Mat Rees

Mat Rees has built and led businesses in industries that don’t make maintaining a work–life balance easy. From early years in hospitality to later ventures across property, finance, and now law and technology, he’s learned that ambition doesn’t have to come at the expense of balance, it just needs better structure and self-awareness. Over two decades, and while raising five children, that tension became a defining question: how do you build ambitious companies without losing the rest of your life in the process?

Today, as Founder and CEO of Beneficial Holdings, Mat leads a growing group of businesses built on that principle. Its flagship, Beneficial Network, reshapes the traditional mortgage model: advisers keep 100% of their commissions and pay a simple flat monthly fee. It’s a structure designed not just for profit, but for fairness and autonomy, helping advisers take real ownership of their time, income, and future.

Mat’s approach is deeply informed by his academic grounding — a master’s in Applied Positive Psychology and doctoral research in Entrepreneurship — which he uses to explore how mindset, structure, and resilience shape both business outcomes and personal wellbeing. That thinking guides how he runs his teams and his home life alike: clarity, compassion, and systems that give people room to thrive.

Now, through a new conveyancing firm and fintech venture, Mat is extending the same idea into other sectors that have lost sight of service and sanity. Each project is built around a simple conviction: that success should create freedom, not dependency, and that work should support life — not the other way around.

As a podcast guest, Mat speaks with honesty and warmth about the realities of entrepreneurship, fatherhood, and leadership, offering grounded insight on how to build businesses that work for people, not just profit.