700 Transactions Wasn't Enough: Why Rene Bartum Walked Away and Rebuilt With 5 Agents

Guest BioRene Bartum leads Next Steps Group, an eXp mega team based in Ocala, Florida. Before real estate, he worked as a teaching golf pro in Fort Myers, moved into B2B office equipment sales in Orlando, and eventually founded a marketing agency called Connectar, working with celebrity makeup artists. After starting a family and deciding he wanted his time back, he talked his way into a job at a local real estate school, working up from marketing director to GM before finally getting licensed in Q4 2022. He built his first team to over 700 transactions and 70+ agents, then walked away from it in January 2026 over a culture problem he says he failed to catch soon enough. Eight months later, Next Steps Group has scaled back to 30+ agents across 32 zip codes, with Rene positioning the team as one of the few Zillow Preferred Partners in Central Florida.Show NotesTim sits down with Rene Bartum, an Ocala, Florida team leader whose path into real estate ran through a golf course, a B2B sales floor, and a marketing agency built around celebrity makeup artists before he ever got licensed. Rene's rise since Q4 2022 has been fast by any measure, but the most interesting part of his story isn't the growth, it's the moment he walked away from it. After building a team to 700+ transactions and 70+ agents, Rene says he failed to notice that culture, morals, and values matter more than volume. In January 2026, he left that brokerage and restarted Next Steps Group with just 5 agents. Eight months later, the team has scaled back past 30 agents.The conversation goes deep on the AI infrastructure Rene has built to support that growth: a custom-built platform called ALM Trainer that role-plays new agents against 60 different AI personas before they ever talk to a real lead, an AI nurture system that runs a strict 7-30-30 follow-up rule against a 50,000-lead database, and an AI contract writer currently in development to catch compliance mistakes before they cost a new agent their EMD. Rene is candid about why Zillow remains his highest-converting, highest-credibility lead source, and closes with a philosophy that runs through the whole conversation: it's not what you can do, it's what you will do.In this episode:From teaching golf, to B2B sales, to a celebrity-makeup-artist marketing agency, to real estateWorking his way from marketing director to GM at a real estate school before getting licensedBuilding a team to 700+ transactions and 70+ agents, then walking away over a culture failureRestarting Next Steps Group in January 2026 with 5 agents, scaling past 30 in 8 monthsALM Trainer: the custom AI role-play software Rene built to onboard agents fasterWhy Zillow remains his highest-intent, highest-converting lead sourceThe AI nurture system running a strict 7-30-30 rule against a 50,000-lead databaseThe 5-minute response standard, and what happens when an agent misses itBuilding an AI contract writer to protect new agents from costly compliance mistakes"Is it harder to make the call, or harder to tell your wife you can't pay the mortgage?"Why Rene doesn't want to sell real estate for the rest of his life, and what he's building insteadHis prediction: title and mortgage get streamlined, but the human connection in real estate never goes away