In today’s episode, we chatted with Lauren Wells. Lauren a seasoned real estate investor and senior consultant, discusses the unique investment opportunity offered by 7E. The company specializes in fixing and flipping mortgage notes, providing investors with passive income and low volatility. Mortgage notes are a $14 trillion market with significant opportunities for investors. 7E differentiates itself by focusing on mortgage notes and providing monthly distributions to investors. The company’s marketing strategy includes education, webinars, podcasts, and partnerships with financial advisors.

Listen To The Podcast Here 

Watch The Episode Here 

What’s Covered In This Episode

  • 7E specializes in fixing and flipping mortgage notes, offering investors passive income and low volatility.
  • Mortgage notes are a $14 trillion market with significant opportunities for investors.
  • Investing in mortgage notes provides monthly distributions and tax benefits.
  • 7E’s marketing strategy includes education, webinars, podcasts, and partnerships with financial advisors.

Connect with Lauren: 

  • Website: https://7einvestments.com/

Resources 

Want to get booked on podcasts? 👇

https://realestateinvestors.podcastingyou.com/ 

~~~

Learn how to master podcasts for business growth 👇

https://realestateinvestors.podcastingyou.com/ebook 

Read The Transcript Here

Trevor Oldham (00:01.326)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the REI Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today on the show we have Lauren Wells. Lauren is at the forefront of 7E’s strategic market evaluation and implementation efforts spearheading business strategies with a wealth of experience. With a robust background encompassing over a decade in business development, sales, and project management, Lauren plays a pivotal role in 7E’s success. Before joining the company,

Lauren served as a senior consultant with SaaS startups such as Procore and LinkedIn. Her expertise was instrumental in building and scaling sales organizations involving tasks like developing forecasts, defining target markets, identifying acquisition opportunities, and establishing new revenue streams. Beyond her corporate achievements, Lauren has been a seasoned real estate investor since 2010. Throughout this decade, she has actively contributed to the growing and managing and

a diverse portfolio of over 100 assets. This extensive portfolio includes both residential real estate and mortgage notes, showcasing Lauren’s multifaceted skills and commitment to success in various domains. Lauren, excited to have you on the show today!

Lauren Wells (01:13.654)
Yeah, I’m excited to be here and I love like your format of your podcast and kind of what it’s all about because a little bit about me for anyone listening, like why should I trust this person? Where did she come from? You know, I feel like I was in the looking for passive investment seat not too long ago. So now kind of flipping the script being on the sponsor side, it’s a bit I have a big passion for the education on due diligence and.

just education on the asset class. So it’s fun to kind of talk about all these things from the lens of like where I, former Lauren, I guess you could say, corporate junkie Lauren.

Trevor Oldham (01:51.934)
Yeah, and super excited to have you on the show. And I know I found out about 7E, gosh, maybe about a year ago, or I think it’s been over a year now. I know Chris, the founder of the company, he was going all over BiggerPocketsForum just talking about helping out folks that were interested in passive investing. And then that’s how I came about finding 7E. I looked at the company, I was like, wow, you guys seem to be pretty good. At the time, I know the minimum was a little bit lower than what it is now. So that was like, I think your company was the first investment that I made.

and I think it was 500 back, way back when, and I think the distribution I get right now is like three or four bucks a month, so nothing to be able to quit my job or anything like that, but it really opened the door for me to feel comfortable making another 25, 50K investment into these other companies, just off that small initial investment, but for those of the listening to us that are like, who’s Lauren, what’s 7E, what are you guys talking about? Do you mind just going over what the company does and who you are?

Lauren Wells (02:50.582)
Yeah, so Seven E is really just the brand. My business partner and our founder, Chris Seven E, it’s a play on his last name, and Chris has been in the business, in the mortgage note space for quite some time, and so together we’ve launched a ton of other funds, and Seven E became the brand we were recognized with. Our current offering is under CWS, so it does get kind of confusing. We tried to rebrand to CWS, and people were like, oh.

Is this a new company? So we’re a 7E and CWS together. You know, what we do is pretty unique. We, how I like to put it, is we fix and flip mortgage notes. So we buy mortgage notes, so secured by single family homes. So think of your mortgage, you’re paying. We assume that we become the bank. We buy them at a discount.

and off the secondary market, we rehab the borrower, and then we sell them back on the secondary market for a profit. So in today’s environment, it’s actually an asset class that is doing really well. You’ll probably even see if you were to look at any other marketing from other companies that debt funds are now like all the rage and out with equity offerings in with the debt funds.

So we are a debt fund. We have been for, you know, since our initiation or launch of all of our funds have always been debt funds. So yeah, so we’re a debt fund that offers our investors passive income to subsidize their lifestyle. And then what you said, Trevor, super important, I feel. And one of the things, you know, made me smile hearing you say is it gave you, we have a regulation A plus offering. And so,

