Ebru Erturk trained to build things. As a civil engineer, her work was measured in loads, materials and deadlines. These days she builds something harder to measure. Her YouTube channel, Bizbizetalk, is a growing record of the people who make up Dubai, told in their own words.
The route between those two jobs took her across three countries.
Turkey, then London
Erturk grew up in Turkey and moved to London as a young professional. It was her first big relocation, and it taught her what every expat learns sooner or later. A new city doesn't care about your old résumé. You have to prove yourself again, make friends again, find your favourite café again.
She settled in. She became British-Turkish, with a foot in each culture and a habit of seeing both from the outside. Then she moved again.
A new career in a new city
Dubai brought a second big change. Erturk left engineering behind and retrained as a digital marketer. It's a jump that sounds sharper than it is. Engineers learn to break problems into parts, test them and fix what fails. Marketers do the same thing, only with audiences instead of beams.
Still, a career switch in your thirties, in a new country, takes nerve. Erturk knows what it feels like to stand at the start line twice. That's partly why she started Bizbizetalk.
Why she wanted to listen
Dubai is full of people who've taken a leap. Some left steady jobs to open a business. Some came for a contract and stayed for a decade. Some arrived with a guitar and a few savings. Each of them carries a story, and most of those stories never get told. They get swapped over brunch, or late at night with a flatmate, and then they're gone.
Erturk saw value in catching them. Her channel runs mostly as a podcast interview series. She sits down with one guest at a time and asks how they got here and what it's really been like.
Her guests come from all corners of the expat economy. There are business owners who took the risk of setting up in the Emirates. There are singers who perform across the city. There are people working at creative agencies, and people working a regular 9-to-5 who have a story just as rich as anyone with a startup.
The engineer's eye
Erturk's background shows up in the way she interviews. She's curious about how things work. How did you find your first client? What went wrong in year one? What would you do differently? Those questions give viewers something practical. They also bring out the human side, because nobody can explain how they built a life without talking about the doubts that came with it.
The result is a channel that feels grounded. Dubai life on Bizbizetalk isn't a highlight reel. It's a set of honest accounts from people still in the middle of their own stories.
Still building
Erturk now lives in Dubai full time, and the channel keeps growing one conversation at a time. She may have swapped hard hats for headphones, but the instinct is the same. Start with a solid base. Add to it carefully. Make something that lasts.
For Bizbizetalk, that base is a simple belief: people want to be heard, and their stories are worth the time it takes to hear them.
Youtube: www.youtube.com/@Bizbizetalk
Instagram: instagram.com/bizbizetalk_
Tiktok: tiktok.com/@bizbizetalk