In this episode of One Small Change, Yvonne McCoy welcomes Kami Wanous, an educator turned entrepreneur, to discuss reigniting the love of learning in both children and adults. Through stories of personal and professional transformation, Kami Wanous shares how breaking away from the "box-checking" mindset cultivates leadership, creativity, and resilience. The conversation explores the contagious nature of curiosity, practical approaches for adults to reconnect with lifelong learning, and strategies for families and entrepreneurs alike to foster growth through small but impactful changes.

Guest Bio:

Kami Wanous is a former high school English teacher and homeschooling advocate with a passion for inspiring lifelong learning and leadership. After witnessing widespread apathy toward learning in traditional education, she transformed her approach at home, focusing on sparking curiosity and personal growth in her son. Now, she empowers parents and entrepreneurs to foster a culture of continuous learning and personal leadership in their homes, businesses, and communities.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction and host welcome

05:09 Fostering a love for learning

07:46 Importance of personal leadership

11:56 Improving my email strategy

13:33 Finding your passion topics

18:46 Discussing son's career decisions

20:26 Importance of long-term focus

24:44 Learning and sharing experiences

26:54 Importance of lifelong learning

31:20 Embracing discomfort for growth

Quote from the Guest:

"Learning happens everywhere, all the time."

Link:

The Freedom Scholar Love of Learning Launch Pad

Make learning time exciting—for you and your kids! Launch into

joyful, lifelong learning!

https://pages.thefreedomscholar.org/loloi0

Welcome to the One Small Change. And as always, I am thrilled

that you're here to embark on this journey of exploration and

transformation with me. And I'm your host, Yvonne McCoy, and I bring

almost 30 years of entrepreneurial experience and passion for

discovering growth through the power of seemingly small change. And

what I realized just the other day is the part of that change

actually helps you to get clarity because you're taking action,

you're getting clarity, which makes you more confident. So, like

I said, thank you for joining us. And

today we have an amazing person

and what we're going to talk about is going to change every part of

your life. And Kami, I'm not sure

I can say your last name correctly. It's Juanis.

Juannus. I wasn't sure. So, Kami Wanus. And she's

going to share how a smaller, unexpected or

insignificant decision sparked remarkable

transformation in either her personal or professional

life. And I gotta tell you, we talked so much the

other day that our problem is going to be not what we're going to talk

about, but how we can get enough, you know, make sense

of what we're talking about in the time that we have. So,

Tammy, thank you so much for being here. You're going to talk about

a lot of things, but one of them is lifelong learning, which I'm

also passionate about. So tell us how you got to

be where you are and doing what you're doing. Yeah, that's such a great

question. Because I was a classroom teacher. I was a high school English

teacher for seven years. And I came to homeschool when I had

my son. I just felt like that was right for us. And

then when I was homeschooling, I actually made a really

big mistake. Even though I. In the classroom, what

I was doing all the time was trying to get kids. I saw this apathy

in this. This just general.

Just general apatheticness about learning, about being

excited about. I mean, they're teenagers, right? So being excited about anything

sometimes is a big deal. But just literally being excited about

learning, it was. They've been through the system so long. It was very difficult

for me. And I focused a lot on that. Inspiring that love of learning

or just sparking that a little bit again in their life. So I did the

same thing when I was in school. I was a very big box

checker is what I always call it. I was just tell me what to do

and I'll do it. And I did very well in that. I graduated

all the way through college. I was cum laude I. I went through the credential

program, teaching program. I. And I didn't actually get my love of

learning back until I was a senior in. In college. And

I was studying something. I was writing a paper. You guys, those of you that

are old enough to know that back in the days, we always

Xerox copied all our research for papers, right? So we copied.

I was sitting on the floor with all this Xerox copiness, and I was

like, this is what I get to do for a living.

Like, I get to study things I like to learn about. I

was studying Native American language revitalization in

California. Very specific. And it was fascinating to

me. I was a Native American studies minor, and I was just so

juiced. And that's when I started loving learning

again. But guess what? I was a senior in college. I was almost done. The

students that I worked with, they were in school for just, you know, for all

their high school career and their middle school and elementary career, and they

had been box checking for so long that they didn't like learning anymore.

When I went to homeschool my son, that same.

