Mike Soutar

Biography

Mike Soutar is an entrepreneur, business advisor and former media executive who has spent over three decades transforming organisations, building ventures, and mentoring new business leaders. Perhaps best known as the uncompromising interviewer on BBC One’s The Apprentice, Mike combines experience and insight with an infectious enthusiasm for ideas and vision.

Starting out as a teenage journalist in his native Scotland, Mike began his career writing horoscopes. He rose through the editorial ranks, going on to edit and revitalise Smash Hits and FHM in the 1990s. As Managing Director, he turned former pirate radio station Kiss FM in to a diverse multi-platform brand, and was a key figure in the sale of IPC Media to the US giant Time Warner. In the midst of the global financial crisis, Mike co-founded Shortlist Media, becoming a leader in a new field of free and freemium print media, in particular with its Stylist title. The business grew quickly from a five-person start-up into a 200-strong, multi-platform media group incorporating successful live and online activities and significantly disrupting the UK print landscape.

Along the way, Mike was recruited as an interviewer on the BBC series The Apprentice, with a remit to test candidates and their business plans to breaking point. It also demonstrates his own no-nonsense approach to entrepreneurship, resilience, leading through change and uncertainty, and the realities of building and scaling a business. With clarity, wit and hard-won experience, Mike explores strategies and stories from boardrooms, newsrooms and the Apprentice interview room.

Mike holds a diverse portfolio of board roles and advisory positions across technology, media and culture. He serves as a Non-Executive Director at Scottish Rugby and fintech firm LoopFX, is a Trustee of the V&A Dundee, and is an Advisor to the UK Government’s Board of Trade.