When Your Dream Career Isn’t Your Dream Life

What happens when you love the career you've built, but start realizing it may not be giving you the life you actually want?

In this episode of The Red Chair, Genevra Collins sits down with Joe Balestrieri, a former college basketball coach who made a major career pivot during COVID and built a new path in real estate.

Joe takes us from growing up in Lee's Summit and his years around Kansas basketball to coaching at the college level, meeting his wife, becoming a dad, and eventually making the difficult decision to walk away from coaching.

From there, Joe shares what happened when he stepped into real estate, including his first sale, the financial lessons he had to unlearn, investing in rental properties, cash flow, refinancing, flipping, and building greater financial freedom and optionality.

But this conversation isn't really about real estate.

It's about knowing what matters to you and being willing to build your life around it.

We talk about leadership, humility, mentorship, money, family, personal growth, and why surrounding yourself with people who challenge the way you think can completely change what's possible.

If you've ever wondered whether the path you're on is actually the path you want, this conversation is for you.

Connect with Joe on Instagram or Facebook:

Instagram: @josephedwardb

Joe says Instagram is the best way to connect with him, and you can also reach him through Facebook or find his contact information through his social profiles.

• Joe's journey from Lee's Summit to college basketball
• What coaching taught him about leadership
• The moment becoming a father changed his perspective
• Why he walked away from coaching
• Starting over in real estate during COVID
• Learning to think differently about money and debt
• Rental properties, cash flow and refinancing
• Flipping and the BRRRR strategy
• Building financial freedom and optionality
• Finding what actually motivates you
• Creating a business that supports the life you want

Aaron Bunnell was in the final semester of his master's degree in voice at UMKC, gearing up for a main stage opera, a recital, and symphony performances, when COVID shut all of it down. He was working as a pharmacy technician for $18 an hour to pay for it. A coworker had just cleared a $10,000 commission on one house and put in his two weeks. Aaron had been half-heartedly clicking through real estate licensing videos at night with a three dollar bottle of wine from Trader Joe's, thinking the test seemed easy. Little did he know.

Five years later he is a Kansas City agent on the Homes By Brandy team at Keller Williams Overland Park, closing roughly $10.5 million across 34 units in 2025. He still sings every week at St. John's off Ward Parkway, in a church choir where everyone holds at least a master's in voice.

It did not come fast. He grew up in a small East Texas town with ex-military parents who told him plainly that anything past high school was on him. His first year in real estate he sold eight homes while still working the pharmacy, waking up at 4:30am to grab the only 15-minute showing slots COVID allowed. Year two nearly ended it. Four straight months with no closings, credit card debt, student loans, no savings, and a partner covering the bills. Then he saw a post on the office Facebook page from Brandy Hensley looking for someone to join Homes By Brandy. Three interviews later he closed $4 million in six months and paid off $15,000 in credit card debt. He has grown 25 to 30 percent every year since.

In this conversation, Aaron Bunnell and host Genevra Collins get into:

• Choosing music over med school, and telling parents who had no money for college
• Why COVID forced him to put a decade of vocal training on the back burner, and why he refused to let it go completely
• Finding a mentor the old-fashioned way: 50 people applied, 3 picked up the phone, and he was one
• The four-month drought, and what it felt like to let his partner cover the bills
• Why the teams he interviewed with gave him the ick, and what was different about Brandy's
• Answering emails in the shower, and the boundary conversation that saved his business and his relationship
• Setting goals by what balance actually feels like, not by where you land on the leaderboard
• Appearances versus real financial independence in the gay community
• What he would tell a new agent, and what he wants to be remembered for

This episode is for anyone in a creative career wondering how to make it pay, new agents wondering if the drought ever ends, and anyone still trying to fix everything themselves instead of asking for help.

Connect with Aaron Bunnell on Facebook and Instagram, or find him at a Mid-America LGBT Chamber event.

The Red Chair is hosted by Genevra Collins, CEO and Team Leader of Keller Williams Overland Park. New episodes drop every other Wednesday. Follow the show so you don't miss the next one.

Jennifer Smeltzer spent her first five years in real estate without selling a single home. She learned the investment side first, and that background is a big reason she's landed on America's Top 100 Real Estate Agents list seven years running as founder of Just Say Home KC, a Keller Williams agent closing 70-plus deals a year.

Before any of that, she spent 15 years in ministry. In her 40s she took a job property managing 45 to 50 units to learn investing on someone else's dime, and got licensed almost by accident when the company that hired her realized Missouri required it. She spent the next several years on the acquisitions and bookkeeping side of two investment companies with opposite philosophies: one chasing cash flow in rougher neighborhoods, and one chasing appreciation in better school districts. This contrast still shapes how she advises clients today.

In 2016 she moved to Keller Williams and went all in on straight commission. A few years later, at the height of her production, she built a small, intentional team of three or four agents each clearing six figures. She found she didn't love the coaching and managing that came with leading one, and about five years ago she disbanded the team, redirecting that passive income dream back into her own rental portfolio instead.

In this conversation, Jennifer Smeltzer and host Genevra Collins get into:

• Fifteen years in ministry, and the leap into straight commission real estate in her 40s
• Getting licensed almost by accident, because Missouri required it for the property management job she took just to learn investing
• The moment "I want 10 properties" went from overwhelming to obvious
• Two investment company philosophies: cash flow in tougher neighborhoods versus appreciation in better school districts
• Building a team because it was supposed to be the next step, then disbanding it to go back to being an individual agent
• The Sunday night she reviewed offers on her day off, and the coaching question that changed how she sets deadlines: "Who set the deadline?"
• Why a rental portfolio is never actually "passive," and what a bad tenant can really cost you
• Tax strategies she wishes she'd learned sooner, including cost segregation and the Augusta rule
• Her advice for anyone considering their first investment property, or their first year as an agent

This episode is for Kansas City agents weighing whether to build a team, aspiring investors deciding between cash flow and appreciation, and anyone who struggles to actually take a day off.

Connect with Jennifer Smeltzer at ⁠jsmeltzer@kw.com⁠.

The Red Chair is hosted by Genevra Collins, CEO and Team Leader of Keller Williams Overland Park. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Follow the show so you don't miss the next one.