What that means is we’re qualified by the SEC to accept money from accredited and non-accredited investors. And as someone who, you know, former Lauren will call her, wasn’t accredited, I wanted to have access to these investment offerings that didn’t cost, one, that didn’t require me to be accredited, and two, that didn’t require $25, $50, $100K, you know, start.

Lauren Wells (05:06.27)
So the Reg A allows for that. We have a low minimum and we’re accessible to anyone.

Trevor Oldham (05:13.886)
And I think that’s excellent about the company. You know, I know I recommended it to a few folks from the LFI community or for those little things from the left field investor community over to your company, you know, especially those that are under 35, you know, as we run the group over there. And I think really what I really like about the company is just the, when I think about it, like the different capital stacks and like how can I protect myself and any sort of investment, your company comes straight to mind. You know, like as you mentioned that debt fund, it just makes sense for me.

at this moment in time versus me going out and investing in say a multi-family deal where I could potentially lose everything. At least there’s some sort of collateral going through your company. But with that said, why sort of these mortgage notes instead of like going into an asset class like multi-family or self storage or marinas or wine, you know there’s so many different asset classes out there. You know what makes like mortgage notes special?

Lauren Wells (06:07.85)
Yeah, so there’s quite a few things. The first thing is the market size in comparison to the players in the game. So it’s a $14 trillion market, you know, mortgage notes, mortgages being originated every day. So there’s a ton of opportunity and inventory. And then the second thing is, okay, you have all this inventory, who are the players?

You really have your Black Rocks, Blackstones, and then there’s not really anyone servicing, kind of, they’re, you know, in the thousands, billions in AUM, but we’re kind of that next level down. They’re not dealing with, you know, your investors off the street, you know? So there’s not many players, if any, that, you know, we’re really aware of that do what we do.

and what they do at a smaller scale. So you see people who do notes, but they originate, or they take on additional leverage, which pushes you further down the capital stack. So mortgage notes, like how I got into it was I don’t want to rent property, or I don’t want to own property because I don’t want to deal with the whole, tenants, termites, and toilets, but I like real estate. How can I invest in real estate without becoming a landlord? And I was…

a crazy networker, still am, and I had someone much wiser than me tell me to look into mortgage notes, and that’s kind of how I got into it and, you know, basically assumed becoming the bank were borrowers instead of paying JP Morgan would be paying, you know, it was ring, what was it at the time, Ringcom Partners. So I’m sure maybe people listening, if you have a mortgage, you may have gotten a letter in the mail that said, hey, we sold your loan, make your payments instead of Chase to Bank of America.

That’s essentially what we do. We’re buying those, we’re sending you that letter and saying, hey, your payment’s now, we’re going here. And the way we do it is unique. And again, I really haven’t come across any other funds who do what we do in the way that we do it. So the asset class, and even in today’s economic environment, which…

Lauren Wells (08:20.146)
you know, we could talk about for probably a whole hour, you know, it’s really a hidden gem in today’s investment landscape because The mortgage notes are non-correlated to the stock market interest rates or real estate valuations, you know while other asset classes are really shedding losses or you’re seeing this like emergence of debt funds to You know kind of make up for capital. They can’t get at three percent anymore You know the defaulted note space or private credit or debt

It really provides a unique opportunity for investors to achieve cash flow with lower volatility, which everyone has their different thresholds, but for people who are looking to test the waters and get started with how can I start getting some passive income, it’s definitely a great place to start.

Trevor Oldham (09:08.55)
And I would say looking at volatility, you could think of the multifamily space. There’s been a number of syndicators within that space that have defaulted on their loans. Maybe they took on Bridge Dad, or something similar to that. I find the mortgage notes, it’s a lot more safe for play. And I think I’ll have you go through and explain it, but one of the reasons, again, why I invest it is I like the monthly distributions. It’s not quarterly. It’s not a developmental deal where maybe I’m waiting a year, maybe I’m waiting two years on my money.

Lauren Wells (09:18.882)
Yeah.

Trevor Oldham (09:38.162)
I’d love for you just to talk about, let’s say someone comes in, they invest, what does it look like on the monthly distribution? Is it monthly, is it quarterly, is it 6%, 10%? Love for you to share that information with our audience.

Lauren Wells (09:52.254)
Yeah, definitely. So we have an 8% return with the ability to get bonus shares. So how it really works is just like you said, we provide monthly, our goal was monthly income to subsidize people’s ever more expensive lifestyles as we are seeing with just inflation and everything else or subsidize their retirement.

So what we did is essentially for investors, for example, who were to invest by the end of January, their interest on their investment would start accruing February 1st and they’d receive their first dividend check in the mail on March 1st. So it’s a really quick turnaround. We’re putting this money to work. We can’t keep it in-house long enough because there’s so many opportunities that we’re getting, so many deals coming our way.

