Meet Michael Fleming

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Michael Fleming. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Michael below.

Hi Michael, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

I think I found my purpose at an early age. My parents put me in music around 3rd grade and I started out with Tenor Sax. My mom was heavy into jazz and broadway musicals and my dad was into 60’s rock n’ roll so I was heavily influenced by that. Music made them happy. There wasn’t a cookout or birthday party that didn’t have a soundtrack to it so I think I knew early on music would be my purpose.
So my parents put me in Alamo City Band Camp in the late 1990’s through middle school and I eventually joined the Central Catholic High School Mighty Button Band where I switched from Tenor Sax to Trumpet. Trumpet players had all the cool melodies and loud parts so I switched to that thinking it would be more fun. It was more fun but a lot harder to play.
After High School I joined a local Ska band named Kevin Goes 2 College. We became locally famous and did 2 national tours. This is where I really knew I wanted to play for people on stage. Unfortunately the band broke up and we all went separate ways but I still wanted to do music professionally. The only place I could think to play professionally and get a steady paycheck was by joining on of the military bands. So I joined the United States Marine Corps Band in 2009. Now this was tough! One motto of the Marine Corps is every “Marine is a rifleman first”. So I had to go through Marine Corps bootcamp just like everyone else. I learned shooting, rappelling, hand to hand combat, and everything else needed to earn the title of U.S. Marine. After three long months I became a Marine and headed off to Virginia Beach, Virginia to train at the Naval Base Little Creek School of Music for 6 months. This was a tough program for me because I did not have a college degree like most people going through the program. So needless to say I lived in a practice room for 6 months. I graduated and was sent to the III Marine Expeditionary Force Band in Okinawa, Japan for 2 years and then the Marine Forces Reserve Band out of New Orleans, Louisiana.
I was eager to get my life started after the military and I married my high school sweetheart and we had a daughter. I couldn’t support us on Music alone so I went to school for AutoBody work and learned how to repair cars after a collision. I naturally was drawn to classic cars because of my dad so I did a lot of classic car restoration. After about 10 years of repairing cars my buddy Eric Rodriguez, owner of Musical Instrument Service, called me and asked if I would be interested in helping him run his music shop and repair horns. I thought how perfect! I knew how to play music and now I already had the skills to repair metal so this just seemed like destiny. I married the two skills of music and classic cars and here I am today the general manager of Musical Instrument Service.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I think the best part of my job is helping young kids learn and discover music. We make it affordable at our shop so anyone can play. My brother and I always say, “ If you want to play we’ll find a way”.
Another part of the business that is important to me is developing custom products that we can add to our customer’s horns. We started by making custom stone inlays for finger buttons. Now we have a state of the art laser engraver that we can use to put the customers name on the horn or any type of ornate decoration. The latest customer asked for Koi Fish on their button caps and it came out wonderful.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I had a Master Sergeant in the Marine Corps tell us, “Excellence is a habit”. I had never heard that before and it hit me like a lightning bolt. So forming good habits and not being complacent about my work is important. How you do one thing is how you do everything.
I think spending 8 hours a day in a practice room for 6 months taught me nothing great comes without discipline and consistency.
I would say people just starting out on their journey, just try and get really good at one thing. The things you learn along the way to get really good at that one thing will help you get good at everything else.

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

I think a major challenge for us is making people aware of our new products and services. Social media has been a great help but as I’m finding out trying to do my job and trying to do social media posts is very time consuming. Let’s be honest, running a social media page is a full time job. It helps to delegate. We are bringing in outside help to run social media posts and run our eBay store.

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