding to do their work that's really important, have been kind of waiting and trying to see if the funding is going to come through. And I, you know, I think that hopefully as we kind of adjust to the new reality, there's more decisions being made that can ensure that this important work is happening. 

Yeah, and it's a great lesson I think in knowing your audience, right? That's one of the rules for lots of things, really. But if you're not speaking the same language, you'll have challenges. And so I love, I love to hear that. I love hearing that come from you and what I, I kind of want to go from there, right? So that's one part of a good strategy, a calm strategy for energy. What else does that look like and how do you know, like what do you measure as success? What do you say like, OK, our message, we're good, we're done, we did it, you know, like how do we get there? Like what does that look like to you? Well, unfortunately, it's never done. There's always risk, there's unpredictability that is kind of a defining trait of the current administration. It's not a political statement, it's just true. Success can look like making bad bills, for example, less bad, and it's not something that's going to be inspirational to say this tax credit is going to expire in 4 years instead of 3, but it can make a meaningful difference and it's setting your mind that, OK, this isn't going to be ideally how we want it to get done. It's a, it's a huge change from just a few years ago, when the most significant climate bill in the history of the country was passed in the Inflation Reduction Act. And so it is just a way of thinking a little bit differently to minimize damage as much as possible. Yeah. It's so, I mean that's really especially in DC like super important work. As a fellow entrepreneur, I'm always wanting to know how did you have the courage, the skills, the audacity to start your own company and jump out there and say I have the skills to do this. Well, luckily I didn't think about it too hard because I would have thought too much about all of these things, and the timing, the way it worked out was just everything aligned, I guess. I had just come off of working for Senator Cory Booker as he was running for president. And when his campaign ended, of course you were unemployed at that point.

 And so I had a period to think about what I wanted to do next, and I had some folks that I knew, fortunately, I had built up a bit of a network at that point in my career, and I had folks reach out to me about different projects and I said, well, these are all interesting, they'll pay the bills and let's see where it goes. I didn't want to jump into anything full time in-house so soon. And even then, this was 2020, I was like alright, let's see what happens with the election, and then maybe I'll consider something else, whether it was maybe trying to work in the administration or some other in-house job, but the more I did it, the more I liked it, and I appreciated the challenge and the opportunities. It really was, and it still continues to be, you get out what you put in. If you aren't going after. Different opportunities and trying to do different things and you, you can limit your ceiling, but if you do push hard, you can really, the sky is the limit. It's just really, I wonder if you agree with this, Laura, but it's really just about solving new problems that come up constantly. 100%. And, and if you enjoy solving problems, and I think doing this whole entrepreneurial thing is for you. It's not for everybody, it definitely isn't. I'm someone who hasn't needed outside motivation, have enough motivation within myself, and I just enjoy the challenges that it brings, and it's hard to imagine doing anything else now after 5 years of running a business. Right. Absolutely. No, that's so true. I think that a lot of people. might try their hand at it, and then they find out later, like, oh, I didn't have the self-motivation it takes. And, and I think they're the true definition of an entrepreneur is just full-time professional problem solver. That's, that's what you're solving the problems from your clients and then solving all 100,000 problems that come up with tech and all the software and all the things that you need to make it run day after day after day, but if you don't love that and you don't enjoy solving those problems, you're not going to make it as an entrepreneur. That's right, and you know, problems come up at sometimes the worst times and unexpectedly, and it's just, just what we've signed up for. 