For some reason, that didn't occur to me in my mind that that was

what I was trying to do, even though in the subconscious I was. And I

started box checking with him and I. We hated it. And within two

weeks were both crying every day. And I think,

just to interrupt you, I think that is,

it's. I think it's. For a lot of teachers, that's their frustration as

well. They. They have to, you know, if they don't move their kids through

the benchmarks and stuff like that, that they don't get a chance

to ignite their curiosity. And, you know, one of the

stories that I tell is I couldn't read in second grade and

I met. I could memorize, but I couldn't read. And I had a teacher

that not only did she teach me to read, she teach. She

taught me a love of reading and what it could explore for me.

And I think that was even a bigger gift than the reading.

Oh, for sure. Do you know, I mean, she, she always read exciting

stories to us and, you know, you wanted to know more and that kind of

thing. And then, you know, you get into the, you know, you get into high

school and you just, you know, you want to get good grades and, you know,

and you lose that, that curiosity and the out of the

box thinking, you know, yeah, most kids actually lose their love of

learning by grade three. And it's super sad, but

I did that with my Own son. We're sitting there crying every day. And I

realized I stopped everything. And I said, something's wrong. I'm doing something

wrong because it's not him, obviously. And so I stopped everything.

And what I realized was I was doing exactly what I knew didn't work in

school. I was focusing on box checking instead of focusing on his love

learning. So we switch gears through. Through a lot of trial and error,

I realized that creating a culture where love of learning

stays high develops lifelong learners and leaders. And right

now I have a 17 year old lifelong learner. I can't undo it if I

tried at this point, it's kind of crazy, but that is

the key to success in any endeavor when we want to

develop leaders. If you want to be a leader, a true leader, not

a positional leader, but a true leader, which I know all of your audience

does, because that's who you attract. You attract leaders

because you're so incredible. So that's what it

takes to be a leader. You have to be a lifelong learner. If you're an

entrepreneur, you know, you have to be a lifelong learner. You have to

be a hungry student. I'm reading a book right now. It's

Question Based Selling. It's. It's you. You probably remember it from

back in your corporate days. It's actually a corporate book from a while ago

and decades ago. And I'm re. I'm just hungry. No one

else. I mean, that's a random book that's not even recommended these

days to read. But I just am hungry. And when you're an

entrepreneur, when you, if you want to be successful, if you want to be a

true leader in your industry, if you want to be a true leader in the

world and you want to raise up other people to be leaders, you

have to be a lifelong learner. So you said a couple of things that

I think are so important, and I just kind of want to shine a light

on them. And one of the biggest change for me that

happened was I was raised

to not fail. Failure was not an option. And

it wasn't until I was much older that I realized

that that fear of failure actually kept me from doing things.

If I didn't think I could succeed, I didn't do it. So, you know, the

story that I tell is when I ran for student council president,

my mom said, I don't want you to do that. And I'm like, why? And

she said, because you could lose. And I go, mom, there are five of us

running. There's an 80% chance I'm going to lo. The

piece that I didn't recognize was you actually

learn more from failure than you do from success.

Because when we succeed, we go, okay, great, I'll do that again.

And you, you know, you do it again. And it may not work because you

don't know why it worked or what the circumstances were that made it work the

first time. But when it fails, you take the time to, like,

analyze it and evaluate what's going on. So,

you know, small changes can. Can show up as failures

that make you go, ah, I want to do this better. Right?

Absolutely. The other thing that you said had to do with

leadership, and this is my opinion, and I'm

sticking with it, but I kind of think that, you know, leadership starts with

personal leadership. And that doesn't mean that you have an authority or a

title. You have to learn to manage and lead yourself.

And that's what we are, I think, not teaching people and

teaching students. Because whether you're going to be an

entrepreneur or whether you're going to be, you know, an employee or

manager, whatever, personal

leadership is a portable skill that you can take with

you wherever you go. And that is so important

that you can, you know who you are, you know what your

style is, you know what you believe in, and that's how you go for it,

and that's how you show up. And curiosity to me is just

part of that, because kind of the opposite

of curiosity to me is being judgmental. It's

like, we always do it this way. We never do it like this. Why would

you even think about doing it like that? You know, and curiosity

is what happens if we do do something different?

