By Dan Spalding
News Now Warsaw
WARSAW — The Warsaw Growth Summit returns for a third year on Nov. 11 at the Warsaw PAC.
This year, all six featured speakers, including founder and organizer Keith Sampson, are published authors.
The 49-year old area resident is a graduate of Grace College and owns Cloud 9 Multisport, a shoe store dedicated to supporting health and wellness. He also operates a consulting business, Trident 21, which includes his passion for public speaking.
Sampson’s new book, Grow Through It, looks at a way to face diversity, a lesson he learned at the age of 19 when his father was facing a fatal diagnosis.
A relative pulled him aside and told him, “You have a choice to make and neither one is wrong, but what you decide will determine everything. Are you going to choose to go through this or are you going to choose to grow through this?”
The Summit, which falls on Veterans Day, runs from 8 a.m. to mid-afternoon, and Samson said it can benefit a wide range of people, including students.
Admission to the summit has different pricing tiers, but free access will be available to several hundred people through a scholarship program.
“This isn’t just for business people or just leaders. This is a summit around personal and professional growth and development,” Sampson said.
He talked about his business career that has led to a growing interest in motivational speaking during a recording of this week’s In The Know, which can be heard this weekend on Kensington Digital Media radio stations. (See broadcast times below).
In addition to Sampson, speakers include Barb Betts, Jess Janzen, Brett Eaton, Sheri Jacobs and a Headlining Keynote by Brent & Kyle Pease.
“I would challenge people,” he said. “This might be exactly what you need to change your trajectory, and you should absolutely think about it. “We have a big push in the high school, and I’ll open that up to other areas because of our scholarship program. We have over 300 seats that are no charge you can learn more and register at warsawgrowthsummit.com.”
Sampson’s book also includes a bonus chapter that can be accessed through a QR code at the back of the book.
That discussion looks at an instance of personal tragedy and raises one of the toughest philosophical questions in life — Why do bad things happen to good people?
Sampson is a person of faith, and you might hear light inklings of that in his talks, but he said he did not want to risk shifting the focus of his book
“I couldn’t do that. I had to come up with a way to work it in but make it optional to not take away from the body of work itself,” he said.
“We have Christian authors … that constantly struggle with how do I separate out these things or share something that is incredibly moving and important that can help people but not shift the entire concept of the book or keep the book from being available to all.
“I came up with this idea, and they were just blown away with it.”
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Now Warsaw (99.7 FM and 1480 AM):
Friday at 9 am and 5 pm
Saturday at 7 am
Sunday at 7 am
WRSW (107.3 FM)
Sunday at 6 am
WILLIE (103.5 FM)
Saturday at 7 am