Yeah, that's great. Well, you're obviously doing something right because you were recently named one of Washingtonians 500 most influential people for climate and the environment. So congratulations on that. So what does that kind of recognition mean for you? Well, thank you. I think we've grown our team from, you know, when we started the firm 5 years ago, it was just me, and now we have a team of 5 people that we work with, that I have on my team, and they're fantastic and it's really. really of our team. And I have to admit that I don't really love talking about these things. Um, but you know, it's helpful for us to, you know, for our team for what we're working on to get more, more folks to know about us. And so that in that way that I, you know, I appreciate it, but I never thought about being on a list like this, and I have no idea how it happened, frankly, but um I will, I will take it. Yeah. Oh that's awesome. You know, yeah, it's just one of those messages from the universe, you're doing the right thing. So after doing this for a couple of years now, and of course administration has changed, but how do you feel about climate and the communications and like AI is also born in the between when you started, I mean it was there but like it's it has blossomed, so is that affecting your work at the same time? I think I'm constantly and our team is constantly looking at ways that AI can help with what we do, can we be more efficient? Can it analyze data, for example, in a, in seconds in a way that would take us a lot more time. And so can we be more efficient as an operation and provide more value to our clients somehow, but I don't think we fully know. I think we're just like. At the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding how it can help, but it has become more of what we do. But again, I don't, you know, there's challenges associated with AI as well. So we're trying to be cautious but find the opportunity. 

Yeah, so I guess the question is a little bit about, you know, kind of when you start a career in something, maybe you think one way about it. So I think that the way I'm going to approach communications and climate is one thing. But now that I've been doing it and I've made some realizations, some real world experience, has your approach changed? So I think at the beginning of my career and maybe a lot of folks are like this, you think progress is, is just in a straight line and continually going to happen. And I started off when President Obama was early in his first term, he won re-election, and then things certainly changed with the 2016 election, and this kind of gone back and forth now in the last couple of elections. I think you kind of understand that it's not a straight line, and you might take a couple steps back, but the important thing is you have to keep pushing because the pendulum can always swing back and you have to be ready for those opportunities. Right, that makes sense. And before I hand it back over to Nick, I'm curious about young folks. What advice do you have for young folks who are looking to get into policy, writing, communications, or even lobbying? I think as a general point of advice I would offer is that, you know, school, going to college can really teach you a lot and can train you for how to learn, how to become smarter on different topics, and feeling equipped for entering the. Workforce, but especially in Washington, one of the most important things that I didn't know this right away and had to learn over the years is that it's great to just work hard and put your head down and do your job well, but the relationship piece is critical. 

And you have to really invest in relationships. And it's not just with people you work with, but the community around you and around your industry. So take the climate industry or community, I'd say in DC. There's a lot of great folks here and a lot of great opportunities to meet other people. There's, we just had uh DC Climate Week at the end of April. There's regular meetups, there's a lot of folks, obviously, a lot of NGOs and organizations doing really good work for federal policy are based here in DC and so. You know, anyone who wants to work in this industry, whether it's in communications or lobbying or some other way in climate or clean energy, go to these events and talk to people. I think, you know, one of the lessons I learned was when I was first looking for that job in the Senate, when I was interning, I emailed every communications director working for a Democratic senator, and I just sent, I sent my resume, I sent a short paragraph saying who I am, I'd love to talk to them. And I think I got 3 responses back out of almost 60, and one of them was Senator Reid's communications director. Within hours of that email, I was on the phone with him doing a first round interview for a job. And so you don't need everyone to get back to you. So you have to be OK with, and this is a lesson I've learned in business too, when you're trying to get new clients, like, you don't need everyone to say yes to even getting coffee with you. Um, so you have to become resilient and take rejection. Well, because, you know, I only needed that one job offer. And now with business, I don't need, I can't handle 100 clients. Um, so, so I just need a few of them to work out, and that means you're successful. So being resilient, don't get down by people saying no, people are going to say no to you for your whole career and you just have to move through it. Yeah, I love that. I literally just said the same thing to one of my coaches yesterday. I was like, you've got to get these messages out. You're doing all the right things. You just need to, I said shoot for 100 no's, you only need one, yes. So thank you for confirming that and it's such a great message that I don't think can get out there enough. But yeah, they take it over. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a really great thing and I think it's very fair, like rejection is, you know, it's, it's funny, I think it's something we all have to learn, it's really hard not to take it personally sometimes, and even now sometimes I catch myself taking things personally, like, ah, it's just business, you know, it's, you gotta kind of calm down a little bit. But like, you know, you have a lot of different clients, they're coming from the climate focused businesses, tech startups, etc. etc. So I guess what do you do for them? Is it, do they come to you and say, hey, We're trying to host an event, or are they saying, hey, we're trying to change policy? Is it everything under the sun? What do you do for them? So it's a good question and it, it can certainly vary. I'd say we have clients that we work with on an ongoing basis that really want to, maybe they want to raise their profile so that folks in DC on Capitol Hill know who they are. A lot of these newer companies that are in the climate tech space. to have a story, they need to tell their story about what they're doing and why policymakers should care. Sometimes that means on the administration side, there could be funding available and they need to be more of a known quantity if they're going to have a chance at some of these competitive grants. And they also, a lot of our clients have legislation they want to get passed. And there's messaging that we advise them on for reaching different senators, knowing kind of the political environment that a particular senator might face. If you're trying to get a senator from New Mexico, for example, to understand your point of view, you might try to get some earned media coverage in New Mexico, in New Mexico press. You're not always focused necessarily on DC and so we'll advise on the best way to get in front of members and their staffs. We work really well with lobbyists who are their. Full-time job is, is really just directly working with policy staff and the members themselves. We'll do media training, will really help raise the profile and help get executives, founders, leaders of organizations and companies to be confident when they're speaking with the press. And we also find that that's helpful for no matter who they're speaking to. If they can more effectively tell their story of what they're doing and what their company is, and what policy they're working towards, that's effective with all different audiences. 