What happens is there is a better way to do this, that we don't need

to go through 50 steps. We can, you know, do it in 10 or

whatever. So I'm sorry, that was my soapbox. But. But, you

know, you and I are on the same page about lifelong learning, and it needs

to start early. Absolutely. And that personal leadership that

you'd mentioned, that goes that you could. If you focus on

it in one area, it transfers to all areas. And guess what? That

love of learning, that lifelong learning, it's contagious.

It's contagious because when my son and I made a

commitment to read 30 minutes, or actually it was.

My son reads all the time, obviously, but it's. I made the commitment to read

30 minutes a day, and I made that commitment. And because. Because

we were doing it so much, and he and I were exercising every day we're,

we're reading every day, and we made this commitment to do that.

My husband started going on more walks. My

husband started reading his book more, and he's like, you guys are

just, you know, inspiring me to read. And that's what

happens is it changes, and then that transfers over to your business, and then

it transfers over to your. Your other areas of your life,

your health and your sleep and everything like that. It's pretty amazing.

It is. And proximity to you

is going to have an impact on people. And the choice is,

is my proximity going to have a good impact or a bad impact?

And when I say proximity, it can be somebody that you don't know

their name, that you. That you don't know them, that the way

that you act has an impact on, on. On what they do. I

mean, you see how somebody behaves, and you go, I

want to be like that, or I don't want to be like that. Right. You

know, and so that is, you know, when people say, where did you

hear that? You know, I say, make your learning last. And so part of

that is you learn something, you apply it and share it. When you share it,

people are like, where did you get that from? Where did you learn that from?

Right? And now they're curious about, you know, what's going on. All

right, keep going. So. So for those of us that

are adults now or doing our business,

and maybe we. We had that

lifelong learning kind of snubbed out of us a little bit, and we still are

in that box checking mode, you know, And I think this is why

people don't get a lot out of some of these big classes or courses and

stuff. It's like, they tell me to go this step, this step, you know, And

I'm following exactly the way they say to it. What are some

things we can do now, possibly. This is a great

example. Yvonne, a great question, because I.

There are certain parts of your business where you absolutely love, and it's like in

your passion area, right? So one of the things I love to do is I

love live talking. I love coaching, I love teaching.

That's my jam. I love interacting with people. I

personally do not enjoy writing emails. And

so the one thing I had to do was I

had. I realized that my, my open rate was going

down, and I was like, what's happening? And then I heard

somebody say, if you don't like writing

your emails, people won't want to read

your emails. And I was like, oh, stab in

the heart, right? And I actually really like writing I

just don't like writing emails. And so what I did

was I started digging and I started

hungrily looking into how successful

copywriters write emails, how people in the top

levels of our industries are writing emails. And I

studied them and I looked at what the best parts were, what,

what are the things that made me open them, and I, I studied

copywriters and I follow them, and I just went to everything

I could get on writing emails. And I started to change my

format. I overhauled it completely and it's continuing

to go up because, and I actually don't hate writing

them anymore. I actually really enjoy because I made it,

I made it something that's personal to me. Yeah. And so I,

and I think that is, is, you know, I did not like writing emails

either. And, and, and one of the things that, you know, the

first thing is be yourself. You know, the whole part of the be found

framework is be yourself. Don't try to be somebody else.

Don't try to put, you know, like the first book that I was ever in,

I wanted it to be an academic, something that's going

to change the world. Right. And that's not me. I'm very

practical. You know, when I ended up, I spent a year and

a half and I had one paragraph, and then when

I finally somebody was smart enough to say to me, what, what

do you want people to get out of this? What is the purpose of this?

And I said, I want people to be able to take action and

wrote the book, you know, wrote my chapter in two days. So it's

got to be something that you, that you're fired up about, right?

And you can be fired up about more than one thing.

So I always tell people, what are five things that you do in your life

on a regular basis? For me, obviously, it's my business.

It's humor. You got to have humor. To me, it's

my weight loss journey, it's my kids, and it's my

pets. Those are the things that I talk about. And

so, you know, when you're doing that, you get

curious about what are the connections between some of these things. So, for instance,

I did a post that said,

what happens when the dog catches the car? You know, when your

marketing finally works, but you're not ready for it? You know, I talk

about weird stuff like that, you know, and I enjoy it. I mean,

I just put out a post for my birthday that said I didn't think I

would be doing Pilates and I feel like this awkward baby elephant.

