What do premiership-winning football teams and thriving regional businesses have in common? According to Shaun Mooney, almost everything. In this episode of Launch Spotlight, host Eddie the Chef sits down with one of East Gippsland’s most quietly influential figures — a man who has spent decades building winning cultures both on the football field and in the local business community.

Shaun Mooney is a self-described quiet achiever with an extraordinary record. Over 300 senior games of Australian rules football, three premiership-winning coaching campaigns, back-to-back grand final appearances with Lucknow in the East Gippsland Football Netball League, and now a new chapter as senior coach of Morwell in the Gippsland League. Off the field, he’s spent nearly two decades as a radio sales representative for TRFM and Gold FM (Ace Radio), helping local businesses across the region tell their stories and grow their audiences.

The thread running through both careers? Connection. Shaun talks openly about how coaching and sales demand the same core skill: genuinely getting to know people — understanding how they learn, what motivates them, and what they need in the moment. Whether he’s working with a 17-year-old starting his football journey or a brand new business finding its feet in Bairnsdale, Shaun’s approach is the same: ask questions, listen, and show up consistently.

He shares a compelling philosophy on marketing consistency that every regional business owner should hear: radio’s role isn’t just to sell — it’s to keep businesses top of mind so that when a buying decision arrives, they’re already in the conversation. He draws a direct line between this and football: you train week after week not for the moments when it’s easy, but so you’re ready when it counts. Shaun also opens up about the evolution of Ace Radio’s offerings — now extending beyond broadcast into digital and website services — and how that allows him to be a genuine one-stop marketing partner for clients he’s known for years.

There’s a warmth to this conversation that’s hard to manufacture. Shaun speaks about East Gippsland the way someone does when they truly belong to a place — born at the Bairnsdale Hospital, raised in the high country, moved away briefly for family and career, and came back by choice. He describes the region with genuine affection: the mountains, the 90 Mile Beach, the tight-knit communities that pulled together through bushfires, floods, and COVID. During those crises, he reflects, radio stopped being entertainment and became something closer to an essential service.

With a young family of four, a fresh coaching challenge at Morwell, and a career built on long-term relationships over short-term transactions, Shaun Mooney is a reminder that in regional Australia, the most powerful business asset you can have is trust — earned one conversation at a time.