Aimee Augustine is a mom and business owner who, after having their fifth daughter, took on an unexpected new career supporting her husband’s growing business during the pandemic. Amidst growing a business and balancing work and home lives, they’ve kept the value of being charitable front and centre. They give a portion of every sale to charitable causes close to their hearts, including donating to Compassion Canada.
We recently had the opportunity to chat with Aimee and hear her story—a timely conversation ahead of Mother’s Day! Aimee shares how being a mom informs her work, why giving back is important for business, and a story of a mother in Compassion’s program that inspires her.
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An interview with mom and business owner Aimee Augustine
Compassion Canada: Introduce yourself in a minute or two. We love hearing about work and family, but we also love hearing about fun stuff like your favourite snack!
Aimee Augustine: My name is Aimee Augustine. I am married to Steve Augustine. We’ll be celebrating 21 years of marriage this spring and we have 5 beautiful daughters. We spend most of our time working and running the kids back and forth to activities—we’re in that heavy stage right now where there are very few spare moments in a day.
Aimee and Steve with their five daughters.
For fun, I share the love of fast cars with my husband and we recently went on a four-day driver training in northern Quebec, learning to drift on ice-covered race tracks with professional race car drivers. I love going to the beach, a good book and daily workouts. I don’t do a lot of snacking but when I do, I love chocolate, but only very specific kinds!
CC: We’d love to hear about your business and the story behind it. How did it start and what are you all about?
AA: Real estate is actually a second career for both me and my husband. I was a hair stylist for 15 years, all through the years of having my children. It was great because I could work from home while they were napping and be flexible with my schedule.
Steve was a travelling musician, so he was on the road a lot. We got to the stage in life where, while he had no desire to quit travelling and touring altogether, he was looking ahead and realizing, I know I can’t do this forever, what’s going to be our next step? We had always invested in real estate on the side in different ways—we had flipped homes and owned rental properties—so it was a natural transition to get his real estate license. We started doing that on the side while touring and doing hair and we had quite a bit of success right away.
It wasn’t long after that we opened our own brokerage, and when I was pregnant with our fifth daughter, Steve encouraged me to get my real estate license. We thought it was a good opportunity, so I did, and then sure enough, COVID hit, and I couldn’t do hair anymore. I wasn’t allowed to see any clients. It ended up being a perfect transition for me to start working to help build the business.
We’re part of a world-class coaching program—it was important to us to learn from the best and implement proven systems in our business. It’s been one of the best business decisions we’ve ever made. Through that program, the opportunity to license the brand Your Home Sold Guaranteed emerged.
Today, we have a business with about seven agents and five support staff. We have a nice office down in the Grimsby beach area, and we enjoy supporting people as they make one of the largest financial decisions of their lives. It’s a real honour to be part of the journey people take as they navigate this important decision. Our goal is always to bring certainty where we can and eliminate stress in what can be a stress-inducing time.
CC: We’d love to ask you about being charitable. It’s on your website as one of your values and something that clearly has been a very intentional choice. You’ve chosen to partner with Compassion as one of your charitable causes. What does that look like and why do you choose to make that a part of your business?
AA: We are firm believers that everything we have has been entrusted to us by God and doesn’t belong to us. We have a mandate as Christians to not only build up but to spread out and to give. That was also another reason why it was really easy for us to make that decision to join up with Your Home Sold Guaranteed Reality—their vision and their values are very much aligned with ours.
We take a portion of every sale give it to out worthy causes. The two big causes we support are Compassion and the Sarah Tapley Foundation.
The Sarah Tapley Foundation was started by Matt and Lisa Tapley, the pastors at our church, Lakemount Worship Centre. After a long fight, they lost their daughter Sarah to cancer. Through that experience, they incurred a lot of additional costs as they got treatments that could help Sarah. They started the foundation to support other families as they go through difficult health circumstances with an additional emphasis on supporting the siblings of a sick child. We help the foundation raise funds and awareness so they can help families navigate the financial and emotional strain that comes with these circumstances. OHIP covers a lot of expenses, but hospital parking, work leave, food costs and more add up fast. We partner with them so they can provide this important support to families in need.
“We are firm believers that everything we have has been entrusted to us by God and doesn’t belong to us. We have a mandate as Christians to not only build up but to spread out and to give.”
Aimee Augustine
When it comes to Compassion, both Steve and I have a fairly long history with Compassion. For me, when I was a young woman, I first came to hear about Compassion at a music festival. Someone spoke about Compassion from the stage, and I was compelled to support by sponsoring a child. I enjoyed the frequent updates and direct communication I was able to have with my Compassion child through letter writing and photo sharing. I supported him into adulthood.