Right. And so you're

you have to bring you. Because that's how you

were found. People go, I relate to that. I

understand that. Right. And you don't have. The good

thing is you don't have to be perfect. So you don't have to keep practicing

to be perfect. To be practicing to be perfect. Because

by the time you think you have it pretty good, whatever you were

practicing for has now passed. You've missed the

opportunity. And so, you know. All right, so

we both agree that one of the things to do is be yourself and

be curious about the things that you're naturally curious about.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. What else?

And to be curious about things that you need to improve on.

So to whatever you know what those are those areas of your life.

One of those things, you know, I have a health. Chronic

health issue and I am just

hungry for information on health. And so

a lot of our lifestyles changed over the last for

decade and a half because we've just been on that journey

and so something. Yeah, that's something. That's, that's your urgent to

me. But the emails, the things that I don't really like doing, how

can I do them more efficiently? How can I do them better? How can I

enjoy doing them? Or how can we hire somebody else

to do it right? How can we get to the place to. To get that

done? Or how can we make connections with people? I think that one of the,

one of the really amazing things is being hungry with the people that

you're interested into. So. Or the people that you inter in

interact with. So you know, you and I are in different

industries, but we are very,

very aligned. And I really, really enjoy

building our relationship because it's something that we

align a lot of places and but we use it in different ways and

I think that's a really important connection. So everybody has, everyone

has something to teach you. You mention or whether it's something you want

or something you don't want to do or be like or whatever.

But that kind of curiosity, boy, if we had that kind of

curiosity in everybody in the

society right now, what kind of society would we

have if people were genuinely curious about why is it that. What?

Tell me how you think. Tell me how you think. Tell me how that works.

What can I learn from you? Even if it's what not to do, what not

to whatever that would be. Oh,

transformational. I just, you said something and it,

it really reminded me of what just happened with me and my grandson.

So one of the things that I think is really important

is that if you have a skill or a

passion that it's kind of transferable. So, you

know, you don't have 24 hours to be an entrepreneur and

another 24 hours to be a person, you know, in your personal

life. And so I always say whatever models or, you know,

kinds of formats you use in one, you should be

able to use it in the other because one is you don't have to have

two separate things that you have to switch back and forth, but also you will

use it more and so you will internalize it more. So

I had this situation with my grandson where

he, he decided he had a weird idea of what he was going to do

about school. And I said to him, I want you to think about

what your long term plan is. Not just think about what's

right in front of you, but what you want to do further down the

road, which I never did with my kids. Okay?

And so the important part was that I wasn't saying,

are you going to do this? Are you going to do this? Are you going

to do this? I was like, what are you going to do? You know, being

curious and, you know, bring up. And then

he had said he was, he was going to be a professional basketball player. And

he's actually pretty good. And as I shared with you before,

then two days later he quit.

And, and instead of saying which my normal, with my,

my kids decades ago would be like, are you crazy? Have you lost your mind?

You know, I said to him, how does this change your long term

plans? What does this mean for you now? Do you

still want to be a professional ball player? And if so, how are you going

to get there? And if you don't, you know, he, he has an idea

for a business. It's like, how is this going to impact your business?

Right? And I really, I had to stop myself

to say, okay, this, you know, the old way is not where I am,

it's not what I'm, you know, coaching people on. How does

this work in my personal life, right?

And it was interesting to hear him talk about the

things that, you know, he said. And just as a, as a final

caveat to this whole thing, first of all, he, he, they

did a video at his. One of the things I had said to him when

he wanted to be a professional ball player, which you're gonna have to learn to

speak because nobody's going to pay you to endorse things if you go

anyway in this video, the kid is like a class act.

I'm like, oh God, I have never seen this kid, he's like, I am so

happy to be here. And you know, I get lots of support from. So I'm

like, who is this? Right? And just

like you said to me, that's a 15 year old. Two days later he was

back in basketball practice again. So who knows what he's gonna. There you

go. That's a 15 year old for you. Yeah, but the idea is,

what is your long term? And I think

that's where

we don't have that skill as an adult. Many of

us, because we never learned it as a kid, because we were told,

go to school today, get this for this marking period for this

season of whatever you're playing for this do, you know, you're like,

really blinders on. And I think that

I have learned that I am very focused.

