On today’s episode, I sit down with one of my favorite bands: Orlando-based band SALES @sales, comprising of Lauren Morgan and Jordan Shih. We talk about how they’ve navigated the music industry as an independent band since 2012 through shared trust, friendship and open communication to work through growing pains and celebrate wins as a duo.

We talk about the origin of their band name, how hip hop has influenced their business approach and creative process, how it’s important to know your worth and not to compare yourself to others, working through different relationships and more.

In celebration of the one year anniversary of their latest project forever & ever this week, we also dive into how some of my favorite songs from the album came together.

I first met SALES when I interviewed them for an emerging artist research project around 2014-2015 back during my SoundCloud days. I fell in love with their music immediately--their music feels open yet cozy and intimate and evokes a lot of different emotions. Once I reached out to connect, we hit it off immediately, so it was an honor to have them as guests on the show to hear about their progression from first meeting in Latin class in high school to continuously creating and building their SALES UNIVERSE to being one of, if not the only independent band, to have played Coachella this year.

Learn more at wearenotsales.com

Photo by Malcolm MartinAdditional audio editing by Jasmine Chen