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 just try to stay honest with myself and in doing that I feel like the songs are going to resonate.

I think people just want to hear good songs and I just want to keep getting better as a writer so that I can deliver good songs.

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.

In many ways my writing is like therapy. It is my way of dealing with things.

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.

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