I'm, you know, I'm like, what is the fastest route to get from here

to there? And what I have learned from my husband is the

downside to that, because every strength that you have has a downside.

The downside to that is that I do not notice a lot of things

that are not in my immediate path.

And I mean, we will get out of the car and he will say, did

you look at the flowers I planted? And I'm like, huh, huh? I'm trying to

get, you know, so talk about that a little bit.

Like, you know, a skill that you get as

a young person and how important it is,

you know, as you are an adult. But if you haven't gotten it as

an adult, you can still get it. Yeah, 1,000%. That's

exactly what I'm doing with parents when I work with homeschool parents to

help them raise leaders and lifelong learners. And that's very important to me

because our kids want to be leaders. They want to be

true leaders. They want to make a difference and impact in the world, but they

just don't know how. We have to give them the environment, we have to give

them the lifelong learning, learning, and we have to give them the skills, the leadership

skills to be able to get to that place, at least the beginning skills. And

so, but the hunger is important and that's the most important thing. And

so when we are an adult, when we're doing that with our kids, we're also,

guess what, we're doing it with ourselves. Because you have to. You have to.

Because if that, if you're not doing it, they're not going to. And you have

to speak from experience too. And it's okay if you're not of you

not you're not, you know, Martin

Luther King Jr. Or something, you know, it's okay if you're not that, but you

at least need to be going through it with them together. And that creates a

very big important journey that you can share with

other people and you can share with them, you can share with anybody else. But

when you are an adult and you never got that yourself, if

you want to help people, you in

your business, in your life, you have to be able to,

to be on that curiosity journey together. And that end goal focus is

so important. Nobody. That's one of the things I tell parents. The very first

thing we talk about, the very first thing that's in my inspiring

lifelong learning academy is we have to get that end goal defined. What

is that person, that vision of a picture of a 25 year

old of your kids when they're 25 and they're living their best life

or they're doing their thing, what does that picture look like? Because

if we don't have that, we're just driving around in the car

without a destination in the gps, hoping

that we're going to get there and you're never going to. Just like in our

business, if we don't have a goal, an end goal, we don't have a. And

you don't even necessarily have to have, oh, I know exactly what it's going to

look like 25 years down the road because we don't have, we don't have

that vision necessarily. Some of us do. But we can

have a what is it going to look like at the end of this year?

What is it? What, what is that picture look like? And

then we can work backwards from there and make sure that everything else lines up

because otherwise we're just going through the motions of. And

we see. I know you see a lot of Yvonne because you work with some

pretty amazing people and, and working with business owners. You

see them dabble, dabble and dabble, dabble and

dabble over here and dabble, dabble over there and this over here and

oh, shiny object and shiny object and then where

we have no destination, we have to make sure that everything lines up and be

super intentional about that. But if we don't have that end goal, we,

we, we don't even know where we're going. So it's very important that we do

that. Don't go into business saying, I just want to, you know, like,

I have some people, you know, we have to get more specific than that

in order to be able to actually help people and that is

something that I know you do really well with everyone, Yvonne. You're amazing at that.

So, yeah, so I, you know, and one of the things that I

say that probably was another one of those things

is there's always going to be somebody ahead of you, and there's always going to

be somebody behind you in terms of experience. And so, you

know, you learn from the people that are ahead of you, but people that

are not, as far as you learn from you. And so you can help,

you know, where you are right now is good enough to

help people who haven't had the experience that you have. And in business

particularly, it's really important that you do

the right thing for the right reason at the right

time, the right way at the right time, and it's right for you. I mean,

something that I would have done, you

know, five years ago is not the same thing I would do now. Having

experience that I have now, I would do it differently. And in five years,

in the future, I still probably, you know, I. The main thread would

be the same, the vision would be the same. Right. The mindset and

the, you know, the values would be the same. But the

way I would do it would be different, partially because they're different. You know, they're

going to be new technologies and, you know, all these other things that are happening.

So, okay, let's do this, because we're going to run out of time. I need

to know. Tell us about the free gift.

Yeah. So if you are a parent of kids who are still

in school or, hey, even if you're not there, we're talking about

lifelong learning. And to be alive, lifelong learner, it looks a certain way.