So we really do that. Quite a bit, sometimes we'll do just one off media training sessions that can be helpful. We'll just, you know, paid media, sometimes you do want to reach legislators that way. But as you mentioned earlier, we are policy focused, we're policy first, and we are exclusively working with these climate and energy clients. We don't do anything else and it allows us to really go deeper on these issues, understand things with more nuance, speak the language of our clients and just provide better advice at the end of the day. Oh yeah. That's great work and I, I think it's really, really fun kind of sparks my brain a little creatively as well. It's interesting because I think policy has inherently, it's slow and then it's very fast, right? It's kind of, we have these big shifts and we've had a lot of that going on, and we talked about it on the show many times about how we're swinging back and forth and back and forth these last three administrations. Uh, really for. So how do you handle that change? Because right now, people keep asking me, it's like, well, you know, what's going on? What are you doing with what's happening with policy? And I'm like, you know, I've basically been saying, well, buckle up. We're on a ride, but like, when we get to this point here, right, we're going swinging back the other way. How do you manage that? Because it's hard to keep track of everything changing. Yeah, I think you can't assume that you know when things will happen. Certainly there's, you know, like the big headline legislation, like the massive bill that the Senate is considering right now, uh, in the month of June, they're trying to get a bill to the President's desk by July 4th. I don't know, or I really don't think that is likely to happen, but that's the headline stuff. There's also pockets of opportunities that go under the radar that we try to Help clients identify, we work with lobbying teams to try to help identify that. And you have to constantly be educating these members of Congress on your specific issue. And if you aren't, then you're potentially missing a window of opportunity because the way things work in a very hyperpartisan environment is that there's only a few bills that actually get passed in every Congress. And so everything gets swept up into what they often call an omnibus, because it includes everything. And sometimes it's wrapped up into bills that just keep the government funded and you have to do that. So therefore, you kind of, it's kind of like a Christmas tree, you try to add ornaments to it. And outside of that, there are a few opportunities. 

