On this episode of the Playbook, I have COO Adrian Downcoulson of Rakuten Americas,

and we're going to talk about how ballet is reconciled with their success in business.

Join me for all this and more on the Playbook. This is Entrepreneurs the Playbook.

For each week, I bring you some of the greatest athletes, celebrities, and entrepreneurs

to talk about their personal and professional playbook to success, and what made them champions

on the field and in the boardroom. I'm your host, David Meltzer.

I'm excited to have another extraordinary executive, Adrian Coulson. She is the COO of Rakuten Americas,

and she is going to share with us this extraordinary journey of her success,

and maybe a few lessons that she learned along the way. Adrian, welcome to the Playbook.

Hi, thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. Well, you know, obviously being a great

executive of a great company, a worldwide company, it's taken you a little bit of time to move

your way up through the ranks and both in your profession and in the situation or knowledge.

Most people look at you and say, oh, God, how lucky could she be? This is amazing,

but I don't think they realize all the different stepping stones and the lessons that have been

learned. You kind of started your career with a really big project. I think what, 2013, you're working

on the Russian business side in Toronto, and you had a few lessons just right off the bat

when you were putting your perspective into place of what you wanted to be and what impact you

wanted to have. Yeah, well, I guess so my Russian business story actually, well, yes, it started

in Canada in Toronto. So I'm born and raised in Toronto. And in 2012, I was recruited, I was given

this amazing gift in many ways to start the Ebates business in Canada. And I don't really,

you know, I never really thought of myself as an entrepreneur, but I was given this opportunity

to build this business in the Canadian market under the banner of Ebates, which was already this

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