This last week was a crazy whirlwind of long days and short nights and lots of work. I’m completely exhausted, but I’m very happy with how NATE UNITE 2025 went.

This year went a little differently from the last two years. One of my big projects is working with the golf committee to host our annual golf tournament fundraiser on the last day of NATE UNITE. The week before we were closely monitoring the weather as it wasn’t looking very good.

On Saturday when I left for Raleigh, I had a very short connection in Chicago, but I was able to quickly check my email once I had finished running to my next plane lol. The golf course had emailed me saying the weather wasn’t looking good for Thursday and there was no way we’d be able to hold our tournament. They made the decision for us to cancel. And obviously it was disappointing, but I don’t blame the course. They made a good call. Thursday was cold, snowy, and windy and it would have been awful.

So as soon as we landed in Raleigh, we had to scramble a little bit to come up with a game plan on how we wanted to handle all the sponsorships and people who registered to golf. Everyone was very understanding and we worked with everyone on an individual basis to make it right.

It was a disappointing start to the week, but we’ll make up for it next year in Vegas!

After that, we hit the ground running. Sunday was full of committee meetings. However, since we were no longer golfing, my meeting for the day was cancelled and I spent the day helping with the info lounge set up and preparing my “Show Daily” newsletter campaigns that were to go out twice every day during the show.

Each morning, I had to send a newsletter letting attendees know what to look forward to each day, and every evening I sent another newsletter with highlights and photos from the day. It was a lot of work, but I heard a lot of compliments from attendees about them. It was well worth it!

My WIN meeting was on Monday this year, so I started off the morning right away with some of my favorite NATE people. These guys and gals are located all over the country – some even come from other countries – and I’m always impressed so many of them make a point to join us at the show each year. We came up with a lot of great ideas to further enhance the WIN network and I can’t wait to keep learning and growing with these folks.

Tuesday morning started off with the annual Women of NATE 5K – which is quickly becoming one of my favorite races. 😉 The course was very hilly – like almost ALL of it was uphill 🥵 but it was still a ton of fun! I was the overall female winner again this year, which is always super fun to brag about!

Tuesday was also our Keynote Speaker luncheon and we got to hear Mike Eruzione speak this year. He is an Olympic Gold Medal hockey player, and he’s the guy who scored the winning goal against the Soviet Union, which led them to the gold winning game. I’m not much of a hockey person, but I might be now. Mike was so humble and he has such a great outlook on life. I really enjoyed hearing him speak and he also has a book: The Making of a Miracle, and the movie Miracle on Ice was also inspired by this US hockey team. I’m definitely going to be checking both of these out! He was awesome.

Wednesday, the weather started getting cruddy, and we had a lot of people bail early to beat the storm. It was still a busy, busy day of running around the educational sessions and walking through the exhibit hall. We were all running out of gas by this point, but we were all pretty happy to have made it through another successful show.

My body hurts from all the running, standing, hauling, and long days, but it was a great week. Each year, I get more and more confident at the show, and I meet more people and learn new things. I’m happy it’s over now, and next week, we already start gearing up for next year.

Bring it on!

Until next time! 🙂

Megan Nelson