On a typical week in Dubai, Ebru Ertürk splits her time between two very different jobs. One is Elexacar, the rent-a-car company she founded and runs. The other is BizBize Talk, the podcast where she sits across from a guest and asks them how their life turned out the way it did.
One deals in bookings, fleets and customers. The other deals in memories and turning points. To Ertürk, they come from the same place.
Elexacar is Ertürk's first venture as an entrepreneur in the UAE. She isn't an owner who watches from a distance. She takes part in running the company herself, and that hands-on approach goes back a long way.
She started working at 16. She has never really stopped since. Through her civil engineering degree, a master's in architecture and around ten years at a government institution in Istanbul, she learned to manage detail and keep projects moving. Construction work rewards people who plan carefully and stay calm when things slip. A rental business does too.
The skills that make her a good host came later, and mostly in London.
Ertürk moved there in 2019. She arrived intending to study for an MBA and launch a construction firm under the Ankara Agreement. The pandemic got in the way, and she found herself building a life from scratch instead. She worked as a waitress. She worked in accounting. She moved into digital marketing and eventually became a digital marketing manager, building contacts with websites, publications and editors.
Waiting tables and working in marketing have something in common. Both teach you to read people. You learn when someone wants to chat and when they want to be left alone. You learn how to ask a question that gets a real answer. Ertürk picked up those instincts in London, and they show on every episode of BizBize Talk.
She also discovered she simply liked hearing people's stories. She noticed how often a stranger's experience gave her a fresh way to look at her own. That was the seed of the podcast.
After five years in the UK, Ertürk received indefinite leave to remain and later became a British citizen. She had thought about a spell back in Turkey. Instead, Dubai pulled her in. It's a city full of people who arrived from somewhere else, each with a reason, and that suited her plans well.
The podcast brings together guests from a wide range of professions and walks of life. Ertürk keeps the conversations warm and unforced. She isn't hunting for headlines. She wants to know what happened, how it felt, and what the guest learned from it.
Viewers get the benefit. Someone weighing a career change can hear from a person who has made one. Someone new to a country can listen to a guest describe the same doubts they're having now.
Ertürk knows those doubts well. She has changed countries twice and careers more than once. That history gives her guests an easy trust in her. She isn't asking questions from the outside.
Elexacar and BizBize Talk look like separate worlds. Watch Ertürk at work and the link is clear. Both need patience, attention to people and a willingness to start something new.
She has spent her working life collecting experience in very different places. These days she puts it to use in a car company and a podcast studio, often in the same week.
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