Oh, indeed he can succeed, Alan, otherwise I wouldn't encourage him. He will need to identify early on what "success" means for him, and focus, because he has a number of options. Success could be:

a) Becoming well-known as a performing songwriter (like KT Tunstall)
b) Ditto as a performer
c) Ditto as songwriter - where he only performs to "get the songs out", and attract "star names" to sing his songs
d)Getting his songs well known to a wide audience as quickly as possible, through the club circuit

Each of those avenues requires a different strategy.