Matthew Fleeger: Five Fast Facts about the Oil Executive
Generally, entrepreneurs reach a pinnacle of success after concentrating wholly on their companies. Not Matthew Fleeger. While he is the CEO of Gulf Coast Western-a $25 million family-owned company that focuses on exploring, developing, and acquiring oil and gas reserves in the United States-Fleeger is also a founding member of the Petroleum Club of Dallas and Gas Council of Dallas. He’s also a prolific philanthropist.
He has been an active member of the Gulf Coast region’s oil industry for 25 years, but his career trajectory has hardly been linear. Here are five fast facts about the oil tycoon’s road to success.
If you think that “family-owned” means “not much experience” or “small,” you would be incorrect when it comes to Matthew Fleeger. Fleeger is in the International Who’s Who of Professionals , a book of notable professionals around the globe. His extensive expertise in waste management, oil and gas, and the tanning industry undoubtedly landed him on the coveted list. He can credit his early entrepreneurial experience to a degree in business administration from the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. From there, he started with executive positions in the oil and gas industry, where he honed his strengths in team building, contract negotiation, and strategic planning.
From waste disposal to…tanning companies? Matthew Fleeger’s resume proves how daring of an entrepreneur he is. Before he became the CEO of Gulf Coast Western, Fleeger had a 13-year run as founder, CEO, and president of MedSolutions Inc., which specializes in transporting, treating, and disposing of healthcare medical waste. Once Fleeger forged a successful business out of MedSolutions, he sold it to Stericycle Inc. Fleeger then made the unlikely leap into the tanning industry. He helped found Palm Beach Tan and Mystic Tan, whose combined revenue is approaching $100 million. Palm Beach Tan started with six stores and is now the biggest indoor tanning company in the United States. Mystic Tan, a spray-on tanning booth franchise, is one of the largest in the world.
Matthew Fleeger isn’t just a hard-nosed businessman. He recently made headlines as a generous benefactor to a 13-year-old Texas girl named Sadie Keller. Keller is an Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia patient and founder of her eponymous nonprofit, the Sadie Keller Foundation, which benefits other children with cancer. Fleeger’s own cancer battle drew him to the nonprofit. Soon enough, Gulf Coast Western partnered with the Sadie Keller Foundation and donated $25,000 to the foundation’s annual toy drive, Sadie’s Sleigh. The event collects toys for children hospitalized with cancer. During its first year, the foundation collected more than 10,000 toys. And, although 2020 was challenging for oil companies, Matthew Fleeger and Gulf Coast Western donated anyway. “I feel blessed that we could help this year when it meant the most,” said Fleeger, discussing the visiting limitations in hospitals because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made battling cancer even more difficult for the children. Fleeger’s company also sponsors the Sadie Keller Foundation’s Yellowball fundraiser, a dinner and dance that features a silent auction and raffles. Fleeger also helps the foundation raise awareness of childhood cancer. Gulf Coast Western and Fleeger also support several other charities , including the North Texas Food Bank, Smile Train, Shriners Children’s Hospital, St. Jude’s Hospital, and other Dallas and Fort Worth-based charities.
After Matthew Fleeger’s father, Thomas H. Fleeger, founded Gulf Coast Western in 1970, Matthew became an apprentice, learning from the elder Fleeger’s successful approach to doing business. Matthew Fleeger also honed his craft with a dual degree in marketing and finance at Southern Methodist University before returning to the family business in 1986 and eventually taking over the reins as CEO when Thomas Fleeger retired in 2007.
Fleeger says the morals and ideals that his father taught him helps him and Gulf Coast Western weather the highs and lows of business. Just recently, he restructured the company’s daily operations to ensure the company’s continued growth.
His experience across various sectors has proven valuable in forging additional partnerships and acquisitions for Gulf Coast Western.
Matthew Fleeger cemented an acquisition that helped not only Gulf Coast Western but Dallas-based Northcote Energy Ltd. as well. Fleeger bought 50% of the working interest in the company’s key assets, which also allowed Northcote to expand its drilling operations in Louisiana. The move leveraged Gulf Coast Western’s expansion in the same area.
In another acquisition, Gulf Coast Western bought most of Orbit Energy Partners LLC’s assets. Both the Louisiana-based company and Gulf Coast Western benefitted from this development, as the acquisition provided the companies with access to 3D seismic data that covers a good portion of Southwestern Louisiana. Gulf Coast Western also gained working interest in 13 of Orbit’s active oil wells, plus 140 additional drilling sites.
The acquisition allowed Gulf Coast Western and Orbit to create a large expansion in both companies’ operational and territorial bases for oil and gas prospects.
Originally published at https://companyleaders.org on September 22, 2021.