So you constantly need to be positioning. Yourself for the policy that you're trying to, to push forward so that you can get, get it included in one of these rare moments throughout, throughout a given year. Yeah, it's very fascinating. It's interesting how that works and it's kind of like, like you said, putting ornaments on a tree, it's a great analogy. For how we change those or how those things get added to these larger bills and sometimes those have unintended consequences and there's many examples of that, but like, I'm kind of curious, do you ever, you know, in the process of you're doing messaging, right? You have somebody, maybe it's a senator you're trying to reach or a representative and you're talking with them, working with them, and you kind of, they start having an opinion one way and then kind of change their tune a little bit. Like, do you have an example of something like that? That happening, or is it kind of really, are we in a really partisan space where it's like, oh, I can't even talk to you because you said the word climate. Yeah, I think that does happen more than you might realize actually. And that's why having these conversations and doing the education is really important, and then reinforcing that with maybe there's an op ed in the local newspaper for that member of Congress or there's an interview or press event that generates headlines that cause these senators and members of Congress, they read all the news. their district. When I worked for Senator Reid, he asked his staff every day to provide a packet, printed out a packet of Nevada news coverage every morning by 8:30, so that when he arrived in the US Capitol and the Majority Leader's office, the first thing he would read was the Nevada news coverage, because he really wanted to stay connected with what was happening back home. 

And this as he, you know, he's like the top person in the Senate dealing with international and national issues of importance, but he made the time for that. So that's an effective channel for making arguments. A lot of the policies that clients are pushing for are fairly nuanced and they're not partisan for the most part. They might be under the umbrella. Of a partisan issue, say climate change, but if you're talking about some really specific things, you can make a really compelling argument as to why they should support it, then they're going to be intrigued and there is more room for things to happen than some might think, certainly with the reputation over time of DC being very partisan than it is, and the gridlock and the approval of Congress being so low. But again, there are smaller bills that can be really impactful that do get passed. Yeah, and I think, you know, it's interesting cause you know, we talk about like, I like finding synergy and compromise in areas where we do have these partisan ideals, but then the reality of the situation, right? So it's energy independence for the military, for example, is a good thing and how we get there can be argued, but I think there's, that's where we start having conversations about, oh, if they're off the main grid, they can actually have two different ways to get power. This is a good thing X Y Z. Yeah, I was trying to, I know you asked for a specific example, and I don't know if this is exactly it, but it is a little bit more specific. You remind me of, we do some work in the geothermal industry, and that's one of those renewable energy issues that are areas that is very bipartisan. Republicans tend to like it because it has DNA from the oil and gas industry. Has investments from the oil and gas industry. A lot of the folks who work in that industry, engineers, for example, you know, it's the same idea. You're drilling a hole in the ground, you're just getting renewable heat versus fossil fuels. 

And then Democrats like it because it, it doesn't require it, their operations are carbon-free for the most part. It requires a little water, little land. Everyone likes it because it provides base load reliable power that pairs well with intermittent sources like solar and wind. And so there's a lot for everybody to like and there's some bills that have been introduced that have bipartisan support, Republicans, Democrats, and there's an opportunity, even under this administration to make real progress for geothermal. Yeah, that's a great point and uh, yeah, cause like you said, it's very much very similar to the oil industry and so that's exactly what I mean. It's really neat to see where are those areas of compromise, where can we make progress, because I still think it's worthwhile to do. So. And 4 years, a long time, you just put everything on pause and say progress. Uh, it's just not, that can't happen. No, and it would be a shame to do that, and I think, like I say, It's been really fun to talk about, you know, the how we adjust and adapt, and I think that's really important for in the next few years, and I love that and uh. I hate to say it, we're already coming closer to some of our time, but we love to do a segment called # Field Notes, where we talk about our guests' memorable moments at work and you know, we ask our, our listeners to send their funny, scary, awkward field stories to us to be read on a future episode at info@environmentalprofessionalsradio.com. 