And then you’re getting 8% annually, paid monthly. And then to add to that, and I think this is something that people forget because people are saying, oh, I can put money in a high yield savings account. Yes, you totally can. You can get maybe 4%, maybe 5%. But high yield savings income is taxed as interest income. So you’re paying ordinary income tax.

on that money you gain versus with our fund, it’s a dividend. So you’re going to get a qualified dividend. It’s a 1099 dividend form, which is taxed as long-term capital gains.

Obviously, I’m not a financial, I’m not an accountant or a CPA, so check with your advisor to make sure how that would impact you, total disclaimer there. But it’s lower than your ordinary income, regardless of where you’d be. So there’s that small tax alpha, as we like to call it. You’re getting that 8%, maybe more if you qualify for bonus shares, depending on the amount of investment. And again, you know…

Lauren Wells (11:44.522)
It was really to give people the opportunity to see what everyone always talks about. Passive income, monthly cash flow. But when you think of that, I feel like a lot of people default to, I have to actually own the property, or I have to buy rentals, or Airbnb. And that’s not passive. You and I both know this. That’s definitely very active. So it’s truly a passive income play for those who are looking…

One, want to test the waters again with something that, if this is new to them, with people who are maybe looking to subsidize retirement, have a self-directed IRA account, or people who are looking like me or my counterparts to subsidize daycare.

Trevor Oldham (12:29.162)
Yeah, I can definitely agree with you there on that daycare cost. I know as we were speaking earlier, Lauren and I, my daycare costs went up 30% at the start of the new year. So that was lovely, but that’s the cost of owning a kid and all the joys that come with that. But with that said, I can attest to investing with your company and getting that distribution first of the month, no questions asked, very consistent. And again, I think I’ve been investing with your company about 15 months now. So you know.

I’d assume that operations will continue to be smooth in the future, so for anyone listening to the audience, it’s been great. Some of these sponsors I’ve invested with, sometimes you get the distribution, sometimes it might be on the 10th of the month, sometimes it might be the 15th, the 20th, it can totally be all over the map, so I really like that aspect of it where it’s been very consistent. But let’s say you have these mortgage notes, you and Chris per se, and you want to go out and find these investors.

How have you been able to bring investors into your fund? Have you been going out on podcasts similar to mine? Is it Chris going out and just laying the groundwork on bigger pockets? Just curious what the marketing strategy behind the company has been.

Lauren Wells (13:39.862)
Yeah, multifaceted, we’ll say that. So really when we started out, and one thing we continue to do today is there’s a lot of education. I think what we realized early on was mortgage notes isn’t super sexy. It’s not multifamily, it’s not a development deal. People are like, what are you even doing? How do you, like they can’t, they’ve never heard of it.

Once we explain it, it’s a very simple concept to understand. So really for us, getting new investors has come by way of just educating. So Chris, as you mentioned, is I think the number one contributor on BiggerPockets. So he is all over BiggerPockets. Myself, I’m attending conferences. We’re working actually with both kind of two arms of

capital raising. So because we’re reggae, we can market to anyone. So we’ve utilized LinkedIn. We can really accept funds from anyone and market however we want to anyone, obviously without providing guarantees. So LinkedIn, podcasts, our own internal webinars, growing our email list, like you said, bigger pockets, and then growing our…

brand as well, not only on the retail side, to individual investors, but also we made the jump into what I would call the big leagues, where we’re now working with financial advisors. We’re working, we’re getting on the Schwab platform probably by the end of this month. It’s January. So now instead of us having to go to like…

you an individual investor, you can say, hey, I don’t really know who you are. Can I talk to my financial advisor about this? And if we’re approved by their broker, they can invest with your qualified funds. You have another layer of due diligence. You have this assurance that Schwab or Fidelity or one of the bigger brokerages has basically said like this is a…

Lauren Wells (15:44.31)
These are not crooks. We’ve done background checks. There’s just another layer of due diligence that I feel like has added credibility, not only on the broker dealer side, but also on the retail investor side. So I think really just like growing, not really pushing it. We do promote the fund, but I think a big part of it is just talking to people and getting on their level.

and building that trust that you’re not a crook, you’re going to be transparent with them. And that’s something that we focus on a lot. And I mean, hopefully you see it as an investor is the distributions on time, we do quarterly updates, but we also send out weekly case studies because it is a unique asset class. You’re not investing in one property, you’re investing in a portfolio of, at this point,

just under 100 notes. And so how do we continue to give our investors and even potential investors updates on case studies, wins, things, evaluations we decided to pass on, you know? I think it’s important to just…

I always try to put on my investor hat, my 10 years ago Lauren investor hat. What would I want to see if I was scared to make an investment and didn’t know who Lauren Wells, 70s, CWS, or Mortgage Notes was? Where would I want to start? So I think a big part of our marketing effort has been wearing that hat and speaking to those audiences. And then Chris and I have very different voices, so we attract very different people.