There are different habits, there are things you do on a regular

basis. And so what I have is the love of

learning Launchpad, which is designed for families, but

if you are not, you can still take it. And it gives you a

snapshot of where your love of learning is at right now.

And this is just a little quiz, but it really dials in as

you're taking it. You can see, see, do I do that? How often do I

do that? What is that? And it's really going to give you a good picture

of where your love of learning is right now. And if you have a family

and you have kids, it's really going to help you as a

family, take an assessment of where you're at, and you can take it again and

again and again. It's pretty amazing. And, and the other thing is, we talked about

transferable, so, you know, if you don't have,

you know, if you're. Your kids are not school age right now, you may have

grandkids, but transferable in terms of business

is who are the people on your team? Who are the people you're bringing in

with you because you want to inspire? You don't want to just bring

in drones. You want to bring in people who are also going to be inspired

and have that same level of learning. So I would recommend

that you definitely, definitely get this, because

lifelong learning is a gift that keeps giving,

obviously, because it's lifelong. So. All right, so

we got to do the. We got to do the commercial, and

you and I could keep going for, like, forever. We

did on Monday. Yeah.

Okay. So the first thing is make sure

that you subscribe and share and engage on social media

about the podcast. The reason I do this is

because I know that we are

all at different places and we need different things. And so I try

to bring people into your world that you may not meet on your own.

And it's there to have a vibrant community and

fuel your quest for impact and growth. And so one

of the things with the one small change is that even a small

change can yield big transformations. I think

of it as kind of like the spokes on a wheel where in the center,

it's really small, but the more you do it over time, the. The amount of

area you cover, much bigger. And so that's what I'm hoping

that you will get out of this. And you should go back to the first

episode. There's some episodes that I've done that I've done all by

myself, and, you know, because I like to talk

and you can look at them too, but the gifts and stuff like that, and

be sure you pick up Cami's gift. So, Cami,

I did not ask you when was the last time you did something new for

the first time? Gosh, you know, I feel like that's an

everyday endeavor for me.

So one of the things that. That I definitely

do on a regular basis is I look for those things to do on a.

Is to do things I haven't done before. And

for me, definitely one of the things I've. I haven't done.

You know, honestly, recently it was that reading the 30 minutes every

day because I haven't done that in years. And

it was a game changer because it not

only, like you said, it's something that transfers everywhere. And

it's not only in that one area, it's also building my mindset, my

growth, my business and that was. That was trying something new,

because I hadn't done that in a long time. And it. I

remembered what it. How impactful it was, but I went back

to it, and it had been a long time. It was amazing.

Sometimes the things that you did when you were starting out.

I think I mentioned I was trying to declutter my office, and I don't know

if it was you or not, but I looked at some of the ideas that

I had when I started, and I went, yeah, these are really good.

I just need to bring. I just need to bring them up today.

So I think I really want people to take away the

idea that you can take old ideas and. And.

And tweak them. You can. Whatever you have can be transferred

from your personal and your business. So what are your last words? What are your

words of wisdom? My words of wisdom are just

be hungry learning. One of the message that I

have in I teach families how to do is create that

culture where learning happens everywhere, all the time, and that's the message that

we're sending to our kids. It to. To become

lifelong learners is learning happens everywhere, all the time.

So if you live through that message through yourself, learning

happens everywhere, all the time, that you

will open yourself up to so much more passion,

so much more inspiration, and you'll make a lot of

progress. And I. And I think

just to. To. To jump onto that, I think what

that does for entrepreneurs is it keeps you

relevant and passionate for your clients. And who doesn't want to work

with somebody like that? Absolutely. Okay,

we gotta stop. We can keep going, but we gotta stop.

Okay? So one of the things I want to say is that, remember, the

change is simple, but it's not always easy, and it requires a certain amount of

courage and resilience and a willingness to step outside your comfort

zone. I always say if you're not feeling some butterflies, then

it means that you don't care. You don't. You know, if you've got that, yeah,

I'm just gonna do this. It means that you don't care. So you want to

feel a little bit uncomfortable, right? Because it means that you're on the right track.

And so I hope that you'll continue to join me on the one small

change, and until the next time, stay very,

very curious. Cami, thank you so much for your gift.

Thank you so much for your thoughts. Of course.

Anytime. Bye.