The most important thing is writing songs that resonate and giving people a chance to listen to them.

When I think about my career and how it all started, it really started with me getting to a point where I understood how to write songs that resonated with people.

I believe that people want to hear good songs and they want to be moved.

I believe that most people aren't that different from one another. Although we might appear to be different on the surface, I think ultimately we all go through the same struggles.

What we really need to be open to is diversity itself, especially in a business environment. What you want is a plethora of ideas; you want people with different life experience, people with different work experience, people from different cultures to bring something to the table that you otherwise based on your own coming up, you yourself wouldn't have thought of.

There are a lot of people who talk about a formula for being able to start a fan base. But for me, it's been about songs and just being hard on myself as a writer, feeling like there is a purpose to it all.

Athens, much like Austin, is a difficult music scene. There are so many musicians there that it is hard to get gigs and hard for people to take you seriously.