Margot Ettedgui

Join Kristin Messerli in her hot new series, NextGen Influence, to get a behind-the-scenes look at how today’s social media influencers reach their audiences and discover new ways to connect. 

Margot Ettedgui, mortgage TikTok influencer and loan originator at Financial Triangle Inc., explains how she decided to start posting on TikTok and how her following evolved through her financial coaching content. 

As part of the NextGen homebuyer generation, Margot discusses the lack of understanding surrounding the purchasing process and her desire to make learning fun.

Interview Excerpt:

Kristin Messerli: Margot. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Margot Ettedgui: Absolutely. It’s my pleasure.

Kristin Messerli: So for our viewers, Margot is one of the leading TikTok mortgage influencers and creates a lot of really fun content. So again, thanks for joining the show.

Margot Ettedgui: Thank you, it’s an honor.

Kristin Messerli: So I wanted to ask you, I mean, you have over 300,000 followers on TikTok and over four and a half million likes. So you get a lot of viewership, what made you start doing that?

Margot Ettedgui: So what made me start was really just in the beginning of the pandemic in March, I kind of lost all my business. I really specialized in the non-traditional mortgages and a lot of those private lenders had to kind of close their doors temporarily for three months, six months, some of them. And so being that I was someone that was specializing with foreigners that couldn’t get into the country with private lenders that had their door closed, I was like, oh my God, I have no budget for marketing, my pipeline is dry, I need to figure out a way to get exposure. And TikTok was like an accident, it was something that I was like right before all the lockdowns started, I was on a ski trip, ski snowboard trip with my brother and family and he showed it to me. I was like, Ooh, like it’s snowing, we have nothing to do, look at this app, it’s really funny, I went viral, we probably go viral.

And then just like, as I was studying it and stumbling upon other educational creators, I was like, there’s a very, very little amount of educational creators in a massive need for mortgage, home buying content. And the content that I was used to seeing prior to TikTok was just so boring. I was used to getting things by email, I was just like, lenders calling me, Hey, I got a new program and I was like, oh my God, it’s not fun to consume, it must not be fun for young people to want to join the industry. So I started to create content and that was kind of how it is like naturally shifted.

Kristin Messerli: Yes. I love that. I have done a lot of work in educational content around home buying and personal finance and it is absolutely a big place of need. What makes you-

Margot Ettedgui: They don’t teach us this in school.

Kristin Messerli: What was that?

Margot Ettedgui: We don’t get taught any of this in school?

Kristin Messerli: No, exactly.

Margot Ettedgui: Yeah.

Kristin Messerli: Yeah. It’s such a huge need. And then the content is really difficult to consume, especially for a younger generation. What makes you really passionate about the subject to begin with?

Margot Ettedgui: So for me, the mortgage and real estate industry was something that I had always seen my parents be around. My father is a mortgage broker and real estate broker. And I was always like turned off by the idea again, because no one was making it like fun and I was in the fashion industry and it was just kind of like, I was getting tired of working so hard and not being able to achieve financial freedom. I was seeing clients walking into the stores decked out and just living their best life and I was like, when will that be me? Because no matter how many hours, no matter how high I climb this ladder, like I’m not going to get there, I didn’t feel like I did. And what was passionate for me was like sales and knowing how to interpret a product and sell that my way. So when I started to join the industry at first, you make that decision and you’re like, do I do real estate? Or do I do mortgage? And I just found that there was a bigger demand.

I felt like if I went into the mortgage shot, I could be more of a benefit to real estate agents and to home buyers, because I just found that the mortgage product was something that was just so valuable and was something that was going to be, I felt like easy to sell. I was like, everyone needs a mortgage. It must be hard to sell a house if you don’t have the money to buy the house, but everyone needs the money. Then I just kind of put my spin on it, because, like I said, like I just found that there was just so much space for me to kind of be creative with this. And I just saw so much room and potential for growth in the industry. That’s really what made me passionate about the mortgage industry and getting more young people to feel more relatable to being able to buy a home and feeling like it’s not scary to talk about mortgages and finance. It really was passionate to me when I was like, we have a serious situation on our hands here.

Kristin Messerli: Yeah, definitely. It’s funny, my dad was also a broker growing up but I was not planning to get in the industry at all. And I was a social worker working primarily in immigrant communities and doing a lot of education and realized that there was this huge need for personal finance education. And then as I was kind of getting into that, I realized everyone in my generation also needed personal finance education, like you said, we didn’t get that growing up. But there is this huge communication gap where it’s just like unrelatable, difficult to understand, out of touch and you’re now making that very accessible to a huge amount of people, which is really exciting.

Margot Ettedgui: Yeah. I’m happy that I’m able to do that.

Kristin Messerli: So you being very in touch with this audience and having a big following, I would like to know what some of the fears are that you hear from your audience or the questions that come up or if there’s any myths that you feel like you are constantly kind of working to dispel around mortgage or personal finance.

Margot Ettedgui:  So again, because I really specialized in that nontraditional space, as you can imagine, I saw, wow, people really don’t understand finance and less mortgages and even less about home buying, so even less when it comes to nontraditional. And so really like my job was to help the young entrepreneurs, the self-employed individuals and people understand that, maybe you did too many deductions on your tax returns, but there are other ways to qualify for mortgages. So for me, it was really like, how do I make that accessible? And how do I teach people that there are just many other options?

Don’t feel like it’s the end of the world, if you get denied one time. And so that was for me, like my key, my spark, to be like, well, that’s how I’m going to be different. Because if it all comes down to like, well, I can also help a first time home buyer and I also do the FHA. Well, then I felt like we all were going to be advertising the same products all across the board and then it was just going to be like, well, who has the lower rate? So for me, it was like, let me show you all of the different options, let me show you all the different programs and not to be afraid to just try, just see what you’re approved for and see what option is best for you.

Kristin Messerli: Yeah. You are a perfect example of someone who is looking for or finding that niche in the market and filling that space. And I think with your unique voice, that’s what makes us so powerful because people enjoy seeing that authenticity in you.