Steve, on the other hand, was a touring musician and Compassion was an organization he and his band mates partnered with on many of their tours. He’s always had a lot of respect and trust for Compassion because he has seen first-hand how they steward the resources they are trusted with, delivering approximately 80 per cent of the funds given directly to the children. A 20 per cent administrative cost is incredible and we respect that greatly.
We sponsor three children now and have joined arms in special projects as well. There’s no shortage of ways Compassion helps around the globe. If you’re interested in getting involved we encourage you to do so! We’ve found them to be a valuable partner.
CC: Switching gears a bit—you’re a mom of five girls, as you mentioned. Can you talk a little bit about how you have seen being a mom inform how you lead and operate as a business owner?
AA: Being a mom is amazing, and it changes you in all the best ways—whether you’re a mom to one or to 10, I highly recommend it! I will say though, when you have multiple children, there are skills that you acquire that really do parallel into other areas of your life, all your relationships can grow from these skills and of course, these skills help your business also! Most notable skills that I feel have developed through my parenting journey are patience, multi-tasking, selflessness and leadership.
Aimee at the Augustine Team’s office in Grimsby, Ontario.
I believe that family is a large part of the foundation of a healthy heart and healthy mind. Funny enough, all the systems and approaches that we have to implement at home to run a healthy and successful home life apply to the office as well.
You’re putting other people first—your clients, your employees and your partners. You care about their well-being first. You have to implement systems so that things run smoothly and people have what they need when they need it to thrive. You’re constantly thinking ahead to what everyone will need a week, a month, a year or five years from now. There are times you have to make hard decisions, but you know those decisions are going to benefit the business and everyone involved in it in the long run. All those things kind of happen both at home and at the office.
It requires hard work, love, patience and resilience—lots and lots of resilience.
CC: There is certainly a lot of balance that goes into being a mom and a business owner. Do you have any wisdom or encouragement that you would share on that topic?
AA: I sometimes wonder if the idea of perfect balance is a myth. I’m not sure perfect balance really exists. For me, it’s more about being present where I am and managing my time well. I time block to create space in my life to improve my work/family balance and go all in on each task or part of my day as it comes, giving my all to the goal of thriving at home with my family and at the office with our team.
“Consistency compounds! The small things add up to big things, and you’ll be amazed at the impact it will have on you and your business.”
Aimee Augustine
I lean on God. He has been faithful to walk with me because there are always challenging times. One of my favourite sayings is “consistency compounds.” I try to carry that thread through all I do and use it as a reminder to keep pressing in on the things that I know are growing my faith, our family and our business. The compounding effect of many small things adding up to something larger intrigues me and I’ve seen huge results from this principle in my life.
CC: Along this thread of being a mom and business owner here in Canada, and partnering with Compassion to empower children and families and fellow moms living in poverty around the world… We would love it if you could share a Compassion story or moment that particularly stands out to you or comes to mind as really inspiring.
AA: A story I remember well was one about a woman who was nine months pregnant. She lived in a very small home, and I think it was half a day’s walk for her to get to the clinic where she was going to have her baby. She was registered in Compassion’s program around this time, and because of the funding Compassion provided, she had her very first check-up. She got to hear the baby’s heartbeat for the first time.
Later in the story, she goes into labour in the middle of the night and has to get up to walk that half day’s journey while in labour and in the dark to make it to the clinic. She made it there and had a beautiful, healthy baby. That story impacted me because I don’t think women realize how strong they really are. You know, if you can do that, you can do anything. I think that’s just a really beautiful story about the strength that women have and the beautiful support Compassion gives.
It’s sad that we live in a world where some people have so much, and others have so little. I love that Compassion gives us an avenue to help those in need.
CC: If you were to talk to another business owner who wanted to incorporate this value of being charitable into their business, but they don’t know where to start or what that looks like, how would you encourage them or what advice would you give them?
AA: First of all, I would say that giving back needs to be one of the highest values in your business. It’s a business principle shared by all business in the world regardless of your beliefs. The size of the hole through which we give is the size of the hole through which we receive. That’s not the reason we give, but it’s a business principle we must understand. Make sure it’s one of your top values, not only because of what you might receive back, but because of how it changes you when you do.
My advice would be to prioritize this right away, whether it’s 10 cents from every sale or $100 from every service you provide, it’s important. Again, consistency compounds! The small things add up to big things, and you’ll be amazed at the impact it will have on you and your business. If you need a worthy cause, please consider Compassion, they’re a wonderful partner that you can trust.