Trevor Oldham (17:22.262)
That’s awesome though, being able to go out and get featured on Schwab and have that potentially to invest with you. I know when I was back, I worked at Fidelity for a little bit. I wouldn’t say worked, I interned there. But I had some family members that worked there for a long time. It seems that these big financial institutions are finally starting to get around to some of these alternative investments where for the longest time, it was just investing through their mutual funds, their index funds, it started off mutual funds, and then we went to those index funds, those low costs, and then became the trade.

you know, that sort of trade off. So it’s great to see that they’re extending this arm of potentially these mortgage notes. And like you mentioned, it may not be like the most sexy investment. You could look at a development deal or multifamily and potentially you could, you know, it’s a two or three extra money in five years. But what I like about mortgage notes is it’s just a safer play. There’s not as much volatility that comes into it. I’m not trying to hit a grand slam when it comes to my investments. I’m trying to hit

you know, 10 different singles, you know, that all are paying me say, I mean, even 10%, you know, annually would be, you know, would be a really nice, but eight to 9%, and I know that that’s coming in, you know, I like it maybe, you know, you’re tripling that leases, but there’s still that aspect of what happens if the tenant moves out and it’s just like a single asset fund or single asset and not a fund model. So I think there’s all these ups and downs where I find with mortgage notes, it seems to be the clear sort of winner and I can.

attest to that as part of the LFI community and talking to different folks. It’s an asset class that people are getting very excited about where again people thought how do I get into it? Do I have to go buy someone’s mortgage on the court house steps and different things like that. So it seems as though your company just makes it a lot easier than that. But let’s say someone is now listening to this podcast. This all sounds great. They go to your company. They request more information.

Lauren Wells (19:01.137)
Yeah.

Trevor Oldham (19:17.106)
Now they’re on, do you guys have investor calls with everyone? I know it’s not a 506B or, it’s not like, you have to have that pre-existing relationship, as you mentioned, Regay and 506C, but curious what that looks like. Is it just, again, just educating that person on the call and then potentially adding them to your email list and then sending them these case studies and then maybe after a couple of months, they become their, they invest with your company. Just curious what that sort of process looks like.

Lauren Wells (19:21.303)
Yeah.

Lauren Wells (19:45.534)
Yeah, so with us, again, because we’re reggae, we can speak with anybody. So we have a team of investor relations associates, and you can go to our website, learn about there’s an offering page, and you can actually schedule a call with someone on our team. You’re able to book with them and ask questions about the offering, learn more about who we are or what we do, get added to our email list. And then because…

The big gap is really like, oh, I like these people, but then it’s about the strategy. I wanna know more about the strategy. So we do, again, have.

a ton of resources. I think sometimes it’s overwhelming because we have so much education. So what we’ve done is we really have curated these specific pieces for people who are looking to learn more even if they don’t want to talk to us. If you go to our website and you’re like, I’m not ready to talk to them, I don’t even know what they do, we have our three minute explainer video and then we have a resource you can download to learn more. We have the webinars. Typically those then get people to say, most of the people I’d say that call or schedule calls with us,

have that are serious investors have watched a webinar, seen the explainer video, been on our email list, and they just have some like few questions to follow up and want to actually speak to a human being. So we really pride ourselves on like having an actual person available to speak and answering your questions and kind of guiding you through the whole process from investing and then even onboarding as an investor as well.

Trevor Oldham (21:18.55)
That’s awesome, and I know again, investing with their company, I know you guys made it super easy to onboard, and if I had any questions, you would reach out, so that was definitely super helpful, but I don’t wanna take up too much of your time, Lauren, and the last question I wanted to ask you of the day is if our audience is interested in learning more about you or about your company, where should they go to?

Lauren Wells (21:38.346)
Yeah, so if you’re interested in learning more about us, you can go to our offering or our team, you can go to 7einvestments.com and that’s the number seven, letter E, investments.com. There you’ll find all the resources you could possibly ever want, including different materials on evaluating a sponsor. So there’s educating, but there’s also educating on things you should be asking.

So you can go there, you can also, and I always put this out just to see, like do people actually email me directly? You can email myself at laur or follow me on LinkedIn and it’s Lauren Wells. And those are the places you probably wanna go to check us out.

Trevor Oldham (22:24.386)
Awesome. I’ll make sure to include that in the show notes of today’s episode. But Lauren, again, just wanted to thank you for coming on to the show today.

Lauren Wells (22:28.578)
Yeah.

Yeah, thanks so much Trevor. I’m excited to be here and thanks everyone for listening.