Melbourne Mum wins in National St George Banking Group AusMumpreneur Awards

The 2016 St George Banking Group AusMumpreneur Awards were held at Melbourne’s Crown Casino on Sunday 14^th August 2016.

Attended by the Federal Minister for Small Business, The Hon Michael McKormack MP and emceed by Channel 9s Shelley Craft from The Block, finalists from right around the country attended the event.

Sarah Morrissey, founder of Little Rockers Radio, a 24/7 online radio station dedicated to children from birth to 6 playing nursery rhymes, story time, yoga, meditation, lullabies and more won Gold in the Rising Star Category taking home a prize cheque from Bank of Melbourne and a 4-day Byron Bay Business Retreat.

“I am delighted to win this award. I saw a gap in the market, followed my dream and started a successful business that meets this need,” says Sarah Morrissey.

“It’s been a very steep learning curve,” states Sarah Morrissey, who had no previous background in radio broadcasting or IT. “However sometimes not knowing an industry intimately, can allow you to create something a little outside of the box and reshape how things are historically done.”

Sarah is delighted to be leading the way for Mums starting businesses and looks forward to growing Little Rockers Radio and most importantly, the reason she started her business, helping to support Mums and their children.

"My growth has been established through successful partnerships," said Sarah. "I have been able to work with some amazing companies including Australian Radio Network with Little Rockers Radio being the first Australian Children's Radio Station available on their iHeartRadio platform, The Five Mile Press with Australian authors reading their children's books on air, SIDS & Kids running the Little Rockers RED NOSE Disco through Child Care Centres nationally on Red Nose Day and more recently becoming Media Partner with Mother & Baby Magazine, one of Australian leading parenting magazines."

But at the heart of the online radio stations success is the drive to make a difference to the health of Australia's children and the tens of thousands of Mums switching on for their children who also believe in this vision.

“I am so incredibly passionate about children’s health, both physical and mental, and I see Little Rockers Radio as the perfect platform to help equip children with the knowledge and tools to help them grow into happy and healthy grown-ups,” says Sarah. “That’s why we play not only great songs and nursery rhymes but also Little Meditations, Yoga and short physical activity programming. It’s all designed to get kids incorporating this sort of activity into their lives from a young age so it becomes a natural part of what they do as they grow up.”

"St. George Bank is keen to support Australian entrepreneurs like Sarah and her fellow AusMumpreneur Award winners", said Stuart Zalunardo, Head of SME St George Banking Group.

“The awards are all about recognising the growing number of mums who are achieving outstanding business success while balancing motherhood. I was blown away by the entrepreneurial spirit of the award winners and am very confident that they will provide great inspiration for other mums considering starting their own business,” Stuart said. 

This is the seventh year the AusMumpreneur Awards have run, with the business mum community growing at lightning speed as mothers look for opportunities to join the ranks of small business owners in search of more flexibility, financial freedom and family time.

AusMumpreneur Network co-founder Katy Garner said “the awards show the passion of women who want to fulfil their entrepreneurial dreams as well as be great mums.

“The number of women starting businesses has tripled in the last 12 months! Of the 668,670 women operating a small business in Australia currently, a total of 47 per cent are mums with children at home.  We are thrilled to be the number one community for mumpreneurs and showcasing the best and the brightest each year through these awards and inspiring other women to follow their dreams too.  We are creating new initiatives every year to help Australian Mums achieve their business dreams.” 

“We are delighted that Sarah has won this award, she has an outstanding business and is an inspirational role model and ambassador for mums in business everywhere. We wish her and all our amazing Ausmumpreneur Award winners every success in the coming year,” co-founder Peace Mitchell said.

Sarah has also caught the attention of Red Shark, Naomi Simson, with a mention of Little Rockers Radio in her latest book, READY TO SOAR. This is a great story that needed to be told #inspiration, Naomi said on an Instagram post.