But Chris, we've talked about Harry Reid a lot. You shared a story with us about your early days working with him. Can you tell us what happened at a solar event outside of Vegas? Sure, yeah, this was, I don't think I, this is my first time meeting Senator Reid as a staffer for him, and there was an event at a big solar array in just outside of Las Vegas, and there are all these dignitaries lined up to speak, and he was, the senator was running a little bit late. And my boss, the communications director, said, No, come over here. I want to make sure you can meet him before he goes and speaks. And so I went over and then these two black Chevy Suburbans pull up. He had Capitol Police protecting him everywhere he went. And he comes out of the passenger driver's side door and walks over to me and says, Are you Chris? I said, Yeah. And he said, What was your marathon time? And I said, I said, I set a time that I was really proud of. And I so I said it with some, some amount of pride. And he looks at me and says, Oh, are you walking half the time? And without, without, without skipping a beat, just goes over to the podium and starts speaking. And uh I was just like, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to react. I didn't know his personality yet at this point. And, um, and it was like he had such a wry sense of humor, and he himself had run many marathons over the course of his life. And so he was, uh, clearly teed up to ask me about it, and that was a pretty funny moment. Oh, that's great. I mean, I mean, are you afraid to share the time, or is it you're worried about second judgment from us? It was just under 4 hours, which I was happy with, but yeah, that's good. Yeah, I'm you asked, but I didn't even come close to doing one, so congratulations. That is funny. Yeah, that's a great goal. 

That's a great, yeah, goodness, that's amazing. Um, I'm glad at least you guys were impressed because Senator Reid. Yeah, that's, that's so funny. Like, I don't know. I guess he, there's like a friend of mine who Rick, his first marathon ran 258, and I'm like, what's wrong with you? Like why would it? Yeah, it's that is really good. Yeah, and he's like, oh, my heart rate's in the 30s. I'm like, oh, OK, cool. I'll just work on that then. But anyway, um. We love asking our guests about like their hobbies, and this kind of ties in perfectly to yours. So you, you like to run, you've done a few triathlons as well, which is, you know, where you like, marathons are hard, but you know it's harder. I should do that instead. Is that why you decided to do those, start doing those? Well, I am pretty competitive, but the reason I did it with my cousin. Asked me to. And funny story here is, I thought we were just gonna, it was his first triathlon as well, and this was about 2 years ago, and I was like, my mindset was like, all right, we're just going to train our best and we'll see how well we do and, you know, we're both just like rooting for each other. And then the night before the race, we're at dinner together. And he just threw down the gauntlet, like, I'm gonna beat you. And, and so like, a, a switch went off of my mind, like, OK, I'm gonna, I'm gonna beat him. And so, you know, I knew the, the first two events because you swim first and then you bike and then you run. And I knew the first two, he would, he would be ahead of me. But on the run is when I would catch him. 

And so It wasn't until the last 2 minutes of actually under 2 minutes, where I finally see him and we're like, I can see the finish line, we're that close. And I'm running up behind him, and for a second, I just, I'm like, oh, I'll just jog with him to the finish line. But then I remembered the conversation the night before and then I went ahead and I, and I beat him. Oh, that's so great. That's so great. And what was his reaction? Was he, was he mad at you? I think he uh he probably would have done the same thing, so he got it, yeah, that's so great. uh I love that because it's like the joy of competition kind of takes over and I, you know, I can say I'm more of a 10K kind of person back in the day, but like, I remember even passing people. Sometimes it's just like I remember passing a woman once and she yelled at me. She was like, no, and I was like, I'm faster than you. I don't know what to do right now. I'm sorry. I'll see you later, you know, and but part of me was like deep down I was like, yeah, one more, you know. Knocking them down, but um, anyway, I know, like I say, we had a great time talking with you and we want to give you space here that at the end. Is there anything else? This is this is where Nick realizes I'm supposed to ask what happened. This is exactly what happened. I was like, man, I'm doing such a great job competition.

 Sometimes Nick gets a little carried away. Never once, never once. I'm not trying to sprint towards the finish line and leave me behind. So what happens, no, please, please, you take it, you take it. No worries. Um, but yes, we are running out of time. This has been a great conversation, but is there something that you'd like to talk about? We didn't touch on? No, I would just say if anything that, that I described, if you're, you know, working in clean energy and climate as an advocacy organization or a company, I think you can't really ignore policy and if there's, there's a way that we can help, we'd love to find a way to work with you and Our website is echocoms.com, ECHOCOMs.com. You can also email us at info@echocoms.com and we'd love to chat. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. Really great to be with you. Appreciate it. That's our show. Thank you, Chris, for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. See you, everybody. Bye.